eLearning 3.0 - Edutainment, Distance Learning Collaboration & Social Learning = Future of eLearning | elearning30.com

With the down turn in the economy the educational institutions get hit just as hard as the business sectors. Colleges and universities are forced to slash budgets, on-campus programs, 401K and even personnel. Now is the time for traditional education institutions to focus on digital alternatives.

Tips for Higher Ed Institutions:

• Focus on Distance Education! It has less overhead (both time and resources), it can reach more people; effectively making it a very profitable solutions for your institution.
  
• Get rid of Blackboard! Blackboard is a very costly and poorly designed solution that the majority faculty, students and IT Admins strongly dislike. I highly recommend checking out open source alternatives such as Moodle or the Sakai Project. Yes, initially out-of-the-box its not the prettiest solutions, but with a nice custom theme and integration of particular modifications you can have a very nice solution. With Moodle you can securely host all of your course and customize anything and everything internally. This will drastically reduce operating costs and cripling attachment to Blackboard.
• Get rid of general education classes taught on campus! These basic education courses are fairly mind numbing for professors to teach and these classes take up a lot of overhead. Your solution here is to create these courses in a digital format and put these classes online. This is especially effective for courses that will never change: Math, History, English, etc… 1 + 1 will always equal 2. This will result in on-campus students taking a hybrid approach to their education. They still attend courses in classrooms when needed, they have the flexibility to do their basics as they need and if your student is completely distance this just helps you build your program to reach more people.
• Proven Case Studies: University of Phoenix, Liberty University, etc… Everyone has heard about University of Phoenix and seen their advertisements. They have created a full working business model off of distance education. Liberty University (whether you agree or disagree with the principles of this school) has created an extremely profitable business model of offering distance education from 2nd Grade all the way through Doctorate Programs with an outreach outside of the United States.

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