Techno-News Blog

By Sharon O’Malley, Inside Higher Ed

Four authors of books about online course development offer guidelines for engaging learners in distance education courses. Inside Digital Learning asked for their expert advice on how instructors and their institutions can excel in virtual course instruction. The authors agreed that the online classroom is different enough from the traditional one that faculty members and adjuncts need to create courses for digital delivery that are substantially different from those they teach on campus. And they said teaching online requires an even keener focus on student engagement than the face-to-face model does.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/07/12/7-guidelines-effective-teaching-online

by Jennifer Goodman, Inside Higher Ed

A math professor takes his ideas for open educational materials to campuses across Georgia to try to help save students millions of dollars. It makes sense that the College of Coastal Georgia math professor and OER advocate German Vargas relies on open educational materials to help reduce textbook and material costs for courses like calculus and trigonometry. But he’s equally passionate about the importance of open materials for courses in economics, philosophy and sociology – and not just for his college’s students. Vargas, who has been assistant vice president for academic student engagement at Coastal Georgia since October 2015, is meeting with instructors and department heads at colleges across Georgia to share his message that OER makes sense in every discipline.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/07/12/german-vargas-crisscrosses-georgia-advocating-oer

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

In most cases, people agree that a traditional textbook approach is insufficient for subjects like coding. While the idiosyncrasies of the language can be introduced that way, it’s hard to assimilate the information until it is in used entirely. But sticking children in front of a blank screen and having them write line after line, though functional, isn’t very inspiring or even interesting. If you want to capture the interest of young students while giving them access to a valuable skill set, then turning to coding tools and games may be the ideal method. To help you get started, we have compiled a list of 31 apps, tools and games that teach kids to code.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/tech-edvocates-list-31-apps-tools-games-teach-kids-code/

By Tara Beams, THE Journal

When you make the switch to a blended learning model, you find yourself making instructional choices for students that empower them to utilize technology in a very independent and deliberate manner. Defined by the nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank Clayton Christensen Institute as any formal education program in which students learn at least in part through online learning with “student control over time, place, path and/or pace,” blended learning needs to be a purposeful and thoughtful endeavor.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/07/12/how-to-build-a-successful-blended-learning-model.aspx

by Raghu Krishnan, Business Standard

Infosys, India’s second largest software exporter this year, has set a bet for graduates who are given campus offers. A graduate is asked to pick a paid course on front-end development (of website or an app) on Udacity, the online technology education provider. The person must get a nano degree or pass the course before being put on training at its Mysuru campus. Once he or she gets placed after training, Infosys pays back the student the course fee on Udacity. With this, Infosys is ensuring that it gets trained engineers in thousands who are ready to be put on digital projects — a segment that is disrupting the company and the Indian IT services industry. For a perspective, business from newer digital technologies is growing at 25 per cent, while legacy business is shrinking at 2.5 per cent, according to Everest Group, a global technology consultancy.

http://www.business-standard.com/article/companies/indian-techies-are-taking-these-online-courses-to-get-reskilled-amid-layoffs-117071201440_1.html

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Before 2015, faculty at the University of Arizona who wanted to teach online didn’t have much in the way of formal support for building their online courses. There were no established processes or requirements. For some faculty, that was the end of the onboarding experience. “That’s all you got,” said Angela Gunder, associate director of the Office of Digital Learning (ODL). “You [were] now an online instructor.” Instructional designers assumed that meant a more structured approach with “benchmarks” and “steps,” but Melody Buckner, director of ODL, had a different idea: focusing on faculty. Buckner decreed, “[Instructional designers are] going to listen to faculty about how they teach, how their students prefer to learn and the unique challenges they face in the classroom,” as Gunder recalled. “The faculty are going to drive the process, with the instructional designer there to support and facilitate production.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/07/12/how-to-help-faculty-build-online-courses.aspx

by Jeff Mao, THE Journal

Despite the limitations of the technology back then, I learned a lot from my time at Brewster Academy. One of the things that we did well, that I still recommend to schools today, is to be targeted and intentional about how you use the technology. At Brewster, we measured success one skill at a time and one student at a time. A decade later, I joined the team at the Maine Department of Education that led the Maine Learning Technology Initiative (MLTI) — a much larger initiative. Whereas Brewster’s total student body was fewer than 350 students, MLTI served about 35,000 students in more than 230 schools.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/07/12/evaluating-the-success-of-your-ed-tech-program.aspx

