Techno-News Blog

By Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed Digital

The University System of Maryland’s campuses boast diverse student bodies in terms of race, income and college preparedness. Officials believe new data collection standards will improve retention and graduation rates.  “We [needed] to understand … what does it mean when we put interventions into place?” said M.J. Bishop, director of the system’s center for academic innovation, during a panel at last week’s Educause conference here. “How do we know whether or not we’re making a difference when we put these interventions into place?” What followed was a process of introspection and realignment that the system’s leaders believe has moved the campuses toward a level playing field: standardizing disparate definitions for student success data and identifying areas where students need more help than they’re getting, particularly in the classroom and before they arrive on campus for the first time.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/11/08/university-system-maryland-standardizes-data-collection-improve

By Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed Digital

Administrators knew faculty members felt frustrated and isolated by the online development process, though Bond said they all agreed that instructional designers were valuable. Bond and his team landed on a faculty cohort model in which six to eight instructors joined together and met every other week in a 12-week time frame. During that time period, each professor developed one online course with the help of the group. The instructional design team provided substantive assistance and design input during the process. Unlike at other institutions with faculty cohort models, where instructors gathered to create a single course, each instructor in the cohorts at Central Michigan was manager for their own online course. Another new element under this approach was the designation of one of the instructional design team members as a course production services coordinator, or CoursePro.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/11/08/trial-and-error-faculty-cohort-model-speeds-online-course

By Sean Gallagher, Ed Surge

Corporate learning and development, often referred to as L&D, is radically different than just a few years ago. Meanwhile, the education dialogue has shifted to a focus on employment-related themes such as competencies and skills. “Businesses today have to be more agile and have to be able to pivot—access to content needs to be very rapid,” says Lori Bradley, executive vice president for global talent management at PVH Corp, a publicly- traded fashion and apparel company with 35,000 employees. “Priorities and jobs are changing more quickly, so we need an agile learning environment that anticipates what learning needs will be, and where we can quickly access them.” The typical employee has one percent of their time available for learning, according to research by Bersin by Deloitte.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-11-06-as-corporate-world-moves-toward-curated-microlearning-higher-ed-must-adapt

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News

New research has unearthed a dramatic increase in the number of young children who have their own tablet device–42 percent compared to 1 percent in 2011. The research from Common Sense, which examines media use by kids ages 0-8 and is the third installment in an ongoing series that tracks media and technology use, also uncovered an increase in the amount of time children spend with mobile devices–48 minutes, up from just five minutes in 2011. The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Kids Age Zero to Eight is based on a large, nationally representative sample of respondents and replicates methods from 2011 and 2013 to gauge how media environments and behaviors have changed over the years.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2017/11/06/spike-childrens-media-use/

by David Raths, Campus Technology

Learning analytics tools have become increasingly valuable for college and university administrators looking to boost student success. But can data also inform decision-making on the part of students themselves? A project at Purdue University (IN) explores that possibility by taking advantage of the “quantified self” movement (made popular by health-tracking apps such as Fitbit) and putting the data into students’ hands. Pattern, one of several teaching and learning apps developed by Purdue Teaching and Learning Technologies over the past few years, allows students to self-track their academic and extracurricular pursuits and rate how productive they are. The app also lets them compare their behaviors to other students to see which activities may yield the best results. Pattern can suggest when to study, recommend ways students can be more efficient with their time, and suggest how long students should be spending on tasks.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/11/01/purdue-app-puts-learning-data-into-students-hands.aspx

by Merris Stansbury, eCampus News

Soft skills, ease with technologies are some of the most important skills undergrad students should be learning today for the future of tomorrow. “The jobs of the future will be those that focus on intellectual capitalism, not commodity capitalism,” said Futurist, Physicist and Bestselling Author Michio Kaku during the recent 2017 EDUCAUSE conference keynote, held in Philadelphia, Pa. This was the big reveal to the thousands of EDUCAUSE attendees ranging from college and university faculty to CIOs, and from some of the world’s leading tech companies to some of the country’s most prominent higher ed provosts and presidents—all anxiously awaiting what the crystal ball of the postsecondary future had to say through Kaku’s educated guess.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/campus-administration/michio-kaku-higher-ed-skills/

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive

Students and faculty have somewhat differing views when it comes to technology use in the classroom, according to an Educause Center for Analysis and Research survey with responses from 11,141 faculty members and 35,760 students across the nation, reports Campus Technology.  When it comes to learning management systems, the survey found most faculty are satisfied with it, but students become more frustrated with it as the tasks become more difficult and complicated. And while many students report their teachers have adequate technology skills, they say that few faculty use this technology for more sophisticated purposes. While at least 80% of students said they found student success systems moderately helpful, the survey found most faculty don’t use them. And, when survey authors reported to Campus Technology on how CIOs could support faculty members, they stressed explaining student demands would not sway faculty. Rather, explaining research on effectiveness and learning outcomes to faculty on technology use would be more effective.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/survey-highlights-student-faculty-divide-on-classroom-tech/510201/

