Techno-News Blog

By Collin Binkley, The Columbus Dispatch

Fewer students are enrolling in humanities majors at Ohio colleges amid an upswing in the popularity of science and business programs, according to federal data. Traditionally the bedrock of a college education, humanities disciplines, including English, philosophy and history, have attracted fewer students nationally in recent years. Some scholars have lamented the fall of the humanities, while others say the downturn is overblown.

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/05/09/technology-edging-out-humanities.html

by Brent Betit, EdSurge

We know that students with learning disabilities may learn best in a human-mediated environment that takes into account their highly specific individual learning profile. The very best special educators adapt to a student’s learning style on the fly–a capability that computers haven’t yet acquired. So it would seem logical to question whether online education is even appropriate for students with LD. Yet I believe that a well-designed learning platform that includes multiple learning modalities could very well be superior to in-person education for someone with an LD. Based on my 30 years of experience working with students who learn differently, here are six precepts for how one could build an online learning platform that works for students with LDs:

https://www.edsurge.com/n/2015-05-10-how-to-make-online-learning-accessible-for-students-with-learning-challenges

By David Raths, THE Journal

As tablets move from novelty items to staples in the classroom, teachers are finding new ways to make them more than just another screen for students to look at. According to Sam Patterson, a technology integration specialist at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School, a K-8 school in Palo Alto, CA, “What we are seeing is technology becoming more and more transparent.” Years ago, if you had a computer for every student in the class it would look like a computer lab. And then each student had a laptop, and it was a classroom full of screens, he noted. “Now students have the ability to connect to other things in the room, so that when we are collecting data we can do it directly and do observations,” he said. “It is amazing that in a seventh-grade science class, you can import data and it is in a spreadsheet already. You can start to work with that data without having to teach the students how to build a spreadsheet.”

http://thejournal.com/articles/2015/05/06/5-ways-to-extend-tablets-beyond-the-screen.aspx

by Charles P. Holmes et al, OJDLA

This quantitative study examined the relationship between the Big 5 personality traits and how they relate to online teacher effectiveness. The primary method of data collection for this study was through the use of surveys primarily building upon the Personality Style Inventory (PSI) (Lounsbury & Gibson, 2010), a work-based personality measure, was the instrument used to assess personality measures. In addition an evaluation instrument was developed by the researchers to evaluate classroom performance across a 10-point scale. In total 115 instructors from a large predominantly online university were surveyed through Qualtrics for personality traits and then had their courses evaluated for effectiveness and quality utilizing measures based on the Quality Matters program. Using a Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, it was found that 9 personality traits were significantly correlated with online teaching performance. While the results of this study can only be seen at this point as preliminary, it does open the door to further studies to determine if online teacher training or professional development interventions should take a different approach. Ultimately, the findings of this study demonstrated that personality does play a significant role in the effectiveness of online teaching performance.

http://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/spring181/holmes_kirwan_bova_belcher181.html

By Dennis Pierce, Campus Technology

From screencasting to interactive presentations, here are some resources to get a flipped class off the ground. Flipping the classroom typically requires the use of certain technology tools, whether for recording lecture content or for orchestrating classroom discussion. Jon Bergmann, a pioneer of the flipped classroom and co-creator of FlippedClass.com, categorizes these tools into four different groups: video creation tools, like screencasting software; video hosting tools; interactive tools that help professors check for understanding and foster discussion among students; and learning management systems for tying all of this together. Some products and services perform more than one of these functions — and a few do all four.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/05/06/5-free-or-low-cost-tools-for-flipped-learning.aspx

By Suzi Wilczynski, eSchool News

What is it about Oregon Trail that had such a profound impact on us that we clearly remember the experience years later? Part of the answer lies in the way in which social studies is often taught. Despite the best efforts of teachers, history classes cover so much material that often the only choice is to focus on major events, dates, and important people. Not surprisingly, many kids find that sort of rote memorization boring and never truly engage with the material. That affects both comprehension and retention. Long after the test, students might remember the date of the Battle of Hastings, but the context and significance is often lost. Oregon Trail stemmed from the realization that kids learn more when they are learning about real people doing real things. Deeper learning happens when teachers show life and culture. If history is taught in this way, students can learn to analyze, categorize, process and communicate, and evaluate the motivation behind an action.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/05/07/immersive-gaming-839/

