Techno-News Blog

by David Weldon, Campus Technology

Often, the learning spaces that get the most attention are the big, flashy projects, complete with all the bells and whistles associated with cutting-edge technology-enhanced classrooms. But for many colleges and universities, those kinds of facilities are a dream, not a reality. With that in mind, Sutch and her colleague Mark Frydenberg, senior lecturer in computer information systems and director of the CIS Learning and Technology Sandbox at Bentley, presented the session “Spruce up Your Campus Learning Spaces without Breaking Your Budget” at the recent Campus Technology Conference in Boston, offering ideas on how campus technologists can outfit their learning centers “on the cheap.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/08/31/how-to-revamp-your-learning-spaces-on-the-cheap.aspx

By Rhea Kelly, THE Journal

Safe social media use is the top cybersecurity challenge for employees, according to the latest report from Wombat Security Technologies on security awareness issues in enterprise organizations. The 2016 Beyond the Phish Report evaluated two years of assessment data from Wombat’s Security Education Platform and surveyed hundreds of security professionals to find out how well end users are able to identify and manage security threats. The data came from a variety of sectors, including finance, technology, healthcare and education. Overall, 31 percent of end users missed assessment questions related to using social media safely in the workplace.After social media, the least understood cybersecurity topics across all industries were protecting and disposing of data securely (30 percent of questions missed); identifying phishing threats (28 percent of questions missed); protecting confidential information (27 percent of questions missed); and working safely outside the office (26 percent of questions missed).

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/09/01/social-media-a-top-cybersecurity-challenge-in-the-workplace.aspx

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

EdTech Magazine offers a view into the benefits of automatic digital onboarding, the process of establishing email and single-sign on access for students, faculty and staff that can make IT development faster, easier and more secure for campus stakeholders. Programs like OneLogin are examples of how schools create and manage digital identities for student and academic access points, helping schools like Texas A&M University and Brown University save time in data processing. Cloud-based technology is a major deterrent in protecting institutional information from hacking, as a recent survey revealed higher education is among the most vulnerable industries to illegal system access.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/how-technology-can-make-student-onboarding-faster-and-safer/425581/

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

The Department of Education recently debuted a pilot program to spur public and private partnerships benefiting workforce development, an unprecedented program which will pair colleges with for-profit companies to offer degrees and job training in select industries. We spoke with officials from three of those institutions, Tuskegee University President Brian Johnson, Purdue University Homeland Security Institute Director J. Eric Dietz and University of Wisconsin Extension Dean of Continuing Education, Outreach and E-Learning David Schejbal, who discussed the vision behind pairing academic programs with industrial partners, structuring programs to meet workforce demand, and the future of industrial development in their respective regions, and throughout the nation.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-leaders-discuss-vision-behind-workforce-development/425211/

by Michal Lev-Ram, Fortune

Online learning platform Coursera is launching an enterprise offering for companies. It’s not what everyone expected when MOOCs first came on the scene, but maybe it’s the right move. On Wednesday morning, the company launched Coursera for Business, an enterprise platform for companies. According to CEO Rick Levin, a large percent of the site’s users are seeking content that can advance their career. Many of them are signing in from corporate email addresses. “With that in mind, we felt we could expand the horizon and the number of people we were reaching by going directly to companies,” Levin told me during a phone interview earlier this week. Coursera’s early customers include BNY Mellon, Boston Consulting Group, L’Oreal, and Axis Bank. Some use Coursera for their onboarding and training process. Others simply see it as a retention tool—after all, who doesn’t want to learn Python?

http://fortune.com/2016/08/31/ed-tech-startup-coursera-launches-online-learning-for-companies/

BY JOHN KATZMAN, eCampusNews

Online undergraduate and graduate college programs are growing at 15 percent a year, but will soon be a thing of the past. As will campus-based programs. Both will give way to an agile approach in which the technology and design of a program are indifferent to modality. Courses will be online, on-campus, or a blend of the two; marketing and recruiting will be integrated, as will student support and placement. Agile programs will enjoy a substantial cost, convenience, and quality advantage over online and campus-based programs. And while academia isn’t quite there yet, a review of changes in online higher ed and commerce over the past 15 years presents the compelling case that this level of integration between and among traditional and online offerings is inevitable.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/featured/featured-on-ecampus-news/college-programs-future/

