Techno-News Blog

Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed

How much students should pay for online programs varies widely from institution to institution.  We’re not breaking any revelatory news in saying that college and university pricing is … less than straightforward. But it can be instructive to examine how institutions make decisions about pricing. Luke Dowden arrived at Alamo last year after eight years at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. There, his bosses expected his online programs to be self-supporting, and cost and price were aggressively monitored. At Alamo, he has pushed to establish a financial model that will inform further pricing decisions.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/06/05/pricing-online-programs-involves-decisions-around-competition

BY LEO GIOSUÈ, Jerusalem Post

The traditional methods of imparting knowledge to other people are becoming less and less dominant, with the emphasis instead being on online platforms and social media to deliver the necessary information required for learners to succeed. If the education system wants to maintain high demand and a steady influx of learners, they need to change their methods to suit the new landscape. Some areas have chosen to introduce continuous learning into the digital world via the use of tools like micro-credentials. These types of courses and development seminars provide short, concentrated bursts of information and knowledge, which is potentially more suitable for the modern audience.

https://www.jpost.com/Special-Content/Continuous-Learning-in-Higher-Education-A-Closer-Look-591554

BY NEIL SELWYN, the Sector
Legislators in North Carolina in the US recently passed a bill to fund an online preschool program for ‘at risk’ children. This means that children aged three and four years can take their preschool education at home in the form of online ‘kindergarten readiness programs’. Children engage with online games, ‘virtual field-trips’ and other digital learning activities, while parents are sent teachers’ guides and boxes of resources. So, is this merely an instance of a technological ‘innovation’ providing an elegant and efficient ‘solution’ to educational problems? If not, what needs to be done instead? These are important choices, and it’s crucial that we all begin to properly discuss the values and trade-offs implicit in what might otherwise seem to be another inevitable step in the ongoing digitisation of education.

https://thesector.com.au/2019/06/04/early-years-education-online-the-rise-of-the-virtual-preschool/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
In a survey of 1,500 students who are seriously considering, currently enrolled in or recently graduated from a fully online program, most (86 percent) considered the value of their degree equal to or greater than the cost they paid to take it. Among those who have attended face-to-face and online courses, the majority (85 percent) said that online learning is as good as or better than attending courses on campus. In fact, two-thirds of online college students (67 percent) reported that they’d achieved the original goal that motivated them to enroll in their program; graduate students were more likely than undergraduates to feel that way (76 percent vs. 62 percent).

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/06/18/most-students-say-online-learning-is-as-good-or-better-than-face-to-face.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
In spite of the notion that students could conceivably take online courses from an institution anywhere in the world, two-thirds stick close to home — choosing a college or university within 50 miles of where they live. In fact, 44 percent selected a school within 25 miles of their homes. And the share of students enrolling in a school more than 100 miles from home fell from 37 percent in 2014 to 15 percent in 2019.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/06/04/survey-students-choosing-online-programs-closer-to-home.aspx

By Jason Yan, Daily Pennsylvanian
Wharton professors will teach ‘fintech’ — a cross between finance and technology — to students around the world in a new online program. Wharton Online released the fintech specialization on Coursera, an online learning platform, on May 30. The program, titled “Fintech: Foundations and Applications of Financial Technology,” contains four courses and covers subjects from cryptocurrency and blockchain to crowdfunding and robo-advising. The courses will each cost a monthly fee of $79 and will be taught by Wharton finance and Penn Law professors.

https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/06/penn-wharton-fintech-finance-online-tech

Evangeline J. Tsibris Cummings and Vincent J. Del Casino Jr., Inside Higher Ed

Building and managing their own online programs helps institutions transform themselves and prepare for the future, Vin Del Casino and Evie Cummings argue. To survive and prosper in this moment of massive change in higher education and the noise of “mega-universities” and to lead higher education into its next quarter century, it will take great courage, clarity of vision and purpose, and the empowerment and high expectations for impact among our faculty and staff. We must be mindful that while it requires leadership at your university, building an effective and integrated online experience also demands partnership with external stakeholders — state officials, university boards and accrediting agencies — whose focus on student completion and success must be geared toward the long game of a sustainable future.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2019/06/05/universities-can-go-online-without-corporate-partner-even-age

