Techno-News Blog

By Darwin Green, US News

Nontraditional students with outside responsibilities can benefit from the flexibility online courses offer. ​After a long and difficult decision, I decided to return to college after a 12-year gap between my sophomore and junior years. Things had changed since I had been to college, both for me and in education. I now had a pregnant wife and bills to pay – something I never had to consider as a young man in my early 20s. And an undergraduate degree somehow became the new high school diploma. I needed a way to find financial security while maintaining my responsibilities as a father, a husband and as an adult. I decided to apply to an online program. As an adult, I found there are three advantages of online degrees:

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/2015/11/06/3-challenges-online-education-helps-adult-learners-overcome

By: Maryellen Weimer, Faculty Focus

“Based on the results in this study, students in online courses, with unmonitored testing, are no more likely to cheat on an examination than students in hybrid and F2F courses using monitored testing, nor are students with low GPAs more likely to enroll in online courses.” (p. 72) Some had suggested that because students who had not taken an online course reported that they thought it would be easier to cheat in online courses, students with lower GPAs might be motivated to take online courses. There were only 19 students in the online course in this study, but across these three sections, GPA did not differ significantly. Using this interesting model to predict cheating, there was no evidence that it occurred to a greater degree in the unmonitored tests given in the online course. That’s the good news. The bad news: “There is ample opportunity for cheating across all types of course delivery modes, which has been demonstrated through decades of research.” (p. 73) In other words, we still have a problem, it just isn’t more serious in online courses, based on these results.

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/do-online-students-cheat-more-on-tests/

by Olivia Vanni – BostInno

Taking courses online can be the true test of self-discipline. At any moment, you could feel weak and direct your focus to a world of websites rather than your work. So when you’re learning a skill that needs your full attention, like coding, opting to do an online program is risky business. Launch Academy, which has offered on-campus coding coursework for the past couple of years, is trying to mitigate any issues virtual learning has posed in the past with its upcoming online program. In December, Launch Academy will be starting its first online coding program. When I spoke with the company’s co-founders Dan Pickett and Evan Charles, they said they’re taking a new approach to virtual learning by making it more like the real deal. Looking at what’s helped on-campus students and translating that to the online realm, Launch Academy is hoping to enable a broader range of professionals be successful.

http://bostinno.streetwise.co/2015/11/06/launch-academy-online-code-course-and-professional-program/

By Mike Cummings, Yale News

Yale’s latest round of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) will provide learners across the globe instruction on legal concepts, negotiation strategies, and the details of 2008 financial crisis. These courses are the first Yale has offered on Coursera’s new “on-demand,” cohort-based platform. The platform responds to two requests Coursera received from global learners. Learners wanted course material to be much more accessible, but they also wanted their learning process to retain some structure. The cohort-based platform creates a new course session every three weeks, complete with automatically generated (soft) deadlines and fresh discussion forums. The hope is that this will allow cohort-based courses to maintain the robust student-to-student interaction of a session-based course, while drastically reducing the time a learner has to wait before accessing course material.

http://news.yale.edu/2015/11/06/free-online-learning-yale-experts-now-offered-demand

By David Nagel, Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The numbers are in: Our survey of higher education IT professionals gathered salary data for hundreds of tech leaders and staffers in colleges and universities across the country. As readers we’ve always approached salary surveys with conflicting sensations — trepidation that we might be wildly underpaid; and hope that, if we’re not, there’s still room for growth in salary so that if we chose to leave the jobs we had, we wouldn’t be priced out of the market. If you’re the same way, let’s get the jolt over with quickly: The average salary of respondents to Campus Technology’s IT salary survey was $75,621 (plenty of additional details to follow). People are generally positive in their outlook and don’t plan to switch jobs anytime soon. Most do not expect promotions in the near future, and just a few foresee any kind of raise over the next year.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/03/campus-technology-2015-salary-survey-it-pay.aspx

By Dennis Pierce, Campus Technology

Produced by Su-Kam Intelligent Education Systems (SKIES), named after co-founders Julius Su and Victor Kam, the app enables students to construct an interconnected web of knowledge around a topic as the professor is teaching — turning a traditional lecture format into a shared, interactive learning experience. “Students learn best not when they are passive recipients of content, but when they are actively involved in their own learning,” Su said. With the SKIES app, he said, “teachers and students can be creating and constructing knowledge together. That makes the classroom more lively, engaging and democratic — and just a great place to be. It turns into a better environment for learning.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/04/making-lectures-more-interactive.aspx

by eMarketer

There is a proliferation of devices in the marketplace. When it comes to ownership, young adults ages 18 to 29 are more likely to own a mobile phone or smartphone than a desktop or laptop, pointing to how mobile is becoming an all-purpose device that users are increasingly relying on. According to a July 2015 survey by the Pew Research Center, ownership of desktop and laptops, game consoles and MP3 players among US young adults has dropped since 2010. Alternatively, smartphone ownership among these respondents has grown from 52% in 2011 to 86% in 2015.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Young-Adults-More-Likely-Own-Smartphone-Than-PC/1013202

