Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Are you looking for more effective approaches to engaging and retaining online learners? Then this may be just the resource you have been looking for. Better yet,
you can get it for free (read on).
I first got to know Curt Bonk several years when I
interviewed him about his excellent book
The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education. We’ve stayed in touch ever since, and I was thrilled when he sent me an advance copy of his newest book,
Adding Some TEC-VARIETY, co-authored with Elaine Khoo.
One of the most common questions I get from organizations trying to grow their online education businesses is “How do we keep learners engaged and make sure they actually complete a course?” It’s a big issue, and it has gotten even bigger with the rise of MOOCs and the abysmal retention rates they have demonstrated so far.
As researchers and practitioners, Bonk and Khoo are on the front lines of the retention challenge, and they definitely know their stuff. (Curt is a professor at Indiana University and Elaine is a research fellow at the University of Waikato in New Zealand.) Their book is chock full of practical, actionable tips on motivating and retaining online learners.
So how do you access all those great tips?Adding Some TEC-VARIETY is available as a
free PDF e-book (all 367 pages), but you can
download each chapter separately for free as well. Since the book release in May, over 20,000 people have already downloaded the entire book and thousands more have selected individual chapters. Chapters on curiosity, tone/climate, and relevance are among the most popular ones.
Besides the free e-book, “Adding Some TEC-VARIETY” is also available from Amazon in
paperback and for the
Kindle.
You can also learn more about the book in a
recent blog post from Curt (whose writing I recommend following in general) as well as on the
home page for the book site.
Be sure to checkout
Adding Some TEC-VARIETY today and spread the word to others who are interested in motivating and retaining online learners.
Jeff
P.S. – Curt was also very kind to contribute some of his perspectives to our recent free white paper
Exploring the Fringe: Flipping, Microcredentials, and MOOCsThe post
Motivating and Retaining Online Learners Online – Free Resource Shows How appeared first on
Tagoras.
