For traditional colleges and universities, international students usually have a greater ability to pay. At a time when tuition costs, already at astronomical levels, keep rising, and when a greater number of families are struggling on tight budgets and in need of financial assistance to pay for education, colleges must increasingly face the fact that many students will require aid. If the school has a need-based approach to financial aid, this results in many students not paying the full price.

In the past, colleges looked outside of their state or region to court wealthier students that had the means to pay tuition costs in full. These days, they are looking further afield. Despite our country’s economic problems, our education system is still the envy of the world, and smart and enterprising students across the globe seek to come here for college. Those who seriously consider all the costs of attending school overseas are usually capable of paying in full. For colleges, then, it is win-win: they can increase the cultural diversity of the student body while also padding the university’s coffers.

The situation for online schools has some overlaps and also some differences. The economic recession has hurt non-traditional colleges like DeVry University, which focuses largely on providing the degrees that are most applicable for the workforce. With unemployment high, and with no signs of an impending recovery, many people are eschewing colleges like DeVry. The school’s enrollment and revenues have suffered as a result.  To boost both, the company is focusing on international expansion. It already operates in Brazil and the Caribbean, and it has now been hinting at plans to expand into Asia, with India being the prime target.

While India has a growing workforce and an economy that requires a range of vocational skills, its education system remains less focused on career training, especially among colleges that are more accessible to the average Indian. By expanding there, then, DeVry could potentially tap a very large market.

The move towards internationalization, especially among more online-focused schools, reminds us that it is only a matter of time before there are education companies operating globally, and maybe even colleges that offer an internationally-accepted degree. Costs would certainly be lower, since qualified professors could lecture from any country; the technology is certainly already here, in the form of the latest learning management system; and it would offer millions and millions of students around the world a first opportunity to get a college education. Perhaps the recession could have this long-term silver lining.

That’s where an online MBA program is so helpful. Because of the time constraints associated with higher education, and because the majority of those seeking an MBA are usually already working a full-time job and often raising a family, it’s more difficult than ever to make the time to carry a full load of classes at a local university. Enter the world of eLearning.

An online MBA program gives you the opportunity to finish your degree while working a full-time job, raising kids and more. The ability to study online, without the need to attend classes on a physical campus makes eLearning more efficient, especially for adult students. And the variety of quality programs available makes it easier than ever to find a web-based program to meet your needs.

Online degree programs are available in a number of disciplines, though some subject areas are more easily adapted to eLearning. Computer related fields are an especially good option, for instance. But so are business and technology, among many other things. Online MBA programs even exist for nursing and other more technical job classifications.

Many local colleges and universities offer online classes now. That makes it especially easy to attend a college you know without having to drive across town to campus. Another great benefit is that you can often finish your degree in much less time than when taking traditional classes. That can help you advance in your career more quickly as well.
An online university such as the University of Phoenix (UOPX), not only offers a full line of degree programs, but they’re also highly respected in the educational realm. That means you don’t have to suffer with a degree from an unknown institution just because you take your classes online.

Online MBA program offer several distinct advantages over traditional college campuses. The ability to take classes with an already full schedule, complete a degree more quickly and still receive a quality diploma from a recognized school are all important aspects of a good education. eLearning only adds to the benefits derived from completing your Master’s degree.

This is a video demo that I created to show how easy it is to convert older Flash eLearning content so that is optimized for mobile devices. There is an actual demo towards the end that shows how smooth it runs on the Google Nexus One (running Android 2.2 FroYo and Flash Player 10.1 for Mobiles).

RESOURCES:

Authoring mobile Flash content for multiple screen sizes

Optimizing Performance for the Flash Platform

“Giant Campus, the nationally recognized leader in innovative technology education programs for youth and adults, today announced the availability of full-time enrollment with Giant Campus of Washington, a public and tuition-free online school program of Columbia Tech High School in the White Salmon Valley School District. Giant Campus of Washington is accredited with the Northwest Association of Accredited Schools (NAAS), and is the first online school in Washington state to offer both core curriculum and elective concentrations in digital arts, computer science, and business & innovation to Washington high school students statewide.”