By Richard Chang, THE Journal

Turnitin’s back-to-school program, “Rethink Feedback,” features new, free resources and tools this fall. The new elements are designed to help K–12 teachers and higher ed instructors teach proper methods of attribution, improve student writing skills and avoid plagiarism.“Teachers intuitively know — and research supports — that there are best practices to giving feedback to students in writing exercises,” said Jason Chu, education director at Turnitin, in a prepared statement. “Feedback that is appropriately constructive, specific, actionable and given at the right time drastically improves how much a student learns about good writing.” Earlier this year, Turnitin added Revision Assistant to its product lineup. The program, designed for grades 6-12 and developmental writing in higher education, extends teachers’ reach by giving students immediate feedback during the writing process.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/25/turnitin-releases-new-free-teaching-resources.aspx

By Michael Hart, THE Journal

As technology has changed K–12 education, so has it changed the role of the chief technology officer, a job title that just barely existed 15 years ago. Today’s CTO is not your grandfather’s infrastructure manager! Technology is ubiquitous in today’s classroom, so we sometimes forget it was just a short while ago that not even teachers had their own computers, let alone their students, who now sometimes come to school with two or three electronic devices. THE Journal contributing writer Michael Hart spoke recently with four veteran chief technology officers who were present at almost the very introduction of technology to K–12 education and asked them how their jobs have changed over the last 15 to 20 years.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/25/the-changing-role-of-the-cto.aspx

By Leila Meyer, Campus Technology

Digital transformation has the potential to revolutionize citizen services, but efforts to bring about that change are “often hindered by top-down hierarchies, cultural legacies and the lack of a compelling vision,” according to information from Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company. Gartner spoke with numerous public sector CIOs who have lead successful digital transformation initiatives. Based on those conversations, Gartner identified three key steps to effective organizational change. The first step is to promote a compelling new vision for the organization as a whole, including the role of IT in that transformation.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/08/29/3-key-steps-for-digital-transformation-initiatives.aspx

by NANCY ACEMIAN, Montreal Gazette

It’s hardly surprising that today’s digital generation is embracing technology in the university environment as well. Digital technology has also widened access to learning beyond even traditional correspondence courses. Students are able to listen to lectures on their cellphone, tablet or computer whenever, wherever and as often as they want, submit assignments digitally (instead of mailing them) and even participate in a group discussions asynchronously via a wiki (a website allowing many people to collaborate in the creation of a document) or synchronously with the use of video conferencing (such as Skype), something that didn’t used to be feasible in correspondence courses. These types of digitally enhanced learning experiences have made a university education accessible to ever greater numbers of people but also resulted in a more engaging student experience.

http://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-teaching-and-technology-partnering-for-excellence

by Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg

Google is entering what has quickly become a crowded marketplace, with products from Facebook Inc., Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC Corp. Whereas Sony’s Morpheus headset is tethered to its PlayStation video-game console, Google is focused on mobile-based VR, whereby consumers snap their phones into a visor or headset. With the headset on, Daydream presents users with an array of apps, from YouTube to HBO Now. “Google’s Daydream will help advance mobile virtual reality,” said Oren Rosenbaum, a digital media agent at United Talent Agency who spearheads its VR effort. “Mobile virtual reality is what’s going to get the most people to strap things on their head.”

by Sarah D. Young, Consumer Affairs

Millennials may have gotten a traditional public school education, but they’re not holding their kids to the same standard. According to a new survey, the vast majority of Millennial moms and dads are supportive of alternative approaches to education. Rather than following the well-worn path, 77% of Millennial parents believe it’s a good idea to create a path to graduation that suits their child’s unique needs. Their view of K-12 public school education involves the inclusion of online courses and blended learning. Additionally, almost all Millennials (92%) believe online learning options should be offered tuition-free.

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/what-kind-of-k-12-education-do-millennials-want-for-their-kids-082616.html

by Seb Murray, Business Because

The world’s elite business schools are pouring resources into virtual and augmented reality, as they place bets on the next big innovation in online learning. Technavio, the consultancy, forecasts that augmented reality, which layers an interactive image directly on top of physical reality (think Pokémon GO), will be one of the most disruptive forces in e-learning over the next four years. Souped-up smartphones have improved access to the latest AR apps, which are cheaper than ever before, notes Jhansi Mary, lead analyst at Technavio.

http://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-distance-learning/4140/schools-bet-on-virtual-and-augmented-reality

by VINAY PIDATHALA, Information Management Online

Cyber criminals are generating millions of dollars in revenue by targeting organizations with dated cybersecurity infrastructures. The latest attack techniques are designed to take over legitimate user credentials and have evolved to evade traditional signature-based perimeter defenses, which enables attackers to compromise users and masquerade as legitimate insiders with full access to corporate networks. Skilled cyber criminals are increasingly deploying new strains of ransomware due to its effectiveness in avoiding detection and in generating profits. In fact, the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center released data revealing that there were 2,453 reported cases of ransomware attacks in 2015 and victims paid around $24.1 million to regain access to critical data.

