Techno-News Blog

September 30, 2018

Penn to offer first Ivy League bachelor’s degree online

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:25 am

by Susan Snyder, the Inquirer

The University of Pennsylvania this summer announced its first online master’s degree. Now it will be offering an online bachelor’s degree, too, and says it’s the first Ivy League university to do so. The new bachelor of applied arts and sciences degree, targeted to working adults and other nontraditional students, will be offered through Penn’s College of Liberal and Professional Studies and will launch in 2019, the university announced Tuesday morning. The Liberal and Professional Studies College for years has offered an alternative path into the highly competitive Ivy League university, often taking students who transfer in from community colleges. Students had access to the same classes on campus and the same faculty as other students.

http://www2.philly.com/philly/education/penn-first-ivy-league-bachelors-degree-online-20180918.html

Share on Facebook

U. of Pennsylvania Says It Will Be First Ivy to Offer Online Bachelor’s Degree

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:20 am

By Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Ed
The U. of Pennsylvania’s new bachelor’s-degree program, aimed at nontraditional students, illustrates the growing credibility and popularity of online education. Starting next fall, the University of Pennsylvania will offer what it says is the first online bachelor’s degree at an Ivy League college, an illustration of the growing credibility and popularity of online education. Designed for adult learners, the program will confer a bachelor of applied arts and sciences, and will enroll students through the School of Arts and Sciences’ College of Liberal and Professional Studies, which serves working adults and other nontraditional students.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/U-of-Pennsylvania-Says-It/244558

Share on Facebook

FBI Issues Warning on Educational Technology

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:15 am

By Sara Friedman, THE Journal
Some schools might have a problem on their hands when it comes to the use of educational technology and the need to protect student privacy, according to an alert issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The alert warns schools that the widespread collection of student data could have privacy and safety implications if the information is compromised or exploited. Multiple attacks on school information technology systems occurred in 2017 through actors hacking into multiple school district servers, according to the FBI. Student contact information, education plans, homework assignments, medical records and counselor reports were stolen, and then the thieves used that information to contact, extort and threaten students with the release of their personal information.

 

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/09/18/fbi-issues-warning-on-educational-technology.aspx

Share on Facebook

September 29, 2018

As students return to college, a basic question persists: What are they learning?

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:25 am

by John Marcus, Hechinger Report

“When you look at college mission statements, they’re loaded with grand pronouncements about the skills and habits of mind they’re going to inspire in their students,” said Alexander McCormick, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy studies at Indiana University Bloomington. Yet “even as they teach their students to back up their claims with evidence, they don’t have much evidence to back up those claims.”  “What students are supposed to be doing or learning diverges wildly,” said Nate Johnson, founder and principal consultant of the firm Postsecondary Analytics, who follows this. “You have students majoring in everything from philosophy to heating and air-conditioning repair to accounting. Even if you had measurable assessments in all those different areas, adding them up to say students made X amount of progress isn’t the same as what you can say about 9-year-olds or 10-year-olds hitting certain benchmarks in reading.”

Share on Facebook

Bye-bye to Netflix in Purdue’s largest lecture halls

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:20 am

By Halona Black, Education Dive
To free up bandwidth for internet traffic related to lectures and other academic needs, Purdue University is restricting access to online streaming websites such as Netflix, Hulu and iTunes during class time in its four largest lecture halls. The university found in a 2016 study that 4% of internet use in its Lilly Hall of Life Sciences was to academic sites while 34% went to sites such as Netflix and Hulu, Inside Higher Ed reported. An additional 64% went to sites with mixed applications, such as Amazon and Google. The lecture halls in which the restrictions are being piloted can hold hundreds of students who often come to class with multiple devices. Since the pilot launched at the start of the fall semester, the wireless system has experienced much less traffic, administrators say, leaving more bandwidth for academic purposes. Faculty members can access the banned sites for teaching purposes.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/bye-bye-to-netflix-in-purdues-largest-lecture-halls/532493/

