Signal Hill produces a regular newsletter focusing on the economics of learning and technology companies. In a slight deviation from that typical publication, they have released their 2007 Post-Secondary Fact Book (.pdf). Some interesting information on the US post-secondary market - over 900 billion spent on education annually (that appears to include k-12 and other forms of education), fluctuating enrollment growth (but continual growth in percentage of population with four or more years of college), rising tuition costs (far out-stripping inflation), completion rates, projected job-growth fields and more. A valuable report for reference purposes.
Setting aside the recent challenges of colony collapse disorder, the ability of bees to achieving complex tasks has long fascinated organizational theorists. And now the dances of bees (not starring Costner) are being used to improve the efficiency of web servers:
"Bees tackle their resource allocation problem (i.e. a limited number of bees and unpredictable demand on their time and desired location) with a seamless system driven by “dances.” Here’s how it works: The scout bees leave the hive in search of nectar. Once they’ve found a promising spot, they return to the hive “dance floor” and perform a dance. The direction of the dance tells the waiting forager bees which direction to fly, the number of waggle turns conveys the distance to the flower patch; and the length conveys the sweetness of the nectar.
The forager bees then dance behind the scouts until they learn the right steps (and the particulars about the nectar), forming a bobbing conga line of sorts. Then they fly out to collect the nectar detailed in the dance. As long as there’s still nectar to be found, the bees that return continue the dance. Other forager bees continue to fly toward the source until the dancing slowly tapers off or a new bee returns with a more appealing dance routine (Hey, the nectar over here is even better!)."
Research of this nature is intriguing, yet does cause a moment of reflection on what does it mean to be human?...and what does our future hold as we integrate biology and technology into combined networks?: "With the ultimate aim of allowing paralysed people to walk again, a team at Duke University in Durham implanted electrodes in the brains of two rhesus macaques and analysed the electrical signals that drive their legs. The team then mapped the signals to specific leg movements and, via the internet, used them to control a pair of robot legs at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International in Kyoto."
The concept of microcelebrities (people who are very well known to a small group of people) makes sense to me. In the educational blog space - with subsections of corporate, library, open education, higher education, K-12, etc. - has many individuals who are well known to groups ranging in size from dozens to thousands. Of course, the celebrity effect is rather small by traditional standards. The paparazzi effect is rather minimal with edubloggers. But the reality that a blog post can cause serious discussion/debate and most importantly, a network spiral effect of ideas built on other ideas, can be surprising, rewarding, and humbling.
Email's demise is once again forecast: email is dead?. The author states: "Email isn’t the only problem here, but its facility and omnivalence is. We use it for everything, from ultra-informal to ultra-formal: to broadcast announcements, arrange meetings, change meetings, share jokes, ask questions, negotiate plead and persuade, issue rationales and justifications, share documents, gossip, ping our social relationships, test the water, build common understanding, signify agreement and disagreement, sell ourselves, buy things, keep records, store key documents, ad infinitum."
This is exactly why email is so popular. It is multi-use and a central point of launching for many activities. Email continues to play a prominent role in how I interact with others and with information. The ECAR 2007 survey (.PDF)indicates email as an activity far exceeds any other communication form (99.9% of undergraduate students use email daily...social networking sites: 81.6% daily...84.1% instant message daily...27.8% blogging monthly (p. 42).
Apparently, there are 3.3 billion mobile phone accounts in the world. In contrast, I have seen numbers of computers range from 750-900 million. Which suggests that anyone designing learning without an eye on access by (or designed for) mobile phones is missing a huge opportunity. (via smartmobs)
I much prefer collaborations of this sort - Universal Digital Library - for digitizing books than the Google/Microsoft ventures. While I appreciate the many "free" tools and resources provided by both companies, their digitization efforts are not altruistic. Eventually, value will be extracted - likely in the form of monetizing viewer attention through marketing. Knowledge artifacts may be free in terms of access...the challenge is understanding the new era of marketing based on context and location. It's more subversive. I like my ads direct and in my face. Then I at least see distinctions between information I'm seeking and marketing being pushed at me.
Well, this officially makes me happy: Ottawa opens up wireless industry to more competition. My mobile phone use is hampered by current pricing - web browsing, email, send pictures. Increased competition will hopefully bring the Canadian mobile market in line with prices other countries enjoy.