by Heather Brown, CBS Minnesota

Do employers look at degrees from an online university differently? Good Question. “I think they’re still trying to figure out what online degrees mean,” Paul DeBettignies, principal of Minnesota Headhunter, LLC, said. A survey by Public Agenda, a non-profit that works on education issues, found 45 percent of employers think online classes require more discipline, but 56 percent still say they’d rather have an applicant who learned in the classroom. “It comes down to the company and the manager,” Perry Wedum, Regional Vice-President of Experis, said. Mary Massad, division president of recruiting services for Insperity, a recruiting firm, says about 75 percent of her clients embrace online degrees. “My sense is that the value of a degree is still more closely tied to the reputation of the school itself, rather than the delivery method used,” Carleen Kerttula, head of program innovation at University of St. Thomas’s Opus School of Business, said.

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2015/05/07/good-questions-do-employers-value-online-degrees/

by Lauren Minor, Wasbash Valley

“We definitely are seeing growth in our online programs,” says Dean of Extended Ken Brauchle. In 2014 more than 7000 students at ISU took one or more online courses. “It allows us to serve more people without having to build more infrastructure. Having to have more residence halls, and classroom buildings and so on,” says Brauchle. More than 2000 students attend exclusively online, but most of them are considered non-traditional students who have family and/or job responsibilities.

http://www.mywabashvalley.com/story/d/story/future-of-online-learning/12922/CK6ZDyq8Ek-Sz7R1en7jrA

by John A. Byrne, Fortune

His first year on the job has been a whirlwind, putting the 68-year-old educator at the forefront of a revolution in higher education. Just this week, Coursera announced the first MOOC-based MBA degree with the University of Illinois College of Business. In February, Coursera launched a series of “specializations” in which a school offers a sequence of courses along with a capstone project. True disruption to higher education, believes Levin, will take many years and largely affect commuter colleges not known for deep engagement between students and faculty. For universities that sit on the sidelines, there could be significant consequences. Levin predicts that global rankings of universities are likely to take into account the number of people in the world touched by a university’s professors. That would make a global university’s status and prestige partly dependent on a school’s reach, which can be expanded significantly through online learning.

https://fortune.com/2015/05/07/coursera-ceo-colleges-will-survive-the-online-education-revolution/

By Teresa Mackin, WISH TV

It was named one of the 12 companies “transforming education” to watch this year by Forbes. Flashnotes.com is a start-up company started several years ago that allows students to buy and sell their notes from classes online. It’s one of several note-sharing websites. As finals week wraps up at many Indiana colleges, company officials say when those exams are done, officials say students can actually make money off the work they did this semester. Some Indiana University-Bloomington and Purdue University students are among thousands of students participating across the country. In March, Barnes and Noble invested in the fast-growing company. Flashnotes.com officials say it’s another way to share original notes by students taken in class, essentially a “student to student” marketplace. Students set a price to sell their notes and earn 70 percent of those sales.

http://wishtv.com/2015/05/07/students-class-notes-available-online-for-a-fee/

By Menchie Mendoza, Tech Times

While it’s true that YouTube also features educational videos on a number of interests, including language, cooking and even hacking, online education sites offer lessons that are more interactive and student-focused. Feedback is generous and students can even gain lifetime access to the lessons. EdX, MIT OpenCourseware, CodeAcademy, Coursera and Moz are just some of the popular online education sites that offer not only quality and university-partnered courses but also lessons that are absolutely free of charge.

http://www.techtimes.com/articles/51072/20150506/want-free-online-education-visit-these-sites-edx-mit-opencourseware-codeacademy-coursera-and-moz.htm

by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Since well before MOOCs emerged, the University of California at Berkeley has been giving away recordings of its lectures on YouTube and iTunesU. In fact, Berkeley has become one of the most-generous distributors of free lectures on the web, adding some 4,500 hours of video per year. But that web channel, webcast.berkeley.edu, will soon stop adding fresh content. Last month officials announced that, because of budget cuts, the university will no longer offer new lecture recordings to the public, although the videos will still be available to students on the campus.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/berkeley-to-stop-adding-lecture-videos-to-youtube-citing-budget-cuts/56587

by Paul Hunter, Training Journal

Undoubtedly MOOCs have their place for disciplined and curious individuals with an iron will, available time and a natural predisposition to persevere. However, for time-stretched executives, juggling high-pressure professional objectives and increasingly scarce personal time, MOOCs have not provided the hoped for panacea. Expecting executive learners to stay the (online) course based on a cobbled together jumble of videos, articles and chat rooms is farfetched. In such circumstances, expecting tangible results such as measurable business impact or observed behavioural change is delusional. For virtual learning to work, providers should follow—and executives should look for—these seven guidelines:

