Educational Technology

By David Raths, Campus Technology
Drawing on the experience of eight public universities involved in a multi-year adaptive learning pilot program, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) has created a six-step guide for implementing adaptive courseware. APLU hopes to provide colleges and universities with a roadmap that runs from initial planning through scaling up the use of adaptive courseware across a campus. The idea behind adaptive courseware is to provide a personalized digital learning experience for each student. Courses are often delivered in a blended format that includes direct instruction from a professor who is able to tailor his or her own teaching based on student progress data that the adaptive courseware provides.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/10/29/aplu-develops-6-step-guide-for-implementing-adaptive-courseware.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
The Khan Academy has launched a new series of videos focused on civics for students in K-12 and higher education — and anybody else interested in learning how government works in the United States. The videos feature academy Founder Sal Khan as well as news media celebrity and presidential debate moderator John Dickerson.  The videos feature lively conversations about U.S. government, politics and history, including little-known anecdotes from the nation’s past.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/10/25/khan-academy-takes-on-civics-and-us-history.aspx

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

American colleges and universities that have yet to figure out a plan to comply with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation still have time to act, attendees at Educause’s annual conference heard Wednesday. Speaking at a conference session called GDPR: Where Are We Now? Esteban Morin, a lawyer at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, told university IT leaders to “not panic” if they are just starting to develop a plan to ensure their institution is compliant with the E.U. data protection and privacy rules.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/11/01/eu-slow-enforce-new-data-privacy-rules-colleges-told-not-panic-about-lack-compliance

By David Nagel, THE Journal
Nintendo is working with the nonprofit Institute of Play to bring its popular Labo kits for Nintendo Switch to classrooms in North America. The Institute of Play is developing STEAM curriculum and a teacher guide for Labo and is seeking classrooms to participate. It’s already running a pilot in New York. Labo is a making and invention system for the Nintendo Switch gaming platform that brings mixed-reality capabilities to the platform, allowing users to build interactive devices out of cardboard and other materials that can not only interact with games and content on the screen but can be interacted with. For example, users can build a car out of cardboard that can actually move using vibration controlled through Switch.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/10/23/nintendo-bringing-labo-to-classrooms.aspx

BY MITCH FOWLER, eSchool News

Imagine: Jimmy starts high school and has difficulty with math. Although he does well in other subjects, he has low motivation in class and forgets when homework is due. Despite the teacher’s best efforts to encourage him and give him extra help, the student continues to struggle. As the semester continues, the teacher runs out of ideas for helping Jimmy and he falls farther and farther behind his classmates. With the right plan and technology in place, this scenario might never have played out.
Simply put, early intervention is key to identifying struggling students. But, early intervention can only be successful if schools have a solid structure in place to access relevant data and act on it quickly.

Early intervention: How a tech-based approach is keeping our students in school

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Google will give away $25 million to projects that propose ways to use the artificial intelligence of computers to help create a more humane society. The grant program announced Monday is part of a broader Google initiative called “AI for Social Good” that aims to ease concerns that advances in artificial intelligence will eliminate jobs and perhaps even be autonomously deployed by militaries to kill people, Other technology companies have taken similar steps to address ethical issues in AI. For instance, Microsoft has committed $115 million to an “AI for Good” initiative that provides grants to organizations harnessing AI for humanitarian, accessibility and environmental projects.

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/google-give-25-million-fund-humane-ai-projects-58834119

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
Kubi brings remote students in on class action when they can’t be there in person. The University of Colorado Boulder has formally introduced a “remote presence” technology to enable students who can’t be physically present in a course to attend remotely. Kubi is a robotic neck that holds a tablet and is controllable by the remote user to allow him or her to look around the room through a Zoom videoconference meeting. The tablet, through which the remote student can see, hear and speak with others in the room, can be moved 320 degrees side to side and 90 degrees up and down.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/10/31/remote-presence-tech-lets-u-colorado-boulder-students-attend-class-from-afar.aspx

By Julie Johnston, Campus Technology
Indiana University explores that question by bringing together tech partners and university leaders to share ideas on how to design classrooms that make better use of faculty and student time. “Smart” products have infiltrated the market with the intention to make our lives easier — at home, in the workplace, everywhere. Setting aside the recognizable challenges of deploying these technologies on the enterprise scale in higher education, our team is beginning to ask, “How we can make better use of our faculty and students’ time by delegating routine tasks to smart technology?” This is a particularly good question in the context of teaching and learning. What if the answer is a smart classroom?

