Techno-News Blog

by Erin Schilling, Red and Black

Nationally in 2015, close to 28 percent of all enrolled students were taking at least one online course, a number that has been rising by a few percentage points each year. At the University of Georgia, there has been a far more drastic growth in online programs in recent years. Since summer 2013, total online summer enrollment is up 265 percent, with undergraduate enrollment up 351 percent, said Nancy Byron, marketing manager at the Office for Online Learning. Byron attributes the rise in enrollment to an emphasis on the idea online courses do not differ from in-person classes. Academic advisers treat the courses the same as they would face-to-face classes, she said. Advisers will sometimes recommend online classes when considering a student’s schedule and intended major.

http://www.redandblack.com/uganews/uga-online-courses-see-dramatic-rise-in-popularity/article_f439e9e8-b769-11e6-80c3-cb389df18358.html

by Adam Gordon, Forbes

There are three seemingly rational behaviors that companies follow, that turn out to be flawed, they miss or undervalue connections. Connecting people. Connecting products. Or connecting decisions. Professor Bharat Anand teaches digital strategy at Harvard Business School, yet when he came to co-developing the HBS digital education business (HBX) he fell headlong into the very trap he tells leaders to avoid. That is to say, the content trap. In The Content Trap (Random House, 2016) Anand shows how the primacy of connections in the digital era—across users, across product and services complements, and across the firm and its specific context—puts three previous holy cows of business strategy to the sword. In other words, these flaws are all of a kind: they miss or undervalue connections. Connecting people. Connecting products. Or connecting decisions.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamgordon/2016/12/04/harvard-hbx-edtech-digital-strategy/#2c715eff1b4c

By Carolyn Said, SF Chronicle

Sebastian Thrun wears many hats. He’s an expert in robotics and artificial intelligence, a scientist, educator, inventor and entrepreneur. He’s best known for founding Google X, a lab for world-changing, “moonshot” projects, and helping to pioneer self-driving cars at Google and Stanford, where he is a research professor. Now he’s focusing on workforce training through his 5-year-old Mountain View startup Udacity, which offers online courses to quickly prepare students for tech jobs. Udacity’s 12 “nanodegree” programs, which include certificates in self-driving engineering and artificial intelligence, cost a few hundred dollars, take a few months and are tailored to needs outlined by employers.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Google-X-founder-now-at-Udacity-talks-10687730.php

By Alison DeNisco, TechRepublic

Nonprofit education platform edX recently announced a credential program to teach employees skills in AI, user interface design, and project management. Here’s what your company needs to know. As 40% of employers globally report experiencing difficulty filling jobs, more than half of businesses say they now train existing employees on skills needed to fill open positions, especially in tech, according to a recent ManPowerGroup survey. EdX, a nonprofit online learning platform founded by Harvard and MIT, is looking to bridge the skills gap with MicroMasters, a new category of master’s-level online education meant to teach employees in-demand skills while still working full-time. A MicroMasters credential involves taking a series of courses from an accredited university that make up of 30% of a master’s degree. It’s aimed at full-time workers who can take the classes online. Each program takes about six to eight months to complete, and costs around $1,000.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/can-micromasters-credentials-help-fill-the-tech-skills-gap/

by Knowledge at Wharton

Computer scientist Donald Knuth summed it up well: “‘AI has by now succeeded in doing essentially everything that requires ‘thinking’ but has failed to do most of what people and animals do ‘without thinking.’” Experts classify today’s AI as Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) because it is programmed to solve particular types of problems but doesn’t have the breadth of human intelligence. AI may progress from ANI to AGI, or Artificial General Intelligence. “It’s not [just] picking out your music, helping you search on Google, or helping an airline set ticket prices. It’s … smart, generally.” According to many experts, said Tim Urban, author of the popular blog Wait But Why, which counts Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg among its fans, if AGI is developed, then the third category of AI won’t be far behind: artificial superintelligence, or ASI. This is software that theoretically would be smarter than humans.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/will-superhuman-artificial-intelligence-turn-us-paper-clips/

by Vickie Cook, Evolllution

Most of us have attended many conference sessions and webinars on best practices within our field of online learning and online leadership. But, how might we leverage what we learn in these informative sessions? How can we best implement what we have learned so that these practices have a lasting effect on our institutions? This article will discuss the concepts of Do It, Be It, Know It, Test It, and Revise It. Leveraging the process of organizational learning to build best practices in online leadership is an important consideration for today’s leaders charged with building and sustaining online initiatives. Competition within the field of online learning is greater today than ever before. Finding, strategically implementing, and evaluating creative solutions is critical to on-going success of any online initiative. In order to leverage best practices and lessons learned in an organization, it is necessary to follow an organizational learning roadmap.

http://evolllution.com/revenue-streams/distance_online_learning/leveraging-organizational-learning-and-best-practices-in-online-leadership-do-it-be-it-know-it-test-it-revise-it/

