Techno-News Blog

Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

Far too often we begin planning a class with the content, pedagogy, technology and outcomes in mind — without first researching the students. When teaching, it seems logical to begin with the content or the pedagogy and then apply technologies to meet the outcomes we see, yet this misses the most important foundational step in the process. It is to get to know the students who have enrolled in your program in the past or for whom you are designing the class. We cannot make assumptions. Over time the characteristics, knowledge and aspirations of enrolling students change. Especially today, with a range of career changers, adult learners and online learners from different regions, continents and cultures, we must be vigilant to monitor them to make sure we are meeting their needs.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/know-your-students?

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Education Dive

The Trump administration on Monday released its $66.6 billion budget proposal for the U.S. Department of Education, which would slash the agency’s funding by about 8%. Among its provisions, the budget plan would eliminate subsidized federal student loans and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. It would also open Pell Grants to students in nontraditional, short-term programs and to certain students who are incarcerated. Higher ed experts say the cuts are largely familiar from previous budget cycles and have little chance of passing Congress.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/trump-returns-to-cuts-in-higher-ed-budget-proposal/572049/

Greg Iacurci, CNBC

Firms like Ford, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Sony Electronics, Sprint, Toyota, Twitter, Visa and Walmart are exploring, and in some cases implementing, apprenticeship programs for careers in technology. Tech apprenticeships offer a new way for Americans without a college degree or tech background to land a job in the field without going back to school.  The average student loan balance is around $30,000, up from $10,000 in the early 1990s.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/07/how-a-walmart-apprenticeship-can-help-those-without-degrees-land-a-job.html

JILL BARSHAY, The Hechinger Report

f you want to understand how online degrees are shaking up traditional colleges and universities, look at Pennsylvania. In January 2020, the state’s 14 community colleges signed an unusual agreement with a private nonprofit university far outside Pennsylvania’s borders to encourage students to complete their bachelor’s degrees online.

https://hechingerreport.org/online-giant-threatens-pennsylvania-colleges/

Susan Grajek and the 2019–2020 EDUCAUSE IT Issues Panel

The EDUCAUSE 2020 Top 10 IT Issues describe the start of the higher education drive to digital transformation, as colleges and universities work to simplify, sustain, and innovate. Colleges and universities are working to unmake old practices and structures that have become inefficient and are preparing to use technology and data to better understand and support students and to become more student-centric. They are working to fund technology and to sustainably manage and secure data and privacy. Higher education institutions are applying data and technology to innovate student outcomes and experiences. Finally, the role of the CIO is undergoing its own transformation in order to advance institutional priorities through the use of technology.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/1/top-10-it-issues-2020-the-drive-to-digital-transformation-begins

EDUCAUSE

This research examines technological investments institutions will spend the most time implementing, planning, and tracking in 2020, as well as the related trends that could influence institutional IT strategy. The trends and technologies reviewed in this report were identified through an EDUCAUSE survey conducted in the summer of 2019 and completed by 312 US institutions.

https://library.educause.edu/resources/2020/1/higher-educations-2020-trend-watch-and-top-10-strategic-technologies

Penn State University

Funded primarily by Provost Nick Jones with support from Penn State World Campus, University Libraries, Teaching and Learning with Technology, and Barnes & Noble, the initial investment of approximately $245,000 has saved students $4.8 million in potential expenses on textbooks and other course materials. The success from these initiatives has enabled an ambitious three-year plan to be extended to invest an additional $600,000.

https://news.psu.edu/story/607328/2020/02/07/academics/open-affordable-textbook-efforts-save-students-48-million

By Eric Cravey Times West Virginian

The Federal Communications Commission established the new Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to efficiently fund the deployment of high-speed broadband networks in rural America. Through a two-phase reverse auction mechanism, the FCC will direct up to $20.4 billion over 10 years to finance up to gigabit speed broadband networks in unserved rural areas, connecting millions more American homes and businesses to digital opportunity.

