The Online, Asynchronous, Accelerated, Compressed, Modular, Standardized, and Adult Undergraduate Course in Biblical Studies

The long title of this article reflects the multiple dynamics at work in a new type of class commonly found in adult degree completion programs in higher education. These characteristics are briefly surveyed in order to show how they impinge upon one another to both limit and complicate strategies for effective learning. These dynamics and complications are illustrated by exploring how they affect an introductory class on biblical interpretation. The article closes by considering some further strategies that may be employed in this highly constrained type of class.

A MODEL FOR DEVELOPING HIGH-QUALITY ONLINE COURSES: INTEGRATING A SYSTEMS APPROACH WITH LEARNING THEORY

As the demand for online education continues to increase, institutions are faced with developing process models for efficient, high-quality online course development. This paper describes a systems, team-based, approach that centers on an online instructional design theory (Active Mastery Learning) implemented at Colorado State University-Global Campus. CSU-Global Campus is a newly-created online campus within the Colorado State University System, and launches in Fall 2008 with fully-online undergraduate degree completion programs and Master’s degrees.

The Factual Knowledge Elements and Components of Outstanding Retention and Student Success Coaching

The research presented throughout this chapter and in Chapters 3 and 4 comes from a 2015-16 study of a US-based for-profit coaching company that was conducted as part of the author's dissertation and doctoral studies. The research was designed to examine, understand, and explain why students assigned to receive retention and success coaching were significantly more likely to remain enrolled at their institutions than students who did not receive coaching. One of the main elements of the research was to understand and evaluate the coaches' performance in the retention of students in online degree completion programs and to inform the larger, related problem of online course and program retention. As a further focus, the study was designed to inform and improve retention of the most difficult community of students, the non-first-time student enrolled in an online degree completion program. This chapter looks at the knowledge elements and components of highly impactful coaching.

The Development and Growth of Professional Coaching as an Education Retention Strategy

This chapter develops background, data points, research, and literature review context around the factors and the educational environment that led to the identification of processional coaching as a promising retention strategy at post-secondary institutions. The chapter begins with some background on the history of educational coaching and how it was initially defined and then chronicles the development of professional coaching as an educational retention strategy. The chapter briefly discusses the financial impact of low retention both from a student and an institutional perspective. The chapter then looks at graduation rates by institution and surveys online versus face-to-face graduation rates and the growth of online learning and its impact on student retention. There is exploration of how for-profit institutions and their growth created a conducive environment for the design and deployment of professional coaching in the higher education sector. The chapter also investigates how increased participation in higher education led to lower completion rates and how this dynamic eventually led to the development of new and innovative strategies around retention. Some background on the birth and ascension of online degree completion programs also helps to set the stage for later research related to retention and student success and how non-first-time students as the new majority are impacting the post-secondary education marketplace. Learning and motivation challenges for non-first-time students are also introduced and explored within the context of the development of coaching as a retention strategy.

Administrators' Perceptions of Motives to Offer Online Academic Degree Programs in Universities

<p class="3">Although the number of online academic degree programs offered by universities in Turkey has become increasingly significant in recent years, the current lack of understanding of administrators’ motives that contribute to initiating these programs suggests there is much to be learned in this field. This study aimed to investigate administrators’ perceptions of motives for offering online academic degree programs in universities in Turkey in terms of online associate degree programs, online master's degree programs, online bachelor's degree completion programs, and online bachelor's degree programs. A qualitative research method was employed for this study. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 administrators from different universities’ distance education centers in Turkey and thematic analysis was applied to the data. The research found that administrators’ motives for offering online academic degree programs mainly involve in answering to the high demand of prospective students. Six major themes were identified with regard to influencing factors for administrators’ motives: demands for programs, mission to support education, readiness of infrastructure, teaching staff as well as applicability of content, overcoming the shortage of classroom space and teachers, obtaining revenue, and gaining prestige.</p>

Improving U.S. College Graduation Rates with Quality Online and Blended Degree Completion Programs

The Lumina Foundation estimates the number of American adults possessing some college education, but no degree, to hover at about 47 million. CAEL approximates this number to be about 100 million when including adults without any previous college study. This chapter questions whether there are sufficient degree completion programs available in the U.S. to meet current demand. With the U.S. a dismal 19th in the 2015 OECD rankings of college graduation rates, this chapter makes the case that there is more work for American colleges and universities to do to address the gaping disparity between the number of Americans holding four-year degrees and those needed to provide the innovation required to maintain future American economic vitality. Finally, the chapter reviews the blended classroom approach as a highly effective model for serving the adult degree completion population and describes a successful program that was recently created at Long Island University.

The Net Generation of Nursing: Keeping Empathetic Communication Alive

Electronic communication has had a profound impact on generations, in the nursing profession as well as in society as a whole. Nursing educators struggle with facilitating verbal communication skills in didactic and clinical settings, particularly with the Net Generation. Online education is rapidly becoming the norm in degree-completion programs. Nursing educators must assure that empathetic communication with patients will not become a lost art.