Techno-News Blog

Courier

The sands of higher education are shifting, prompting more schools to enter into partnerships and utilize distance learning to attract elusive “place-bound” students. The University of Northern Iowa took a step this month to increase its Des Moines footprint. UNI President Mark Nook and President Rob Denson of Des Moines Area Community College announced a new 2+2 partnership — earning an associate of arts degree on DMACC’s Urban Campus, then completing work through UNI for a bachelor of liberal studies degree. The UNI courses would be offered online initially with staff present to support students, beginning in fall 2020.

https://wcfcourier.com/opinion/editorial/editorial-uni-looks-forward-with-partnerships/article_738885f4-84a2-5562-97eb-4829fa389358.html

by Malcolm Brown, Betsy Reinitz and Karen Wetzel, EDUCAUSE Review
Digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. The digital transformation signals listed in this article indicate progress along the way and provide guideposts for the journey. In the context of sweeping social, economic, technological, and demographic changes, digital transformation (Dx) is a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution’s business model, strategic directions, and value proposition. Dx can make institutions more resilient, flexible, and relevant as they face an array of increasingly difficult challenges that include declining student enrollment, increased public skepticism, and skyrocketing student debt.

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2019/10/digital-transformation-signals-is-your-institution-on-the-journey

By NATALIE CIERZAN, Minnesota Daily

The Center for Online Biology Education would include a website featuring CBS online classes, resources for faculty and a new research program about biology online teaching.  Faculty from the University of Minnesota’s College of Biological Sciences are working to fill the demand for online biology classes. They are creating the Center for Online Biology Education, which would include a website that features all available CBS online classes. Faculty said they hope to launch the website by the end of fall semester. The center also includes faculty resources and a mentorship program for instructors looking to teach an online class.

https://www.mndaily.com/article/2019/10/n-umn-college-of-biological-sciences-looking-to-add-in-demand-online-biology-classes

Clark G. Gilbert and Michael B. Horn, Education Next
Helping students earn certificates upfront offers a promising path to address the dropout rate. Postsecondary institutions offer these credentials of student educational attainment in a growing variety of subjects, which run the gamut from auto mechanics to unmanned aircraft systems to finance. Although community colleges have long offered such programs, name-brand institutions also have gotten involved: the extension program at the University of California, Los Angeles, for example, provides certificates in subjects like cybersecurity and interior design, and delivers some of its programs through an app.

https://www.educationnext.org/certificate-then-degree-programs-help-tackle-college-completion-crisis/

Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

Citing a serious skills gap, the multinational International Business Machines Corporation is looking for different recruiting channels for its workforce of 360,000 employees. IBM’s view is that “new-collar” jobs in cybersecurity, cloud computing and other high-demand fields don’t necessarily require a traditional college degree. The company also has created one of the most developed digital badge portfolios for an employer, which both its workers and those outside IBM can earn, and it is adding more and different apprenticeship opportunities as well launching its own boot camp-style offerings. At the same time, IBM continues to partner with traditional colleges, particularly through its expanded work with community colleges.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/10/29/interview-ibm-official-about-companys-new-collar-push-look

By Jan Burns, Houston Chronicle
Online learning has become a powerhouse for today’s students. Each year improvements in technology and methods enhance the virtual classroom.
The use of interactive media, such as audio, video, and gamification, the use of gaming and gaming technology, are now widely used. Also popular are augmented and virtual reality (VR), where learners in a realistic environment can demonstrate they have mastered the required skills.
“Online learning continues to grow and outpace overall higher education enrollment,” said Dr. Dwight Smith, Lone Star College, vice chancellor of academic success. “Lone Star College has seen a 52 percent increase in distance-learning course enrollments from fall 2015 to fall 2019. Distance learning includes fully online courses and hybrid classes, which are a combination of face-to-face and online learning.”

https://www.chron.com/education/article/Online-learning-sees-advances-for-students-14562566.php

By Robert Sedgewick, Inside Higher Ed
Every college student needs a computer science course, and most need two or more. More and more educators are beginning to recognize this truth, but we are a long way from meeting the need. Should we require all college students to take a computer science course? That is perhaps debatable. But, without question, we need to make such courses available to all students.

