Initiatives: Online Learning

Since its inception, the Kirwan Center has been supporting USM institutions in making strategic forays into online learning. “Online learning” in this context is defined as any learning environment that makes substantive use of a web-based component that enables collaboration and access to content beyond the classroom. Online learning strategies across the USM range from fully online degree/certificate programs, to MOOCs, to hybrid and "flipped" courses.

To advance this work, the Kirwan Center has launched USMx to help institutions  leverage the affordances of online learning to give students the flexibility to interact with content, faculty, and learning communities in the ways that best meet their needs. 

The USMx mission is to provide both access to innovative e-learning technologies as well as the resources, support, and planning necessary for strategic implementation of online learning.  This, in turn, helps our institutions achieve their mission of providing access to high quality, affordable higher education to a diverse student body both in Maryland and across the globe.

    In addition to UMUC, which offers over 90 fully online programs, the USM now has 44 degree programs offered entirely online.

    Our Work in Online Learning

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    2014

    Filtered By:

    2014
    July 24, 2014

    The University of Baltimore (UB) is working with Pulitzer-prize winning historian Taylor Branch and the USMCAI to offer the course “Citizenship and Freedom: The Civil Rights Era” in an innovative, online, for-credit format. Unlike MOOCs, this course is based on a seminar format that promises synchronous interactivity. Also unlike MOOCs, this course features a blend of lecture, panels, and real-time Q&A with the virtual audience.

    July 24, 2014

    In 2013, the USM entered into an agreement with Ithaka S+R (with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) to explore the viability of repurposing MOOCs to be used as part of regular undergraduate programs at degree granting institutions. Given the momentum already established by the USM’s Maryland Course Redesign Initiative, faculty interest in MOOCs was robust. We ended up with 22 trials –many more than the 5-7 originally projected. So, as the highly controversial MOOC model continues to generate much national press –both positive and, more recently, negative– our side-by-side experimental MOOC-augmented courses are currently being tested (2013-14).

    July 10, 2014

    Ithaka S+R collaborated with the University System of Maryland to test the use of interactive online learning platforms in seventeen courses across seven universities. Fourteen of these tests used Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) on the Coursera platform, almost all embedded in hybrid course formats, and three used courses from the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University (OLI). We conducted seven side-by-side comparisons to evaluate outcomes of students in hybrid sections with those of students in traditionally taught courses, controlling for student background characteristics. In addition, we conducted ten case studies using MOOCs in smaller courses using a range of approaches. For all tests we collected detailed data on the time it took for local instructors to plan and deliver their courses.