Report on Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems
Intended to provide leaders in higher education with lessons learned from existing online learning efforts, and to help accelerate productive use of these systems in the future, this Ithaka S+R report (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) is a landscape review of important developments in online learning today.
Even though there are many “online courses” in existence today, the environment for systems that support interactive learning online (ILO)—those that are full-featured and used by teaching institutions to assist in the effective delivery of credit-bearing courses—is at a very early stage of development. Ithaka S+R worked with leaders, administrators, faculty members, and other key stakeholders to investigate the potential for the use of these delivery systems.
Two important findings came out of this work: 1. the need for open, shared data on student learning and performance that are created through ILO; 2. the need for investment in the creation of sustainable and customizable platforms for delivering interactive online learning instruction.