Edward J. Maloney and Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

The answer always depends on the individual asking, but anyone who claims that there is a single route to a career in digital learning has not spent much time with leaders in the profession. A strength of the field is the range of diverse perspectives and training that practitioners bring to the work. Whatever one’s educational background, and independent of the decision to study for a Ph.D., there are a number of areas that everyone working in digital learning should know. These are subjects that neither of us learned anything about in our own traditional Ph.D. programs, but they have proven vital navigating our careers in higher education digital learning.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/technology-and-learning/4-things-every-digital-learning-leader-should-know

EDUCAUSE

LTI Advantage is the next generation of the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard, which was designed to enable plug-and-play integration of educational applications and tools within an institution’s digital learning environment. LTI Advantage features three extensions that enable faster setup and configuration, improved user functionalities, and more advanced security to protect student data. LTI Advantage improves an institution’s digital learning ecosystem by making it more intuitive for faculty to integrate third-party resources, applications, and tools into a course.

https://library.educause.edu/resources/2019/4/7-things-you-should-know-about-lti-advantage

Tiernan Ray, ZD Net
The “Era of neural disinformation” is upon us, a future in which machines can generate fake news articles in enormous volume that humans will get suckered into believing is real.  The only hope for society lies with … another machine.  Researchers at Allen Institute and the Paul Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington have tuned the “GPT-2” neural network to create “Grover,” a program that both creates convincing fake articles but also is able to detect those fakes, pointing to a way to combat propaganda.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/to-catch-a-fake-machine-learning-sniffs-out-its-own-machine-written-propaganda/

Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

For my money, the most disappointing late arrival to higher ed is actionable data.  Colleges and universities seem to be diverging from the data-driven present of almost every other industry. It is so common to hear that “data is the new oil” that this sentiment has become conventional wisdom. Can you imagine Amazon or Netflix running their businesses as data free?  Name any company with a marketplace advantage, and you will find that the key differentiating factor is most often the smart use of data. Colleges and universities? Not so much.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/learning-analytics-and-campus-instructional-design-teams

by Will Knight, MIT Technology Review

New guidelines on freedom and privacy protection signal that the Chinese state is open to dialogue about how it uses technology. And while China’s government is widely criticized for using AI as a way to monitor citizens, the newly published guidelines seem remarkably similar to ethical frameworks laid out by Western companies and governments.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613610/why-does-china-suddenly-care-about-ai-ethics-and-privacy/

Abeer Anwaar, Block Publisher

According to the press release published on May 30, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania has officially introduced a new online program focusing on fintech in general, which also includes digital currencies and the distributed ledger technology (DLT). As the acceptance and popularity of cryptocurrency and its underlying blockchain technology increases, the need to study it in more detail also becomes necessary. In light of that necessity, several universities around the globe are offering courses on the new technology. Among them is an Ivy League university from United States, the University of Pennsylvania.

https://blockpublisher.com/learning-crypto-and-blockchain-is-now-made-easy-by-an-ivy-league-university/

Yvonne Wenger, Baltimore Sun

The number of cashiers in Maryland has grown steadily for decades, and more than 80,000 people work as cashiers in the state’s grocery and department stores, pharmacies and boutiques. An occupation practically as old as the economy, the job employs more people here than any other, according to the U.S. Labor Department. But the job is also among the most likely to be replaced by machines. Many bigger stores already offer the option of self-checkout, shifting the task of scanning and bagging items onto customers who then pay a computer that spits out change and receipts. Economists say many cashiers’ jobs will go away over the next decade, but an estimate on just how many is elusive.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/business/bs-md-cashier-20190305-story.html

