Techno-News Blog

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News

Higher-ed leaders are increasingly focused on institutional analytics, despite challenges associated with implementing enterprise-wide programs, according to a new Ellucian survey of 200 college presidents, provosts, CFOs, CTOs, and CIOs. Fifty-eight percent of surveyed leaders say institutional analytics that improve operational efficiency are of greater priority than learning analytics that will improve student outcomes, according to What Will It Take to Build an Analytics-Driven Campus? Analytics priorities seem to differ by role, with presidents, CFOs, and CIOs focusing on improved learning outcomes; provosts are focused on improved retention and completion; and CTOs are concerned with improved operational efficiency.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/ed-tech-leadership/hed-analytics-program/

BY KELSEA KIERSTEAD, eCampus News
Countless organizations are rethinking how students learn and earn skills in postsecondary education.  Employers are in desperate need of skilled workers to address current employee shortages and prepare for projected disruption in the workplace. For example, artificial intelligence will create 2.3 million jobs while eliminating 1.8 million by 2020, according to a 2017 Gartner report. To fill jobs now while preparing for the future, countless organizations are rethinking how students learn and earn skills in postsecondary education. Such a change requires new mindsets for institutions and businesses.

Unbundling the 4-year degree: How to design education for the future

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Digital learning is becoming almost commonplace in classrooms across America; however, you will still come across opposition. While studies suggest digital learning is changing education for the better, it does not mean that digital learning is without problems. Ask any teacher who has ever attempted to use technology or digital resources in his or her classroom, and you will be told about a time when technology let them down. And, yet, even with the digital learning challenges teachers face, most are willing to deal with them to make their classroom a digital learning environment. Today, let’s take some time to look at some of the more common digital learning challenges and discuss ways to overcome them.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/how-to-overcome-10-digital-learning-challenges/

By Cait Etherington

It is a widely known fact that in tech, the vast majority of employees in tech and leadership roles are still White and male. An April 2018 article posted on Recode reported that at Microsoft, Intel, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Google, Black employees across genders represent less than 5% of the workforce and Latinx employees represent less than 10% of the workforce. In leadership and tech roles, the numbers are even more dismal. At Google, for example, Black and Latinx employees represent only 2% of the leadership team and only 1 and 3% of tech roles respectively. But does racial diversity in edtech reflect the numbers in the tech sector at large?

Racial Diversity in EdTech: Little Data Available and A Lot of Work Ahead

by Foster Kamer, Futurism

As if the point needs belaboring, but sure: The future of technology, no matter how far down the line you trace it, will inevitably run into A.I. at some point. So it’s fitting — if not overdue — that an established, esteemed American university would offer up an undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence. And that school is Carnegie Mellon University, of course. Per the MIT Tech Review, the program will be run out of the college’s School of Computer Science. It’ll involve the social and ethical impacts of A.I. as much as it will computational learning, along with the technical knowhow to have a decent grasp on what the future of A.I. is going to be, and maybe practical work on some of it, too (as a precursor to joining CMU’s top-flight status as the graduate school for A.I.).

Robot U: The First American A.I. Undergrad Program is Here, and Already Incredibly Elite

by Marco De Novellis, Business Because

Online MBA programs have traditionally been seen as secondary to campus-based courses. But now more and more UK business schools are investing in online. Today’s business schools have woken up to the importance of flexible, affordable alternatives to classroom-based study. In the workplace, everything is online. So why shouldn’t business education be too? Still, every business school is different. Some schools offer 100%-online MBA programs; some offer online MBA programs with residential components; some schools don’t offer online MBA programs at all. BusinessBecause caught up with business school deans and MBA directors across the UK—one of the more developed markets for distance-learning—and asked them one simple question: what do you really think about the online MBA?

https://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-distance-learning/5280/business-school-deans-online-mba

by Adalberto Toledo, News Gazette
On Saturday, May 12th, the University of Illinois hosted a graduation ceremony for dozens of MBA students who may have never set foot on campus before. These aren’t your typical MBA students. They’re “iMBA” students, part of an online-only, UI-taught MBA program, and 73 percent of them don’t live in Illinois. Most of these mothers, veterans and first-generation college students have life constraints preventing them from doing traditional coursework on campus. The average student brings 12 years of professional experience and is between 22 and 61 years old.

http://www.news-gazette.com/news/local/2018-05-09/46-states-56-countries-represented-ui-imbas-first-graduating-class.html

