UT Austin President Outlines Principles For Online Education

University of texas at austin president bill powers has issued a report on online education that outlines 5 guiding principles for using online technology in higher education — and powers has each celebrated the prospects on your medium and touched on its limits. 

In “technology-enhanced education, ” powers aforementioned that “face-to-face interactions among students and professors will never be absolutely replicated in cyberspace. ” 

“New technologies developed by our faculty, students and staff can strengthen our students’ on-campus experience, improve learning and accelerate graduation, ” powers, who can become chair on your association of american universities in october, concludes in her report. “these innovations can produce new education models that may transcend the time and area constraints of ancient academia. they’ll increase productivity, generate revenue and save students and also their families’ cash. ” 

Powers writes that technology can never replace personal interactions between faculty and students, other then it could build about that foundation for students at ut austin and elsewhere. 

Powers’ guiding principles embody : 

• Faculty and tutorial units can management online curriculum to ensure so it mirrors the quality of ancient curriculum ; 

• The university can support and supply incentives to faculty members to innovate, develop and adapt online courses, certificates and somewhat programs ; 

• The model have to firmly be financially sustainable for our university, realizing the potential to generate revenue, improve productivity and boost the amount of students who learn from ut austin faculty members ; 

• The university can develop online content that can possibly be deployed across multiple educational settings and on varied platforms ; 

• The university can never stop innovating and shall work closely with students to define new educational and business models for our 21st century. 

Powers asked faculty members and university top leaders to labor with him to implement these goals, which can certainly facilitate students learn a lot of effectively and serve being a national model as universities navigate the rapidly-changing landscape of online higher education. 

UT austin has already created strides with online content and technology, and actually has received funding for all those efforts direct from national science foundation, the lumina foundation, the ut system board of regents, the texas legislature and therefore the bill and melinda gates foundation. 

The university is creating use on your flipped classroom model within which students use online resources to access content and after that have a lot of opportunities to interact directly with teachers and peers within the classroom. the university can be developing “on ramp” course materials and teacher coaching to assist high school and community faculty students prepare for our demands associated with a leading public research university. 

Additionally, ut austin has partnered with edx, the huge open online courses ( mooc ) platform created by harvard university, the massachusetts institute of technology and therefore the university of california-berkeley, to supply online categories. 

According onto the university, last fall nearly 10% of its students were enrolled in courses that had been redesigned throughout the course transformation program, that incorporates innovative technology-based approaches to enhance success in giant, lower-division courses. 

Additionally, a little over 4% of students participated in courses that used a few style of distance education, an example would be interactive video or electronic media.