Full Giant Campus Press Release can be downloaded here…

Quoted from the article, “A professor for almost 30 years, Joy has mainly researched computer graphics and visualizations, until he and a former grad student came up with the idea to offer a class that teaches to the iPhone SDK (software development kit). Joy didn’t have much experience in mobile platforms, but he was game for teaching something “relevant” that would keep his students motivated.”

That last line is the reason for this result, “ECS 198H wasn’t approved as a university course until 10 days before the fall quarter started in September–in other words, students already had their class schedules set. But less than four hours after Joy placed it in the registration guide, the class was filled to its 35-student capacity, with another 40 people staking out wait-list spots.”

Advice to universities: Have your professor revamp or create RELEVANT classes & students will come. For any university to be wildly successful this is a MUST! Many kudos to Professor Ken Joy!

What else do you think is key to getting students excited & interested in taking classes?

• MIT Open Courseware

• TED

• W3Schools.com

• iTunesU

There are numerous courses in each of the following categories:

• General

• Communication Technology

• Web Development

• Computer Science

• Programming

• Software Design

• Information Technology

• Security

• Mathematics

• Engineering

• Education

Click here to view the entire list of course and descriptions…

3D Training, Learning and Collaboration (3D TLC) taking place April 20-21, 2009 in Washington, DC, is the leading event for businesses seeking to understand and maximize business strategies using virtual worlds. 3D virtual worlds have broad implications for business not the least of which is cost savings and energy conservation. Topics range from the general use of virtual worlds in the workplace to specific examples of applications for e-Learning, onboarding, sales training, collaboration, meetings, and more.

Join us for exclusive keynotes from BP Group’s Joe Little and a special group keynote with executives from Johnson & Johnson, Chevron, Sun Microsystems and SAP.

Click the image above to find out more…

There are still potentials issue such as language and cultural, but Mr. Reshef already has taken a few of these into account. There are monetary issues as well. This nonprofit startup will cost $5 million, but Mr. Reshaf said he will cover $1 million of that.

QUOTED FROM NYTIMES.COM

“”The idea is to take social networking and apply it to academia,” said the entrepreneur, Shai Reshef, founder of several Internet-based educational businesses.

“The open-source courseware is there, from universities that have put their courses online, available to the public, free,” Mr. Reshef said. “We know that online peer-to-peer teaching works. Putting it all together, we can make a free university for students all over the world, anyone who speaks English and has an Internet connection.”

About four million students in the United States took at least one online course in 2007, according to a survey by the Sloan Consortium, a nonprofit group devoted to integrating online learning into mainstream higher education.”

To read the full article from the NYTimes.com click here…

So here is my Wish List for 2009:

1. Quality verse Quantity – I’m hoping people/companies get away from the crappy voice-over-powerpoint training and focus on more engaging and better quality eLearning.
2. Edutainment – I think the US military is actually doing something right… they are using video game like systems to train their troops, saving a good amount of money and time.

• Air Force Uses Interactive Gaming Technology for Training
• Army is to Spend $50 Million in Edutainment for Troops

3. Confidence-based Learning – I would like to see better testing methods rather than just quizzes/tests. People can memorize facts all day long in their short term memory and recall them, but what if we actually made them learn and apply.
4. Social/Collaborative Learning – as Michael mentioned web-conferencing and tools like Yammer, Twitter, Ning, Facebook, etc… I think we are going to be a very large part of eLearning over the next year. A nifty example is Supercool School… people volunteer to teach a class and then member of this Facebook app/group take the class.
5. Mobile eLearning – With the iPhone, Blackberrys, Android and other mobile devices becoming more popular the next logical step is to turn these into on-the-go training resources. Over the next year I think we will see more of this.
6. Distance Education – With the global economic downturn, I think traditional universities are going to be pushed more to eLearning/Distance Education. Distance education is more profitable than traditional methods, but the quality is much lower. So if the quality was up-to-par with classroom training I think it would be a logical and viable solution for more universities.
   • Why Distance Education in a Rough Economy?

2009 is going to be an exciting year for the digital education realm.

Tell me your predictions or wish list!

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.