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/10/31/are-smart-classrooms-the-future.aspx

By Audrey Williams June, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Having a mentor can make a big difference in students’ academic success — particularly for underrepresented minorities who often seek guidance on how to battle feelings of isolation on campus. Yet a newly released report on college alumni shows that students have disparate access to sources of help navigating the ins and outs of college life, and beyond.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Professors-Are-the-Likeliest/244955

By Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed
Does anyone really know the definition of a “good” assessment? Does such a thing even exist? The second question has no clear answer (which means it’s not likely to show up on an assessment any time soon). As for the first, the jury’s probably still out, but Dianne Conrad and Jason Openo are closer than most. Openo serves as director of the Centre for Innovation and Teaching Excellence at Medicine Hat College in Alberta, Canada, and Dianne Conrad teaches in Athabasca University’s Center for Distance Education. Conrad has long wanted to write on this topic, and in early 2016 she convinced Openo, then a doctoral student with similar perspectives on assessment, to join her. The final product is Assessment Strategies for Online Learning (Athabasca University Press), which came out this summer.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/10/31/qa-strategies-better-assessments-online-learning

By Doug Lederman
Invisibility of instructional designers is among most surprising — and to designers themselves, upsetting — findings of new Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology. As online enrollments grow and many colleges ramp up their digital course and program offerings, the role of instructional designers — staff members who work with instructors to adapt or build new digital courses — is growing in importance. But new data from Inside Higher Ed’s just-released 2018 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology suggest that instructional designers — and colleges and universities that want them to play a central role helping instructors create high-quality, well-built courses — have a lot of work to do in building awareness of their role.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/10/31/survey-professors-shows-surprising-lack-awareness-instructional

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

The Rodel Foundation describes personalized learning as a new paradigm in which “students become the center of the learning environment, and where students and teacher work together towards students’ individual learning goals.” Students move through the curriculum at their own pace by completing lessons that present material in the way each student can best absorb it. In the transition from the traditional lecture environment to the personalized learning environment, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a key role. In combination with the use of up-front and ongoing assessments and integration into a learning management system, AI can provide real-time assessments of student achievement.

AI Comes to the Classroom: Preparing Students for Autonomous and Personalized Learning

Karthik Ravindranath, the Week

The meaning of being tech-savvy has changed significantly in the past few years—from knowing how to use social media to knowing how to protect your personal data. So, the tech-savviness required for virtual learning is now commonplace. And, the argument that e-learning is impersonal and non-collaborative no longer carries any merit as virtual courses have become quite interactive. Still, as a matter of perception, online learning is not considered on a par with on-site learning. It is this perception that India’s best b-schools are challenging, and they are delving into the world of virtual learning like never before. “E-learning has become a significant trend in today’s fast-changing business world, facilitating students with relevant education in a flexible and convenient platform,” says the Reverend E. Abraham, director, Xavier Labour Relations Institute, Jamshedpur.

https://www.theweek.in/theweek/cover/2018/10/27/virtual-reality.html

Nicole Pope, Disability Support Guide

The report, Online but off-track conducted by Vision Australia and endorsed by Disability Discrimination Commissioner Alastair McEwin has identified online learning environments as a growing concern to people who are blind or have low vision. The respondents who had studied at 24 of the 39 Australian public universities, also identified issues with lack of understanding and timely support from disability services staff, unwillingness of staff to make changes to course delivery formats and inconsistency in the provision of reasonable adjustments. General Manager of Government Relations and Advocacy at Vision Australia, Karen Knight is also a postgraduate student who has experienced the accessibility barriers firsthand.

