Distance Education and the Evolution of Online Learning in the United States

Online education is no longer a trend, rather it is mainstream. In the Fall of 2012, 69.1% of chief academic leaders indicated online learning was critical to their long-term strategy and of the 20.6 million students enrolled in higher education, 6.7 million were enrolled in an online course (Allen & Seaman, 2013; United States Department of Education, 2013). The advent of online education and its rapid growth has forced academic institutions and faculty to question the current styles and techniques for teaching and learning. As developments in educational technology continue to advance, the ways in which we deliver and receive knowledge in both the traditional and online classrooms will further evolve. It is necessary to investigate and understand the progression and advancements in educational technology and the variety of methods used to deliver knowledge to improve the quality of education we provide today and motivate, inspire, and educate the students of the 21st century. This paper explores the atioevolution of distance education beginning with correspondence and the use of parcel post, to radio, then to television, and finally to online education.

Polarimetric Response of Rice Fields at C-Band: Analysis and Phenology Retrieval

A set of ten RADARSAT-2 images acquired in fully polarimetric mode over a test site with rice fields in Seville, Spain, has been analyzed to extract the main features of the C-band radar backscatter as a function of rice phenology. After observing the evolutions versus phenology of different polarimetric observables and explaining their behavior in terms of scattering mechanisms present in the scene, a simple retrieval approach has been proposed. This algorithm is based on three polarimetric observables and provides estimates from a set of four relevant intervals of phenological stages. The validation against ground data, carried out at parcel level for a set of six stands and up to nine dates per stand, provides a 96% rate of coincidence. Moreover, an equivalent compact-pol retrieval algorithm has been also proposed and validated, providing the same performance at parcel level. In all cases, the inversion is carried out by exploiting a single satellite acquisition, without any other auxiliary information.

Deed to Joseph Woodward, 29 November 1786

Deed for a parcel of land in Braintree, Massachusetts.

Extract from Norwich proprietor's book of records, p. 112, ca. 1775?

Record of parcel of lands in Norwich, CT deeded to a group of individuals including many members of the same families around 1770.

Letter from James Winthrop to William Bentley, 1815 March 16

Two octavo-sized leaves containing a brief half-page handwritten letter from Winthrop to Bentley to accompany the deliver of a "small parcel of Irish Farthings."

[Indenture of Anthony Blount & John Jones to the Trustees of Hopkinton], 1724 March

Handwritten indenture between grantors Anthony Blount and John Jones, and the Trustees as grantees for a parcel of land originally included in Mr. Savill Simpson's farm.

Design examples for steel box girders /

"July 1986."

Ewer

11 19/64 in.x 3 15/16 in.x 5 29/32 in.; silver, parcel-gilt; raised, cast, stamped and chased

Bow Broach

4 3/32 in.x 2 1/64 in.x 45/64 in.; parcel gilt bow brooch with niello and garnet inaly and chip-carved decoration

The Burghley Nef

1 ft. 1 45/64 in.x 8 3/16 in.x 4 51/64 in.; nautilus shell with parcel-gilt silver mounts, raised, chased, engraved and cast, and pearls.

The Burghley Nef: close view

nautilus shell with parcel-gilt silver mounts, raised, chased, engraved and cast, and pearls.

The producer's marketing guide, the connecting link between producer and consumer ...

Mode of access: Internet.

The act to regulate commerce (as amended) ...

Inclues text or related sections of the Accidents reports act; Ash pan act; Bills of lading act; Block signal resolution; Boiler inspection act, as amended; Clayton antitrust act; Compulsory testimony act; District court jurisdiction act; Elkins act, as amended: Expediting act, as amended; Government-aided railroad and telegraph act; Hours of service act, as amended; Immunity of witnesses act; Lake Erie and Ohio ship canal act; Medals of honor act [and] regulations, as amended; Parcel post acts; Railway mail service pay act; Safety appliance act; Transportation of explosives act.

High resolution provenancing of long travelled dust deposited on the Southern Alps, New Zealand

On 7 February 2000 an atypical orange discolouration of snowfields in the central Southern Alps, New Zealand occurred following the passage of a cold front. Analysis of snow samples identified fine orangey-brown dust mixed with much coarser grey dust. Air parcel forward trajectories from dust sources in southern and central Australia, where dust storms were reported on 4 February 2000, were computed to identify the deposits source. Geochemical analyses of the dust deposit using 26 trace elements, unaffected by regional air pollution and gravitational sorting, indicate that 20% of the dust was sourced from western New South Wales, with 45% from the eastern Eyre Peninsula of South Australia and the remaining 35% was local New Zealand dust. This provenancing approach provides a spatial resolution of long travelled dust sourcing not previously achieved. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Collaborative decision-making processes for maintaining biodiversity: Two Australian case studies

There have been many models developed by scientists to assist decision-makers in making socio-economic and environmental decisions. It is now recognised that there is a shift in the dominant paradigm to making decisions with stakeholders, rather than making decisions for stakeholders. Our paper investigates two case studies where group model building has been undertaken for maintaining biodiversity in Australia. The first case study focuses on preservation and management of green spaces and biodiversity in metropolitan Melbourne under the umbrella of the Melbourne 2030 planning strategy. A geographical information system is used to collate a number of spatial datasets encompassing a range of cultural and natural assets data layers including: existing open spaces, waterways, threatened fauna and flora, ecological vegetation covers, registered cultural heritage sites, and existing land parcel zoning. Group model building is incorporated into the study through eliciting weightings and ratings of importance for each datasets from urban planners to formulate different urban green system scenarios. The second case study focuses on modelling ecoregions from spatial datasets for the state of Queensland. The modelling combines collaborative expert knowledge and a vast amount of environmental data to build biogeographical classifications of regions. An information elicitation process is used to capture expert knowledge of ecoregions as geographical descriptions, and to transform this into prior probability distributions that characterise regions in terms of environmental variables. This prior information is combined with measured data on the environmental variables within a Bayesian modelling technique to produce the final classified regions. We describe how linked views between descriptive information, mapping and statistical plots are used to decide upon representative regions that satisfy a number of criteria for biodiversity and conservation. This paper discusses the advantages and problems encountered when undertaking group model building. Future research will extend the group model building approach to include interested individuals and community groups.