by Maria E. Cruz Lopez, MIT Tech

The increasing popularity of massive open online courses (MOOCs) has created new pathways to education, connecting diverse groups of learners not bound by geography. But what happens when these online students engage and interact? Do they build bridges of healthy discourse or do they form siloes of insular thinking — and is it possible for instructors to forge communities founded on conversation rather than conflict? Education researcher Justin Reich, executive director of the Teaching Systems Lab within MIT’s Office of Digital Learning, intends to find out. Reich, along with associates from Princeton University and Harvard University, was recently awarded a $400,000 research grant from the Spencer Foundation. The grant is part of the foundation’s “Measuring the Quality of Civic and Political Engagement” initiative.

http://news.mit.edu/2015/grant-enables-research-into-online-course-mooc-forums-1105

By Chris Havergal, Times Higher Education

Many students with disabilities are attracted to online learning because they feel less stigmatised than they do in the classroom, a study suggests. Researchers at two US universities interviewed students with a range of disabilities taking online or blended programmes and found that more than half said that avoiding stigmatisation was a key reason for signing up. Many of the interviewees, who were enrolled with higher education institutions across the US, highlighted how digital learning made their disabilities “invisible” and “offered the freedom to be viewed as a student without limitations”.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/students-with-disabilities-enrol-online-to-avoid-stigmatisation

By Meris Stansbury, eCampusNews

If online learning is to succeed as not only as a legitimate option for learning but as a respected platform within an institution, leadership has to build that respect through calculated risks and building multi-departmental relationships. That was the main takeaway from an EDUCAUSE conference panel on the “Hallmarks of Excellence in Online Learning,” based on a newly released report from UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association). “We wrote this report to serve as an aspirational model for the approach to online learning,” said Vickie Cook, director of Online Learning, Research and Service at the University of Illinois at Springfield and one of the authors of the report.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/online-learning-leader-265/

By Stephen Noonoo, eSchool News

North of Los Angeles, not far from the city of Ventura, the brand new Rancho Campana High School sits on a California campus fit for the set of a teen movie, where spacious, airy classrooms open — via retractable glass-paneled garage doors — onto sun soaked courtyards and outdoor learning spaces with sweeping views of the neighboring Camarillo Hills. It’s a place where all the furniture is on casters, to be reconfigured with ease, and where every building boasts a computer lab and a media commons. If the $77 million campus, completed earlier this summer, is stunning, it’s nothing compared to what’s going on inside. Following a novel college and career readiness model, Rancho Campana divides itself into separate learning academies, designed to immerse students in one of three distinct career fields: arts and entertainment, health services, and applied engineering.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2015/11/03/college-career-readiness-382/

By Joshua Bolkan, THE Journal

Global tablet shipments declined in the third quarter of this year, marking a full year of contracting sales for the devices, according to a new report form International Data Corp. (IDC). The quarter saw a year-over-year decline of 12.6 percent to move just 48.7 million units in the most recent quarter. Apple continued to hold the top spot with a market share of 20.3 percent, though it also saw the second-largest largest year-over-year decline, 19.7 percent, of the top five tablet providers. That market share is down from 22.1 percent in the same period last year and total devices shipped is similarly down, from 12.3 million in last year’s third quarter to 9.9 million in the most recent quarter.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2015/11/04/tablet-shipments-decline-for-fourth-straight-quarter.aspx

by DEREK NEWTON, the Atlantic

Today, entrepreneurs and freelancers openly advertise services designed to help students cheat their online educations. These digital cheaters for hire will even assume students’ identities and take entire online classes in their place. I reached out to one of these companies—the aptly named No Need to Study —asking, for the sake of journalism, if it could take an online English Literature class at Columbia University for me. I got an email response from someone on its customer-relations staff who told me that, not only could the company get a ringer to take my online class, it could also guarantee I’d earn a B or better. I was told the fee for such an arrangement was $1,225.15. When I asked for more information to be absolutely sure I understood the company’s services, the reply was crystal clear: “We offer the services of a pool of experienced academic tutors to take classes and complete course work for our clients.”

http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/11/cheating-through-online-courses/413770/

by Jennifer Reingold, Fortune

The massive disruption of the education industry is well underway, but the biggest tremors are yet to come—disruptions so dramatic that many universities will cease to exist in the next few years. That was the conclusion of the panelists at the Fortune Global Forum’s session on Ed Tech. Said Alan Arkatov, a professor in USC’s Rossier School of Education: “Think Jurassic Park,” he said. “I would say 500 to 1000 colleges across the country will not be around, or will have morphed into something else, because they do not have a sustainable business model. The market will annihilate those folks.” Two of the would-be annihilators—Dennis Yang, founder of Udemy, and Daphne Koller, founder of Coursera, weren’t disagreeing. Yang’s company, which allows anyone to offer a course and relies on the market to sort out the good from the bad, now offers 30,000 different classes in 80 languages. And Koller says Coursera has reached 4 million “learners,” with much of the company’s growth coming from outside the U.S.