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2019/10/28/why-every-student-should-study-computer-science-opinion

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Smartphones have been part of our lives for over a decade now. These little computers in our hands have put the world at our fingertips; from the ability to access Google Maps to tracing a health tech company that specializes in finding cures for rare diseases. Your mobile device is also an access point for mobile learning. Mobile learning, defined as education or training conducted using portable computing devices such as smartphones or tablet computers, is only viable if you give the following points serious consideration.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/6-ways-to-adapt-your-mobile-learning-strategy-to-the-needs-of-modern-learners/

Gerard A Postiglione, University World News

Universities are, however, facing the challenge of how to align their core missions with the rapid emergence of technological innovations such as artificial intelligence, big data and algorithms, facial recognition, biosensors, augmented reality, gamification, blockchain, cloud computing and other yet-to-be-created technological innovations. These can become disruptive, but they can also be tapped for their potential to improve how students are selected, how courses are offered, how student learning is programmed and evaluated, how higher finance is managed, how knowledge networks are organised, accessed and expanded, and how more graduates can be prepared for entrepreneurial jobs, smart cities and sustainable development.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20191023081415452

By Rebecca Koenig, EdSurge

So the professor developed a backchannel tool that allows students to submit questions online during class and receive real-time answers from a teaching assistant. Question-askers remain anonymous to fellow students, but Samson and his TA can see their names. As Samson suspected, students had plenty of inquiries when offered an alternative method to raise them. But to be sure the backchannel made a real difference, Samson teamed up with colleagues from the university’s school of education to study his tool. They found that the use of the backchannel dramatically increased student inquiry in class.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-10-24-backchannel-tools-let-students-ask-questions-anonymously-and-that-brings-more-voices

ByDaniel Uria, UPI

Decreases in state funding have pushed the cost of higher education to historic levels over the past decade, according to a new report by a budgetary think tank. The 22-page analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said Thursday the average cost for tuition at four-year public institutions in all 50 states increased by nearly 40 percent between 2008 and 2018, or a little over $2,700. Overall funding for two- and four-year state colleges and universities, meanwhile, decreased by $6.6 billion.

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/10/25/Study-Less-state-funding-has-hiked-college-tuition-by-nearly-40-since-2008-crisis/6241571963849/?sl=2

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Microlearning is a modern educational tool that provides learners with bite-sized pieces of content on their mobile devices, be it smartphones, tablets, or laptops. In today’s complex business environment and with technologies evolving all the time, employees must continue to learn and upskill. According to the Deloitte report The Future of Work, 47% of today’s jobs will be gone in ten years, and 67% of employees believe they must continuously reskill themselves to stay relevant in their careers. The fact that microlearning focuses on short learning content to cater to an audience whose attention span has shrunk doesn’t mean that that is all microlearning is about. Let’s clear up some misunderstandings about microlearning.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/5-microlearning-myths-you-need-to-stop-believing/

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

With thousands upon thousands of videos added to the service every hour, YouTube can be an unwieldy service to parse through for college professors looking for useful and applicable content. With that in mind, we decided to highlight the 10 best YouTube channels for college professors looking for an extra dose of material or inspiration.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/10-incredibly-useful-youtube-channels-for-professors/

Leah Belsky, Harvard Business Review

By harnessing emerging technologies, universities can reach beyond campus walls to empower diverse learners at global scale. It begins with embracing stackable, online learning, which provides flexibility and affordability that increases access to university curricula and allows students to engage in smaller chunks of learning before committing to larger degree programs. . At a more advanced level, embracing AI-powered adaptive learning will enable universities to personalize education for millions for more effective outcomes.

https://hbr.org/2019/10/where-online-learning-goes-next

BY RYAN CRAIG, the Hill

House Democrats last week rolled out a sweeping proposal to transform federal higher education policy. Among the proposals included in the bill is a provision that would make community college free nationwide, an expansion of federal Pell grants, and a new set of policies to hold schools more financially accountable for the outcomes of their graduates. The Democrats’ approach is one that reflects, and seeks to address, a troubling reality: Perhaps more than ever before in our history, too many Americans feel that the American Dream is out of reach.