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

Teaching is changing. What was once a solo pursuit has increasingly become a team sport. I’m not talking about co-faculty taught courses. Rather, the team that I’m thinking about includes a mix of faculty and non-faculty educators. My experience with building a team of faculty and non-faculty educators to design and run courses comes out of online learning. Recently, we have started to take the course team model developed (in my experience) for online learning to residential (and blended) courses. This team model may not be appropriate for every course – but for larger enrollment introductory courses this team model works really well. There are 3 immediate and obvious reasons that a librarian should be included on every faculty / non-faculty educator course development and teaching team.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/librarian-teaching-team

by Military Technologies

Georgia Tech and McGraw-Hill Education are teaming up on an innovative approach to make elite education more broadly accessible. They’re launching an online, undergraduate course in computer science that will debut this spring for current Tech students and be made available in MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) format to help future Georgia Tech applicants earn college credit before they ever set foot on campus. The online “Introduction to Computing Using Python” course will feature the same rigorous content as Georgia Tech’s on-campus course (a requirement for all undergraduates) and will be created with McGraw-Hill Education’s adaptive “SmartBook” technology. Like many other MOOCs, it will be freely available through edX, the nonprofit online learning destination founded by Harvard and MIT.

http://military-technologies.net/2016/11/29/taking-undergraduate-computer-science-online/

By Richard Chang, THE Journal

More girls are taking the annual AP computer science exam, but boys still outnumber girls when it comes to taking the test. In fact, fewer than 10 girls took the May 2016 exam in eight states, and not a single female took the test in Mississippi and Montana. These are some of the findings of a state-by-state analysis of newly released data from the College Board by Barbara Ericson, the director of computing outreach and senior research scientist at the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/11/29/eight-states-have-fewer-than-10-girls-take-ap-computer-science-exam.aspx

By Leila Meyer, THE Journal

The generic e-learning course market is projected to grow by 8 percent per year over the next four years, driven primarily by growth in general purpose learning applications, cost-effectiveness of generic e-learning courses and increased adoption of mobile learning, according to a new report from Technavio, a global technology research and advisory company. The company defines generic e-learning courses as standard courses on a subject offered by service providers, educational institutions and experts, and prepared according to the standard curriculum. The report, “Generic E-learning Course Market in the U.S. 2016–2020,” examines the current state of the generic e-learning course market in the United States and forecasts trends over the coming years.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/11/28/report-flipped-and-mobile-helping-to-drive-growing-momentum-in-elearning-content-and-courses.aspx

By Amanda Cohen, ULoop

There is a common belief among college students that dressing nicely will help them focus better in class, and ultimately receive a better grade in the course. However, I have never thought about this “Look good, feel good, do better” debate applying to online courses until now. Usually, students will take online courses over summer vacation in order to get ahead in credits (at least most of my friends did). Whenever we would discuss online courses, most of my friends would say that they complete most of the work in their pajamas/comfortable gear lying in bed. So, the question at hand is whether or not students would be more successful in their online courses if they dressed for the occasion? Honestly, it truly depends on the person. However, I do find that I am most successful in accomplishing what I need to get done when my outward appearance is on the cute-casual spectrum rather than the pajama spectrum.

http://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/220302/Look-Good-Feel-Good-Do-Better-in-Online-Courses

by Kelly Evans, Indiana Daily Student

In the fall of 2012, IU announced the implementation of a new learning curriculum with the hopes of extending education to more groups of students and truly making the IU culture and what it means to be a Hoosier accessible to young minds everywhere. Today students know this program as IU Online — or informally known as the online alternative to many in-person courses. Just four years after its development, more than 25 percent of IU students are enrolled in online classes through the program at IU, according to IU Online.

http://www.idsnews.com/article/2016/11/online-class-enrollment-reaches-new-heights

by GAURAV SANGWANI, Business Insider

Coursera is basically an education-focused technology company that offers courses and learning experiences from the world’s top universities and education institutions including Stanford University, University of Pennsylvania, Duke University, University of Virginia, and ISB. It has more than 22 million registered learners worldwide who can access over 1,600 courses and 160 Specializations in dozens of topics including business, technology, social sciences, health, and art. This education-focused technology company now has a recommendations engine that will tell you about courses and specializations that teach the skills you need; kind of like a career counselor.

http://www.businessinsider.in/Beginning-of-a-revolution-in-Education-through-Coursera/articleshow/55436075.cms