https://www.timeswv.com/news/fcc-launches-b-rural-broadband-fund/article_377adea8-456d-11ea-8914-9be970ade0c1.html

By Hallie Busta, Education Dive
The election could be a key deadline for complex nonprofit conversions and change of control applications, and colleges are “at the wire,” one analyst said. The potential for the November elections to shift the balance of power in the legislative and executive branches makes this year important for operators of for-profit colleges. Already, 2020 has seen the continuation of the sector’s years-long shift into new business models, at least partly in response to stricter oversight from the Obama administration. One way is by selling their colleges or spinning them off as nonprofit entities and then moving on to function as an ed tech services provider — in some cases for their former institutions.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/3-trends-impacting-major-for-profit-college-operators-in-2020/571517/

JW Marshall, Market Scale

“eLearning” can be used to engage and teach employees, as well. Jennifer Stringer, founder of Square 32, joins host JW Marshall to talk about the future of eLearning and how her company combines marketing and education to empower organizations. Stringer said that, if “companies want to have engaged employees, in order to do that successfully, you have to provide eLearning opportunities.”  eLearning is becoming increasingly important in the business world whether companies implement it in their organization or not. Stringer said “it is important to educate your employees to keep them from leaving your company for other opportunities.”

https://marketscale.com/industries/education-technology/the-future-of-elearning-combining-marketing-and-education-to-empower-organizations/

Adam Looney, David Wessel, and Kadija Yilla, Brookings

Students loans are now the second largest slice of household debt after mortgages, bigger than credit card debt. About 42 million Americans (about one in every eight) have student loans, so this is a potent issue among voters, particularly younger ones. About 75% of student loan borrowers took loans to go to two- or four-year colleges; they account for about half of all student loan debt outstanding. The remaining 25% of borrowers went to graduate school; they account for the other half of the debt outstanding. Most undergrads finish college with little or modest debt: About 30% of undergrads graduate with no debt and about 25% with less than $20,000.

https://www.brookings.edu/policy2020/votervital/who-owes-all-that-student-debt-and-whod-benefit-if-it-were-forgiven/

Linda Jacobson, Education Dive

Funding, work-based learning, industry-recognized credentials, and access or equity were among the career and technical education issues states tackled during 2019, according to a new state policy review from Advance CTE, the Association for Career and Technical Education and the Education Commission of the States. Forty-one states, for example, took action related to funding for CTE, including more spending on work-based learning, dual enrollment and early college programs. . States also have been creating four-year plans for federal funding through the Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Century Act, which is expected to provide close to $1.3 billion annually for CTE. Those plans are due this spring.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/report-states-enacted-more-than-200-cte-policies-in-2019/571357/

Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

Far too often we begin planning a class with the content, pedagogy, technology and outcomes in mind — without first researching the students. When teaching, it seems logical to begin with the content or the pedagogy and then apply technologies to meet the outcomes we see, yet this misses the most important foundational step in the process. It is to get to know the students who have enrolled in your program in the past or for whom you are designing the class. We cannot make assumptions. Over time the characteristics, knowledge and aspirations of enrolling students change. Especially today, with a range of career changers, adult learners and online learners from different regions, continents and cultures, we must be vigilant to monitor them to make sure we are meeting their needs.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/know-your-students?

Education Dive

State attorneys general were left out when the U.S. Department of Education rewrote its state authorization rules for distance education. The department “didn’t feel attorneys general had a strong role to play in the potential regulations compared with other groups overseeing colleges,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg early last year. The new rules expressly forbid states from enforcing laws that go beyond the requirements of any interstate agreement they belong to that authorizes out-of-state institutions to offer distance education in their state. Because every state but California is part of such an agreement, most state laws on distance learning will be void when the rules go into effect July 1.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/new-regulations-limit-states-oversight-of-online-colleges-how-will-they-r/571397/

