Techno-News Blog

by the Conversation

Research has shown that students who have access to better designed, and more personalised, courses tend to have higher engagement and better outcomes. A study of more than 1,000 engineering students taught with online lessons that adapt to suit individual needs cut the percentage of students who failed the course from 31% to 7% between 2007 and 2011. In Florida, a comparison trial delivery of a traditional online marketing course and one enhanced with adaptive lessons resulted in 16% of students increasing their marks from a C to a B. Lower-performing students quickly remediated to a competent level. These results point to the growing importance of new technologies and approaches to improve both the delivery and quality of online courses to cater for a diverse range of students.

http://theconversation.com/online-learning-can-work-if-universities-just-rethink-the-design-of-their-courses-50848

by Allison Dulin Salisbury, EdSurge

The next wave of experimentation for edX involves creating those for-credit pathway programs. EdX announced three in the last six months, including two just in the last four weeks: Global Freshman Academy: A complete freshman year offered on edX by Arizona State University which had a soft launch this year. The program is available worldwide to anyone, has no admissions requirements and will award full university credit when students pass courses. ACE Alternative Credit Project: An initiative to help millions of nontraditional learners gain a college degree launched by edX in October. By taking select online courses with edX, adult learners can aggregate credits for general education courses that will transfer directly into participating colleges. Supply Chain Management (SCM) master’s program that launches online in February. Students can complete an MIT master’s degree, if they choose, by then spending a single semester on campus.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-11-23-edx-buckles-down-to-offer-credit-for-moocs

By Ellie Kaufman, Tech Mic

While the success of blended learning programs is debatable, incorporating technology more actively into any subject helps students learn basic tech skills they will need later in life. And it engages them with material in a completely new, potentially more effective, way. Tracy Rudzitis teaches technology and digital media classes at the Computer School, a public middle school in New York City’s Upper West Side neighborhood. She teaches computer programming and other courses in which students design and build real-world projects using PCs. “If they are using technology and computers, they are using them because those are really powerful tools that allow students to create and construct powerful ideas,” Rudzitis told Mic. “They can use a computer to create a program, which is much more powerful than drawing a picture.”

http://mic.com/articles/126856/blended-learning-is-making-teachers-more-productive-in-the-classroom-here-s-how#.K0nDTvIhJ

By Benjamin Farniok, Minnesota Daily

About 75 percent of faculty are part-time or adjuncts nationwide. Adjunct faculty members instructing online courses often don’t receive enough training, according to a recent study. The study, released earlier this month, suggested schools develop clearer policies and laid out a number of problems with adjuncts teaching online classes. The report found many institutions do not have specific rules to handle faculty who teach online courses. Seventy-four percent have written policies for how often they are expected to interact with students, and 42 percent have policies detailing when instructors must respond to student inquiries. And the number of adjunct faculty in colleges across the country is expected to rise, said Russell Poulin, policy and analysis director with the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education Cooperative for Educational Technologies, a nonprofit that studies online learning.

http://www.mndaily.com/news/campus/2015/11/23/study-calls-clearer-rules-adjuncts-teaching-online-classes

BY CARLY NYMAN, Brown and White

The number of sheets of paper that the Office of Institutional Research consumed to conduct course evaluations last spring is 25,842. With only 22 percent of Lehigh faculty opting for the online evaluation form, Institutional Research is left with the lengthy and environmentally-unfriendly process of mass producing the forms and vibrant orange envelopes that land on professors’ podiums at the end of each semester. This process has created a debate between the use of online versus paper course evaluations. Faculty members that use paper generally believe they receive better response rates because they can administer the evaluation forms in person to students who are already sitting at a desk ready to fill them out. Students, however, are left feeling pressed for time and may not provide as thorough feedback as if they took it online at a different time.

http://thebrownandwhite.com/2015/11/23/departments-debate-efficacy-of-online-paper-course-evaluations/

by Will Worley, CNN

Nanodegrees are a new form of online learning, focusing on specialized tech related subjects. They are run by a company named Udacity, which has close links with Google.  If successful, they could herald changes in business practice (CNN)While college degrees take years to complete and cost many thousands of dollars, Google is now backing a scheme to get people a “nanodegree” in just six months. Devised by U.S.-based company Udacity, Nanodegrees are online learning courses aimed at providing up-to-the-minute qualifications in specialized tech subjects like “Android development,” “full stack web developer” and “data analysis.” Proponents say they are shorter, more focused and more practical than traditional degrees, and can be easily kept up to date in today’s fast-changing environment. The benefits, they say, are a cheap, world-class education that is easily accessible.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/23/tech/nanodegrees-google/

