Case Study

Recently, i had found a Articulate blog called World of Mouth. It is talk about web-publishing, software support experience and also information about e-learning. One of the post is talk about a professor from Miami University, Ohio - Middletown campus. The main subject she teach is physics courses. She holds an undergraduate degree in physics and a master degree in education.She tend to change the way of learning physics.Miami University was invited her and the Center Online Learning (CoOL) to assist the distance learning courses of school of nursing.

The nursing school needed to build up activities immidiately for associate the degree nursing student who were searching for bachelor's degree in nursing. In this situation, most of the nurses are working , and their working time sometimes is different with others. So, attending a normal lecturer class tend to be a problem for them. The evaluation team, led by Hurn, has recommended Articuate Rapid E-learning Studio as the technology to assist creating the online courses.

Says Hurn:
“Our lectures were PowerPoint-based, so Articulate Presenter was a natural fit. The fact that our instructors and course authors could work within PowerPoint and easily enhance the courses for online learning was exciting in and of itself. But when we realized we could easily create and add engaging quizzes with Quizmaker and impressive interactions with Engage, Articulate Studio Pro became a no-brainer.”

She now holds class two days a week and creates and e-learning course that students review over the weekend. The Monday class begins with a quiz. Students can use notes they took from the online course and answer questions via a real-time response clicker. Based on instant results, Hurn is able to customize her Monday review session based on areas that need additional attention.

Following is Articulate-powered presentation about Hurn’s favorite features of Studio-09:

You can view this link according to following link:

http://www.articulate.com/blog/demos/Miami-University/player.html

The results have been excited. Hurn has observed the following:
-She can able to deliver a lecture in a 15-minute e-learning course instead of took one hour in a classroom lecturer who need to waste one hour.

-The Articulate-authored courses provide for easy navigation and allow students to repeat sections or even skip sections altogether. This allows students to learn at their own pace.
Class time can be used for more lab-oriented or collaborative activities.

-Some lab demonstrations are difficult to reproduce. She purchased a Flip Video recorder and records her lab demonstrations. Then, using the Articulate Video Encoder ‘09, she converts those videos to a Flash Video (FLV). Now she’s able to introduce the labs whenever she wants into the Articulate courses and quizzes.

-Using LectureScribe (a free software product developed by Brian C. Dean, Clemson University) and her tablet PC or Wacom tablet, she’s able to work through equation examples and easily insert them into Articulate courses. Some students will need to go through this once, but others may need to go through it multiple times to understand it.

-Student satisfaction and performance have improved: 88% of students agreed that the presentations were helping their learning.

What’s next for Hurn?
“I continue to challenge myself to improve my teaching approaches,” Hurn says. “I really want to improve the quality of my e-learning courses, and I’ve become a real fan of the Rapid E-Learning Blog.”
Her success has motivated others at Miami University to follow her lead. A mandatory safety training course was created in Articulate by colleague Andrea Han so that all staff could review it.
The university is now looking to hire a full-time director of online education. Is Hurn interested in applying for that position?
Says Hurn:
“I’m an educator at heart. So I’m not going to apply for that position. But, I’ll continue to explore ways to make physics easy to learn and work with other interested faculty. And, I’m certain that e-learning and Articulate software will continue to play a key role in that ongoing journey.”

After this article, i had found that e-learning is really helpful for nursing programs. This brings a lot of convenient to the students and absolutely for the lecturer. Although there is not face-to-face interaction, but the student and lecturer also can discuss their problem via many social network features. I believe that people will change their opinion about e-learning. please kindly leave a comment , thx :)

Reference:
The word of big mouth, The articulate blog, e-learning,Web publishing and software support experience [Online] Retrieve by 21th February 2009
URL: http://www.articulate.com/blog/

Financial aid for e-learning

Financial aid is assistance meant to help you pay for school. Some of schools allow students taking e-learning courses online to have financial aid but others do not. You will need to contact any school you're interested in to see what their specific financial aid policies and requirements are for students taking online courses.

Most financial aid programs fall into two categories:

Grants and Scholarships
Grants and scholarships are types of financial aid that you don't have to repay under normal circumstances. If you withdraw from a course or fail to maintain eligibility by sucessful meeting certain criteria, you may be required to repay part or all of a grant or schorlarship, depending on the particular award's rules.

Self-Help Financial Aid
Self-help financial aid consists of student loans and work study programs. Loans are types of asistance that you have to repay after you complete your degree. Normally, student loans have lower interest rates than other kinds of loans and some don't require interest payments while you in school.

In my opinion, financial needed not necessarily the amount of money that we think we will need to take course. This is the different between the cost to attend school and the amount that our family expected to pay toward our education. For me, I would apply student loan toward my study because it can treat as a preparation of emengency use. If our family facing financial problem suddenly,we still can rely on this student loan to continue our study.

.

Maybe it just a few money, but when we really need money, it really very useful for us. Maybe it can help our family to go through the financial, but at least we can release their burden. So, I recommend that those who want to continue their further study, please try to apply the financial aid, its really very useful for those who facing financial problem. Are you agree?

.

References:

Matthew Helm and April Helm.( 2000). Get Your Degree Online. Martinsburg, New York.

Analysis of the poll 4 result

Do you think e-learning is an effective way to continue your studies?

The poll 4 result shows that 69% of respondent think that they prefer study at college or university that study through internet. 22% of respondent think that it much more convenience and flexible. 8% of respondent have no comment with e-learning.

This analysis shows that most of the people like in-campus study than e-learning although it much more convenience and flexible. For my opinion, this is because people like to feel and face to face to lecturer or other. Study in campus actually can improve personal communication skills and enhance the relationship between each other. This can help in learning and student can actually experience it.

For those who will choose e-learning to continue their studies, maybe they have no time to go to the campus. They maybe are career people or businessman,or those who have their own business to handle but they want to learn something new or extra that may help them in their industries. E-learning really is a good investment for them, it can let them continue learning at the same time doing their business.

The result shows that there are still some of the people do not know about e-learning. This really disappointing me. Let tell them "Is time to learn something new!". Anyone have any comment, please leave a comment. Thank you.