The document discusses the history and future of online education. It begins with a brief overview of the speaker's background and experience in online learning. It then provides a high-level history of online education, noting that online learning started in the 1990s with asynchronous learning networks and grew through research and organizations like the Sloan Consortium. The document outlines concerns about a "quiet crisis" in online education and discusses changing dimensions in online learning like new technologies, widespread acceptance, and increased competition. It advocates for a focus on affordable, high-quality online education and learning through simulations, videos, mobile access, and competency-based models.

1. The History and Future of Online
Education:
What should you do?
John Bourne, Ph.D.
Chief Academic Officer
American Sentinel University
Executive Director Emeritus, The Sloan Consortium
Emeritus Professor at Olin College and Babson College

2. Outline
My background
Your Challenge
Brief history of online education
The dimensions of online learning
Are there problems? - yes, people just don’t know what is going
on and how to do online education correctly!
• The frog – just what is the problem?
• What are solutions? Why should we consider the problem.
• What are our solutions – take the best of on-ground and make it
great online by replicating the best on-ground in an anytimeanywhere world.
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Add things to do in the online world that can’t be done onground

3. John Bourne Ph.D -- Background
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B.E. Vanderbilt
M.S.E. University of Florida
Ph.D. University of Florida
Professor at Vanderbilt (31
years)
Professor at Olin College (10
years)
Professor at Babson College (10
years)
Executive Director, The Sloan
Consortium (6 years)
Chief Academic Officer,
American Sentinel University ( 2
years)
Fellow: IEEE, Sloan Consortium
• Interests
• Innovation in online
education
• Technology for teaching
and learning
• Social networking
• Entrepreneurship
• Analytics
• French Horn playing

4. The Challenge for this morning
• In your discipline, as I present ideas, think about
how could online education improve teaching and
learning here at UMKC.
• What can be done that cannot be done easily onground.
• What affordances do you see for your discipline
• Write things down and we’ll collect and organize –
and have discussions with Devon Cancilla
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5. Why talk about online learning now?
• Online learning is changing! The first phase is over.
• How is it changing?
– New technologies
– Widespread acceptance by the public and government
– Increased competition in a huge market
• What does this mean for us?
– What are the best steps to be leaders in this increasingly competitive
market? - especially in the regional market.
– Our direction: We should focus on affordable high quality online
education for learners delivered at scale in markets that have
sufficient growth in our focus programs. Focus on regional markets.
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6. Some people worry
that we have an Online Education crisis1
• “Friedman’s term quiet crisis, which others have called a “creeping
crisis,” is reminiscent of the folk tale about boiling a frog. If a frog
is dropped into boiling water, it will immediately jump out and
survive. But a frog placed in cool water that is heated slowly until it
boils won’t respond until it is too late.” – from the Rising Above
the Gathering Storm report.
– After Our Stem
Crisis
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Picture from Wikipedia

7. Sloan Foundation funded projects starting
in 1993 in the “Learning outside the
classroom” program spearheaded by Frank
Mayadas and ultimately spent nearly
$100M on projects, mostly in US.
Online learning = ALN (asynchronous
learning networks) grew in parallel paths:
e-Learning (training) and in higher
education. K-12 lagged significantly.
Significant scholarly research proved the
efficacy of online learning
Sloan-C was established and grew into a
prime mover organization for online
education.
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History of
Online Learning

8. The Pillars
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9. The Changing Landscape
• The Internet became widely available
– The original pillar of access was largely realized. Scale became
more important.
• Better ways of learning were introduced but often often
poorly utilized – often largely duplicating drawbacks of
the classroom model (e.g., MOOCs)
• Known learning theory discoveries have not been
widely implemented (e.g.,Community of Inquiry (COI),
immersive learning, simulation, learning by doing)
• We believe schools that will be successful will embrace
change and organize their offerings according to the
educational needs of the student
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10. The Online Learning Landscape
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Immersive simulations
– Immediate feedback
– Assessment
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MOOCs
– Videos and Assessment
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Mobile
Video, audio, text, COI (e.g. voice
thread)
Competency-based; e-portfolios
Cohort learning – COI and the
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bush taxi
Self-paced to scale
Curated Collections of Content –
videos, papers, texts
The changing role of the faculty –
guide-on-the-side and/or Content
creators?
Learn-by-doing
– “Challenges” and “Failures”

