Online Enrollment Continues to Climb

Approximately 4.6 million college students are now enrolled in at least one online course – a 17% increase over the previous year. In 2002, less than 10% of students were taking a course online. Now more than 25% of all college students take courses in the virtual environment. One of the concerns raised by the rapid increase of online

courses is whether or not professors are receiving adequate training for teaching online. According to the Sloan Survey of Online Learning, far less thanhalf of faculty, and as low as one in five, "accept the value and legitimacy" of online learning. 

(Source: Inside Higher Ed, January 27, 2010)

Church with Facebook Campus

Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, NV, recently became the worlds' first church to launch a Facebook campus. The online campus features 6 live services per week, complete with live lobby chat, tithing and teaching. The church hopes to capture some of the 250 million Facebook users. The inaugural service had 450 attendees

from around the globe. Central Christian now has four physical campuses and two virtual campuses – one on their website and one on Facebook. 

(Source: MassMedia Corporate Communications)


Teen Media Usage Increases

With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth, according to a national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation titled Generation M2: Media in the Lives of 8- to 18-Year-Olds. The study, the third in a series of

large-scale, nationally representative surveys, also found that heavy media use is associated with behavior problems and lower grades.

Today, 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week), compared with less than 6 and a half hours just 5 years ago — a conclusion that shocked the authors. And because they spend so much of that time "media multitasking" — for example, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media content into those 7 and a half hours.

"This is a stunner," said Donald F. Roberts, a Stanford communications professor emeritus, one of the authors of the study. "In the second report, I remember writing a paragraph saying we've hit a ceiling on media use, since there just aren't enough hours in the day to increase the time children spend on media. But now it's up an hour."

The heaviest media users, the study found, are black and Hispanic youths and "tweens," or those ages 11 to 14.

While most of the young people in the study got good grades, 47% of the heaviest media users — those who consumed at least 16 hours a day — had mostly C's or lower, compared with 23% of those who typically consumed media 3 hours a day or less. The heaviest media users were also more likely than the lightest users to report that they were bored or sad, or that they got into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at school. But, the study could not say whether the media use causes problems, or whether troubled youth turn to heavy media use.