by Education Dive

Higher education campuses are hotbeds for cybersecurity threats — college and university servers house countless pieces of data on current and past faculty, students and other stakeholders. But as institutions become more and more technologically entrenched — and customers demand that the college experience be more modern, while still guaranteeing safety — securing this data and ensuring that members of the institution’s community do not inappropriately handle ed tech becomes more of a daunting task for administrators, in particular CIOs.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-is-becoming-more-entrenched-in-tech-what-does-this-mean-for-cio/507825/

by Magnetic Magazine

To help optimize the usage of available bandwidth for streaming video, most streaming platforms use algorithms known as Adaptive Bitrate (ABR). Traditional ABR algorithms are either rate-based that vary the video quality based on connection speed, or buffer-based that attempt to constantly keep a certain percentage of the video pre-loaded as a buffer so that the stream is smooth. Although there are several AI streaming algorithms in development, two of the most notable are MIT’s Pensieve and Netflix’s Dynamic Optimizer. In fact as the usage of AI enables more efficient video streaming, cloud data distribution and other optimizations – the efficiency of the internet in general is likely to improve.

https://www.magneticmag.com/2017/11/deep-learning-could-be-the-future-of-online-streaming/

by Emily Price, Fortune

In recent years several universities and colleges around the world have started offering some of their courses for free. Over the past six years over 8,000 different courses have been made available for free to anyone who wants to take them. In a story on Quartz, Class Central founder Dhawal Shah notes that he’s been tracking them all since they rose to prominence.  Free courses range from humanities and social sciences classes to business, health & medicine, and computer science courses. Classes are taught by professors from places like Stanford, Johns Hopkins, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Colorado. If you’re interested in giving one a try, Quartz has a good rundown up of some of the best courses available as well as how to sign up for them. You can also view a more detailed list on Class Central’s website.

http://fortune.com/2017/11/06/free-online-college-courses/

by eMarketer Daily

US consumers are spending more time with their digital devices than ever before, and that holds true while they’re already watching something else. eMarketer estimates 177.7 million adults will regularly use a second-screen device while watching TV this year, an increase of 5.1% vs. 2016. As individuals spend more of each day digitally connected, simultaneous media use will rise. As always, consumers want to fit as much into their day as possible, and multitasking during TV is often how that’s accomplished. By 2019, 193.5 million US adults will access the internet during TV viewing at least once a month. Some 162.6 million people will use smartphones as a second-screen device while watching TV in 2017. This is much higher than the 110.5 million simultaneous users expected for desktops/laptops. The number of people using a desktop/laptop and TV set at the same time will be roughly flat during the forecast, due to declines in overall PC use.

https://www.emarketer.com/Article/Few-Viewers-Giving-TV-Set-Their-Undivided-Attention/1016717

By Tim Sandle, Digital Journal
Voices.com has released a new report which has found that e-learning projects make up 5.1 percent of the global voice over market. The worth of the voice over industry has been costed for the first time, at $4.4-billion. E-learning is based on cognitive science principles, where effective multimedia learning is used to develop electronic educational technology. When developed effectively, research suggests that the selection of appropriate concurrent multimedia modalities enhances learning and can lead to improved educational attainment.

http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/voice-over-market-is-key-for-e-learning-developments/article/506863

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has already received 238 applications from the nation’s higher ed institutions as of last month to host the company’s new $5 billion corporate headquarters, which Bezos proposes will create 50,000 new jobs with average salaries of $100,000 for the areas graduates, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education. The move is similar to when Amazon counterpart Microsoft invested more than $1 billion in the University of Washington, creating a pipeline from the institution and others in the city into the company. Bezos’ plans are similar as eligibility for the headquarters requires the institution to be in a city with a population of at least 1 million and a strong pool of talented students that are likely to go into a technical field.  Experts predict that the city will be one which already has a superior reserve of computer science graduates and programs. Though it’s likely the move will enhance local economies, many still caution that the influx of Amazon’s business could have the negative consequence of raising the city’s housing prices, making competition even more difficult for the city’s highly skilled laborers, and changing the identity of the city.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-will-be-critical-to-amazons-success-and-institutions-are-joini/510110/

By Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
To stay ahead, higher education leaders must constantly be aware of the latest trends and policies taking over the industry — and social media is often the perfect place to find this. Everything from general tips on improving an institution’s online presence to getting inspiration for innovation on the campus. Here we present ten twitter accounts all higher education leaders ought to follow, so that fresh ideas and quick industry news will rise to the top of their feeds.  [ed note:  Special Thanks for listing my @rayschroeder]

https://www.educationdive.com/news/10-twitter-accounts-every-higher-ed-leader-should-follow/509800/

