In Going Online, one of our most respected online learning leaders offers insights into virtual education—what it is, how it works, where it came from, and where it may be headed. Robert Ubell reaches back to the days when distance learning was practiced by mail in correspondence schools and then leads us on a tour behind the screen, touching on a wide array of topics along the way, including what it takes to teach online and the virtual student experience. You’ll learn about:
- how to build a sustainable online program;
- how to create an active learning online course;
- why so many faculty resist teaching online;
- how virtual teamwork enhances digital instruction;
- how to manage online course ownership;
- how learning analytics improves online instruction.
Ubell says that it is not technology alone, but rather unconventional pedagogies, supported by technological innovations, that truly activate today's classrooms. He argues that innovations introduced online—principally peer-to-peer and collaborative learning—offer significantly increased creative learning options across all age groups and educational sectors. This impressive collection, drawn from Ubell's decades of experience as a digital education pioneer, presents a powerful case for embracing online learning for its transformational potential.
Foreword by Katepalli R. Sreenivasan
Acknowledgements
Part I. Virtual Classes
- Dewey Goes Online
- Virtual Team Learning
- Active Learning: Interaction, Diversity and Evolution in Online Learning
- What You Can Do Online, But Not on Campus
- Why Faculty Don’t Want to Teach Online
- Blind Scores in a Graduate Test: Conventional Compared with Online Outcomes
- Migrating Online
- Who Owns What? Unbundling Online Course Property Rights
- The Road Not Taken: Divergence of Corporate and Academic Online Instruction
- Engineers Turn to Online Learning
John Vivolo
With M. Hosein Fallah
Part II. Migrating Online
with A. Frank Mayadas
Biography
Robert Ubell is Vice Dean, Online Learning, at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where he heads the school’s digital education unit. Recipient of the highest honor given for individual achievement in digital education, the A. Frank Mayadas Leadership Award, he is a Fellow of the Online Learning Consortium.
"The chapter on why faculty don’t want to teach online provides the best explanation yet for the critical question on why faculty acceptance of online education has barely budged in the face of dramatic growth of online enrollments. It is now our 'go to' resource for those who need to understand this important issue."
—Jeff Seaman, Director, Babson Survey Research Group
"Ubell describes in detail how new technology allows us to use online learning in new ways that are both more participatory and more effective. These assertions come from someone with a remarkable track record of making learning actually happen."
—Ralph Gomory, Research Professor, NYU and former President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
"For Ubell, the critical task is developing student-centered pedagogy and a greater degree of meaningful contact between student and faculty. One would be hard pressed to find an educator today who would dispute the importance of these needs."
—Christopher Haynes, Medium
"Going Online shows there are many ways to migrate education to the Internet. All require institutions to commit to opening up instruction, moving from a professional relationship between a teacher and students to a corporate process. It involves decisions about the online learning environment (be it Moodle, Blackboard or Canvas), whether to use a MOOC provider, how to negotiate intellectual-property rights and how to compensate staff."
—Mike Sharples, Nature 540, 340 (15 December 2016)
"This well-structured, well-researched collection gets to the root of the world's skepticism about digital education, and snippets of humor make it a more entertaining volume than readers might initially expect. Collectively, the essays argue that, despite our misgivings, online education is the best tool for advancing, creating, and distributing knowledge in the modern world."
—Alex Moore, TD Magazine (1 May 2017)"Going Online presents a hopeful view of online teaching... Going Online makes a case for recognizing the limitations of the face-to-face classroom and reconsidering the pedagogical practices that become possible outside of that setting. The collection might not persuade administrators and faculty whose familiarity with online education has led them to resist its expansion. However, it offers a useful survey of previous research and confronts pervasive misconceptions. These two features make it a valuable resource for sustaining conversations in universities looking to develop online experiential learning."
— Bethany Mannon, Reflective Teaching
