Great Bend, KS – EduKan, a consortium of the six western community colleges in Kansas, reports the largest enrollment in the institution’s 11 year history.  “We offer our students ten different sessions each year to match the needs of our students,” says Dr. Mark Sarver, EduKan’s Director.  “The session that begins in January is usually one of our largest, this year it was the largest in our institutions history.”  Enrollment is up by 9.14% over the previously highest enrollment and overall enrollment is up 10.3% ahead of last year.

EduKan provides online associates degrees and general education classes to students in Kansas and across the United States.  “We are seeing a lot more students coming from out of state, especially California where the state’s budget deficit is reducing the number of classes being taught by their community colleges; our out of state enrollment is up by 7% through word of mouth advertising by our students.”

It finally hit me at a presentation during the Consumer Electronics Show last week in Las Vegas. 

Let me take a step back, I attended the show to find a device that would help our students better utilize technology in their studies.  We have toyed with the idea of moving to eBooks, but as the previous post states, our students are not a fan of eBooks.

So my search began.  I waded through 62 inch ultra flat 3D televisions and speakers that work underwater and in space to find the three aisles designated for eReaders.  I presented my dilemma.  I need a device where students can highlight, make notes; print out selected passages (along with the notes and highlights) and share information with other classmates. 

What a surprise…. Nothing exists.  Many vendors looked at me like I had three heads.  It was not until a presenter said, “We need eStudiers, not eReaders”.  Yeah, someone else gets it.

Soooooo….. electronics people.  Step it up.  Give our students a product that allows them to interact with the content.  We are waiting.

We surveyed 614 of our current online students regarding the use of eBooks and resource material imbedded in the online class.  25% have used eBooks, about half like them.  Their biggest concern was being able to highlight, make notes in the margins and print specific areas of the document.  Several saw eBooks as simply a way of pushing additional costs onto the student.  Example – Regular textbook costs $189, eBook costs $99.  If the student buys the eBook, most will want to print a portion or all of the document, costing the student in paper in printer ink.  And at the end, they will not be able to sell the eBook back.

Students were encouraged by the idea of imbedded resources, however, their concerns were the same as with the eBook.  How to customize the learning resource to their needs.

We are working on several technology ideas that might address this need.  I will be at the Consumer Electronics Show this Jan. to look for innovative ideas to make student learning better and more engaging.  A key focus of this show is educational electronics.  I will keep you posted. 

Remember, textbooks are flat.  The world is not flat!

Mark

The world is flat.  Pretty popular theory a couple thousand years ago. 

Around 330 BC, Aristotle provided observational evidence for the spherical Earth,[10] noting that travelers going south see southern constellations rise higher above the horizon. He argued that this was only possible if their horizon was at an angle to northerners’ horizon and that the Earth’s surface therefore could not be flat.[11] He also noted that the border of the shadow of Earth on the Moon during the partial phase of a lunar eclipse is always circular, no matter how high the Moon is over the horizon. Only a sphere casts a circular shadow in every direction, whereas a circular disk casts an elliptical shadow in all directions apart from directly above and directly below.[12] Writing around 10 BC, the Greek geographer Strabo cited various phenomena observed at sea as suggesting that the Earth was spherical.

Text books are flat.  Yeah, but you need a book to teach.

We say NO.  Project Aristotle is a bold initiative to rid our students of the pedagogically inferior flat context of an overpriced textbook.  One of the key tenants of EduKan is to provide affordable access to higher education.  We keep our tuition low – $125 per credit hour, yet our students are forced to pay almost that in textbooks. 

Our initiative seeks to utilize open source and purchased digital repositories to embed content within our online courses.  I encourage you to review some of the great resources listed below and follow us on our journey to become textbook (free).

www.hippocampus.org

HippoCampus is a project of the Monterey Institute for Technology and Education (MITE). The goal of HippoCampus is to provide high-quality, multimedia content on general education subjects to high school and college students free of charge.

 http://www.theorangegrove.org/OGMain.asp

Florida’s digital repository of open text and resources.

 www.cnx.org

Connexions is an environment for collaboratively developing, freely sharing, and rapidly publishing scholarly content on the Web. Our Content Commons contains educational materials for everyone — from children to college students to professionals — organized in small modules that are easily connected into larger collections or courses. All content is free to use and reuse under the Creative Commons “attribution” license.

 http://www.oercommons.org/

In a brave new world of learning, OER content is made free to use or share, and in some cases, to change and share again, made possible through licensing, so that both teachers and learners can share what they know.

 http://learn.creativecommons.org/

ccLearn is a division of Creative Commons dedicated to support open learning and open educational resources. Our mission is to minimize barriers to the creation, sharing, and reuse of educational materials—legal barriers, technical barriers, and social barriers.

www.ocwconsortium.org

An OpenCourseWare is a free and open digital publication of high quality educational materials, organized as courses. The OpenCourseWare Consortium is a collaboration of more than 200 higher education institutions and associated organizations from around the world creating a broad and deep body of open educational content using a shared model. The mission of the OpenCourseWare Consortium is to advance education and empower people worldwide through opencourseware.

www.wikibooks.org

www.wikiversity.org

www.wikieducator.org – free training on how to use a wiki

http://wikilearn.uvu.edu/wikis/Main_Page

 http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/

 http://webcast.berkeley.edu/

 http://oerrecommender.org/