University students nationwide are using the platform of the internet meme to explain their college experience. Facebook is populated daily with campus inside jokes, the realities of studying finance or even class registration strategies, all of which are explained with only a photo or two and a few lines of pointed text.
Now the grownups are catching on, hoping to tap into the medium to argue the merits of online education, an explosively popular but still hotly debated learning method.
Lecturers at the University of Edinburgh are hoping to use their own meme-like document to attract more people to their cause: making online education cool.
Steve Kolowich at Inside Higher Ed reported that four faculty at the university, who teach online master's courses in "e-learning," wrote a "Manifesto for Teaching Online," which they hope will spread throughout the digital world. The document, which Kolowich called "less like a traditional academic paper than an exceptionally wordy bumper sticker," is tailored for quick Web consumption, complete with the bright colors and short phrases that often characterize internet memes.
Michael Sean Gallagher, a graduate of the U of E program, explained on his blog that the document is "part of a larger University of Edinburgh project examining online writing and assessment."
But the "Manifesto," which can be downloaded as a PDF, is also intended to briefly explain what online education means for many and counter some of the arguments against it.
"Place is differently, not less, important online," it asserts between yellow and orange asterisks. "The best online courses are born digital."
Jen Ross, associate lecturer at the university's education school, told Kolowitch, "What we'd really like to have happen with the manifesto is that people take it up and remix, rewrite and take it apart." She and her colleagues also commissioned a video with the same phrases.
Gallagher applauded the faculty's effort as a confrontation of the misinterpretations of online learning.
"As e-learners (either students or teachers), we are constantly fighting against the grain of public perception that online learning is a lesser form of learning, that physical institutions can simply extend to account for elearning, that space matters only in the physical sense," he said.
Our take? Internet memes are powerful tools to attract attention, and using online methods to promote online education is a smart marketing idea. It would be more effective, though, if they took a leaf out of the students' book and made their manifesto a little more dynamic.
As any college student will tell you, nothing sends a message like a condescending Willy Wonka.
25-02-2012 13:45 Waterloo, Canada - September 6, 2010 - ClevrU Corporation launched their intelligent mobile computing company at the Communitech HUB in Kitchener Ontario. ClevrU technology is an adaptive and intelligent solution that delivers user specific information from the cloud to any internet enabled desk top, notebook, tablet or smartphone. Dana Fox, President and CEO of ClevrU Corporation said, "Our mobile technology is designed to deliver relevant information to the user at the right time using an intelligence engine to make the best use of data found in cloud computing databases." Fox went on to say that " ClevrU technology is particularly designed to deliver content over cellular networks by adapting and optimizing the reformat of content to fit the device and work with the available bandwidth every time." ClevrU is initially developing opportunities in the education sector in fast developing markets, like China. ClevrU will deliver online education in rapidly expanding markets where there is explosive demand for quality education and a lack of infrastructure to deliver customized learning using ClevrU's adaptive, intelligent and mobile cloud based platform. About ClevrU Corporation ClevrU is focused on WEB 3.0 applications that intelligently leverage Cloud Computing in a mobile environment. ClevrU has developed an e-teaching content delivery platform with advanced tools to assist in interactive teaching and student/instructor collaboration. This application uses an ...
23-02-2012 13:15 Medical Coding Classes Online: http://www.CodingCertification.Org So what does the actual course work look like when you want to learn medical coding online classes? Listen in and watch as Laureen Jandroep gives you a view inside the course work of learning medical coding training online at http://www.CodingCertification.Org From the video: "Hello! Welcome to the Physician Based Medical Coding Course. My name is Laureen Jandoep and I am a certified coder and I've been an instructor of coding since 1999 and I love it. I love teaching. I love using modern technology to teach as well and doing things online to me is the best most convenient way to learn. So I appreciate you putting your trust me as an instructor and http://www.CodingCertification.Org to support you in your journey to becoming certified. And hopefully it will be a long relationship. Because once you get certified you have to maintain it with continuing education and just day-to-day coding questions that you will have on your job. So no doubt you found us through http://www.codingcertification.org. I wanted to kind of give you a little tour of how to get around (the members area). Sometimes its going to get overwhelming- you're getting a textbook, a workbook, you're getting aa CPT manual, an ICD-9 manual, HCPCS manual... its a lot of moving parts here compared to maybe some other types of courses you could've taken. So what we're going to do is go into the student membership area to kinda give you an overview of what that looks like ...
23-02-2012 13:21 Medical Coding Classes Online: http://www.CodingCertification.Org So what does the actual course work look like when you want to learn medical coding online classes? Listen in and watch as Laureen Jandroep gives you a view inside the course work of learning medical coding training online at http://www.CodingCertification.Org From the video: "So now let's look at the rest of the course which is on the Evolve site. You can't get onto the Evolve site until you get your textbook and workbook because in it is going to be an access code: don't lose that- I think it's on a yellow sheet of paper and that will will get you into the corresponding site and Evolve. The Evolve site is integrated with your textbook and workbook package. We like it because it's got a phenomenal grade book and assignments and test giving software. So it definitely makes our experience as instructors and your experience as a student much more satisfying. Now this is the the Evolve course site.... This is going to be your home page and you will always log in here first. You'll see the logos so you know you're in the right spot. And this is where it will give you your grade as you continue to take tests and complete homework assignments and quizzes. You'll see your your average grade here. And whats kind of neat is that it shows you how you compare to that to the class average." WATCH THE VIDEO TO LEARN MORE ABOUT TAKING MEDICAL CODING CLASSES ONLINE. youtu.be