Share on Facebook

Penn to offer Ivy League’s first online bachelor’s degree

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:15 am

By James Paterson, Education Dive
The University of Pennsylvania will become the first Ivy League college to offer an online bachelor’s degree with the launch of an interdisciplinary program next fall aimed at working adults and other nontraditional learners. Offered through the School of Arts and Sciences’ College of Liberal and Professional Studies (LPS), the applied arts and sciences degree encompasses general education courses and interdisciplinary concentrations as well as two on-campus experiences. The program will take a different approach to instruction than traditional residential courses by using the unique properties of e-learning, officials said. An advisory board of management executives is working with LPS to advise on workforce trends and skills needs.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/penn-to-offer-ivy-leagues-first-online-bachelors-degree/532805/

Share on Facebook

September 28, 2018

New learning opportunities for displaced persons

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:25 am

by MIT Open Learning
This week, the MIT Refugee Action Hub (ReACT) announced that it is now accepting applications for the second offering of the Certificate Program in Computer and Data Science. The one-year course of study is designed for refugees and other displaced people around the world, and offers them the opportunity to earn a certificate in a rigorous, yet accessible program that allows young adults to reactivate their potential and restart careers. The inaugural group of students will be completing their studies in January 2019. The blended program will continue to offer a core online curriculum of the edX catalogue along with an immersive set of in-person workshops and classes offered by MIT faculty and staff. These offerings include an entrepreneurship program, led by the MIT Bootcamps and a MakerLab run by the Little Devices Lab. Admir Masic, faculty lead and the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Career Development Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, founded ReACT in 2017 with a mission to provide blended learning opportunities to refugees around the world.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-react-expands-learning-opportunities-refugees-displaced-populations-0921

Share on Facebook

Professors find ways to prevent cheating for online classes

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:23 am

By: Natassia Henry, Daily Toreador

Many students may think professors are not aware of the various cheating tactics students try, but Lisa Low, assistant professor of practice in public relations at Texas Tech, said that could not be further from the truth. “Very few (professors) are not, not aware of the many ways to collude,” Low said. Professors are understanding when it comes to the lifestyles of students. Low said if students are in a jam, it is better for them to talk to their professor rather than cheat, because once a student cheats, the professors are obligated to report it. Once that is done, it is no longer in the hands of the professor.

http://www.dailytoreador.com/news/professors-find-ways-to-prevent-cheating-for-online-classes/article_74838ffa-bdc1-11e8-81c8-d72d20ca3dc0.html

Share on Facebook

THE LATEST COURSE CATALOG TREND? BLOCKCHAIN 101

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:15 am

by Wired
On a clear, warm night earlier this year, several dozen students at the University of California, Berkeley, folded themselves into gray chairs for a three-hour class on how to think like blockchain entrepreneurs. The evening’s challenge, presented by Berkeley city councilmember Ben Bartlett, was to brainstorm how blockchain technology might be used to alleviate the city’s growing homeless problem. New York University, Georgetown, and Stanford are among the other institutions that offer blockchain technology courses to get students thinking about its potential uses and to better prepare them for the workforce. Job postings requiring blockchain skills ballooned by 200 percent in the first five months of this year, compared with the same period a year earlier, though they remain less than 1 percent of software development jobs, according to the research firm Burning Glass Technologies. Universities like MIT, Cornell, and Columbia are launching labs and research centers to explore the technology and its policy implications and seed the development of rigorous curricula on the topic.

https://www.wired.com/story/latest-course-catalog-trend-blockchain-101/

Share on Facebook

September 27, 2018

President Speaks: Staying high-touch in a high-tech college world

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:25 am

By George Hagerty, Education Dive
George Hagerty is the president of Beacon College in Leesburg, Florida.  For many of us, our enthusiastic embrace of the latest technological conveniences has moved from “shiny-new-thing” novelty to indispensable daily companion: a sure harbinger of the growing role artificial intelligence will play in our lives.  It can be argued that few sectors have been more disrupted or transformed by technology than higher education — given our dual responsibilities as both transmitters and creators of knowledge. But when conversations on campus inevitably turn to the acquisition and application of new technology — deliberations further complicated by strategic purposes, cost implications and political overtones — we must safeguard against mistaking electronic-based systems as ends unto themselves, in favor of what they are: tools to benefit the delivery and quality of instruction and services.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/president-speaks-staying-high-touch-in-a-high-tech-college-world/532535/