Jay Cross on Improving workplace performance (.pdf): "Knowledge workers are becoming self-service learners, taking on responsibilities that once resided with supervisors and the training department. Knowledge work requires
judgment and decision-making, and workers are beginning to use those abilities to manage themselves."
My dichotomous view of Google is aptly summed up with two articles I encountered today: Google funds renewable energy(good) and Google hands over anonymous bloggers IP address (not good).
If you build it, they may not come. And, if they come, you will likely not be able to monetize their contributions. An Important Lesson About Grassroots Media: "I take some solace in knowing that some other smart people -- who raised far more money from investors than we did -– also couldn't figure out how to make user contributed content work as a business."
The value point of content has shifted from one where we can make money off of content to one where content serves as a means of creating relationships with others...and then we, if so inclined, can make money from the development of our reputation through the process of engagement, interaction, and sustained contact.
Much of my writing and speaking over the last few years flies under the banner of "openness". Open environments enable connections to form. Connections and networks represent the foundation of knowledge and learning, which in turn represent society's ability to function in complex and adaptive climates. The heart of openness rests in democracy (as conceived in days gone by, not necessarily what we see happening in many in the political activities in many so-called democracies today) and democracy assumes high and equal value for each human being. Choice and freedom are vital. It's with some interest that I've been watching the opening of Facebook, Google's Android and OpenSocial, and the larger open source movement. Mobile phone companies have a history of serving as poster children for closed models. Today, Verizon announced it is opening its network allowing users to "bring your own" device to their network. Ross Dawson calls 2007 the turning point in the move to openness, NYTimes says the move "stunned" the wireless world, and TechCrunch states (somewhat obviously) that wireless networks should be like the internet - any device and any application should run on the network (assuming basic technical standards are met).
But even with the numerous positive movements to openness, it's important to understand that the motivation is not altruistic. The voices requesting openness have become so prominent that it just makes good business sense.
Wetpaint is an innovative and user-friendly wiki site. I've used it for various in-class and conference related presentations. So, needless to say (but I will anyway), I am rather pleased to see that they are now offering educators ad-free wikis when used for learning.
A Wiring Diagram of the Brain: "...to truly understand how a network of neurons can perform a particular function, scientists need a new kind of map. "A lot of properties of brain function are at the level of the circuit--information is being integrated, processed, extracted...To understand what that means, you need to be able to see who connects to who.""
China's bid for world domination (a rather subtle, non-confrontational, non-fear inducing title) is a sign of the depth of global change in not just economics, but also education: "What defines a global "superpower"? In the past, it was the size of national armies or possession of nuclear weapons.
But now there is a more important (and peaceful) benchmark: the size and prestige of university systems...China is now the largest higher education system in the world: it awards more university degrees than the US and India combined."
The growing prominence of networks is the most defining shift of the last half century. Networks of communication and information have existed as long as people have communicated with each other. The initial forms consisted of conversations shared in small groups/tribes. The development of writing as a means to make the spoken word explicit and more permanent, permitted networks to form outside of time limitations. And there we stayed for many many years. While time no longer limited the ability of people to form networks (connect) with each other and with ideas, geography (space) still did. While we found better ways to record ideas - tablets of stone replaced with parchment and ultimately paper - the core nature of connecting with ideas and people changed little. Gutenberg accelerated the process of writing, sharing text, and made it more cost effective and thereby accessible to a wider audience. But other than increased efficiencies, nothing new was added to our ability to network. The development of travel (global - first by boat, then recently by air) made the world appear to be smaller. People and ideas flowed more rapidly. Another improvement, but not a revolution.
The development of the telegraph and then the telephone provided the first cracks in the geographical limitations of network formation. Unfortunately, these tools eliminated the value of text as a means of making our ideas explicit (telegraphs were not effective for sharing extensive passages of text so while it played a role in reducing the role of geography, its limitations were severe). Even though we could connect with ideas/others outside of time barriers, the conversations vaporized as the phone call ended. We were again at the mercy of time - we had to be present in real time to benefit from the conversation. But the physical networks created by the developing telecommunications industry provided the foundation for what would eventually become the internet and then the web. It was the web that enabled a reduction of geographical and time barriers for connecting with others. Limitations were still severe. But the basic structure was in place. The efficiency improvements - like those applied to paper and text over the previous millennia - now came in the form of broadband, voice over IP, and other emerging tools of content creation and conversation. Essentially, geography and time were no longer limitations. Three additional value points were provided: interactivity (two-way flow), multiple media (images, video, integrated), and presence (video and avatars). Our ability to form networks with people and ideas, riding on the backbone of the internet, existed at unprecedented levels.