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/466340-can-higher-ed-bill-reauthorization-close-americas-skills-gap

Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
Survey of four-year-college leaders finds they lack confidence in their institutions’ ability to adapt — and aren’t planning ahead in ways that would ensure success. The report, “The Transformation-Ready Higher Education Institution,” included a survey of nearly 500 senior administrators at four-year colleges and universities, roughly half of whom were presidents and chancellors. The survey sought to gauge the campus leaders’ assessments of the most significant challenges awaiting their institutions in the next three to five years, how prepared they felt to respond to those pressures, and whether their institutions were structured and managed with agility and responsiveness in mind.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/10/22/four-year-college-leaders-not-feeling-ready-future

By Hallie Busta, Education Dive

When it comes to strategic planning, just one in six colleges is looking a decade or more ahead, according to a new report from the American Council on Education (ACE), Huron and the Georgia Institute of Technology based on a survey of 495 leaders at four-year institutions. They cite several challenges ahead: more competition for new students, particularly from national universities investing heavily in online education; an increase in nontraditional students; less state and federal support; and declining public confidence in higher ed’s value. While they say their institutions are prepared to meet students’ changing needs, they are less confident in their ability to address new forms of competition or change how the public views higher ed.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/report-college-leaders-not-confident-they-can-beat-new-competition/565483/

Data Points, AACC

About 6 percent of all undergraduate students indicate that they are currently serving in the military, in the reserves or National Guard, or are a veteran of military service, according to data in the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study of 2015-16. For-profit college students have the highest rate of participation with nearly 14.1 percent being veterans, 3 percent on active duty and 0.2 percent in reserves/National Guard.

https://www.aacc.nche.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/DataPoints_Military-Students.pdf

Loren Katz, Vox

The reason it’s so hard to figure out who’s affected by AI grading is because there’s not just one program that’s being used. But they’re all made in basically the same way: First, an automated scoring company looks at how human graders behave. Then, the company trains an algorithm to make predictions as to how a human grader might score an essay based on that data. Depending on the program, those predictions can be consistently wrong in the same way. In other words, they can be biased. And once those algorithms are built, explains Reset host Arielle Duhaime-Ross, they can reproduce those biases at a huge scale.

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/20/20921354/ai-algorithms-essay-writing

Marco Annunziata, Forbes

Would you trust an Artificial Intelligence (AI) to tell you how to become more effective and successful at your job? How would you feel if you knew your HR department uses AI to determine whether you are leadership material? Or that an AI just suggested to your boss that she should treat you better or else you might soon quit and join a competitor—well before the thought of jumping ship entered your mind? Meet Yva, introduced by her creator David Yang in this fascinating podcast discussion.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcoannunziata/2019/10/20/ai-can-help-youand-your-bossmaximize-your-potential-will-you-trust-it/

Heather Long, Washington Post

As humanities majors slump to the lowest level in decades, calls are coming from surprising places for a revival. Some prominent economists are making the case for why it still makes a lot of sense to major (or at least take classes) in humanities alongside more technical fields. Nobel Prize winner Robert Shiller’s new book “Narrative Economics” opens with him reminiscing about an enlightening history class he took as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan. He wrote that what he learned about the Great Depression was far more useful in understanding the period of economic and financial turmoil than anything he learned in his economic courses.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/10/19/worlds-top-economists-just-made-case-why-we-still-need-english-majors/