http://www.information-management.com/news/security/ransomware-meets-its-match-with-machine-learning-10029621-1.html

by Emory Bryan, News on 6

Students at Tulsa Community College can now get free textbooks online for some classes. This can save students several hundred dollars a semester. Biology Professor Jennifer Kneafsey has 24 years in the classroom and knows a thing or two about her students. “I used the traditional publisher’s books for many, many years, but I could see what a burden it was for my students to come up with the 200 or so dollars,” she said. So, after watching that struggle, she jumped at a new option. Kneafsey said, “When the students access the textbook online, it’s completely free.” The textbooks are from an online publisher named OpenStax.

http://www.newson6.com/story/32844649/tcc-offering-online-free-textbooks-for-some-classes

by Svetlana Dotsenko and Thomas Hwang, Forbes

Educational technology is booming. Technology is helping to redefine how we learn, obtain skills, and get credentialed. That value proposition has captured public attention and attracted record amounts of venture capital funding. But the vision for edtech is, and should be, much broader. After all, the education market serves not only to instruct but also to invent. And educational technology can transform the “other half” of this equation by streamlining the research process. The need for research innovation is arguably strongest at universities.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2016/08/23/the-future-of-educational-technology-how-edtech-is-still-ignoring-its-biggest-market/#17d81cb3640b

By Joseph V. Kennedy, et al; Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

This paper argues that the federal government should spur reform by promoting alternatives to traditional college diplomas that allow individuals to more effectively demonstrate educational mastery to prospective employers. This would give students the freedom to pursue their own best options for learning, incentivize students to study harder and schools to teach better, and apply competitive pressure on colleges and universities to reduce the costs of education.

http://www2.itif.org/2016-disrupting-higher-education.pdf

By Charlie Chung, EdSurge

In a Meetup hosted by EdSurge on Aug. 17, more than 100 people gathered to hear speakers present how their organizations are embracing the future of digital learning. Held at NovoEd’s headquarters, five speakers gave their six-minute lightning talks and then led a smaller group discussion with attendees. Researcher Candace Thille of Stanford University, notable for developing the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie-Mellon University, now at Stanford, emphasized starting with the learner when we consider edtech research and products. Collaborating with her Stanford colleagues, Thille has been looking for ways to take additional learner factors into account, particularly social-psychological components.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-08-23-5-higher-ed-innovators-share-challenges-ideas-for-the-future-of-digital-learning

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

Minecraft just received another education boost. An ed tech startup that encourages students to build their own mods for the popular online virtual world game has received a second grant from the National Science Foundation that will enable it to continue development of its coding environment for novice programmers. ThoughtSTEM received its initial NSF funding in 2015 to test the use of its Minecraft extension, LearnToMod, for teaching rural middle school students how to program. During that phase, the company said it taught computer science (CS) concepts to “over 50,000 students,” who produced 1.5 million Minecraft mods. A mod is a customization to the block-oriented game that allows the player to add new characters, change the look of objects and modify the environment, among other activities.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/25/startup-receives-new-nsf-grant-to-expand-minecraft-student-reach.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

While the traditional orientation process at the University of Colorado Boulder was meant to bond new students to the institution from their first moments on campus, its structure often had just the opposite effect. Two early-summer “welcome days” packed with face-to-face presentations and panels blasting participants with a firehose of information were bound to leave students feeling numb. By the time they returned to campus in August, they’d have forgotten much of what they’d learned. So the university came up with a different approach. The “New Student Welcome Online Experience,” introduced in 2015, doles out content just in time, using a blend of videos, text, quizzes, checklists and rewards to engage and entice students to learn more continually.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/08/25/taking-student-orientation-online.aspx

By Lynn Haber, Channel Partners

Microsoft partners not only are interested in participating in the newly minted Microsoft Professional Degree program (MPD) announced in July and currently in pilot, they’re also excited about the business opportunity around online content. That’s according to a recent blog, in which Microsoft’s corporate vice president, worldwide partner group, Gavriella Schuster, reiterated that partners soon will be able to offer learning solutions built on the Open edX platform powered by Microsoft Azure. Just six weeks ago, Schuster gave us an inside look at the new (MPD) program pilot discussed as part of Microsoft’s partner enablement efforts. At that time, the first Data Scientist degree candidates were scheduled to complete curriculum in September. Microsoft rolled out MPD to address the skills gap in critical fields in the industry. The Data Scientist degree is the first of many degree programs in the works, according to the vendor.

http://www.channelpartnersonline.com/news/2016/08/online-learning-business-opportunity-ahead-for-mi.aspx