Techno-News Blog

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed

The share of women in many science and technology fields has increased dramatically in the last generation — in some cases reaching parity with men. But women’s gains have lagged in computer science, some technology fields and in the businesses where many of the graduates of those programs aspire to work. A new book says that both colleges and businesses can do better. Failing to improve, the book argues, means wasting talent that could promote innovation in both academe and industry. The book is The Future of Tech Is Female: How to Achieve Gender Diversity (New York University Press). The author is Douglas M. Branson, the W. Edward Sell Chair in Law at the University of Pittsburgh.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/07/17/author-discusses-his-new-book-about-women-tech-industry-and-engineering-education

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

I read lots of nonfiction. Unless these books are about higher education, higher education is unlikely to be mentioned. The Efficiency Paradox is different. Higher education plays a starring role. This is one of the first books written by someone who works primarily outside of academia that gets at a fundamental truth about higher education right. That fundamental truth is that technology to advance learning can be great, as long as that technology is a complement – and not a substitute – for a well-trained and fully-supported educator. In short, nothing matters more than the professor.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/how-efficiency-paradox-gets-edtech-right

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed
A large-scale study at the University of Georgia has found that college students provided with free course materials at the beginning of a class get significantly better academic results than those that do not. The Georgia study, published this week, compared the final grades of students enrolled in eight large undergraduate courses between 2010 and 2016. Each of these courses was taught by a professor who switched from a commercial textbook costing $100 or more to a free digital textbook, or open educational resource, at some point during that six-year period.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/07/16/measuring-impact-oer-university-georgia

by Giving Compass

Most of our energy has been focused on designing physical learning spaces, even as more teaching and learning shifts online. Unfortunately, most massive open online course (MOOC) platforms still feel like drafty lecture halls instead of intimate seminar rooms. The majority of online learning environments are no more than video-hosting platforms with quizzes and a discussion forum. These default features force online instructors to use a style of teaching that feels more like shouting to the masses than engaging in meaningful conversations.

https://givingcompass.org/article/can-we-design-online-learning-platforms-that-feel-more-intimate-than-massive/

By James Paterson, Education Dive
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has directed that state’s universities to continue policies that promote diversity despite the Trump administration ruling that institutions don’t have to consider race in admissions decisions, according to the Northeast Public Radio. Cuomo asked the chairmen of the boards of trustees for City University of New York and the State University of New York by mid-August to report on how they will further increase diversity on their campuses.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/new-york-to-resist-trump-rollback-of-affirmative-action-in-college-admissio/527722/

By Prachi Mishra, Udacity

Each of these 5 students earned a scholarship from Google and Udacity, and they’ve used their opportunities to achieve incredible things in their lives and their careers. Back in 2017, Google Scholarships launched in India with a mission to help 30,000 students pursue their dreams of venturing into mobile and web development. Today, so many exceptional students have earned new opportunities for themselves through the Udacity-Google Scholarship program. Their stories are amazing, and we share five of them with you here.

5 Amazing Student Success Stories from India

by Stephanie Glass, My San Antonio

Artificial intelligence is already reshaping society as we know it in both business and consumer realms. Early use cases with Alexa, autonomous vehicles and AI-driven supply chains provide just a glimpse of the disruption that AI is poised to deliver in the near future and for years to come. Yet despite all the AI hype and initial successes, it remains in its infancy. That makes now the ideal time for young people to build the knowledge, skill sets and connections they need to capitalize on the fast-growing market for AI jobs and build a strong AI career.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/The-Sooner-You-Get-Your-First-AI-Job-the-Better-13065882.php

by Institute for Research in Higher Education, University of Pennsylvania

The College Opportunity Risk Assessment is the first state-by-state analytic tool to consider the breadth of the policy landscape that must be navigated to ensure future educational opportunity. All states face risks to college opportunity, but each state faces different types and levels of risk within their diverse economic and social realities. To guide state policy makers in mitigating these risks, we offer individual state risk assessments based on four interrelated risk categories—higher education performance, educational equity, public funding and productivity, and economic policies that influence public revenue and budgeting.

https://irhe.gse.upenn.edu/College-Opportunity-at-Risk

by Lauren Bauer, Audrey Breitwieser, Ryan Nunn, and Jay Shambaugh; Brookings

Educational and occupational choices matter for your earnings, but where you work matters, too. Employment opportunities and wages in some occupations vary substantially from state to state, county to county, and city to city. One location might be a great place to earn a living as a nurse but not as a construction worker (e.g., New Orleans, Louisiana), while a different location might be the opposite (e.g., Utica, New York). Does it make sense for people starting or advancing their careers to move? And if it does, to where should they move?