https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/feature/seven-guidelines-ensuring-better-online-business-programme

by Nick Morgan, Forbes

What’s the secret to effective learning? A recent study by a group of neuroscientists from the University of California, the University of Pennsylvania and Johns Hopkins University found that the less you work your brain when learning, perhaps, the better. The researchers studied subjects learning a simple game over a six-week period. Those who used the part of the brain least associated with conscious planning, the frontal cortex, did the best. It’s better, it turns out, just to practice and not over-think what you’re doing. You learn faster. The results were published in the journal Nature Neuroscience recently, and one of the researchers noted, “It’s the people who can turn off the communication to these parts of their brain (the frontal cortex) the quickest who have the steepest drop-off in their completion times. It seems like those other parts are getting in the way for the slower learners. It’s almost like they’re trying too hard.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorgan/2015/05/05/whats-the-secret-to-effective-learning/

by AMANDA RIPLEY, the Atlantic

Starbucks and Arizona State University are collaborating to help cafe workers get college degrees. Is this a model for helping more Americans reach the middle class?
 Our class-based higher-education divide explains more about America’s widening income gap than does any other single factor, according to Anthony P. Carnevale, the director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. Declining union membership, frayed social services, low minimum wages—none matters as much as the unequal distribution of college degrees and certificates.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/05/the-upwardly-mobile-barista/389513/

By Julie Ferrell, Ames Tribune

Free program aims to increase students’ awareness about security threats. Researchers at Iowa State University are hoping to bring the subject of cyber security to grade school classrooms. The team is releasing the nation’s first computer literacy curriculum aimed at middle and high school students, and it is expected to be ready as early as this fall. Teachers were introduced to the free program during a workshop at the IT-Olympics computer competition on ISU’s campus.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/05/05/university-cyber-security-784/

by Stuart M. Butler, Brookings

Called the Global Freshman Academy, this is another important step in the revolution that is engulfing higher education. Recently Google and MOOC pioneer Coursera announced “microdegrees”, a set of online courses and a hands-on project that will essentially be the core of a low-cost degree major that will be accepted by top employers. Now ASU and edX is aiming at the package of general course requirements, enabling students to assemble an accredited set of mainly first-year classes to use at ASU or to gain credits that they can transfer to another college or university. The Global Freshman Academy is a boon to students and an existential threat to traditional state and private universities.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/techtank/posts/2015/05/4-asu-moocs-butler

By University of Chicago

Students who physically experience scientific concepts understand them more deeply and score better on science tests, according to a new study. Brain scans showed that students who took a hands-on approach to learning had activation in sensory and motor-related parts of the brain when they later thought about concepts such as angular momentum and torque. Activation of these brain areas was associated with better quiz performance by college physics students who participated in the research.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1344919-quiz-scores-students-feel-physics/

By Thomas Magaldi, Inside Higher Ed

One challenge to the graduate school and postdoc experience is that Ph.D.s become focused on a niche topic, which can lead to intellectual stagnation. A great way to stimulate your brain and overcome complacency with a specific topic is to take challenging courses in new and exciting fields. Fortunately, the rapid emergence of online education provides a perfect solution for busy Ph.D.s who wish to take new and interesting courses. Many online courses are free, which is perfect for a ramen noodle budget. They are also flexible, allowing students to view lectures at their own leisure. Some of the skills that you might develop by taking courses online might include computer programming, foreign language, finance and statistics. Taking a course will not only help you build skills for your next career, but may also bring a unique perspective to your research.

https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2015/05/04/essay-how-phd-can-pursue-professional-development

by Rebecca Paddick, Education Technology

The first well-documented flipped classroom rang into session only back in 2007, when a pair of chemistry teachers began looking for a way to provide lecture materials for students who had to miss class. Using simple screen recording software to capture their PowerPoint slides, the two then uploaded the recordings to YouTube for every student in the class to review. Right away the two teachers noticed the tenor of the classroom had shifted. Students came to class prepared with a better understanding of the day’s material. Right away, class time began to shift away from passive lecturing and toward increased student interaction and greater discussion of the details of the lesson and how the subject related to other lessons. In short order a new pedagogy was born — and its adoption throughout the world of education has been nothing short of astonishing.

http://edtechnology.co.uk/Article/has-the-flipped-classroom-already-become-the-norm