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Your key goal when it comes to making an eLearning course rigorous enough to be worthwhile should be to balance that with an attractive presentation that makes learners want to work hard. Loading up a bunch of dense concepts and content with hopes of testing them on it doesn’t fit the bill anymore. That may work, to an extent, in a lecture format in person, but there are too many factors diverting an eLearner’s attention for this to make any sense online. Ensure your testing has weight. Make sure that you don’t gift your students the answers in lieu of having them figure those out on their own. However, make the learning process to get to that testing entertaining enough for them to care. Utilize multimedia to your advantage. Create textual references and connections that both challenge them as readers and force them to think about the concepts on new terms.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/is-your-elearning-course-rigorous-enough/

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Education Dive

Colleges awarded roughly the same number of associate degrees and certificates combined (1.95 million) in 2016 as bachelor’s degrees (1.92 million), according to a new report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce​.  Though the authors describe the four-year degree as the “gold standard” for stable employment, they found that depending on field of study, workers with an associate degree can earn more than someone with a bachelor’s. In some cases, certificate holders can outearn those with a bachelor’s. The center’s analysis highlights the growing focus on alternative credentials, which comes as colleges look for ways to make their programs available to a wider range of prospective students than before.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/report-students-earn-associate-degrees-certificates-at-equal-rates-to-bac/571344/

Technology Review
Google has released a neural-network powered chatbot called Meena that it claims is better than any other chatbot out there. Data slurp: Meena was trained on a whopping 341GB of public social-media chatter—8.5 times as much data as OpenAI’s GPT-2. Google says Meena can talk about pretty much anything, and can even make up (bad) jokes. Google says it won’t be releasing a public demo until it has vetted the model for safety and bias, which is probably a good thing. When Microsoft released its chatbot Tay on Twitter in 2016 it started spewing racist, misogynistic invective within hours.

https://www.technologyreview.com/f/615118/google-says-its-new-chatbot-meena-is-the-best-in-the-world/

Ray Schroeder Interviewed by Helix Education

“I will begin with a caveat,” Ray told us. “As we get into this area, we have to be aware of privacy rights and potential issues.” If a student is willing to share background information, then quantum can take control of designing programs. Even while the course is underway, it can adapt to the student’s achievements and abilities as well as backfill where they might be a little foggy. “This requires developing two pools of data sets,” Ray said. “Those of the students and those of engagement. Then of course, creating a relational database for the outcomes.”

https://www.helixeducation.com/resources/uncategorized/quantum-computing-will-personalize-higher-education/

Malcolm Brown, et al:  EDUCAUSE Review

From a teaching and learning perspective on the 2020 Top 10 IT Issues, integration is the key theme. This theme consists of multiple layers: technology integration, certainly, but also integrations of cross-organizational collaboration, leadership, learning ecosystems, and learner and instructor success. For 2020, integration emerges as the single most important avenue leading to overall institutional academic success and also as the critical prerequisite for institutional transformation.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/1/teaching-and-learning-perspectives-on-the-educause-2020-top-10-it-issues

Rick Seltzer, Inside Higher Ed
More than 40 percent of trustees are now very concerned about the future of higher education, up 14 points from last year, according to a survey. Trustees have grown significantly more concerned about the future of higher education in the last year, according to new polling released today that points to financial sustainability and the prices students pay as top sources of anxiety. And trustees aren’t just worried about the sector as a whole. A majority are also concerned about the future financial sustainability of their own institutions or systems.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/29/trustees-growing-increasingly-worried-about-future-higher-education-us-polling-shows

By IBL News

Stanford University joined the edX consortium as an institutional member, contributing with a portfolio of 11 courses ranging from computer science and algorithms to humanities classes in areas such as history and government.  Stanford University’s supporting role at the creation of edX and its open-source code—Open edX—in 2013, was crucial. However, the institution refrained to join the edX consortium, even criticizing the governance of Open edX through an elaborated report.

https://iblnews.org/stanford-university-joins-the-edx-consortium-seven-years-later/