https://www.disabilitysupportguide.com.au/talking-disability/online-learning-environment-a-growing-concern-for-university-students-with-vision-impairment

By JACLYN TERSIGNI, Toronto Star

Ten years ago, when this writer was a university student, an online course was often comprised of an audio recording of a lecture paired with a PowerPoint file. Things have changed — dramatically. The online course offerings of today deliver a seamless educational experience that, unlike fuzzy mp3 files, don’t sacrifice quality for convenience. That quality means online courses aren’t the “bird courses” they were perhaps thought to be back in the aughts. Doing well requires more than just an internet connection; here are four strategies for acing your online classes.

https://www.thestar.com/life/further_education/2018/10/25/4-ways-to-ace-your-online-course.html

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
IT analyst firm Gartner has named its top 10 trends for 2019, and the “immersive user experience” is on the list, alongside blockchain, quantum computing and seven other drivers influencing how we interact with the world. The annual trend list covers breakout tech with broad impact and tech that could reach a tipping point in the near future.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/10/22/gartner-immersive-experiences-among-top-tech-trends-for-2019.aspx

by Pete Musto and Dorothy Gundy, VOA

For example, 74 percent of men with a certificate but no four-year college degree were employed. By comparison, 67 percent of women with a certificate but no four-year degree were employed. In terms of pay, 46 percent of women with a credential but no four-year degree made less than $30,000 a year. The same was true for 25 percent of men, New America found. Seventeen percent of men with only a non-degree credential earned more than $75,000. Just five percent of women with similar credentials earned that much.

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/non-degree-programs-may-not-serve-men-and-women-equally/4630745.html

BY JUDY KURTZ, the Hill

An unlikely pair — David Axelrod and Karl Rove — is teaming up, reaching and teaching across the aisle about winning elections. The political odd couple — Axelrod was a senior adviser to former President Obama while Rove famously served under former President George W. Bush — has put on their teaching hats to instruct a MasterClass on politics called “Campaign Strategy and Messaging,” ITK has exclusively learned. The course, which includes 24 separate lessons, will be the first one focused on politics from MasterClass, the online education company, and the first class to be taught by two instructors.

https://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/413138-karl-rove-and-david-axelrod-partner-for-online-politics-class

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

It’s easy to focus on the immense potential that edtech brings to K12 classrooms, but the use of digital learning to promote lifelong learning has received less attention. And yet digital learning is just as powerful of a tool—if not moreso–for adults who want to expand their horizons. Here four ways that lifelong learners can use digital tools:

Using Digital Learning to Promote Lifelong Learning

NOLAN TAYLOR, Indianapolis Recorder

It’s not uncommon to see adults rely on the younger generation to fill in the “knowledge gap” for tasks like setting up a new smartphone or posting information on the internet. But consider the many cases where we as adults need to know for ourselves, like being up-to-date enough to help our children with homework (things have changed a bit since we were in school), meeting the demands of a current job or pursuing possibilities of advancement. In some sense, our diplomas and degrees have expiration dates that we can only extend by keeping current.  With so many great options, how do you decide how to keep current or how to update your skills?

http://www.indianapolisrecorder.com/business/article_f3d1b2c0-d86d-11e8-8184-c347d2e5f5ea.html

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Students often desire the ability to have more input into their own education. Particularly as they get older, children want to have a say in what they learn and how they learn it. Educators are starting to catch on to this trend and view it as a way to keep students engaged. The final result is a classroom with a choice-based learning component that gives children the flexibility and freedom they require. Adding a choice-based learning program into the blended classroom can overwhelm you at first. However, it doesn’t have to be a difficult undertaking.

How to Add Choice-Based Learning to Your Blended Classroom