Educational Technology

by Kulmeet Bawa, ET Rise

Much of today’s established working population comes from an era that offered only static learning using limited resources. Most of us had to be self-motivated and acquire skills on the job to emerge as high-performers. The modern generation of learners, on the other hand, use technology to shape their careers in a more deliberate and thoughtful manner by signing up on websites and apps such as Coursera, edX, Byju et al. Learning has become an immersive experience for them.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small-biz/startups/newsbuzz/education-needs-innovation-to-keep-it-fresh-can-social-learning-environments-provide-the-boost/articleshow/63242961.cms

By Amelia Harper, Education Dive
Online Advanced Placement classes, provided through organizations like the Global Teacher Project, offer a way to expand access for the more that 7,100 rural school districts in the U.S. that find it difficult to offer rigorous pre-college courses to their students, explains an article produced by the Hechinger Report for KQED. Online courses, either through consortiums, through video-conference classes with other schools who share an instructor, through virtual academies, or through pre-produced online AP offerings, can offer students the opportunity to learn more advanced material and a chance at reducing college costs for those who pass AP exams.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/online-ap-courses-offer-expanded-options-to-rural-schools/518791/

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

If you’re on the hunt for a new job in education technology, or just simply curious about the opportunities that might be out there, you should explore some new roles. Whether you’re looking for a job, looking to hire, or just looking, consider checking out the following resources in education technology career building.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/10-resources-for-finding-edtech-jobs/

BY GEORGIA MARIANI, eCampus News
Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio has been a leader in the use of data and analytics for years, thanks to the efforts of Karl Konsdorf, Sinclair’s director of research, analytics, and reporting. Konsdorf leads a team responsible for database administration, institutional research, report development, and data quality. His group helps Sinclair understand and gain insight into student success and student outcomes. Recently, Konsdorf deployed a new data-visualization strategy that allows users to conduct interactive reporting, visual data discovery, and self-service analytics. Enrollment managers, department heads, deans, and advisers can interact with reports, collaborate on insights, and slice and dice data to make proactive decisions about enrollment, retention, performance, and degree completion. For example, what is enrollment this year compared with the same time last year?

5 tips to empower users with data visualization

BY DANIAL JAMEEL AND HAIDER ALI, eCampus News

Before they set foot in their first class, incoming college students face a maze of requirements and resources that will be critical to their success. So-called “student supports” abound. Yet forty percent of first-year students don’t return the following year, and a growing number report information overload as they navigate campus life amid newfound independence. Perhaps with good reason. Today’s students are “over” email—and university websites just aren’t intuitive to the touchscreen generation. The nine in 10 undergraduates who own smartphones are probably familiar with the xkcd about it. College-aged Americans check their devices more than 150 times per day. So it should be no surprise that a growing body of research suggests that mobile solutions can play a critical role in enhancing the student experience.

5 questions to ask before your university goes mobile

by Missy Keenan, DesMoines Register

Earning an associate degree and starting college as a junior as Michels did is far from typical. But more high schools are offering dual-credit and Advanced Placement classes than ever before — and more students are taking them. Out of about 390 high schools in Iowa, 213 offered at least one AP class in 2016, according to The College Board. In 2016, 13,267 Iowa students took at least one AP exam. Mary Michels graduated from Northeast Iowa Community College before she graduated from West Central High School, thank to advanced placement classes.  All Des Moines Public high schools offer AP and dual-credit courses. Many juniors and seniors earn at least some college credit in high school, and enrollment in AP courses has more than quadrupled in the last few years, according to the DMPS website.

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/education/2018/03/08/she-graduatedfrom-junior-college-before-high-school-how-high-school-student-graduated-junior-college/387328002/

by Claudio Sanchez, NPR

Create a new, online community college for people in the workforce who’ve been shut out of higher education. It’s the brainchild of Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor for the California Community Colleges. He’s a product of California’s community college system — and now its chancellor. He says it’s a system that urgently needs to re-think how it delivers the courses students need, when and where they need them. It’s a fascinating idea, yet one that faces hurdles — not the least of which is the cost to get this new system up and running. Gov. Jerry Brown loves Oakley’s idea and has proposed $100 million in startup funding in his budget, which state legislators have yet to approve. I spoke with Oakley about his idea and why he thinks its time has come.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/09/589113650/reinventing-community-college-to-reach-millions-of-workers-online