But progress and developments come at a price. The turbulence following Gutenberg's press resulted in tremendous conflict and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Our ability to now form networks with ease comes with a different type of cost. The web 2.0 hype engine and its advocates often gloss over drawbacks. But the acknowledgment of negatives and drawbacks lead to addressing the real concerns. An article in Financial Times - No place to hide - raises some of the challenges networks create in social interactions. Making ideas (and ourselves) explicit has its own problems. We are not only known by those we want to be known by. We are known by anyone. And everyone. Like other revolutions before, the tools and methods of networking create a new reality, the need for new skills, new opportunities, and new challenges.
The Corporate Learning: Trends and Innovations conference officially wrapped up earlier this week. All 15 recordings are now available. My presentation: Designing your organizational learning infrastructure (or the slidershare version).
Before we truly get to the essence of most issues, greater complexification is required to address many existing nuances (at least, that's what I tell myself when I get overwhelmed).
Stephen Downes started the conversation with the discussion of groups and networks
Terry Anderson and John Dron then suggested groups, networks, and collectives.
And recently Dave Snowden adds crews and teams to communities and networks. What I find encouraging (once I get past the numerous perspectives and contexts being reflected) is that we are talking about these distinctions...we are recognizing unique elements and grappling with a means to make sense of changes wrought by technology, new forms of social organization, and information growth.
Bill Kerr's thoughts resonate: "I'm tired of web2.0 hype, its far from new and because I'm not looking forward to the next education ICT conference that once again will have web2.0 as the main theme and present it as a "revolution""
I like John Connell's statement in Our Duty to Protect through Education: "how do we teach our young people to make responsible use of the web tools and resources at their disposal if we are completely unable to access them in school?"
I fully understand and respect the need for security in schools. But, as John indicates, schools are about preparing people for the world...not protecting them from the world. My children are currently "blog-less" in school, which is to be expected as we are still in the early stages of a hype cycle (actually, we are well past the early stages in my eyes, but classroom reality suggests otherwise). While still young, they realize that access has been removed. They see it in not being able to access the games they enjoy playing, but the subtle message is not missed: you are not trusted.
...or as Will Richardson states in this interview (at the 11 minute mark) people who are blocking the technologies are not users themselves.
Canadian Council on Learning's most recent report - Redefining how success is measured in First Nations, Inuit and Métis Learning - reflects the experiences I had as an instructor at Red River College. Different learners have different learning needs. No where is this more evident in our school systems than with learners who are not integrated (and may not wish to be) within the socio-cultural institutions and traditions of western society. The report paints a depressing picture of the dire current state (see p. 8 - 12 on statistics of poverty, school readiness, high school completion rates) but builds hope as it progresses. Three holistic models of learning are explored, each intended as a reflection of the needs of a particular Aboriginal culture. While education's failure may be more acute in certain segments of society, the shortcomings are evident everywhere. The remedies suggested appear to apply broadly to all learners: consider a few of the attributes of Aboriginal Learning (p. 5): learning is holistic, lifelong, experiential, etc. I'm curious as to how some of these points are unique from any other type of "good learning"? I guess the questions I'm asking are: do certain segments of society need different teaching/learning models? Or do we need to conceive a model of teaching/learning that is flexible enough to meet the needs of all learners? Is our education system currently only ineffective for certain types of learners? Or are we failing more broadly?
Darren Barefoot offers advice on how to improve presentation skills: Everything I Know About Presentations, I Learned in Theatre School. Lessons can certainly be extracted for classroom or lecture-based teaching as well.
Google has been building its streetview map feature (complete with what's likely the goofiest video they could have possibly created - orange spandex=bad) rather quietly. But the feature has lots of promise. How does a company go about getting all of those digital images? With six VWs outfitted with $45K, 11 lens video cameras. At a cost of $125-$700 per mile, the current 50,000 miles logged adds up to a rather pricey endeavor.
