Distance Education and Online Learning on NPR

The last two days, Morning Edition on NPR has done a series regarding online learning and distance education. They focused on the University of Illinois at Springfield. The first piece was interesting, in that the instructor featured was teaching a class synchronously over a tool similar to Adobe Connect or Elluminate Live. The model seemed to be more synchronous than asynchronous. Interestingly, she and one other student were the only ones with microphones, as well.

Today's story focused on the tools faculty use for teaching online, including the ubiquitous blogs and wikis. Faculty members were advocating tools such as blogspot mainly to allow their students to continue working when the university's sites were down. Makes me wonder a bit about their infrastructure out there.

The other giggle I got was yesterday when the NPR reporter referred to posting things asynchronously on a "Billboard." Even my husband (in the car with me at the time) said, "I think they mean bulletin board, right?"

More information and the recordings can be found at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16709807.