Sheela Mamidenna
Monday - Jul 11, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Learning Online Info - Learning to Create for the Web at Lynda.com
Perhaps one of the biggest online education success stories you’ll ever hear about is the story of Lynda.com. First off, Lynda was very much a self-starter in her own history of education; she was an individual who liked choosing her own path and paving her own way. And, unsurprisingly, Lynda.com extends this philosophy with their own online lesson offerings.
What They Offer
Lynda.com offers hundreds of videos on 3D rendering, animation, audio, business, design, software developing, home computing, photography, video production, and web and interactive media (with web and interactive media having the largest amount of videos, 261). So, if you couldn’t gather this already, their library of training videos is massive.
Splitting Up the Lessons
One of the most convenient features of Lynda.com (and what puts them ahead of most video tutorials you see online for free) is that the site segments it’s videos into distinct chapters. With most tutorial videos, you’re stuck with one gigantic hour-long video, having to search and seek some small video bar to find the parts of the video you actually need (which usually ends up only being five minutes of the entire video). And since the video is being streamed, this can sometimes mean having to reload when you navigate to different parts, which can really be a headache for people with slower connections.
Having videos segmented helps you find what you need when you need it. And of course, you can search for keywords in the video; this search function is actually extremely smart as it not only searches through chapter and section titles, but also through transcripts of the lessons. So finding the information you actually need is quite easy.
How to Get Your Money’s Worth
With the lowest individual price at $25/month or $250/year, you could argue that Lynda.com comes with a pretty hefty price. Luckily, for students and educators, you are eligible for a discount. For students, I recommend signing up for Lynda.com video access for a couple months over the summer. This way, you’ll have lots of free time and will be able to learn a lot of material at a much lower price than paying for a whole year’s subscription.
I would only pay for a year-round subscription if you are heavily submerged in the web industry and need to constantly be updated on new software and techniques. If you think you’ll need the information on the site year-round, you should sign up. But for those just looking to learn new skills and improve their understanding of a certain web craft, a couple months of intense training should do the trick.
This guest contribution was submitted by Lenore Holditch, who specializes in writing about top online colleges. Questions and comments can be sent to: holditch.lenore @ gmail.com.
Related posts:
The Best of Online Learning: Free Video Lectures
Why e-Learning Programs are Better Than the Traditional Ones?
Internet Etiquette in Online Learning
Learner.org: Educational Videos
What Studies say about Social Media in Higher Education
Academic Earth (& YouTube EDU): Thousands of Video Lectures from the World’s Top Scholars
Learning to Create for the Web at Lynda.com is a post from Learning Online Info, a blog dedicated to the world of e-learning and the new learning technologies.
Blurb Online Book Review: Ignite.Incite.Inspire.: A book about teaching from within...
This book critiques aspects of the current educational system with the intention of furthering teaching practice. Through the sharing of classroom and online resources, these pages serve as both a catalyst for change and a support for anyone who has ever stepped into a classroom. Written by a teacher in an Ontario school, "Ignite. Incite. Inspire." aims to ignite discussion, incite action and inspire change to the way we teach the students in our classrooms in the 21st century. Hot topics in education today such as; special education, engaging boys, incorporating technology, closing rural schools, video games and teacher training are discussed with questions posed.
Carnegie Learning: The Cognitive Tutor Company
Carnegie Learning, Inc. is a leading publisher of innovative, research-based math curricula for middle school, high school, and post-secondary students. We help students succeed in math, creating a gateway to graduation and preparing them for 21st century careers.
Campus Technology Whitepaper: The Five Critical Elements of a Collaboration Solution for Education
University Business: Grad Students Worried About Debt Deal Cut
Pell Grant funding for undergraduate students was preserved in the law to raise the federal debt ceiling, but it was financed by curbs to student loan subsidies that helped graduate students.
Read more >>
The Texas Tribune: Governor Perry Announces Creation of Online Texas University
Higher education leaders in Texas have been pushing for more pathways to college degees for Texas. Today, Gov. Rick Perry, along with higher education committee chairs Rep. Dan Branch, R-Dallas, and Sen. Judith Zaffirini, D-Laredo, announced a new one: Western Governors University Texas.
"Earning a college degree is one of the most effective ways for individuals to improve the quality of life for themselves and their families," Perry said in a statement.
Western Governors University is an online university that was created by governors of 19 states, including Texas, in 1997, and has grown steadily over time. Currently, roughly 1,600 Texans — out of about 25,000 students nationally — are enrolled in the university. For some perspective, that's slightly less than the total enrollment at Texas A&M University at Galveston, one of the state's smallest public four-year universities.
As noted in the press release announcing the initiative, WGU primarily serves working adults whose work schedules demand flexibility. By taking courses at their own pace and advancing based on proven competency — as opposed to logging a requisite number of hours — WGU lets them earn bachelor's and master's degrees in areas such as business, information technology, education and health professions. Tuition is about $5,780 per year.