It has been a busy week for text, the written word, and reading. Amazon announces Kindle - a digital book reader (which has most appropriately been labeled: ugly, from the 80's, not of this decade...and the occasional "don't judge an ebook by its cover" (ugh)). Will Richardson states, in "The ipod of Reading": "I think it’s clear we’re in a transition period that is moving us to something not necessarily better or worse but different for sure...That in these shifts, in these changes come all sorts of not seen before potential to create connections, to build networks. Like the Kindle, much of this is absolutely different."
Newsweek is giddy: "Though the Kindle is at heart a reading machine made by a bookseller—and works most impressively when you are buying a book or reading it—it is also something more: a perpetually connected Internet device."
NEA just released a rather lengthy report on diminishing reading habits (though, as Stephen notes, this doesn't appear to reflect web-based reading.
The NewYorker tackles the discussion from a perspective of digitizing books initiatives, historical developments of text and reading, and suggests: "The real challenge now is how to chart the tectonic plates of information that are crashing into one another and then to learn to navigate the new landscapes they are creating."
And David Weinberger weighs in with: "Digital writing isn't between covers. It's eruptive, ecstatic, self-transcendent...which is to say it's hyperlinked. This changes how we write, how we read, and how we shape knowledge."
We had a great opening day for our Corporate Learning:Trends and Innovations conference.
Recordings are available: Tony Karrer on elearning 2.0, Steve Mahaley on "Let's get real about the virtual". An informal discussion on elearning 2.0 is also available. Great first day! Tomorrow we hear from Richard Straub, Donald Taylor, Jay Cross, and Rae Tanner.
Ray Sims shares his thoughts on his first experience attending an online conference: "I’ll be getting at least 80% of the benefit, with zero hard-dollar spent and much less opportunity cost from the down-time and wear and tear of travel." (80%? I thought 110% :)).
Well, this is a start, but it's short term at best: To Cut Textbook Costs, They’re Printing Their Own: "On Wednesday, the Arizona community college announced a partnership with Pearson Custom Publishing to allow Rio Salado professors to piece together single individualized textbooks from multiple sources."
I think schools would be better off collaborating with each other and producing content in a wiki, exporting to .pdf and uploading to Lulu.com for a lovely hard cover text for a fraction of the current cost. Do profs make money writing texts? Not very much. So we have an industry that is where music was a decade a go: end-users who feel violated and abused and producer base where only a few see strong financial rewards. And the mediator (record label, or in this case publisher) does make money. How long can a business survive if they have completely upset their end users? And not rewarded their content producers?
How long until we hear educators, instead of music industry representatives, saying this: "We expected our business would remain blissfully unaffected even as the world of interactivity, constant connection and file sharing was exploding. And of course we were wrong."
I arrived in Alaska late yesterday for a week-long stint as a visiting scholar at University of Alaska Fairbanks. I delivered a few presentations today: Connectivism 101: For the Curious and Organizational Impact of Networked Learning. But the most valuable part of the day was discussions with Center for Distance Education staff (Chris Lott being the main one I can point to as he's an active blogger).
UPDATE: I've also uploaded a presentation on Practical Connectivism.
As media change, so does advertising. IBM provides a good overview of what these changes entail - The end of advertising as we know it (.pdf).
The flow of information - whether as simple as asking people to buy a product or as complex as distributed computing projects (SETI) - is of particular concern for educators. We need to be aware of changes in how information is created, validated, and shared. The music industry lost touch of how music was being created and shared. Newspapers lost track of how news was captured and shared. The list goes on. In each instance, the effect has been devastating. The message, however, is quite simple: if you lose track of how people interact with your core "product", you risk fading into obscurity. Why? People will create systems that meet their own needs. Journal publishers are already starting to feel this impact (PLoS ONE is a starting point). Many other journals are abandoning closed access and opening dialogue. Universities, as institutions, hold a unique place in society, far beyond entertainment and information sharing (core functions of music and newspapers). But their effectiveness requires awareness of how their students are interacting with each other and with information. I highly doubt we'll see informal learning networks take over formal accreditation as measure of competence (though, in many small networks, this is happening as a person's reputation may well exceed their formal education, but it is not a model that appears to be transferable broadly to the rest of society. The expectation in reputation-based accreditation of competence is founded in recognition of peers - hence the emphasis on small networks. A peer may hire an expert based only on reputation. Someone who does not have familiarity with the field with likely hire based on accredited degrees). But, for universities and colleges, it's also about missed opportunities. Those life-long learners walking out of our doors every year have learning needs far beyond the duration of a degree program. To fail to account for these learning needs is a significant problem.