by Erik Rédli, Slovak Spectator

The seismic spread of free online courses for life-long education in some countries has caused an outflow of students from institutionalised online education. However, in Slovakia online learning is still a product offered by universities. They offer courses in management, marketing, communication, finances, human resource management and accounting. All of these fields require an active approach and constant learning, which is reflected in the profile of the students. Indeed, online study is different from day-to-day school attendance and isn’t suitable for lazy students. “Interactive online programs of LIGS University are for students who want to work on their skills and at the same time they consider their time carefully,” Dagmar Makovská, executive director at LIGS, said.

http://spectator.sme.sk/c/20064319/online-learning-is-for-the-disciplined.html

by Julie Wurth, News-Gazette

As a first-semester freshman, Madison Aiello was leery of piling too many hours into her class schedule at the University of Illinois this fall. So she signed up for four classes on campus and two more eight-week UI courses online: introduction to theater and integrative biology. With 16 hours of classes, a slightly above-average load, Aiello can better manage her time by doing part of her course work online, at her own pace. “It’s just easier,” she said. On today’s campuses, students mix easily between the face-to-face classroom and the online world, sometimes in the same course.

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2015-11-22/class-only-click-away.html

by Jillian D’Onfro, Business Insider

Content from the nine apps that Google partnered with will now show up in mobile-search results, even if it doesn’t exist on the company’s website, and users will be able to click a “stream” button to get the full app experience without installing anything. Until this week, Google could only turn up information that also lived on a website. That meant that you were potentially missing out on the best results, because that information was locked away inside an app. But now that Google will show app-only content in search, you’ll be more likely to get better results since it can talk to both the apps and the websites. And with streaming, you won’t be limited to the “mobile-friendly” version of a service’s website, which could lack features. Instead, you’ll get the full experience as if you were really using their app, without the commitment or smartphone space required to download.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-app-streaming-2015-11

by Gabrielle Russon, Orlando Sentinel

Tiffani Harper’s online homework seemed to have a mind of its own. It knew that she learned best by watching videos and detected what topics she struggled to grasp. “It’s teaching me the best way to study,” said Harper, 32, a UCF student from Sanford. Harper’s nursing class is part of a growing pilot program that uses cutting-edge technology to personalize online homework for students. The University of Central Florida is one of a handful of schools in the country using the adaptive-style learning for several online courses, school officials said.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/features/education/os-ucf-nursing-online-class-20151120-story.html

By Stephen Noonoo, eSchool News

Looking to give students — or your colleagues — a way to hone their thinking and problem-solving skills while having fun? These free puzzles and games might do the trick. The website APPitic.com, an app resource site with more than 6,000 apps in more than 300 subcategories, offers a number of apps to help build student thinking skills. Here, we’ve gathered a handful of those apps, and you can access more on the APPitic site. All apps were originally curated by Apple Distinguished Educators.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/11/20/student-thinking-skills-173/

By John K. Waters, Campus Technology

For-profit online education provider Udacity and Google today unveiled a new micro-credential program, the Senior Web Developer Nanodegree. The online program is designed to provide students with “the tools, frameworks, and techniques needed to write robust code for progressive Web applications that are secure and easy to use,” said Sarah Clark, program manager in Google’s Developer Training group, in a blog post. “Progressive app,” a term attributed to Google developer Alex Russell, refers to apps that “earn their spot on our home screens over time and preserve URL-based nature of the Web” and work offline. According to Clark, students who spend approximately 10 hours per week on the course should be able to earn the credential in 9 to 12 months.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/17/udacity-and-google-unveil-codeveloped-nanodegree.aspx

Blended Learning Is the Future of K-12 Educational Technology

By Cathie Norris, Elliot Soloway, THE Journal

In our blog post of Oct. 6, 2014 we panned blended learning, and now, in what follows, we are about to say blended learning is the greatest thing since sliced bread. If we were politicians we would be labeled as flip-floppers, a derogatory term in the political argot. But, thank goodness we are not politicians, but an educator (C) and a technologist (E) coming to a new understanding of what the future holds, amongst higher-minded colleagues who eschew fallacious ad hominem arguments.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2015/11/17/blended-learning-is-the-future.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The University of Georgia estimated that it has saved students $2 million through the adoption of open educational resources (OER) since 2013. According to Edward Watson, director of the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning, “Our approach has been to pursue large enrollment courses using expensive textbooks. This has enabled us to maximize savings for students.” The institution has worked with Affordable Learning Georgia, a partnership the University System of Georgia has with California State University, which manages MERLOT, a venerable OER library of resources.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/20/u-georgia-nears-2-million-mark-in-oer-savings.aspx

By Mike Tomei, Campus Technology

When designing audiovisual systems in higher education facilities, accessibility standards are often overlooked. Here are the latest ADA Standards to keep in mind for any classroom AV project. Classroom audiovisual systems can quickly turn into complex designs integrating a mix of technology, furniture and room design into one (hopefully) cohesive system. AV designers are not only tasked with determining the equipment needed in the system, but also the required infrastructure design specifications to make sure the system adheres to building, electrical, structural and life safety codes. In the midst of all those specifications, one often overlooked — but critical — aspect of AV system design is compliance with the ADA Standards for Accessible Design.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/11/decoding-ada-standards-for-classroom-av.aspx

by SUZANNE BOWNESS, Globe and Mail

To help colleges and universities connect with online learners, several Canadian provinces have developed portals to centralize online courses. The latest, eCampusOntario, launched in early October, consolidates 13,000 online courses and 600 online programs from all of the province’s 45 publicly funded colleges and universities. Like a search engine, the new portal allows students to type in keywords that turn up programs and courses on that topic. Listings provide information on content, registration and transfer credit options.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/one-stop-shopping-for-online-courses/article27356635/

BY GEORGE LORENZO, Fast Company

What if you could earn a technology-centric credential at a similar level to a postgraduate for less than $1,000? And what if earning that high-level credential took about six to nine months? What if, after earning this credential, you went into a job interview with solid evidence revealing your skills, backed by several relevant projects you created that very clearly disclosed your innovativeness and creativity, along with showing how advanced you were in relation to the latest developments in your field of study?

http://www.fastcompany.com/3053305/the-future-of-work/could-nanodegrees-be-the-solution-to-the-student-debt-crisis

by Sue Gee, Iprogrammer

Udacity has opened a new Nanodegree in Machine Learning. At advanced level it prepares you to apply predictive models to massive data sets in fields like education, finance, healthcare or robotics. The curriculum for the Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree has been developed with Google and in his email announcement Sebastian Thrun played up this selling point: If you followed the news, you saw that our partner, Google, just open-sourced TensorFlow, its deep learning software. And get this: our program already has a class on deep learning in TensorFlow in development, overseen by Vincent Vanhoucke, technical lead and manager in Google’s deep learning infrastructure team.

http://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/9187-machine-learning-from-udacity-.html

by: Joanna Young, EDUCAUSE Review

To win the war for top IT talent, college and university leaders need a strategy for coming out ahead in one key battle: the paucity of women earning degrees in technology and pursuing related careers. The war for IT talent rages on in higher education, and the battlefields range from the classroom to the boardroom. To win this war and attract top IT talent, college and university leaders need a strategy for coming out ahead in one key battle: the paucity of women earning degrees in technology and pursuing related careers. This issue of women in technology cannot be looked at in isolation. It is an outcome of education access and affordability challenges and of ongoing gender gaps in all ranks and types of technology professions. If we can address those challenges and gaps, we could positively impact the number of women working in higher education information technology.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/10/the-tech-talent-wars-and-womenintech

BY JASMINE ANTHONY, Sheridan Sun

Technology affects everything. It helps us communicate, travel, cook, clean, and shop more efficiently. In education, the emergence of online classes has introduced a plethora of opportunities to prospective students. With all the advantages technology brings, it’s no surprise our teaching system has shifted to include online learning options. That means students face the choice of whether online learning fits their needs. There are positive aspects of taking an online course. It can work well for people who may not be able to attend in-class lessons, whether they are too far away, have full-time jobs or children at home. It also allows students to enroll in classes at institutions outside their province. While some may think taking a course without having to attend class is easy, some students find the opposite is true.

http://thesheridansun.ca/blog/2015/11/17/students-and-teachers-need-to-adapt-as-the-classroom-moves-online/

by Touro College

An important aspect of an online course is grading assignments and providing feedback. This is especially true in an asynchronous course where there is no real-time interaction between the instructors and students. Once a student completes a learning activity, the instructor teaches via the grading of the assignment and provides clear and helpful feedback to the student. A rubric is one of the most popular grading and assessment tools. Here are five benefits to having rubrics as a central part of an online course

http://blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu/rubrics/