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

3D printing has created many exciting activities for the classroom, and teachers are itching to get their hands on one. And, who can blame them? 3D printers allow teachers to bring lessons to life in a way that students can see. Plus, kids love them! Even better, they are now much more affordable than when they first hit the market making it possible for schools to purchase them for makerspaces or individual classrooms.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/best-3d-printers-for-the-k-12-classroom/

by Marty Cook, Arkansas Business

LaTonya Cockrell is one of Michael Moore’s favorite success stories. The success, of course, is Cockrell’s, but Moore loves what her story illustrates about the power of online learning. Moore is chief academic and operating officer at eVersity, the University of Arkansas System’s online-only university, and loves to show how the availability of online education can change lives. Cockrell, 43, was working as a server at the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute atop Petit Jean Mountain in Morrilton when she decided she wanted to go back to college and earn a degree. Her options were limited; she had two young children at home, limited resources and no desire to sit in a classroom for hours when she could be working or raising her son and daughter. Cockrell, who had attended college in the early 1990s, earned an associate’s degree and will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in information technology in December. She won’t be job hunting, though, because the institute hired her in February as an IT associate to help run its myriad conferences and symposiums.

http://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/121896/online-programs-gain-users-in-arkansas

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
The alternative credential market is growing and the pace will not slow down, higher education experts said during a Committee for Economic Development of The Conference Board briefing last week about the Higher Education Act. One of the panelists, Scott Pulsipher, president of Western Governors University, said that around “two-thirds of jobs are going to require some postsecondary credential, while only about 42% of adults currently have any postsecondary credential of any sort.”  Van Ton-Quinlivan, vice chancellor of the California Community Colleges, added to these sentiments during the briefing, noting that she has seen the demand for “booster shot” credentials in the workplace especially as new technologies continue to be introduce. “As we begin to see the economy shift in that direction,’ she said, “people will be building up portfolios and reputations that are beyond how we treat credentials in the current day.”

https://www.educationdive.com/news/stackable-degrees-could-be-the-future-of-higher-education-experts-say/

by Ian Nickens, KOMU

Adult classes at Columbia College are now going to cost just one fee for courses, and that fee covers everything. Starting in the 2018 fall semester, evening and online undergraduate students will only pay $375 per credit hour for classes, and that includes books. “We found a way to essentially negotiate in bulk with the publishers,” said Columbia College President Scott Dalrymple. “The college itself is buying the textbooks and we’re passing those savings along to the students.” Columbia College calls this new way of charging tuition “Truition.” The program is meant to give students who are also balancing a job an easier way to afford their education. “Truition applies to all the other students we have across the country who are generally coming part-time and for whom fees and books are significant costs and barriers to going to college,” Dalrymple said.

http://www.komu.com/news/columbia-college-is-cutting-tuition-for-adult-students

by Creative Commons
The past few years have been transformative for Creative Commons. In 2015, we set out with an ambitious new strategy to nurture a vibrant, usable Commons powered by collaboration and gratitude. Our ambition is fueled by our technology projects and an energetic and productive global community. Each of CC’s initiatives works in support of this goal, unleashing the potential of the Commons through the work of our committed global communities. In 2017, we hosted our largest Global Summit yet, organized by our community and supported by new sponsors and donors. With your guidance, we redesigned the Creative Commons Global Network in a massive, collaborative, international process, and we built new online infrastructure to support this unprecedented expansion of the movement for sharing. Our new engineering team shipped the CC Search beta and established new partnerships to expand our reach. We launched an exciting certification program, meeting demand for the course from librarians and educators around the world. We fought against the TPP and for copyright reform in Europe, and helped national governments adopt open education policies.

https://stateof.creativecommons.org/

by WalletHub

Student-loan debts are more unsustainable in some places than others. WalletHub therefore compared the median student-loan balance against the median earnings of adults aged 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree in each of 2,515 U.S. cities to determine where Americans are most overleveraged on their college-related debts. Read on for our findings, expert advice from a panel of researchers and a full description of our methodology.

https://wallethub.com/student-loan-calculator/

by Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive
A recent Gallup poll revealed that only about one in four adults believe that students who graduate from high school this year are prepared for college or a career, and Lone Star Community College Chancellor Stephen Head agrees. “I really don’t care what your background is, most students are not prepared for college — they’re just not,” Head said to a crowd assembled last month in Washington, D.C. for a Communities In Schools event. “Grades are one thing, but emotionally, they’re just not ready. They need the background of social help behind the scenes … They don’t even know what they don’t know.” “They need job skills,” he added. “We help them with that, but they need to know how to show up on time, how to handle conflict resolution, how to [succeed].”