by Digital Marketing Institute

As microlearning begins to prove successful among employers, the educational sector is now recognizing that the way people learn is changing, while the platforms they learn on are also evolving. Focused on specific learning outcomes, microlearning is a means of teaching and delivering content to learners in small, succinct bursts. It offers a way for learners to be in control of what and when they learn. For educators looking to offer working professionals with valuable skill-honing opportunities, microlearning offers a way to stand out from the crowd. In this article, we look at 7 reasons microlearning can successfully upskill graduates and professionals.

https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/the-insider/06-03-18-7-reasons-to-use-microlearning-in-higher-education

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Educators can have a challenging time adapting their teaching style to match every student, especially when there are students with learning disabilities in their classroom. A learning disability presents a unique obstacle to traditional teaching methods. It can be difficult in a contemporary classroom for teachers to give students the attention and instruction they really need. Now, they might be able to receive that instruction through the use of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is rapidly growing more useful by the day. Researchers are developing cognitive systems that can help to support those with disabilities in the unique ways that suit them. These AI programs may be able to present material in a fresh way that can help students to better understand independent of teacher instruction.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/using-artificial-intelligence-help-students-learning-disabilities-learn/

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

A new report proposes a framework by which open educational resource initiatives — and particularly those promulgated by for-profit organizations — can be measured. “Toward a Sustainable OER Ecosystem: The Case for OER Stewardship” has three purposes according to its authors: to help make sure “the OER community’s values can be maintained as the movement scales”; to gauge the practices of “new entrants” to the OER field (especially those out to make money from it); and to build educator confidence in participating in OER, including those who contribute their own materials and may be uncertain regarding its use by for-profit publishers.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/03/06/new-framework-offers-way-to-validate-oer-commitment-sincerity.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

FERPA protects the privacy of students’ education records and the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) they contain. The federal law gives parents and students over 18 certain rights: to be able to “inspect and review” the education records; to seek amendments to the records; and to have some control over the disclosure of PII from the records. FERPA also prohibits districts from disclosing the records or the PII they contain without prior, written consent from the parent or eligible student, unless the disclosure meets an exception to FERPA’s general consent requirement.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/02/23/student-privacy-in-surveillance-videos-standards-for-disclosure-in-flux.aspx

by Abby Norman, Futurism

Donald Highgate, director of research at Superdielectrics Ltd. and his team have set out to make that vision a reality. Highgate’s team has created a material that amps up the potential of supercapacitors – devices that can both charge up and release their energy rapidly.  Their capacitance for storing energy is “super” because it’s both electrostatic and electromechanical. Therefore, supercapacitors (also called “ultracapacitors”) are kind of like a mashup of normal capacitors and a normal battery. Highgate has teamed up with researchers from Bristol University and Surrey University to create a supercapacitor that’s not just better than traditional batteries, but that could one day be superior to lithium-ion batteries. So how do they plan to do it? Here are four things to know.

4 Things to Know About the Gadget That Will Charge Devices in Seconds

by JENNIFER LEWINGTON, Globe and Mail

Last fall, University of Alberta school of business accounting professor Michael Maier experimented with his traditional lecture delivery, giving students the opportunity to watch short videos on technical topics outside of class time.   His use of videos is one example of how business professors at U of A – and elsewhere – are experimenting with technology to imagine variations on the traditional lecture format. On mid-term exams last fall, the class average in his accounting course was 82 per cent – about 10 percentage points higher than average scores in the lecture-based classes he has taught over the past eight years.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/business-education/professor-on-online-activities-they-get-students-talking-more-and-me-talking-less/article38232748/