The Google Blog presents (unbiased, I'm sure) a view of what it's like to work at Google - Crossing Boundaries. The post discusses how cross-departmental changes are made to software...and cross-teams work.
It's so challenging to be in the education space and not have students fit the profiles we create for them. I often lament that just because students use a certain tool, doesn't mean that they want it used for learning in formal settings. Students tell universities: Get out of MySpace! (a better title would be "get out of my Face(book)): "Online spaces are blurring, as universities that podcast and text their students have shown. The Jisc project manager, Lawrie Phipps, explains how the battle lines are being drawn: "Students really do want to keep their lives separate. They don't want to be always available to their lecturers or bombarded with academic information.""
Educators need to be aware of and use participative web technologies in their instruction. But, the manner, extent, and process of use needs to include learner feedback. The whole point of democratic social tools is to level the field of communication and democratize individual voices. Don't do it for them...do it with them.
Great Yochai Benkler quote: "The critical shift represented by the networked information economy is that on the order of a billion people on the planet have the physical capacity to produce and communicate information, knowledge, and culture."
The increased capacity to create and communicate information results in an intensification of connection forming. If I look back, say ten years, and compare my information network then with my network today, the differences are almost beyond comprehension. "Back then" my network consisted of people who were geographically close to me and information produced by professionals (journalists, TV producers, authors, educators). Today, my network still includes those formal elements, but so much more of my learning now comes through connections I have with people from around the world. In some cases, the people are renowned thinkers and theorists. In other cases, the people are classroom teachers grappling with how to make a difference to 30 students each year. In the past, I did not have direct access to many of the experts (the experience was mediated by publisher or journalist)...or access to the amateurs (the experience was restricted due to lack of tools to create and connect.
Technology forces change. I generally disagree when I hear people say (as I have in the past, but I've since repented): "Technology is just a tool". No. It's not. Technology possesses/creates affordances. It symbolizes world views (the web, for example, symbolizes equality and democracy...the reason why closed-silo structures suffer at its hands). Technology also forces role changes - teacher and student on an equal footing with regard to information access. But the situation in schools is far more complex than simply information access. It's about building new skills, functioning in a new environment, and building deep, complex understanding of fields of knowledge. Technology serves the former two well, but does not necessarily achieve the latter without appropriate implementation. The recent Times article - New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology - provides a bit of a glimpse into the social, education, and cultural factors at conflict in classrooms.
Privacy is an interesting concept. It means very different things than it did a decade ago. But what is it really? We've never had much privacy in our own networks (family and friends often know more than we want, if you live in a small community you sort of know what's going on). Where we did have privacy was from sources that we didn't trust. It's ok if my brother knows I like a particular product, have a certain hangup, or a particular weakness. It's not ok if a company knows that. We too often equate privacy with the notion of not being known (for example, when someone you know in the physical world mentions something they found out about you online, we can see that as "wow, I have no privacy"). But truthfully, privacy has always had gradients. I don't want my life insurance company to know my dietary habits. And I don't want colleagues to know my bank account balance. Now, with Facebook and other tools, we are self-declaring many of our interests - an absolute dream for marketers.
As Britannica Blog notes, the ability to piece together our distributed activities likely results in the most significant affront to our view of privacy. Co-workers know different things about us than our family does, our banks know different things about us than our place of worship. These segregated chunks of our identity is what we mostly define as privacy. When our segregated selves can be brought together into a whole, parts of our identity are shared with people we don't want to share. As Teemu says, big brother, in this instance, is, well, us. We are responsible for self-surveillance - through facebook, flickr, blogs, social bookmarking, twitter.
For all the declarations of libraries being dead, we're witnessing a bit of a revival. University and public libraries are remaking themselves to reflect different needs of learners today. The New Librarians sums it up well; "Students are still coming to the library in droves...But more and more often what they want to come to the library for is collaborative space where they can work with their friends and have a coffee, sit comfortably and do their homework, and get help when they need it."