https://www.educationdive.com/news/its-time-to-break-silos-look-at-education-as-a-continuum-leaders-say/522869/

by Colin Wood, StateScoop

A document published this week by Connecticut officials represents one of the strongest cybersecurity plans undertaken by any state. The 41-page document, called simply the Cybersecurity Action Plan, highlights a need for increased security, more cross-sector collaboration, and heightened academic focus to help fill a cybersecurity workforce gap. The plan builds on a cybersecurity strategy proposal last year that called for Connecticut to implement dozens of new programs and policies affecting government offices, law enforcement, higher education and local businesses.

https://statescoop.com/in-a-call-to-arms-connecticut-publishes-cybersecurity-action-plan

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive
University of Arizona Chief Information Security Officer Lanita Collette told EdTech Magazine that when it comes to securing the university campus, there is a “tension between our need to provide an open environment where people can collaborate easily and the need to protect private information.”  At Arizona, IT security officials make sure that servers remain updated, there are intense monitoring procedures in place, and the team continuously uses the latest patches to prohibit digital currency mining, which can overload the system — a similar approach that was taken by IT officials at Northwestern University when computer chip malfunctions could have potentially disrupted the institution’s entire network.  University of Wisconsin-Madison CISO Bob Turner told EdTech Magazine that ransomware is high on his monitoring and response list and suggests campuses adapt to better respond, explaining that “in order to deal with risk, you have to deal with the pace of technology, along with the pace of the threats that are coming at your organization,” he said.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/campus-network-security-officials-step-up-fight-against-cyberattacks/522922/

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive
A new study from the University of Chicago’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation shows that a majority of Americans look to colleges and universities to drive the nation’s innovation imperatives. According to the survey, 71% of the respondents believe higher education to be a bigger factor in innovation than corporations or government, but they also said that the U.S. is behind other countries in research and development. With a sample size of 1,086 adults representing all 50 states, 61% of participants said that universities play “about the same role they have always played” in the future of innovation, but only 25% said that institutions are “leading the charge more than ever before.”

https://www.educationdive.com/news/poll-americans-look-to-colleges-for-research-innovation/522823/

by Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive
A recent Gallup poll revealed that only about one in four adults believe that students who graduate from high school this year are prepared for college or a career, and Lone Star Community College Chancellor Stephen Head agrees. “I really don’t care what your background is, most students are not prepared for college — they’re just not,” Head said to a crowd assembled last month in Washington, D.C. for a Communities In Schools event. “Grades are one thing, but emotionally, they’re just not ready. They need the background of social help behind the scenes … They don’t even know what they don’t know.” “They need job skills,” he added. “We help them with that, but they need to know how to show up on time, how to handle conflict resolution, how to [succeed].”

https://www.educationdive.com/news/its-time-to-break-silos-look-at-education-as-a-continuum-leaders-say/522869/

by Cheddar.com

The online education platform offers its 31 million users thousands of courses from established universities for a fraction of the price of on-campus classes. Coursera wants to expand further and bring “the highest quality education” to even more people, says its new CEO Jeff Maggioncalda.

https://cheddar.com/videos/coursera-could-be-a-multi-billion-dollar-a-year-company-2

By Gloria Knott, Arizona Sonora News

Melissa Wuellner, assistant professor at the University of Nebraska Kearney and a former faculty member at South Dakota State, studied natural resources courses online and face-to-face and found that online students spent more time on their classwork than the face-to-face students. She also found that grades in both online and face-to-face classes of the same course, which offered the same type of assignments, were comparable. “Mostly what we found was that students do about the same in both environments,” Wuellner said. Although research shows that academic rigor and grades are similar in both environments, online education still has its flaws — just as face-to-face classes do.

http://arizonasonoranewsservice.com/online-education-comparable-to-traditional-learning-but-still-has-flaws/

by Christian Guijosa , Observatory of Education/Innovation

Experts describe a future educational ecosystem in which students have new technological devices; classes happen in virtual and augmented reality classrooms; there are increased distance learning interactions; educational programs teach soft skills; among other characteristics still unexplored. On the other hand, automation and AI are expected to create new jobs that would demand specialized skills. How to face the educational challenge imposed by this rapid technological evolution? Teachers need to adapt and prepare continuously to achieve the success of the new educational programs. For this reason, we share ten free courses of educational tools so that you add skills and competencies to your professional career and begin to shape the future of education.

http://observatory.itesm.mx/edu-news/10-free-online-courses-to-shape-the-future-of-the-education