By Ellie Bothwell, Times Higher Education
One in three students globally is enrolled in private higher education institutions, according to research that reveals the huge growth and wide reach of private providers.  The analysis, the first study based on comprehensive data on the size and shape of private higher education internationally, finds that private institutions have 56.7 million students on their books, or 32.9 percent of the world’s enrollment. Times Higher Education logoWhile the U.S. has historically towered over the rest of the world in terms of the size of its private sector, the proportion of students in the country in private higher education stands at 27.5 percent, lower than the global average, and it now accounts for only a tenth of global private enrollment.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/08/survey-finds-global-boom-private-higher-education-enrollments

by Roz Edward, Michigan Chronicle
Across Michigan, schools such as Michigan Connections Academy (MICA) and Great Lakes Cyber Academy (GLCA)—statewide, tuition-free, online public schools—are meeting the growing demand from families interested in online learning solutions for their students. Both online schools are now enrolling students for the upcoming 2018-19 academic year. “A few decades ago, the majority of students were working toward jobs on assembly lines in manufacturing facilities,” said Heather Ballien, superintendent of GLCA. “Thus, schools were designed to meet that need, teaching a mass number of students and expecting them all to learn in the same way. Today, the economic environment is such that students can go on to hold countless jobs in myriad areas of expertise, and education must be flexible in order to prepare students for whatever they choose to pursue.”

Virtual schools open for enrollment in Detroit

by Patrick Atack, the PIE News

Online learning provider Coursera, which works with university partners around the world, is launching six new fully online degree courses. The news comes just weeks after FutureLearn, another provider of global online degrees, also announced an expansion of its full degree offerings.

Coursera joins online degree expansionists with six new degrees

by JACKIE MADER, Hechinger Report

Inside a rural high school, five Advanced Placement physics students furiously scribbled notes about a video of a Yale University professor speaking more than 1,200 miles away. With textbooks open, they watched a lecture about Newton’s Laws on a giant screen, while their classroom teacher simultaneously offered examples of those laws in action. When the lecture ended, they had yet another to chance to learn: A physics video chat with their tutor, a sophomore physics major at Yale. The unconventional flurry of both in-person and virtual academics in a school that had never before offered AP physics is part of a broader experiment that experts say could herald the future of education, especially for rural schools.

http://hechingerreport.org/can-online-learning-level-ap-playing-field-rural-kids/

by Mark Liebereman, Inside Higher Ed

Digital alternatives to traditional end-of-semester student evaluations seem more numerous by the day. One new tool hopes to advance that landscape with the help of artificial intelligence.  Hubert, launched last fall and currently in use by more than 600 instructors worldwide, appears to students as a chat bot that asks questions about the quality of the class and the teaching. The conversational messenger format is designed to make students feel more comfortable sharing honest praise and criticism, and the low amount of required effort allows instructors to collect feedback at several points throughout the semester.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/03/07/hubert-ai-helps-instructors-sort-and-process-student-evaluation

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

What the lack of technology means for low-income students is that, in addition to trailing in academic achievement, they are missing out on opportunities to learn the technical skills they will need to succeed in a highly competitive global workforce. Having limited access to Internet-connected computers means that they don’t have time to tinker or explore. They don’t have time to practice basic skills like typing or writing emails, or more complex skills like researching or coding. To compound the issue, teachers in low-income schools don’t use technology as effectively or as often as teachers in high-income schools.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/digital-inequity-mean-low-income-children/

by E Kumar Sharma, Business Today

No discussion in information technology today is complete without reference to artificial intelligence or AI, in quickspeak. Needless to say, experts in AI are in great demand. Among them, Andrew Ng is often referred to as a go-to guru on AI. Andrew, wears several hats. He is the co-founder of Coursera, which offers online courses. He is also an adjunct professor at the Stanford University and was formerly the head of Baidu AI Group, and Google Brain. He calls AI, the new electricity. In response to an email from Business Today, he explains why and shares his thoughts on what companies need to do.

https://www.businesstoday.in/opinion/interviews/ai-is-the-new-electricity-says-courseras-andrew-ng/story/271963.html

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

The demand for information technology workers is growing, and the available supply isn’t keeping pace. With the retirement of the baby boomer generation in full swing, worker shortages are only going to be more apparent in the year to come. And, if the information technology field can’t attract a more diverse population, the field is going to suffer.  Tech companies are generally not known for diversity. The IT workforce is predominantly white or Asian males. Even though many companies announce diversity initiatives on a regular basis, they can only hire from the worker pool that is available. And that pool is created based on their choices in higher education.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/need-diversity-information-technology/