Share on Facebook

Average Loan Debt for Graduates of Four-Year Colleges: $28,650

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:17 am

by Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed
The average student loan debt last year for graduates of four-year colleges who took out loans was $28,650, according to the latest version of an annual report from the Institute for College Access and Success (TICAS). The average amount was up $300, or 1 percent, from 2016. Figures from the report were based on debt levels from college seniors who graduated from public and private colleges last year. Roughly two-thirds (65 percent) of this group took on at least some student debt. “While student loans can be an excellent investment, there is a crisis among the millions of students who struggle to repay their loans, and they are disproportionately students of color or from low-income families,” James Kvaal, the group’s president, said in a written statement. “We need to invest more in student aid and in colleges to reduce students’ need to borrow, and make their loans easier to repay.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/09/20/average-loan-debt-graduates-four-year-colleges-28650

Share on Facebook

OpenStax Adds Business Textbook Series

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:15 am

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
Nearly all of the courses for students earning an Associate of Arts degree in business will soon be covered by a free OpenStax textbook, thanks to a series of six new introductory business textbooks being produced by the Rice University-based publisher of open educational resources. The series includes texts for Introduction to Business, Business Ethics, Principles of Management, Entrepreneurship, Principles of Accounting and Organizational Behavior — all courses taught at most colleges and universities in the United States, according to a news announcement, and typically required courses for degres in business or related fields.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/09/18/openstax-adds-business-textbook-series.aspx

Share on Facebook

September 26, 2018

Students can go around the world and beyond through virtual reality

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:24 am

By Addie Fairley, The State Press
Virtual reality could be a dream come true, or a nightmare in the flesh. It could be anything that it is programmed to be with no real limitations. ASU, with its everlasting call to innovation, has started to utilize VR goggles for an online biology lab. ASU has partnered with Google and Labster, a virtual lab simulation company specifically dedicated toward education STEM subject matters, to give students in an online Biology 181 class the ability to view traditional lab situations. The students can purchase their own VR headsets or borrow a pair from the school. There are currently 30 students in the course, and there’s potential for expansion.

http://www.statepress.com/article/2018/09/spscience-class-on-the-moon-the-future-of-virtual-reality-in-education

Share on Facebook

Coursera’s CEO on the Evolving Meaning of ‘MOOC’

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:14 am

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

What we see is just a huge blending. Right now we offer MOOCs, we offer specializations (packages of those single courses), we offer master tracks, which are those modules that count towards a degree. We only have three right now, but we’re going to be building up that library. And then we have degrees now. I talk to people who take who take a MOOC on blockchain. All they wanted was about 10 hours of very high-quality instruction. They didn’t need a degree. They literally just wanted to learn the material. Those kinds of people are not going to buy a degree. Then there are people who get a degree, and you’re like, “Why didn’t you take a bunch of MOOCs?” Because the degrees help them get a better job. So long as we believe there will be a range of needs from very, very rigorous and that ends up in a high-pedigreed credential to smaller learning that nevertheless teaches you something that’s really important, there’s absolutely no reason that MOOCs won’t exist and degrees won’t exist with a link between them. I think it’s going to be a continuum.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/09/12/courseras-ceo-on-the-evolving-meaning-of-mooc.aspx

Share on Facebook

September 25, 2018

Federal court rules against Betsy DeVos in student loan lawsuit over for-profit colleges fraud cases

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:24 am

by Maria Danilova, Associated Press
A federal court has ruled that it was “arbitrary and capricious” for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to delay an Obama-era rule meant to protect students swindled by for-profit colleges. The decision is a significant blow to the Trump administration’s attempt to ease regulations for the industry. A judge in the nation’s capital ruled on Wednesday in favor of Democratic attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia and former students. They had sued DeVos over her decision last year to postpone the rules finalized under President Barack Obama.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-betsy-devos-student-loan-lawsuit-for-profit-colleges-fraud-20180913-story.html

Share on Facebook

Education is not preparing students for a fast-changing world

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:20 am

By Ann Kirschner and Dana Born, Boston Globe

VUCA stands for “volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous,” a handy shortcut used by the military to describe these uncertain times, and a framework to shape its leadership programs. We have a graduation gap, an employment gap, and a skills gap. These are global trends but perhaps most acute in the United States, where we have championed college education for all at the same time that we have not paid enough attention to the link between learning and earning. The false choice between vocational training and the lofty devotion to the life of the mind is particularly damaging to first-generation college students with no parental safety net or networks of their own. Career services remain the Siberia of most college campuses, visited rarely and woefully under-resourced.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/09/12/education-not-preparing-students-for-fast-changing-world/96vTGowaDypumwyLtPtLjP/story.html