http://fortune.com/2015/11/04/ed-tech-at-fortune-global-forum-2015/

BY RACHEL MORELLO, Indiana Public Media

More Indiana schools are awarding these badges to supplement – or even replace – traditional class credit. including pilot programs at universities in the state such as IU, Notre Dame and Purdue. “They’re a way of recognizing accomplishment or learning, and it’s digital, which means it can be shared on the Internet easily, like you can post it on Facebook,” says learning sciences professor Daniel Hickey. He has studied and developed digital badges for students in his own classes at Indiana University. In most cases, students are earning badges to show they’ve completed online courses, or certain sections of those courses. They’re then able to display them on their LinkedIn page or online portfolio to present to admissions counselors or potential employers.

http://indianapublicmedia.org/stateimpact/2015/10/30/digital-badges-offer-students-opportunity-show/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Campus Technology released its 2015 salary survey this week, showing job satisfaction helps combat the relatively low pay in campus IT departments. According to the findings, the average salary at nonprofit public and private institutions was $75,621, with top IT leaders making more than $120,000 and help desk staffers making about $50,000. Employees at private nonprofit colleges are most optimistic about the chance of a raise, though very few expect a promotion and 24% said they would probably change employers in the coming year.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/it-salary-survey-job-satisfaction-helps-combat-relatively-low-pay/408594/

by Anya Kamenetz, NPR

As one of the biggest, most successful tech companies, Google can hire pretty much anyone it wants. Accordingly, the company tends to favor Ph.D.s from Stanford and MIT. But, it has just partnered with a for-profit company called General Assembly to offer a series of short, noncredit courses for people who want to learn how to build applications for Android, Google’s mobile platform. Short, as in just 12 weeks from novice to employable. This is just one of a slew of big announcements this fall coming out of a peculiar, fast-growing corner of the higher education world: the coder bootcamp. This is really an entire new industry within higher ed that’s grown up in about five years.

http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/11/03/451999158/the-un-college-thats-training-100-000-app-developers

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Apple TV is introducing online learning as an embedded element of its product for the first time, adding television to Coursera’s platform flexibility. Coursera announced the partnership on its blog, saying the TV compatibility will give people access to videos from top academics and industry experts from the comfort of their own living rooms. The company’s entire catalog of courses will be available through the new platform.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/coursera-is-apple-tvs-first-online-learning-partner/408499/

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News

It’s called the Office of Analytics at University of Maryland University College (UMUC), and it began with the vision of President Javier Miyares, who wanted to not only unlock the potential of institutional data across multiple areas, but turn the data into a profit for the college. “The problem is most presidents have heard the word but don’t know how to execute,” explained Miyares during a session at last week’s EDUCAUSE 2015. “We have less than 10 percent of revenue coming from the state and had a 50 percent decline in enrollments in 2012. We had to cut 60 million from the budget and fire 300 people, and that’s when we knew we had to take what we had left and invest in the priority: analytics.” Darren Catalano, the Vice President of Analytics for UMUC, says “Our approach is to demonstrate the “art of possible” to the institution,” said Catalano; “in other words, to make complex data simple.” According to Miyares, there are 5 lessons in leveraging analytics to deliver what’s possible.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/office-of-analytics-265/

by Aaron Skonnard, Tech Crunch

For centuries, the college degree has been the global gold standard for assessing an individual entering the workforce. But after cornering the credentials market for nearly a millennium, the degree’s days alone at the top are most definitely numbered. By 2020, the traditional degree will have made room on its pedestal for a new array of modern credentials that are currently gaining mainstream traction as viable measures of learning, ability and accomplishment. Technology is changing the job market, and it’s only natural that we find new ways of determining who’s the right fit for those jobs.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/29/edtechs-next-big-disruption-is-the-college-degree/#.mcirfbh:I4Aj

By MICHAEL GONCHAR, New York Times

In “What Really Keeps Women Out of Tech,” Eileen Pollack writes: Technology companies know they have a gender and diversity problem in their work force, and they are finally taking steps to try to fix it. But where are those new employees going to come from if women and minority students aren’t opting to study computer science or engineering? Figuring out why people who choose not to do something don’t in fact do it is like attempting to interview the elves who live inside your refrigerator but come out only when the light is off. People already working for a company might tell you what makes them unhappy. But these complaints won’t necessarily pinpoint the factors that keep women and minorities away from studying computer science in the first place.

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/30/why-arent-more-girls-pursuing-careers-in-computing-and-tech-fields/?ref=education&_r=1