Miles Brignall, the Guardian

Tutorials available online showing how to get details of stolen cards, says tech firm. Want to use stolen credit card details to buy online? There’s a class for that. Card fraud is evolving, with amateur fraudsters able to “enrol” in online “classes” where they can learn how to use stolen card details to buy smaller-value items. That’s the claim from a UK tech firm, which says a new breed of opportunistic fraudster is learning how to commit crime via online tutorials and guides available on the so-called “dark web”. Featurespace, a Cambridge-based artificial intelligence (AI) firm, showed Guardian Money examples and screengrabs of these tutorials, many of which will point people towards specific “carding” sites that sell people’s details.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jun/01/now-there-are-online-classes-in-how-to-use-stolen-cards

Patrick Blessinger, Enakshi Sengupta and Taisir Subhi Yamin; University World News

In short, service-learning is a curricula-based approach to teaching and learning that allows students to directly put academic theory into real-world practice. The specifics of a service-learning project will depend on the institutional mission, the academic discipline and programme, the grade level and course type and the specific learning objectives. The research knowledge base on service-learning shows that it can have a positive impact on student engagement, retention and graduation rates. Service-learning is an approach that complements and enhances traditional classroom (face-to-face, hybrid or online) courses through civic engagement and community development.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190526153905418

JP Mangalindan, Yahoo Finance

Cuban told Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer in a recent interview he has taken several online courses to stay up-to-date on programming languages and evolving technologies, including machine learning. Doing so arguably makes him a savvier investor when some tech startups pitch him. “I mean, I’ve been on Amazon doing the machine learning tutorials,” Cuban said. “Right now I’m going through… I’ve taken Python online classes.” “I just started JavaScript neural networks,” added Cuban, referring to computing systems that act similarly to biological neural networks and adapt to perform tasks. “There’s a little tutorial where they’ve got most of the libraries … And if you have a background in programming, it’s not hard.”

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/mark-cuban-coding-113412974.html

By: Brian Udermann, Faculty Focus

One of the concerns I frequently hear from instructors considering teaching online is that they will lose the interaction and sense of community they have with their students when they teach face-to-face. That doesn’t have to be the case; many online instructors successfully create a sense of community in their courses. There are a variety of definitions of community. Most include wording or phrases such as “having something in common,” “feelings of being connected,” “shared goals or aspirations,” and “regular interaction.” This article will explore seven strategies faculty can use to promote and increase community in the online environment.

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/seven-strategies-to-promote-community-in-online-courses/

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News

Each Transformation Award winner uses online courses and adaptive learning tools to meet the varying needs of their students, who represent different demographic, economic and geographic backgrounds. The winning programs use online learning to overcome challenges in unique and inventive ways, whether through providing students with the means to earn a high school diploma after dropping out, filling teacher vacancies, helping students recover credits, differentiating instruction based on real-time progress data, or providing students with access to a wider variety of elective course

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2019/05/31/7-programs-that-are-transforming-education/

Bill DeBaun, College Access

A new National College Access Network analysis shows that students are right to be concerned: Affordability is decreasing at two- and four-year public institutions, whose mission is to provide a postsecondary pathway to benefit individuals and the public at large. In 2016-17, just 48% of community colleges in our sample were affordable for the average Pell Grant recipient, according to NCAN’s affordability formula. Only 27% of four-year public institutions were affordable. From academic years 2012-13 to 2016-17, the percentage of affordable institutions declined nationally, while affordability gaps rose.

http://www.collegeaccess.org/BlogItem?dg=9c193a4e63164902adadb8d5612ff29e

Blog Indeed

With AI becoming more deeply integrated into our professional and personal lives, the Indeed analytics team crunched platform data to learn more about AI jobs in 2019. What are the top positions? Which offer the highest salaries? Where are the best opportunities? Some of our findings may surprise you.

http://blog.indeed.com/2019/06/28/top-10-ai-jobs-salaries-cities/