UIS online bachelor’s degree programs ranked among the top 10 percent in the country

The University of Illinois Springfield’s online bachelor’s degree programs have been ranked 34th best in the country (out of 357 institutions) by U.S. News and World Report.

The 2021 ranking put UIS among the top 10 percent of best online bachelor’s degree programs in the United States.

UIS’ online master’s degree programs were also ranked highly by U.S. News and World Report. The management information systems online master’s degree was ranked 53 out of 184 in the non-MBA business category. The UIS online master’s degree in education was ranked 91 out of 317 degrees.

“UIS has ranked among the top tier of U.S. News Best Online Program rankings of undergraduate programs since their inception in 2012,” said Ray Schroeder, UIS associate vice chancellor of online learning. “We are honored to once again be ranked among the top 10 percent of online programs by the rigorous and highly respected rankings by U.S. News. With this recognition comes our promise to continue to provide excellence in all of our online classes and programs.”

This story appeared on WAND January 26, 2021.

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Creating a New Model for MOOCS

In 2008, massive, open, online courses burst onto the higher education landscape when two Canadian researchers launched a course on the theory of connectivism that enrolled 25 students on the campus of the University of Manitoba and another 2,300 learners worldwide online.

The scalability of MOOCs became clear three years later, when a team of professors at Stanford offered a free online course on artificial intelligence to 160,000 students across the globe. By 2012, three companies — Udacity, Coursera, and edX — were producing MOOCs, and educators began predicting that the online platforms would disrupt the future of higher education.

Fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, MOOCs are now experiencing an unprecedented boom as millions of people have signed up for these free online courses. Since mid-March, more than 20 million learners have registered for a class with Coursera, the largest MOOC platform, a 360 percent increase from the same period last year. And edX, the next largest MOOC provider, has seen an uptick of 10 million new users since the pandemic began, more than twice the amount that joined in all of 2019.

“The pandemic has been transformative for many institutions,” said Ray Schroeder, associate vice chancellor for online learning at the University of Illinois Springfield, who organized a MOOC in 2011. “They have awakened to online learning. It could take years to tame a mutating virus, all the while universities will have to cope with periodic campus outbreaks. Online learning will become a mainstay of learning delivery among the institutions that survive.”

This article appeared on the website Unbound in November 2020.

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Inter-Institutional Sharing of Courses Online

Ray Schroeder, University of Illinois Springfield associate vice-chancellor for online learning writes that the COVID-19 pandemic, rapid deployment of remote learning, growth of MOOCs and mounting financial pressure on colleges and universities have combined to open minds on the topic of inter-institutional sharing of courses online.

Colleges and universities have a long history of collaborating in research and in areas of broad purpose, but they have been notoriously cautious about collaborating in the development and delivery of their own courses and curricula. Holding a unique university identity on the academic side has been a revered aspect of institutional pride that stands in the way of large-scale sharing.

UIS now is also a member of the Council of Public Liberal Arts Colleges (COPLAC). It has broken through the barrier to offer classes and portions of classes across institutions. UIS executive director of online professional and engaged learning and research Vickie Cook, who served on the committee arranging the guidelines for collaborations, reports that the association has developed a set of understandings that will enable future sharing.

This article appeared in Inside Higher Ed on October 28, 2020.

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UIS helps parents help e-learners

“This is the most exciting year to be in education!”

When Kara McElwrath of University of Illinois Springfield said that, you could imagine students, parents, and teachers saying, that’s one word for it!

But McElwrath told parents during a webinar Monday everybody needs to know that everybody is anxious about it – and the parents’ job is not only to guide them through remote learning, but also to keep students assured that they are doing okay and that the e-learning is new and a little uneasy for everyone.

One of her analogies: even though kernels don’t pop at the same time, you still get a bowl of popcorn when you’re done — so don’t compare your kids to other kids.

This story aired on WTAX on September 15, 2020.

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UIS Webinar Aims To Help Parents Cope With Remote Learning

Parents who are still struggling with online instruction for their children may find help in a webinar scheduled for next week through the University of Illinois Springfield.

The online event is designed to serve as an introduction to techniques that parents can use to help their children navigate remote learning. 

This story appeared on WMAY on September 9, 2020.

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