11. MOOCs: Yes, No, or Maybe?
• Question: What is a MOOC (massively open online
course)?
• Answer: Basically you provide a recorded lecture that
anyone can view, coupled with testing and feedback
given frequently
– Coursera, Udacity, Edx, others
• Question: How does it differ from the traditional
classroom style?
• Answer: (1) only the very best lectures provided and
(2) assessment is more rapid. Many drop out.
• Q: should MOOCs be important to you?
• A: Maybe, maybe not.
Example: free MOOCs for regional presence
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12. MOOCs: Yes, No, or Maybe?
• MOOCs are “elitist.” Often used for marketing
purposes.
• MOOCs hurt one-on-one and small group
teaching. Possibilities for integration – thus,
helping?
• Unless you have a “pinnacle of excellent” in
your academic quiver, you will likely not
succeed with MOOCs.
• Don’t do it or maybe try out with the pinnacles
of excellence only
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13. Affordances: Consider how a
university can benefit from online
learning
• Improve access, quality of learning,
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Arts and Liberal Arts
Business
Education
Sciences
Health care
Medicine
Nursing
Pharmacy
Dentistry
Law
Engineering
student satisfaction, faculty
satisfaction and reduced cost
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Learning through “doing”
Community of Inquiry created
Higher quality learning through
knowledge organization and delivery
Computer–based methods work for
anywhere anytime learning
Connection with the region and the
world
Improved student performance
Life-long learning model for the
institution

14. The World of Educational
Simulations
“my favorite topic”

15. Steamer – circa 1980s
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16. 2D Simulations
Above from Concord Consortium
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17. Work in
South Korea
– 15 years
ago.
Appeared in
IMEJ; with
permission.
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18. Work in South Korea – 15 years
ago. Appeared in IMEJ; with
permission.
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19. Health Simulations are being implemented to
teach:
Diagnostic Skills
Communication Skills
Health Promotion
Environmental Health

20. Tox Town: National Library of Medicine (NIH)

21. Serious Gaming
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22. Serious Gaming
Through role play the
length and outcome of the
simulation is determined through
decision making.
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23. A Serious Game – National
University
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24. The Virtual Campus
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25. The View the Student Sees
(campus)
Hello:
This is Rick, I’m
your guide-on-theside. Ask me about
things you want to
know about using
this learning
system:
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26. Virtual Learning Center
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27. More features for the Virtual
Campus
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28. The Appalachian Community
Environment
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29. The India Simulation
• Purpose:
• Teach
how to
filter
water in
an
Indian
Village
that has
arsenic
in its
water
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31. Some Examples
• The Windshield Survey
– A learning exercise deeply rooted in the community health
curriculum in nursing
– Students ride a bus, take notes, discuss and report about the
aspects of the community that might affect health and livability
of that environment
• Nursing Theorists
– Nursing students learn the theories propounded by giants in
the field
• We have migrated these activities to online simulations
that permits a variety of affordances
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32. Affordances of Simulations
Affordance
Description
Onboarding
Introduction provides explanation tutorial and practice
Interaction
Robust interaction with sim
Feedback
Immediate feedback given
Identity
Learning identifies with own identity in-world
Immersion
Immersion provides “Flow” (Csikszentmihalyi)
Pleasurable frustration
Provides challenges that are overcome with work
Manipulation
Objects in-world can be manipulated
Increasing
skills/knowledge
Scaffolded learning is evident and clear
Rules
Rules are provide at outset
Informed learning
Students understand what the rules are
Pedagogy
The material could not be taught without the sim
Multi and single player
COI is evident and NPCs used for anywhere-anytime
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35. Sentinel Citytm
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37. A playground in Sentinel City
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38. Next Generation
Bot Example
The Florence Nightingale Bot Dialogs
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39. Museum and Resource Center
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Nursing history (walk
around, talk to
simulated nursing
theorists review
slides, talk to docents)
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Resources for how to
use tools (e.g. Turn it
in, ePortfolios,
Moodle)
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Staffed by bots and
student success
advisors
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40. Virtual Hospital/Health Assessment
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41. The Next Immersion step: Oculus Rift
and Razer Hydra
How do you
teach how
to draw
blood?
Millimeter accuracy
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42. So, what should we do?
? Immersive simulations
? Immediate feedback
? Assessment
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? MOOCs
? Videos and Assessment
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? Mobile
? Video, audio, text, COI (e.g. voice
thread)
? Competency-based; e-portfolios
? Cohort learning – COI and the
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?
bush taxi
Self-paced to scale
Curated Collections of Content –
videos, papers, texts
The changing role of the faculty –
Guide-on-the-side and/or Content
creators?
Learn-by-doing
? “Challenges” and “Failures”
And – it can all tie together in
sims on a virtual campus

43. 1.800.729.2427
www.americansentinel.edu