Techno-News Blog

LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News

Students spoke candidly about what’s working–and what isn’t–during online learning in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. A global pandemic can change learning, but it can’t stop it–and during a virtual EDUCAUSE conference session, educators heard directly from students how to best meet student needs during online learning. Moderated by Kate Miffitt, director for innovation in California State University’s Office of the Chancellor, and with questions led by Michael Berman, chief information officer with California State University’s Office of the Chancellor, the discussion covered student engagement, mental health and well-being, online course structure, and much more.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2020/10/30/9-student-observations-about-online-learning/

Michael Horowitz, Campus Technology

Expect institutions to put budget toward in-house media teams, specifically in the realm of video production. Courses that are traditionally hands-on, such as labs and workshops, will require high-quality video to translate effectively into a digital medium…. Other campus resources — libraries, tutoring services, mental health counseling — will also need to be built out in virtual environments. Broadly speaking, the experience of attending a school online will need to be every bit as substantive as attending live.

https://campustechnology.com/Articles/2020/10/20/COVID19s-Lasting-Effects-on-the-Higher-Education-Landscape.aspx

Marguerite J Dennis, University World News
In Wikipedia, lifelong learning is defined as ‘the ongoing, voluntary and self-motivated pursuit of knowledge either for personal or professional reasons’. The definition recognises that learning is not confined to childhood or to the classroom but takes place throughout life and in a range of situations. The Oxford dictionary defines lifelong learning as the practice of continuing to learn throughout one’s life to foster the continuous development and skills needed for employment and personal fulfilment. Both definitions recognise the need for continuous learning throughout one’s life.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20201027103637927

Max Auguliaro, Stroud Courier

I always felt that online classes, as opposed to in person classes, would be harder because the lack of in-person instruction makes it harder to connect and communicate. This is personally helpful to me because I know I need that little push in order to get a lot of my schoolwork done and I know I am not the only one who works like this. Online classes also require a lot more attention than in-person classes for the same reasons. Attention that I could otherwise use for other things, including my hobbies, and my much harder classes.

http://thestroudcourier.com/2020/10/29/a-personal-experience-adjusting-to-online-learning/

Jessica Kisluk, WICZ

Students are a few months into their online learning for the fall semester and many are feeling the effects of online learning fatigue. Binghamton University Assistant Director for Student Transition and Success and Success Coach Julia Milewski says students are saying the biggest challenges are having online classes back to back and staying engaged. This is not only with Zoom courses, but online assignments as well.

http://www.wicz.com/story/42838787/how-to-cope-with-online-learning-fatigue

Eric Griffith, PC Magazine
It should be drilled into you by now: Use antivirus software. These programs—from free tools and paid antivirus software up to major security suites—keep tabs on your Windows PC with scans, real-time monitoring, even heuristic analysis of files and processes so new threats can be identified. It’s imperative, especially with Windows, that you have antivirus installed. If you suspect or know you’re already infected with a computer virus on your Windows 10 PC, what do you do? Follow these steps and you may be back in working order in no time.

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-remove-malware-from-your-pc

Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
Survey finds undergrads feel modestly more engaged — especially when they think their professors have made an effort — and are somewhat likelier to continue their educations. Undergraduates who are studying online this fall rate their learning experience as modestly better than what they encountered last spring — with greater levels of satisfaction among students who see their instructors taking steps to understand and engage them, according to a new survey of 3,400 undergraduates in the U.S. and Canada.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/11/13/student-impressions-online-learning-improve-modestly-fall

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Education Dive

About 75% of private colleges and 60% of public colleges expect net tuition revenue will decline in fiscal year 2021, according to Moody’s Investors Service. That’s compared to 39% and 54%, respectively, that said so last year. The credit rating agency partially attributes the losses to increased financial aid and pandemic-driven enrollment downturns, especially among international students. Most colleges have suffered financially this year, but Moody’s found that small, private colleges are most likely to predict net tuition will decrease in 2021.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/more-colleges-project-tuition-revenue-will-decline-report/588045/