by Pat Donachie, Education Dive

Carnegie Mellon University Professor Bob Monroe discussed in a recent interview with Education Dive how the largely-held perception that Massive Open Online Classes would replace the traditional college lecture was largely overblown. The result, of the introduction of MOOCs into the higher ed landscape has been subtler, with it becoming increasingly clear that online learning opportunities offer an “evolution” of classroom instruction which allows faculty members to create a unique classroom experience via an online platform. Monroe said many higher ed institutions are also incorporating more focused learning opportunities into shortened programs, and online instruction is opening the door for class discussions to go deeper as they unfold over the course of days, rather than be confined to a classroom schedule.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/carnegie-mellon-professor-better-tech-enables-higher-quality-online-course/446984/

By Joshua Bolkan, THE Journal

Two-thirds of parents report that effective classroom technology use provides an opportunity for their children to develop college and career skills, according to a new report from Project Tomorrow and Blackboard. Meanwhile, motivating teachers to change their instructional practices is the biggest challenge to adopting digital learning or deploying new technology, according to school and district technology leaders. The report, “Trends in Digital Learning: Building Teachers’ Capacity and Competency to Create New Learning Experiences for students,” is based on a survey of more than 38,000 teachers, 29,000 parents and 4,500 administrators.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/06/29/2-in-3-parents-say-classroom-tech-is-key-to-student-futures.aspx

by Coursera Blog

Robert Shiller, who won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, is the instructor of Financial Markets, one of the most popular courses on Coursera. Broadly, I think that the internet age is a fundamental revolution in our society, and I want to see it work. I think that the kind of education that used to be reserved for a few people at elite colleges should be shared around the world, and I’m happy to be a part of that. In terms of my course specifically, after I received the Nobel Prize, I had the opportunity to think about my role as an academic and what I could do to support others in the field. I realized that the Coursera platform could help me reach thousands of learners and give back to the community by sharing my knowledge. So, in February 2014, I partnered with administrators at Yale to launch the Coursera Financial Markets course.

https://blog.coursera.org/conversation-yale-university-nobel-prize-winner-robert-shiller/

by Nick Morrison, Forbes

Coventry University is to offer 50 wholly online degrees over the next five years, in one of the most significant steps yet in the development of a new model of higher education. If successful, it could herald the long-awaited disruption of the degree market away from the traditional campus approach and towards an entirely online experience. ‘Higher education is not limited by the physical or geographical boundaries that it once was, and we believe online learning has a huge role to play in the future of undergraduate and postgraduate scholarship,’ said Ian Dunn, Coventry’s deputy vice-chancellor for student experience.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2017/06/28/this-is-what-a-university-of-the-future-looks-like/#62dba2dc4296

by Gale Holland, LA Times

The survey results come during a time of intense competition over the distribution of proceeds from a quarter-cent county sales tax for homeless services. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors this month designated homeless college students among the beneficiaries of the tax fund, which is expected to produce $3.55 billion over 10 years. The California State University system last year released a preliminary study saying that 1 in every 10 of its 460,000 students was homeless, and 1 in 5 had spotty access to food.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-homeless-community-college-20170628-story.htm

by Jeb Bush and Joe Lonsdale, Forbes

Today, there are more than 5.5 million unfilled jobs in the U.S. labor market, up from 3.2 million just five years ago. It’s not due to a lack of workers aspiring for better jobs, but a lack of workers qualified for the very positions employers need filled. America is facing a skills gap that only continues to grow as innovation outpaces our education system. A recent study by McKinsey and Company found that nearly half of today’s jobs could be automated using current technology, a challenge on par with the industrial revolutions of the 19th century. When it comes to improving higher education today, one major obstacle is government bureaucracy. Our government has long set up insidious funding structures that saddle Americans with astronomical student loans, poor educational outcomes and little applicable, real life experience.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/06/29/the-future-of-our-economy-rests-on-innovating-our-higher-education-system/#3731ff9b3f4b

by Karsten Strauss, Forbes

The top-paying bachelor’s degree, by the numbers, is electrical engineering. Though the starting annual salary average is $62,428, a job seeker coming out of school may see a variety of offers when scoping out the jobs market as the salary range for such a degree is between $25,000 and $130,000. In second place, software design earns new graduates an average $61,466. The salary ranges one might see on the jobs market span from $25,000 to $134,000, depending on a variety of factors like experience and responsibilities involved. In third place is chemical engineering – which claimed first place last year – which CERI discovered offers an average starting salary of $61,125. The salary range in the chemical engineering arena spans from $31,000 to $125,000.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/karstenstrauss/2017/06/28/college-degrees-with-the-highest-and-lowest-starting-salaries-in-2017/#430c71ad2343