WGU Texas, which does not receive state funding, is being created by an executive order that calls on state agencies such as the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, Texas Education Agency and Texas Workforce Commission to step up their coordination, data sharing and involvement in WGU. It also establishes an advisory board that will be appointed by the governor.
Robert Mendenhall, the president of WGU, said, "We look forward to this partnership with the state, which will help thousands of Texans earn the college degrees they want and need, on a schedule they can manage, at a cost they can afford."
Higher education costs have been a repeated theme of Perry's in recent months. Earlier this year, he famously called for the creation of a $10,000 bachelor's degree (books included) in his State of the State address — a level of affordability this new option might not quite reach at WGU's current costs.
Texas is also currently lagging in higher education goals for certifying teachers and graduating minority students, which make up a large chunk of WGU's population. Branch and others hope this new option will help boost the state's workforce. "Texas needs legions of new, sharp, credentialed minds to succeed in a knowledge-based economy," he said.
The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: Ranking the Nation’s Leading Universities and Liberal Arts Colleges on Their Numbers of Black Faculty
Although a great number of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges are located in rural areas of states in the Northeast or Midwest, many of these colleges have been successful in attracting significant numbers of black faculty.
Nationwide, blacks make up 5.3 percent of all full-time faculty at American colleges and universities. But a more accurate picture is obtained when we eliminate from the count the nation’s predominantly black colleges and universities. With that adjustment, our computations say that, nationwide, blacks are slightly more than 4 percent of the full-time faculty at predominantly white institutions of higher education.
The U.S. Department of Education recently published new data on the race of faculty at the nation’s colleges and universities. Here we can make a count of black faculty levels at the nation’s leading colleges and universities. The number and percentage of black faculty is an important gauge of an institution’s commitment to racial diversity. The presence of a significant number of black faculty can be a valuable tool to recruit black students. College-bound African Americans will more likely consider a particular college or university if they know there are a significant number of black faculty who can serve as mentors and advisers.
Black faculty levels at many large research universities tend to be overstated by the high number of attending black physicians at hospitals affiliated with university medical schools. At some large universities these attending physicians, who are considered medical school faculty members, number in the thousands.
With this caveat we see from the Department of Education data that there are 287 black faculty members at Columbia University, the most at any of the 30 highest-ranked universities. There are also more than 200 black faculty members at the University of Michigan and Emory University. The University of Pennsylvania is the only other of the 30 top-ranked universities to have more than 150 black faculty members.
Among the 30 highest-ranked universities, CalTech has the fewest black faculty. There are 10 blacks teaching at CalTech. But this count is a major improvement over past JBHE surveys. There are fewer than 30 black faculty members at Dartmouth College, Tufts University, the University of Notre Dame, and Rice University.
At 6.4 percent Emory University has the highest percentage of black faculty among the highest-ranked universities. Columbia University is second with blacks making up 6.3 percent of the total faculty. None of the 28 other high-ranking universities have a percentage of black faculty that is equal to the national average of 5.3 percent. At Rice University, Stanford University, MIT, and CalTech, blacks make up less than 2 percent of the total faculty.
Black Faculty at the Nation’s Highest-Ranked Liberal Arts Colleges
The number count of black faculty at the nation’s liberal arts colleges is not exaggerated by large numbers of medical school faculty as none of these colleges has a medical school.
Many of these leading colleges are located in remote rural areas far from black and urban population centers. Therefore, one would expect that these colleges on the whole would have a difficult time recruiting and holding black faculty.
But this is not the case. At more than half of the nation’s 50 highest-ranking liberal arts colleges, blacks are more than 4 percent of the total full-time faculty. And a good many of these show 5 percent or better.
Among the nation’s 30 highest-ranking liberal arts colleges, Wellesley College has the largest number of black faculty at 20. At Oberlin College and Smith College there are 19 black faculty members. Mount Holyoke College and Wesleyan University each have 18 blacks on their full-time faculties.
There is only one black faculty member at Harvey Mudd College in California. There are five or fewer black faculty at Davidson College, Colby College, Bowdoin College, Claremont McKenna College, and Scripps College.
On a percentage basis, Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia leads the way. The latest data from the U.S. Department of Education shows that the 12 black faculty members at Haverford make up 7.9 percent of the college’s total full-time faculty.
In percentage terms, Swarthmore College and Mount Holyoke College also show a strong performance. Blacks make up 6.3 percent of the total faculty at Swarthmore College and 6.1 percent of the total full-time faculty at Mount Holyoke College.
The only other high-ranking liberal arts colleges where blacks are at least 5 percent of the total faculty are Oberlin College, Bates College, Grinnell College, Wesleyan University, and Pomona College.
Liberal arts colleges where blacks are less than 2 percent of the total faculty are Bowdoin College, Claremont McKenna College, Scripps College, and Harvey Mudd College.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)