Dutch Godshalk, Temple Now

As virtual learning continues to keep students in their homes and physically distanced from their peers, many Temple professors are finding clever ways to recapture the intimacy and community of a traditional classroom. Betsy Leebron Tutelman is one of those professors. Tutelman, senior vice provost for strategic communications and a professor of media studies and production in the Klein College of Media and Communication, has been hosting Zoom coffeehouses for her Media Studies and Production (MSP) classes, providing a loose and informal environment where her students can more easily get to know each other.

https://news.temple.edu/news/2020-10-28/virtual-coffeehouses-create-community-online-learners

Chris Westfall, Forbes

How important is upskilling and leadership training? The World Economic Forum reports that 42% of the core skills required for jobs will change by 2022. And many of those changes are already in evidence today. Fostering a safe and successful recovery means expanding access to the digital skills that can get people working again – and make companies more efficient. Clearly, upskilling and training is vital to the future of work – and to your future career success.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chriswestfall/2020/10/28/how-to-upskill-corporate-training-and-development-the-4-missing-links-in-online-learning/#3e02e4982e9c

Hannah Juneau, Lion’s Roar – Southeastern Louisiana University

Noel Milton, an instructor of biological sciences, believes that the biggest advantage of online classes is that she is able to teach her students time management skills. However, Milton mentioned that the biggest challenges with online classes are handling the workload and not being able to maintain the same relationship with her students.

http://lionsroarnews.com/24667/instructors-perspectives-on-distance-learning/on-campus/

MarketScale
No one needs reminding that we are in the year 2020, yet we continue to offer education and certifications in virtually the same manner as we have for millennia. Should we really continue to argue whether this is the superior teaching and learning method? What if, instead, we acknowledge that online education is here to stay–and that the charge for education professionals is to ensure that this method of instructional delivery is at least equal to traditional face-to-face instruction? Here are the top five things educational institutions can do to make online education more effective—and valuable—today, tomorrow, and into the future.

https://marketscale.com/industries/education-technology/5-ways-online-education-more-effective/

John Richards and Chris Dede, EDUCAUSE Review

Profound changes in underlying technology (digitization), in combination with root and branch organizational adaptation (reengineering, or what is often called “digitalization”), have altered the global, socioeconomic environment. These forces of change and adaptation have produced what we are calling “the synergistic digital economy.” Students and workers in the synergistic digital economy no longer expect that their jobs will represent a progression through a single career during a lifetime. They instead expect that their current job or career will, at some point, disappear or evolve, forcing them to prepare for novel jobs in several new careers at unpredictable points throughout their lives. The requirement to prepare for a lifetime of changing employment is not optional.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/10/the-60-year-curriculum-a-strategic-response-to-a-crisis

Philippa Hardman, University World News

For institutions choosing to invest strategically in hybrid or more flexible learning to enhance what they can deliver to students and the overall performance of the university, learning design becomes a key part of the process. The objective is to use technology to create an environment in which students feel seamlessly connected to their peers and educators. To achieve this requires a systematic and imaginative approach to redesigning course modules. Simply migrating established practices onto digital platforms without adapting the design and delivery approaches is not enough.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200928134607579

Hallie Busta, Education Dive

Two startups run by ed tech experts are tailoring videoconferencing software for use in virtual college classrooms, but their approaches differ. The limits of traditional videoconferencing software in education applications have been on display in recent months. Two companies emerging to address the need for tailoring are taking divergent approaches: tweaking an existing platform with add-ons or creating a new company entirely. Dan Avida, CEO and  his spouse – Daphne Koller (co-founder of Coursera) – are launching Engageli, a company borne from the pandemic, is taking the latter approach. ClassEDU, whose co-founder and CEO Michael Chasen — who also co-founded and led Blackboard — cited Zoom’s wide uptake and scalability as reasons creating an add-on for the software, rather than building a separate platform, was “a no-brainer.”

