Academic Case Studies

eLearning Utopia: iPods meet course management in the classroom

"My course is anything but a black hole. It involves fiery online give and take on eternal existential questions, integrated with fine art, classical music, "podcasting" and the ubiquitous iPod. I've found that structured online discussion and thoughtful content delivery supports complex learning and discovery."
Robert Viau, Campus Technology, August 2005

Added: 17 August 2005
Reviewer's Note:
The author concludes "Elearning technology can be so much more than notes and lectures posted online. It can be a remarkable tool to enhance learning and actively engage students in meaningful dialogue, conversation and even controversy. When they can do this and still be civil, liberal arts education is really working."

Online Classes Offer Virtual Dissection, but Gym Still Takes Sweat

"The nation's public schools are rushing to reconfigure scores of traditional courses from basic composition to calculus so students can take them via the Internet. One of the unlikely new offerings in this vast experiment is online gym" By Sam Dillon, New York Times, 2 August 2005

Added: 3 August 2005
Reviewer's Note:
This article looks at some online classes at a high school and in subjects that you would not have thought could have been delivered online.

Achieving success in Internet-supported learning in Higher Education

"contains the results of a study of 21 higher education institutions that have achieved success in Internet-supported learning."

Added: 12 March 2005
Reviewer's Note:
Online and PDF versions available

Downloading the classroom: a look at online courses

"No student can deny that it is not fun to have to get up, get dressed, and trek all the way across campus for an 8:25 a.m. class. Imagine how easy life would be if all it took was the click of a mouse to get there."
Jinah Kim, The Tufts Daily, 4 November 2004

Added: 7 November 2004
Reviewer's Note:
The byline on this article is "Some students view such courses as 'wasting great professors'."

Teaching online: stories of contemporary practice at Deakin

"This site contains innovative cases of practice in the development and use of traditional and digital media and online environments."
Deakin University, Australia

Added: 25 May 2004
Reviewer's Note:
Read summaries of cases, listen to interviews with teachers and explore the world of teaching at Deakin.

Confessions of an early Internet educator

"Six years ago, Concord Law School (a division of Kaplan, Inc.) launched the nation's first totally online law school ... In this essay, I will attempt to reflect upon the lessons we have learned in a synopsis of what "works." Ultimately, the growth of online learning during the past few years indicates that much of what we either created or stumbled upon can be replicated in other environments."
Jack R. Goetz, President and Dean, Concord Law School, Published by the Distance Education and training council, February 2004

Added: 19 March 2004
Reviewer's Note:
Something about the development of e-learning at the University of Alberta

Who needs paper? Not Iowa College

"Students at an Iowa College can forget the quintessential experience of pulling all-nighters at the library poring over stacks of books. For one thing, there's no library. For another, there are no books."

Added: 7 August 2002
Reviewer's Note:
The College intends to be an entirely paper-free campus

Compaq's iPAQ: A time multiplier

"Arizona State University has recently adopted handheld computers in its High Technology MBA, a program offering a customized curriculum for managers in technology-intensive businesses. Starting last fall, all incoming students, faculty, and staff were equipped with Compaq Computer Corp.'s 3670 iPAQ handheld computers. Already, the devices are boosting productivity."
Brian Boyd, Syllabus Magazine, March 2002

Added: 13 March 2002
Reviewer's Note:
I think we will see more examples of universities and companies too that are making significant use of PDAs for both working and learning

eCornell distances itself from convention

"When officials from eCornell, Cornell University's for-profit distance-learning subsidiary, introduced "Irate Joe" at a conference in Florida, seasoned human-resources executives found the online simulation of an angry employee chillingly real."
Esther Campi, The Ithaca Journal, 7 March 2002

Added: 8 March 2002
Reviewer's Note:
"The course that Joe is derived from, "Fundamentals of Employee Benefits," has been taught at Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor Relations extension division for nearly 20 years. But it only went high-tech in January.

Using a web site in a large lecture class to help students with personal learning projects

"Teaching large lecture courses pulls me towards two opposing pedagogies. One is instructor-centered. In traditional large lecture courses, the instructor communicates course material to students through lectures, demonstrations, and media and determines assigned readings. ... The second pedagogy is student-centered. It encourages active student work by asking students to search for creative solutions to open-ended problems, to think critically about issues, and to work in groups on complex tasks."
Darrell L Butler, the technology source, July/August 2001

Added: 5 July 2001
Reviewer's Note:
A case study of a simple yet effective way of using the web in a traditional lecture class

Managing a large distance course using Webboard

"The paper describes the experience of trying to use Webboard to manage 40-50 active students in a single course which has high pragmatic content and encourages a collaborative approach to education. It presents the methods used to organize the course and both the advantages this CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) system offers and the problems it creates. Finally some proposals are made for the functionality need in CMC systems to make it easier to manage large classes." Murray Turoff, Division of Information Systems, Department of Computer and Information Science, New Jersey Institute of Technology"

Added: June 2001

Solving some problems of university education: a case study

"Traditional university education, in both on-campus and distance education modes, suffers from a number of problems. his paper describes an attempt to address these problems using a collaborative, online teaching method within the subject Systems Administration." (1996) David Jones, Department of Mathematics & Computing at the Central Queensland University.

Added: 2000