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

Inside Higher Ed recaps Educause’s annual conference held last month, in which one session asked participants to visualize the college library of the future. A recent MIT report suggests that libraries will transition from repositories of historical and research information, to open source hubs with information on best practices and real-time deployments to address intractable problems. The model follows a similar effort from the Georgia Institute of Technology, which will share book storage space with Emory University to make its library facility more conducive to studying and innovation.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/what-will-become-of-libraries/431163/

by Matt Zalaznick, University Business

The University of Maryland’s open source textbook initiative, known as “MOST,” has guided faculty through more than 50 OER adoptions. The program helps instructors assemble resources to significantly keep down the cost of course materials. The University of Maryland’s open source textbook initiative, known as “MOST,” has guided faculty through more than 50 OER adoptions. The program helps instructors assemble resources to significantly keep down the cost of course materials. Open educational resources have grown over the last few years from one-off oddities in single courses to the basis of entire degree programs. Cutting out textbook costs for students tops the list of reasons administrators encourage faculty to develop and adopt these free—or very inexpensive—resources, also known as OER.

https://www.universitybusiness.com/article/oer-revolution-higher-ed

by Kirk Carapezza, WGBH

Top colleges and universities around the world are partnering with edX – MIT and Harvard’s online learning platform – to offer MicroMasters. There’s User Interface Design from the University of Michigan, Entrepreneurship from the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, and Artificial Intelligence from Columbia University. Industry leaders – including General Electric, Walmart, IBM, and Volvo – who say they can’t find enough qualified candidates, are looking for these very specialized skills. To some degree, they’ve all recognized MicroMasters, saying they will consider applicants who master the work online. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is also embracing the idea. “We need kind a revolution in higher education to make it more accessible, more affordable, and we need to have far higher success rates,” said Chris Gabrieli, chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education.

http://blogs.wgbh.org/on-campus/2016/11/28/accelerated-more-affordable-path-masters-degree/

by NICHOLE DOBO, Hechinger Report

The text message is a powerful tool in an unconventional high school program in Idaho. The technology allows mentors working with Idaho PTECH to reach high school students in far-flung places in this sparsely populated state. The high-tech, one-on-one mentoring is part of a pilot program that aims to help students discover and prepare for a career that they can embark on right out of high school, or with minimal post-secondary training. “They don’t know what they want a lot of times,” said Alan Millar, executive director of Idaho PTECH, so the mentoring provides “a caring adult to talk about goals, reaffirm them, and make concrete steps how to get there.”

http://hechingerreport.org/how-text-messages-help-mentors-connect-with-students-in-idaho/

Anthony Picciano, Evolllution

American higher education is moving to a model where almost every course offered will have an online component. This is desirable during a time when enrollments will rise and perhaps get a boost if calls for debt-free public college education gain momentum. Because of state funding constraints, there will likely be fewer full-time, tenure-track faculty as a percentage of the total faculty as contract, untenured adjunct faculty, and tutors will take on more of the teaching load. Instructional approaches such as learning analytics, adaptive learning, competency-based instruction, interactive media, and mobile technology will mature in the 2020s. In the 2030s and beyond, it is likely that major new technology breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, massive cloud computing, and brain machine interfaces will emerge that will change many aspects of human endeavor including education.

http://evolllution.com/programming/teaching-and-learning/the-future-of-online-education-will-our-courses-foreshadow-our-ends/

By Stepan Mekhitarian, EdSurge

There are two common practices used during professional development sessions that are limited in their applicability and effectiveness: First, teachers learn about multiple sites or tools they can use in their classrooms and are given time to experiment with them. Second, teachers discuss instructional practice for application in a traditional classroom, but are then expected to apply it in a blended setting. Neither of these practices melds effective pedagogical practice with educational technology to train teachers on how to offer individualized differentiation and constructivist learning opportunities for students. Another approach, however, can dramatically impact the effectiveness of blended learning professional development. Follow the steps below to apply a blended approach to professional development while focusing on effective instructional practice: Start with a pedagogical concept such as questioning or grouping that applies to all teachers.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2016-11-19-understanding-blended-learning-through-innovative-professional-development

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

A new survey from Gallup suggests that a predominant number of college and university faculty members, about 55%, are not confident in the outcomes of distance education when measured against traditional learning models. Of a respondent pool of more than 1,600 professors from all private, public and for-profit institutions, 40% said they have taught at least one online class, and 32% believed that learning was possible through digital and traditional classroom settings at any institution. More than 60% of professors with no online teaching experience believe that positive outcomes are possible in either academic setting.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/professors-in-doubt-over-value-of-distance-education/431074/

BY LAURA DEVANEY, eCampus News

Mixed reality combines virtual and augmented realities for enhanced learning experiences–and institutions are already implementing it. A new collaboration between Pearson and Microsoft is using a self-contained holographic computer to develop “mixed reality” learning experiences for students. The collaboration will explore how mixed reality can help solve real challenges in areas of learning, ranging from online tutoring and coaching, nursing education, and engineering to construction and surveyor training. Microsoft says its HoloLens is the world’s first self-contained holographic computer. Pearson is developing and piloting mixed reality content at colleges, universities and secondary schools in the United States and around the world.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/disruptions-and-innovations/institutions-mixed-reality/