by Dom Galeon, Futurism

In a video shared by Bill Gates, Broad Institute director Eric Lander warns that the decline of support for private and public research sectors could lead to the U.S. falling behind as a global leader in research and innovation. They say there’s no alternative to hard work, but most researchers probably wouldn’t turn down the opportunity for more collaborative research that’s well-funded. That’s the philosophy behind what the Broad Institute at MIT calls the Miracle Machine. The Miracle Machine produces amazing advances in science and technology as a result of federal support an funding for the public and private sectors of the research community. However, as a video narrated by Broad Institute director Eric Lander explains, one of America’s greatest assets is “falling into disrepair.”

https://futurism.com/mit-professor-gives-a-dire-warning-to-the-u-s-about-funding-science/

by Peter Daisyme, Entrepreneur

Despite a large number of openings in the field, candidates are dealing with stiff competition for every position, often finding that they’re interviewing alongside highly skilled professionals from across the globe. Engineers who want to gain an edge over that competition need to find ways to stand out, including packing their resumes with impressive skills and certifications. The key here is lifelong learning: Lukas Biewald, chairman and founder of Crowdflower, told me, for instance: “When I’m hiring engineers, I always look for someone who shows a dedication to lifelong learning. Whether it’s side projects, contributing to open-source communities or taking online classes, I love to see candidates that have a commitment to making themselves better.”

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/296342

by Shalina Chatlani, University Dive

University email addresses with .edu credentials are particularly vulnerable to cyber theft, as students can receive significant discounts in online purchases, according to the Digital Citizen Alliance’s latest report, “Cyber Criminals, College Credentials, and the Dark Web.” Authors looked at the availability email credentials from the 300 largest U.S. colleges and universities, and found that 13,930,176 email addresses and passwords belonging to faculty, staff, students were available for purchase on sites in the dark web, which is an area of the Internet where illicit goods and services can be sold and bought. Acquisition of these credentials can have serious consequences for members of the institution and the institution itself, as they are more often than not being used for illegal activity. The report found that the University of Michigan had the most credentials offered on the dark web, followed by other large state schools — Penn State, University of Minnesota, Michigan State, Ohio State, and University of Illinois.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/university-email-addresses-especially-prone-to-cyber-theft-report-finds/446011/

by Pat Donachie, Education Dive

California and Pennsylvania are making efforts to boost enrollment in their community college systems, utilizing different approaches to target underrepresented student populations, according to Inside Higher Ed. A California proposal seeks to close gaps caused by declining enrollment over the last 10 years by creating an online-only college which targets unemployed or underemployed adults who may want additional schooling. Pennsylvania is looking to use an “interactive television” model to reach students in rural areas. The Rural Regional College of Northern Pennsylvania will target students living in nine counties in the northwestern part of the state where there are no public community colleges. The state’s Department of Education approved the new school last month, where students will interact on television with an instructor teaching students live.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/california-pennsylvania-disrupt-the-two-year-business-model/445989/

by President Lori E. Varlotta, University Business

This fall, Hiram College becomes one of just a few universities in the country—and the only four-year college in Ohio—to launch a campuswide mobile technology program. Thanks to a $2.1 million gift, Hiram will issue all full-time undergraduates and all faculty and staff an iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and keyboard bundle in an effort to promote “mindful technology.” As we see it, mindful technology is more than simply knowing how to use technology. It is also about delving into the when, where and to-what-extent questions that are sometimes out of sight or overlooked in the technology-saturated world we now inhabit.

https://www.universitybusiness.com/article/tech-and-trek-at-Hiram-College

BY MERIS STANSBURY, Campus Technology

Today’s colleges and universities know that online learning is a must for satisfying the learning demands of a rapidly changing student body. Now, recent market data exposes just how big the business of online learning really is, as well as how much it’s expected to grow in the near future, and which components of online learning are expected to bring in the most revenue. Recent findings detailed in “Digital Learning Compass: Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017,” find that thirty percent of all students in higher education are now taking at least one online course. Those online learners are split almost evenly between students who are exclusively online (14 percent) and those who take some courses in person (16 percent).

https://www.ecampusnews.com/featured/featured-on-ecampus-news/market-future-online-learning/