Wichita Public Library Begins Learning Circles Program For Online Classes

By DEBORAH SHAAR, KMUW

The Wichita Public Library is beginning a new program this week that offers online learning in a social, small group setting. The sessions are called Learning Circles, and they’re free. Ten Learning Circles are planned from now through November on topics such as fake news, the art of poetry, superheroes and how to make a website. The idea is to get a group of 10-15 people together to take an online course and talk about it along the way to completion. Library Director Cynthia Berner says this shared experience keeps people motivated to actually finish an online class. “The curriculum has been vetted. It comes from experts,” Berner says. “What the library will be doing is bringing a facilitator to the Learning Circle and our staff will actually be learning together right with the other participants.”

http://kmuw.org/post/wichita-public-library-begins-learning-circles-program-online-classes

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=29329

Seattle librarians start fake news survival class

by Michelle Li, KING

The Seattle Public Library system is now arming patrons with the tools they need to weed out fake news by launching a class called the Fake News Survival Guide. It’s already sparked a lot of interest from the public, other city libraries, and even libraries across the country. Many used the Seattle Public Library system as a real-life, human Google during the last election cycle. Last year Seattle public libraries answered roughly 850,000 phone calls, emails, and chats. Librarians around the country have been fielding reference questions in person and online for months. “We had a lot of questions regarding fact checking,” said Di Zhang, reference librarian. “So we put our library hats on and did the digging and found resources for people.”

http://www.king5.com/news/local/seattle-librarians-start-fake-news-class/435509535

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=27231

Online courses serve to promote higher education

by Feng Shuang, Ed., ECNS

Su Dekuang, a math professor at Zhejiang University, became an online celebrity in China recently after he started a calculus class online and attracted more than 13,000 participants. According to some reports, Su was already very popular among the students in Zhejiang University. When his calculus class opened for registrations, over 3,000 students lined up even though there were only 150 places. So we can see it is quite natural that the professor’s online course would appeal to a lot of students. However, the popularity of his online course reveals the difficulty university students have in taking the courses they are interested in. Such open online courses offer the opportunity for students to take a course they would otherwise not be able to take.

http://www.ecns.cn/voices/2017/03-30/251460.shtml

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=25742