Editor’s Note: An interactive tool accompanies this economic analysis, allowing users to see the distribution of annual earnings across the United States for a given occupation and age group, adjusting for cost of living and taxes.

Where work pays: How does where you live matter for your earnings?

by EdX

EdX.org has announced the results of a survey of 1,000 consumers ages 25 – 44 around trends related to career transformations. The survey found that 32 percent of respondents have considered making a career change at some point within the past year, and 29 percent of respondents have completely changed fields since starting their first job post college. The chief drivers of these continuous shifts are a desire for salary increase (39 percent) or interest in another field (21 percent). EdX commissioned the survey in order to further identify the types of challenges faced by learners, specifically as they look to change industries, in an effort to provide optimized access to quality, career-relevant education to all.  The workplace is changing more rapidly than ever before and employers are in need of highly-skilled talent. Faced with this ever-changing workplace, candidates seeking to change or advance their careers are tasked with gaining the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. In addition, many of these in-demand fields are so newly emerging that they do not map back to traditional fields of study — according to edX’s survey findings, only a fifth of respondents consider their education from their college major to be translatable to their current field.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180710005238/en/EdX-Survey-Finds-13-Americans-Ages-25

by James Paterson, Education dive
Colleges and universities find it isn’t easy to get faculty to use immersive technologies, but some are having success by introducing them to the new tools in creative ways. Campus Technology recently reviewed the efforts by some institutions to move educators toward using the new technology. Officials advocating for use of immersive technology at institutions point out several hurdles that are hindering its development – from tight budgets for these less-accepted teaching methods, to finding time to instruct professors how to use them. They have improved the response by introducing virtual reality or immersive experiences in casual settings to faculty members, by showing them examples of how it can be used and by proving its value by gathering data about its effectiveness in the classroom.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/creatively-nudging-faculty-members-to-expand-use-of-immersive-technology/527468/

by Tutaleni Asino and Phil Tietjen, Educause Review

One of our shared interests is using social networking technologies not only to build local learning communities but to expand those communities beyond our classrooms. On the surface, this sounds obvious since these tools are often associated with making connections and bringing students together regardless of time and place. However, what we found is somewhat paradoxical: While faculty members are usually interested in using social networking technologies to build learning communities within their specific classes, we saw far fewer instances of engagement in collaborative learning activities with classes from other universities. This suggests another kind of border that we educators could work more earnestly toward addressing. We set out to contribute to this effort by designing a small-scale collaborative project between two classes from our respective schools by using the video discussion tool Flipgrid.

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/6/making-learning-without-borders-a-reality

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
What do students want in the learning activities for their online STEM courses? They’d prefer more real-life problems to solve and instructional resources such as simulations, case studies, videos and demonstrations. They’d also like the chance to meet and collaborate with other students as well as teaching assistants online. Finally, they’d appreciate clear and consistent information from instructors about instructions, assignments, assessments, due dates, course pages and office hours. That’s what a research project found when it queried 537 students from 15 online STEM courses within a large, four-year public university in the southeast during spring 2016. A third of the students (36 percent) came from the college of engineering and computer science; other large groups included science majors (14 percent) and those pursuing degrees in the college of health and public affairs (11 percent). The study was done by three researchers from the Center for Distributed Learning at the University of Central Florida.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/07/09/online-stem-courses-need-more-real-world-interactivity.aspx

By: Melissa Wehler, Faculty Focus

I was still dealing with the real issues of isolation, fear, and frustration that results in students leaving their online courses. To combat these feelings, professors—myself included—have to deliberately, consistently, and relentlessly work to build student-faculty and student-student relationships in online courses. As educators, we know that building community in the online environment increases the likelihood of student success. Finding ways to concretize something as ephemeral as “a sense of belonging” can be difficult; however, here are five places where you can start.

