Posts Tagged 'education'

The 2009 Sloan Survey of Online Learning reveals that enrollment rose by nearly 17 percent from a year earlier.  The survey of more than 2,500 colleges and universities in the United States finds approximately 4.6 million students were enrolled in at least one online course in fall 2008, the most recent term for which figures are available.  According to the survey, both the bad economy and the flu were significant factors contributing to the increase.

The Society of Biblical Literature (of which I am a member) has just initiated a survey that will be used as part of the preparation for a new educational web site called “The World of the Bible: Exploring people, places, and passages“.  Please take a few minutes and fill out the anonymous survey, as your feedback and comments will be immensely helpful.  Thanks!

Well, it has been a while, hasn’t it?  Again.  Apparently, I have had a busy fall …

I gave a presentation at the 8th Hawaii International Conference on Education a couple of days ago, and it was called “Putting a Face on E-Learning: A Strategy to Integrate Faculty Videos into YouTube, iTunes U and a Virtual Learning Environment.”  The primary focus of my talk was to help provide some “big picture” thoughts on how faculty can work with the rest of the university (administration, marketing, etc) to help ensure long-term success.  If you are interested, you can download my presentation here.

Well, it has been a long time since my last posting.  For a number of reasons.    However, I am pleased to say that there are nine world religion video summaries that are now available on iTunes U!   They are a part of the RELS201 Introduction to World Religions course that I teach at APUS.  I hope that you find them to be useful.

For those of you who have been following the development of the Certificate of Christian Studies at UNBC the last couple of years, you may be interested in knowing about the future.  No, not the whole “future”, just the future of Christian Studies.    The course offering will be expanding from six courses to seven, which will reflect a modification to the Church History course(s) and the Old/New Testament courses, and the addition of a new course called

Just a quick posting today.  Did you know that there are about a zillion books that are freely available/downloadable online?  Of course you knew that.  But … did you know that over 30,000 of them are nicely categorized and searchable at Project Gutenberg?  Check it out, and also look at their list of the top 100 books.

Mixed in with all of the useless stuff on the Internet, there are occasionally some great resources.  And Covenant Theological Seminary’s Worldwide Classroom is definitely one of the good ones!  They provide FREE lecture manuscripts, study guides and mp3’s for twenty courses in spirituality, Biblical studies, theology, ministry, etc.  If you are looking to deepen and expand your Christian worldview, why don’t you take some time and explore the Worldwide Classroom.

Well, believe it or not, I am now on iTunes U!  Crazy.  As part of our ongoing e-learning initiatives at AMU, I have been creating and incorporating video summaries into some of my online classes.  Within the classes, the target group has been current students.  As a next step, the university is expanding its reach outside of its digital “walls”, and has now started to provide a selection of course videos as free podcasts through iTunes U.

So … if you are interested in watching some of my weekly Introduction to the Bible video summaries, you can subscribe to this video podcast.  Let me know what you think!

A few of you have been inquiring about the reading requirements for the Christian Spirituality course at UNBC this September.  Well it is your lucky day – the course textbooks are listed here, and the weekly readings are listed below.

Are you looking for opportunities to learn more about online education, network with other instructors, or get some practical tips for improving your online teaching techniques?  If so, why don’t you attend a conference this year?

Go to eLearning Conferences: eLearning Technology for a comprehensive list of 2009 conferences.  Happy learning (and happy travelling)!