Share on Facebook

Teaming Up to Get Workers Ready for Technology of the Future

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:14 am

By Ellen Rosen, The New York Times

The partnership is one of 14 across the country focusing on emerging technologies and industries addressing an increasingly important and frequently vexing question: how to prepare workers at all levels — technicians as well as people with doctoral degrees — for new technologies, like integrated photonics, that are in development, but only at the very early stages of commercial use. “Because the jobs don’t exist yet, we need to train students in the skills that are relevant today so they can get a job, but at the same time, very selectively, begin to supplement the training relevant to new industries,” said Sajan Saini, the education director of the AIM Photonics Academy, which is based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/business/training-tech-workers-for-future.html

Share on Facebook

September 24, 2018

Get on board with data integration

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:26 am

BY REGINA KUNKLE, eSchool News
With rising competitive pressures, digital transformation can mean the difference between losing and improving institutional reputation.  The modern, public university is arguably facing more strain than ever before—both from outside and inside its walls. Marked by new competitors and declining funding, the state of today’s higher-ed marketplace has driven more public universities to turn to technology as a holy grail for readying them to compete. Universities are complex systems, comprised of thousands of departments, specialty schools, and student groups. They’re facing competition from for-profit institutions and tech startups, and the state funding for public universities is declining year over year.

Get on board with data integration

Share on Facebook

Campus faculty: Give us more classroom tech

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:20 am

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News

Campus digital learning leaders–those who supervise online education or instructional technology–overwhelmingly support more technology use in classrooms. Data from various research projects shows 97 percent of digital learning leaders have high support for more ed-tech on campus. Sixty-two percent of faculty have high support more classroom ed-tech, with 30 percent displaying medium support.  The support for more campus ed-tech has two clearly-defined motivators: 80 percent of digital learning leaders and 68 percent of faculty say they like to experiment with new teaching methods or tools, while 85 percent of digital learning leaders and 66 percent of faculty say they have succeeded with ed tech before.

 

Campus faculty: Give us more classroom tech

Share on Facebook

Make Sure Everyone on Your Team Sees Learning as Part of Their Job

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:15 am

Kristi Hedges, Harvard Business Review

The reality is that most people are not set up to take advantage of development opportunities. Many organizations view learning as something extra, something to fit in on top of the regular work. But to create a culture that encourages employee growth, managers need to make learning an expectation — not an option. Learning helps people keep a broad perspective. When we feel expert at something, sociologists have shown, the earned dogmatism effect sets in, causing us to be more close-minded and to disregard new ideas and perspectives. For managers, suggesting that team members go to a training or take an online course isn’t enough; for many professionals, that’s just more work on their plates. Instead, managers need to encourage continual learning with supportive behaviors that, in turn, will shape their company culture. Be a vocal role model. Managers should frame learning as a growth opportunity, not as a quid pro quo for promotion.

https://hbr.org/2018/09/make-sure-everyone-on-your-team-sees-learning-as-part-of-their-job

Share on Facebook

September 23, 2018

Machine Learning Applications in E-Learning: Bias, Risks and Mitigation

Filed under: Uncategorized — admin @ 12:24 am

by Stella Lee, Chief Learning Officer
In recent years, there has been a lot of focus on adaptive e-learning, fueled by the advances of machine learning and artificial intelligence. As the one-size-fits-all approach of e-learning loses its appeal and online course attrition rates continue to rise, there is a move toward more personalized and adaptive learning to engage learners and achieve better learning outcomes. Personalized and adaptive learning has the ability to change learning content or the mode of delivery on the fly and to provide real-time feedback to learners. The origin of adaptive learning came from the research of intelligent tutoring systems, recommender systems and adaptive hypermedia. The advent of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques have helped the plethora of platforms and tools that support adaptive learning flourish.

https://www.clomedia.com/2018/09/12/machine-learning-applications-in-e-learning-bias-risks-and-mitigation/

Share on Facebook
Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress