next decade, this 30 million will grow to 100 million. To meet this staggering demand, a major university needs to be created each week" (1996). 
"Our ancestors sailed across a vast ocean, one third of the earth's surface, and to accomplish this great feat they needed the vision to see islands over the horizon, the ability to plan intentional voyages of discovery, the discipline to train physically and mentally, the courage to take risks, and a deep sense of aloha to bind the crew together during the voyage. These are Hawaiian values but they are also universal values. They worked in the past and they will work today" (
instead of seeking radically new opportunities to develop school-as-it-can-be" (Seymour Papert and Gaston Caperton, in 
matter. What matters to me is the determined space and time where determined tasks are accomplished. Social historical and political tasks, not only individual ones. . . . The two main tasks of the school: to get the already known knowledge and to produce the knowledge not yet in existence" (In Seymour Papert's 
and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to breaking down barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity" (
Andy Guess (Inside Higher Education): “Distance learners tend to drop out more readily than students who have regular, face-to-face contact with their instructors. And that fact, seen in retention statistics comparing students in traditional and online courses, motivated the City Colleges of Chicago to start at the beginning: at orientation. . . . In an interactive session called ‘Student Orientations: Their Impact on Online Student Retention and Success,’ instructors and administrators in Philadelphia on
Monday for the annual American Association of Community Colleges convention discussed strategies that had worked for them at their institutions, and paid closer attention to the one in Chicago, which seems to have produced favorable results. . . . Colleges, for example, can identify students enrolled in three or more courses at once as ‘at risk’ . . . . One audience member suggested that giving an online test to all students could determine whether they are ready to take a course through the Internet, with all the motivation and off-hours work that entails. . . . Data from the CDL presented at the session illustrated a trend, from 2004 to 2007, of greater course retention among distance learners who took online orientations, from 69.8 percent to 75.3 percent last year. Beginning in 2006, the center found that face-to-face orientations worked even better — last year, the rate was 87 percent. Retention rates for traditional students are still significantly higher than those for students who took online orientations, but they are comparable to those who attended in-person orientations.” (“A Look at Online Orientations,” 8 Apr 2008)
Comment: Students who do attend F2F orientations may not be from the same population as those who don’t, and this difference might account for the CDL results. I, too, found that students who attend an optional orientation (F2F or online) have significantly higher retention rates. The concern should be with the population of students who don’t. In my experience, 20-25% of students who sign up for online classes are no-shows, i.e., they don’t contact me via email, as requested in the schedule of classes, and they either don’t log in to the class website or don’t participate in class activities. Add to this percentage the number of students who participate but eventually drop out, and you have the higher-than-F2F results for retention. We need to find a way to identify and disenroll this no-show population since they take up e-seats that could have easily been filled by others. The difficulty is the brief time span — within the first few days of instruction — when this could be done. -js 4.8.08
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