https://www.educationdive.com/news/these-companies-are-redesigning-zoom-university/587876/

Michael Horowitz, Campus Technology

Higher ed’s response to the novel coronavirus has exposed issues of pedagogy, equity and more — but also offers opportunities to reshape the future.  Earlier this year, as the news of coronavirus began spreading as rapidly as the virus itself, colleges across the country had to quickly decide the most effective and, more importantly, safest course of action for their students and faculty. This fall, while some colleges pivoted to e-learning, others sought to create a hybrid model as a handful of students returned to campus. While we hope these uncertain times are not long-lasting, our response is sure to alter the landscape of higher education moving forward.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/10/20/covid19s-lasting-effects-on-the-higher-education-landscape.aspx

GARY MICHELSON AND HAL PLOTKIN, EdSource

Would you pay for a textbook when you could get a better one for free? The answer coming from many college administrators might surprise you. By embracing a new “embedded in tuition” textbook-pricing scheme and ignoring the benefits of getting textbooks through a freely accessible digital library, many college administrators are burdening students with unnecessary costs while also sacrificing an opportunity for tech-enabled collaborative innovations. But there is a much less expensive alternative. Open educational resources are teaching and learning resources that reside in the public domain or are released with an intellectual property license that allows their free use and, often, re-purposing as well as continuous improvement with thousands of educators around the globe contributing to their content.

https://edsource.org/2020/transform-higher-education-make-textbooks-free/641561

Lara Sorokanich, Fast Company

In recent years, much of the investment in online learning has focused on companies such as Coursera, which offer users affordable college courses and professional development. While these more traditional education platforms have seen huge spikes in users and funding during the pandemic, consumers have also demonstrated a growing appetite for online classes geared toward entertainment and enrichment. MasterClass is adding more content, while Airbnb and Instagram Live have emerged as learning hubs, with influential instructors teaching everything from dance to poetry writing to cocktail making.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90560954/coursera-saw-a-398-increase-in-users-between-march-and-april-heres-how-online-learning-is-taking-off-across-platforms

Associated Press

This is an even faster acceleration of digitization than the early days of the pandemic in the spring when content creation rose 230% compared with the previous year. The rapid growth is occurring globally. Content creation in the Americas has grown 767% year over year, while Europe is up by 848%, Asia is up by 930% and Australia is up by 293% during this same year-over-year period. As professors juggle their increasing workload, they are using more of their weekends to create asynchronous classes. Over the summer, professors uploaded six times more classroom content uploads to Panopto on Saturdays compared to the previous year. Sundays saw an increase of eight times more content uploads from last year. The number of professors working on weekends grew 463% this summer compared to last year.

https://www.oaoa.com/news/business/university-professor-workloads-spike-as-fall-courses-are-delivered-online/article_b955d936-f316-56e3-8430-c2051ae2a9ed.html

Lucy Foster, Entrepreneur
The most popular courses on Coursera give an idea of what the world wants to learn. The most well-enrolled MOOCs – or Massive Open Online Courses – tend to be in business or technology. Online courses to improve time management and remote work are also on the rise.  Coursera has released its 10 most popular titles as of 2019 , which are a good indication of where the world of work is heading. There are no prizes for guessing digital skills and artificial intelligence, which occupy seven of the top 10 spots.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/358518

Registered Nursing

RegisteredNursing.org discussed the future of nursing education with department chairs, leaders, and faculty from top nursing schools and they tend to agree – students can expect more online learning and high-tech virtual simulations from nursing school in 2021. Nursing education leaders from renowned schools such as Johns Hopkins University, Baylor University, and University of San Francisco, as well as from regional schools such as Lakeland Community College and Augusta Technical College, all weighed in when asked, “In light of the changes that nursing students have seen in 2020, what will nursing school look like in 2021?”

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/leaders-from-top-nursing-schools-predict-more-online-learning-simulations-in-2021-301150572.html