I've taught in laptop classrooms, and can sympathize somewhat with faculty comments - like those in Digital Distraction - that suggest laptops should be banned from classrooms. It can be distracting, even frustrating, to instruct a class where students don't appear to be listening to the lecture but are instead engagement in instant messaging, downloading music, watching videos, etc. But, as the article mentions, the deeper problem may rest with instructional methods. Active, engaged learning is probably the best model for dealing with lack of student interest. The situation is obviously complex - students can often miss important concepts when not involved in the lecture or in class learning activities. I recall many discussions with students who realized, often too late, that they were well behind in course work due to distractions online. However, students at the higher education level are adults. We can't impose our will on them in classrooms. We need to mirror the democratic worldviews which form society's foundation. I don't think banning laptops accomplishes that.
Later today, as part of Elluminate's Live Events series, I'll be presenting an online session on, well, online conferences. If you're interested in attending, you can sign up here.
Update: The presentation recording is now available.
Gathering data on a complex as "fuzzy" as student engagement is certainly not a simple task. As with any effective research project, multiple approaches and perspectives serve to provide the overall picture. And, perhaps most important, research needs to be conducted on local populations. Unfortunately, too many discussions of research data rely on national surveys (which I personally find quite useful in presenting broad trends), but may misrepresent local learners. With that said, the 2007 National Survey of Student Engagement is now available (.pdf).
I share Dean's comments in Blog Malaise: "Readers, have you noticed lately that very recent blog posts are starting to appear at the top of Google search results?...The problem with this is that blog content is moving up near news content as authoritative, current information - I'm not sure that this is a good development". But, I don't think whether "its a good development or not" is the real issue. The fact is, today's information currency finds its value in connections. And Google is the banker. If you want society to know you exist, you need to be found by search engines. I had a conversation with Peter Tittenberger on the shift in what it means to be seen as competent or an expert. For most people seeking information today, Google is the starting point. What kinds of results does Google return? Results that find their origin and value in connections (after all, that's what search engines evaluate today - a site's authority stems from the connections it has amassed over time). What happens when brilliant researchers conduct brilliant research but publish it in closed journals? The researcher or the research may likely not reach the awareness of individuals who find information through search engines (though, with Google Scholar, this will likely change somewhat). Voices of authority (as seen from the perspective of an average information seeker) are determined by how accessible and how prominently connected they are.
I share Dean's concerns in Blog Malaise: "Readers, have you noticed lately that very recent blog posts are starting to appear at the top of Google search results?...The problem with this is that blog content is moving up near news content as authoritative, current information - I'm not sure that this is a good development". But, I don't think whether "its a good development or not" is the real issue. The fact is, today's information currency finds its value in connections. And Google is the banker. If you want society to know you exist, you need to be found by search engines. I had a conversation with Peter Tittenberger on the shift in what it means to be seen as competent or an expert. For most people seeking information today, Google is the starting point. What kinds of results does Google return? Results that find their origin and value in connections (after all, that's what search engines evaluate today - a site's authority stems from the connections it has amassed over time). What happens when brilliant researchers conduct brilliant research but publish it in closed journals? The researcher or the research may likely not reach the awareness of individuals who find information through search engines (though, with Google Scholar, this will likely change somewhat). Voices of authority (as seen from the perspective of an average information seeker) are determined by how accessible and how prominently connected they are.
I met Kai Pata when we were both on an panel organized by Seb Fiedler at ED-MEDIA in Vancouver. She maintains the Taming the Spaces blog. She explores concepts of embodiment, affordances, activity theory, symbols, semiotics, and activity spaces. Worth following...
A connection is so subtle that its power and impact are often overlooked. Regardless of our focus - learning, transportation, food chain, social contacts - connections play the central role. Barabasi expressed this well in his book Linked: "Networks are present everywhere. All we need is an eye for them". While not the source of the foundational value of connections, social software and the participative web are great mirrors of their underlying presence.
Jon Lebkowsky highlights the vital nature of nodes with which to connect: "When I first got an email account in the 1980's, its value was practically zero because there were so few email users and nobody I knew had it. From a personal perspective, as more people used email, and especially as more people I knew got accounts, the more valuable it became."
I'm still surprised at articles like this, addressing questions and providing experiences that many of us initially grappled with about ten years ago...but I guess such is the process of mainstreaming ideas: An Online Economics Professor Reveals All: "Online education is seriously on the rise, garnering praise from congressmen and even gaining share among elementary school students. In the realm of higher education, more and more schools are offering online degree programs as an alternative to in-class courses, with some schools creating online-only engineering and law degrees as well as bachelors’."