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/five-ways-to-build-community-in-online-classrooms/

By Amy Ahearn, EdSurge

Most of our energy has been focused on designing physical learning spaces, even as more teaching and learning shifts online. Unfortunately, most massive open online course (MOOC) platforms still feel like drafty lecture halls instead of intimate seminar rooms. The majority of online learning environments are no more than video-hosting platforms with quizzes and a discussion forum. These default features force online instructors to use a style of teaching that feels more like shouting to the masses than engaging in meaningful conversations. This presents a challenge and an opportunity: How can we design online learning environments that achieve scale and intimacy? How do we make digital platforms feel as inviting as well-designed physical classrooms?

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-07-09-can-we-design-online-learning-platforms-that-feel-more-intimate-than-massive

by Kevin Parish, Digital Trends

Among the list of devices, services and networks on the menu are multiple government systems on sale worldwide, including those linked to the United States. The team found connections to a variety of healthcare institutions including medical equipment shops, hospitals, and more. They even found access to security and building automation systems at a major international airport selling for a mere $10. The problem doesn’t just revolve around desktops, laptops, and servers. Internet of Things devices based on Windows Embedded are also on the menu such as point-of-sale systems, kiosks, parking meters, thin client PCs and more. Many are overlooked and not updated, making them a quiet entryway for hackers.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/mcafee-hackers-buy-remote-desktop-access-dark-web/

By Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed

Berklee College of Music’s online program, priced at just over a third of tuition for the Massachusetts institution’s face-to-face degree offerings, raised eyebrows when it got off the ground in 2013. Conventional wisdom that online programs require more resources to produce had taken hold, and pricing models that favor online students were few and far between. Five years later, Berklee remains an anomaly in higher ed, as most institutions continue to charge the same or more for online programs as for their face-to-face equivalents. Some arguments hinge on a philosophical belief that online education should be valued equivalently to face-to-face programs, while others emphasize the significant financial burden of designing and launching online courses from scratch.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/07/11/berklee-college-music-defies-conventional-wisdom-low-price

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

What do you think of the online program management (OPM) industry? If you are like many higher ed people that I speak with, your answer may not be all that positive. Higher ed people simply don’t like the idea of long contract lock-ins (usually between five and 10 years) and revenue share arrangements that send half to three-quarters of tuition dollars to for-profit companies. Is it possible to be a critical and clear-eyed observer of the OPM industry and still believe that an OPM partnership should be on the table as institutions consider new online programs? I think the answer is yes, as I’ve come to believe that (a) the OPM industry is more complicated and nuanced than we often think, and (b) we need to think about OPM partnerships in a different way.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/technology-and-learning/5-misconceptions-about-online-program-management

BY MEREDITH HOOVER, eSchool News
We’re building a love for STEM with virtual robotics and coding camps that get students excited; here are 5 steps to get your school going in the right direction. It never ceases to amaze me when I see a middle school student excelling at virtual robot simulations, a seventh grader using computer code to solve a STEM problem, or an eighth-grade robotics team brainstorming ideas and then developing a full-blown operating robot. Even these tiniest victories go a long way, with students getting hands-on with advanced technologies and then taking that experience to college and/or out into the workforce.

How to start a virtual coding boot camp in five easy steps

BY KEITH RAJECKI, eCampus News

Many universities have been relatively slow to embrace the cloud for a few simple reasons. First, because it’s not always cheap or easy to overhaul IT systems. And second, because cloud represents a fundamental technological change and perceived challenges that many organizations do not feel they have the expertise, bandwidth, or resources to address.

Fortunately, there are ways around these challenges, and it starts by remembering that cloud computing is part of a journey to a modern campus—not the ultimate destination. What’s needed is a strategic approach that combines on-premise services with advanced cloud solutions.

5 things every college must know about cloud computing

by Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive
The merger between Capella University’s parent company, Capella Education Company, and Strayer Education Inc., the parent company of Strayer University, has been approved by the Higher Learning Commission and is expected to close on or before Aug. 1. The resulting company will be named Strategic Education Inc., according to a July 9 Security Exchange Commission filing.  The $1.9 billion deal will create one of the largest for-profit companies in the country, serving roughly 80,000 students between them. The two institutions will continue to operate as “independent and separately accredited institutions.”  Strayer shareholders will own 52% of the combined stock and Capella shareholders will own 48%.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/accreditor-clears-path-for-19-billion-strayer-capella-merger/527421/