The term Tower of Babel has become synonymous with projects that have grand designs but end in confusion. So named in the Bible, the Tower is described in the Qur'an and in Judaic texts also, under different names. Its reputed purpose was to unify the nations of the earth with a common language. The Tower fell, however, and those who collaborated…

This study's overall purpose is to identify the factors determining the use of technological innovation in Distance Learning (DL), as perceived by instructors of Business Education programs. The theoretical basis for the study is the Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT). The study's sample is made up of 436 instructors; we used a quantitative…

Sebastian Thrun gave up tenure at Stanford University after 160,000 students signed up for his free online version of the course "Introduction to Artificial Intelligence." The experience completely changed his perspective on education, he said, so he ditched teaching at Stanford and launched the private Web site Udacity, which offers…

The function of leadership is to create a vision for the future, establish strategic priorities, and develop an environment of trust within and between organizations. Great leadership is a process; leadership involves motivational influence, leadership occurs in groups, and involves a shared vision (Northouse, 2010). Instructional designers are…

Open Distance Learning (ODL) provides learners with the greatest possible control over time, place and pace of education. The educational delivery of ODL has improved greatly over the years with growing number of students continuously enrolling into various ODL programs globally. ODL however does come with issues and problems. Loss of student…

Surely "massive open online course" (MOOC) has one of the ugliest acronyms of recent years, lacking the deliberate playfulness of Yahoo (Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle) or the droll shoulder shrug suggested by the word "snafu" (Situation Normal, All Fouled Up). The author is not a complete neophyte to online…

Four converging trends are undermining land-based campuses as the preeminent source of knowledge acquisition and certification. The emergence of the learning sciences, the wikification of knowledge, the unbundling of faculty roles, and the migration of learning online are driving fundamental institutional change toward location-independent…

This paper updates earlier work in which we defined three generations of distance education pedagogy. We then describe emerging technologies that are most conducive to instructional designs that evolve with each generation. Finally we discuss matching the pedagogies with learning outcomes. (Contains 3 figures.)

This article provides an update of the Digital Learners in Higher Education Research project. In Phase 1 of the project, concluded that there is no empirically-sound basis for most of the claims that have been made about the net generation. It also found there are no meaningful differences between net generation and non-net generation students at…

Purpose: The purpose of the paper is to recognise that as educators moving into, or already in, a Web 2.0 world, we are likely to experience anxiety, and to explore the implications for educational design in a Web 2.0 world. Design/methodology/approach: The objectives are achieved as the result of recent successes with the commissioners for two…

This paper presents a patterns-based model of the evolution of learning and competence-building technologies, grounded in examples of current practice. The model imagines five simple stages in how institutions use "expeditionary change" to innovate more nimbly. It builds upon three assertions. First, the pervasiveness of web-based…

Mazoue's ("J Comput High Educ," 2012) article, "The Deconstructed Campus," is examined from the perspective of instructional design practice. Concerns center on: the knowledge base of precision instruction; the differential effectiveness of teaching procedural as opposed to declarative knowledge; the reliance on assessment of online learning; and…

Over the past decade, a small revolution has taken place at some of the world's leading universities, as they have started to provide free access to undergraduate course materials--including syllabi, assignments, and lectures--to anyone with an Internet connection. Yale offers high-quality audio and video recordings of a careful selection of…

"The impact of web-based lecture technologies on current and future practice in learning and teaching" was a collaborative project across four Australian universities, funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC). The project was both exploratory and developmental in nature and according to the project's external…

The academic credit hour, developed over 100 years ago, does not accommodate online and other instructional innovations. The academic credit hour is an Industrial Age metric based on seat-time, or contact time that faculty and students spend together in a classroom. Online education does not require that students and faculty be in the same place…