By Pat Donachie, Education Dive

Sudents want to attend a tech-savvy college or university, but 58% of students found their institution was less likely than other businesses to personalize the digital experience, according to a new survey of a 1000 students from Ellucian. But, there was mixed response on how an application could impact the student experience; 68% of students attending schools with such an app said the amount of information was initially “overwhelming,” but 85% of students at schools without a centralized app said they would have liked one throughout the transition to college life, reports Campus Technology.  Students responded they were most interested in personalization efforts when it came to career prep, followed closely by financial assistance and tuition insight. Eight out of ten students endorsed institutional social media use, with Facebook being the preferred app of 33% of respondents.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/report-89-of-students-prefer-tech-savvy-schools/509829/

by  Natalie Sears, DM Online

The English department has created an online Medieval class to help a student complete his degree while serving in the military overseas. The class — Studies in Medieval Literature: “Game of Thrones” and Its Medieval Worlds — is being adapted to an online format by English professor Mary Hayes, who has taught the class twice before in a traditional classroom setting, and has taught multiple other classes online. Game of Thrones is the popular HBO series based on the book franchise by George Martin. Classic Medieval literature such as “Beowulf” and Machiavelli’s “The Prince” have been cited by Martin as inspiration for his series, making examining the show from a literary standpoint even more fascinating. Ole Miss is not the only place that Game of Thrones has inspired coursework. UC Berkeley offers a linguistics course, and both Northern Illinois University and The University of Tulsa offer history courses.

English department offers “Game of Thrones” online class

by Mashable

Did you know you can make money by teaching online courses? There’s literally a Coursera class on just about every topic these days, whether it’s Cryptography taught by a Stanford professor or Academic Listening and Note-Taking at UC Irvine. It’s great that so many people want to learn in an accessible way, especially if you’re an instructor, but how can you ensure that the class you’re offering is one people will want to take? Consider taking a course in How To Create An Awesome Online Course (so meta). You probably have a specialized skill you don’t even realize is valuable, like hand-sewing wigs or telling dad jokes. But creating an online course can be tricky if you’ve never done it, so this course will break it down in an easy to digest way across 93 lectures and 8 hours of content (which you can access whenever you want for the rest of your life).

http://mashable.com/2017/11/03/elearning-create-an-online-course/#ELAHtUSkUiqN

By Henry Kronk, e-Learning Inside
Instructors may be fond of reminding their students that the right attitude leads to success. But their attitudes towards eLearning has, by and large, remained downright icy. This week, a study published by Inside Higher Ed and Gallup found that only 33% of professors believe that for-credit online courses could match an in-person learning environment. For every professor willing to bring their course online, there’s another who remains ambivalent and another who opposes doing so. The good news, however, is that the tides are changing. Just one year ago, the number of teachers who disagreed that an online setting could ever match in-person tutelage sat at 55%. This year that number dropped to 35%, while the numbers of those who both agreed and remained neutral rose.

https://news.elearninginside.com/online-courses-still-unpopular-among-professors/

By Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed
One in three instructors who responded to Inside Higher Ed’s 2017 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology said they have taken online courses for credit — but 67 percent of the respondents said they had not. Those numbers, which haven’t fluctuated much in the last few years of the annual survey, conducted in conjunction with Gallup, point to an ongoing debate in online education circles about the value of instructors taking online courses. “Ideally it would be great for an online instructor to have taken an online class,” said Susan Yochum, provost at Seton Hill University, in Pennsylvania. But, she added, “the biggest issue is our faculty have a lot of responsibilities, a heavy teaching load. It’s really a time issue.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/11/01/online-instructors-differ-whether-they-need-online-course

by C. Edward Kelso, Bitcoin.com

Professor Dan Boneh of Stanford University Computer Security Lab discussed the attraction to his cryptography course, and how it is due to “the huge valuations in these currencies” such as bitcoin. Second only to machine learning, Computer Security and Cryptography is a wildly popular course. It’s also true bitcoin is “a wonderful way to teach cryptography” he told Mr. Levy of CNBC. The advent of cryptocurrencies means “there are a whole bunch of new applications for cryptography that didn’t exist before,” Professor Boneh added. Getting to cryptography through bitcoin has meant a renewed interest in the mathematical language. Professor Boneh “said that more than 1 million people have signed up for an online cryptography class he teaches through the website Coursera,” CNBC reports.

https://news.bitcoin.com/over-one-million-people-enroll-in-online-crypto-class/

By Alison DeNisco Rayome, Tech Republic

Data scientists are in high demand and short supply, but they may not need a degree in computer science to get a job, according to a new report from Kaggle. The majority of employed data scientists gained their skills through self-learning or a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) rather than a traditional computer science degree, according to a survey from data scientist community Kaggle, which was acquired by Google Cloud earlier this year. Some 32% of full-time data scientists started learning machine learning or data science through a MOOC, while 27% said that they began picking up the needed skills on their own, the 2017 State of Data Science & Machine Learning Survey report found. Some 30% got their start in data science at a university, according to the survey of more than 16,000 people in the field.

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/report-59-of-employed-data-scientists-learned-skills-on-their-own-or-via-a-mooc/