Educational Technology

Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

A centuries-old challenge for teachers has been how to adapt learning materials and presentations to meet the varied backgrounds and abilities of students. Emerging technologies, Ray Schroeder writes, can help meet students where they are and customize learning for them. We are on the cusp of a new era in which learning is personalized to the needs and interests of the students. With the advent of the lifelong, 60-year learner, we will see more heutagogical approaches to meet the expectations of the self-determined adult learner.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/how-artificial-intelligence-can-help-achieve-promise

BY STACEY PUSEY, eSchool News

At this stage of the edtech revolution, most educators are focused on using tech to enhance lessons rather than on the tech itself. But many times, tech is only integrated at specific points in the classroom or with a specific tool as determined by the teacher. At St. Albans City School in Vermont, SETDA’s 2018 Student Voices Award Winner, educators encourage the students to find places in their everyday work to incorporate digital resources, especially from their makerspace. In the edWebinar “Students Leverage Technology Tools and Makerspaces to Personalize Learning,” Grace Borst, innovation specialist at St. Albans City School, and several of her students explained how they’re using technology for assessment, service work, and more.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2019/01/21/5-ways-to-use-makerspaces-to-support-personalized-learning/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Ever-increasing numbers of universities and colleges are teaming up with bootcamps to deliver tech training. Does your campus need one too? When Doug Schmidt persuaded his institution to sign on with Trilogy Education Services to launch what has become known as the Vanderbilt University Coding Boot Camp, he considered it one more step forward in a 16-year effort to help improve the technology economy in Nashville, where the university is located. As this professor of computer science and co-director of the Vanderbilt Data Sciences Institute noted, everywhere else that he’s lived, worked and taught — Southern California, Northern California, Virginia, St. Louis, Maryland — has “had a really thriving tech ecosystem.” In Nashville, however, small companies, primarily in healthcare, have dominated the tech scene, making for limited opportunities for the school’s graduates who might want to stick around.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/01/23/why-build-a-boot-camp.aspx

Gina Londino-Smolar, Smart Brief

Since November 2017, 3,000 first-year seminar students in University College at Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis have taken a voluntary online course on academic integrity. The average pretest scores were 49%, but when these students finished the course, the post-test score averaged 93%. Our team, which developed the course, wasn’t surprised to find that the course was effective. What was surprising, though, was to discover, through the pre-test, that many students do not have foundational skills of proper citation, setting them up for trouble in their academic and professional careers.

https://www.smartbrief.com/original/2019/01/do-students-understand-academic-integrity

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

A 2015 study found that the typical American student is required to take 112 standardized tests between pre-kindergarten and 12th grade. Meanwhile, students in most countries that outperform the United States on international exams are tested just three times during their school careers. Critics of standardized testing argue that the tests put too much pressure on students and take the joy out of both teaching and learning. Plus, the value of all this testing is questionable. Studies have found that many standardized tests are low quality or redundant (high school students may take an AP, end-of-course, and final exam for the same course). So how can we measure student learning without resorting to high pressure testing? Some point to personalized learning as the solution.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/should-personalized-learning-replace-testing/

BY DENNIS PIERCE, eCampus News

Online learning can be more difficult for instructors as well as students. Not seeing students face to face makes it harder to gauge how they’re responding to the material, and there’s the additional hurdle of mastering the technology. But there are many strategies that instructors can use to help students succeed online, as well as approaches that institutions can employ to support faculty more effectively. In interviews, faculty and administrators who have extensive experience with online learning revealed these five key challenges that often stand in the way of success—and tips for overcoming them.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/01/22/5-major-online-learning-challenges-and-how-to-solve-them-pt-1/

Knowledge@Wharton

As a group, they are “sober, industrious and driven by money,” reports the Wall Street Journal, but also “socially awkward and timid about taking the reins.” They are risk-averse and more diverse, says Inc. magazine. Forbes says they “want to work on their own and be judged on their own merits rather than those of their team.” Generation Z is arriving, and they are different than previous generations – or at least that’s how this young cohort is being portrayed as it begins to enter the workforce. After the traditionalists, baby boomers, Generation X and Generation Y/millennials, we have Generation Z – that group born after 1995 now starting to graduate college.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/make-room-generation-z-workplace/

Vicki Brannock, Evolllution

Employers are losing interest in college degrees. In the first half of 2018, only 30 percent of job postings required a degree, down from 32 percent the previous year and 34 percent in 2012, according to a Burning Glass Technologies analysis of 15 million job ads. This presents an opportunity for higher education. With microcredentials, the 75 percent of Americans who do not have a college degree can obtain the skills they need to reach the next level in their career without having to take on the burden of student loans.

https://evolllution.com/programming/credentials/microcredentials-value-dependent-on-higher-ed-cheerleading-instead-of-spectating/

By Byju Raveendran, ETech
Our education system still faces core issues like lack of access to quality teachers, one-size-fits-all approach and rote memorization. Integrate tech with education to create adaptable workforce Overall, in the coming years, some jobs will disappear, others will grow and jobs that don’t even exist today will become commonplace. What is certain is that the future workforce will need to align its skillset to keep pace. And it is only through right education that we can create an adaptable young workforce to drive the Indian economy to new heights. The need is to create lifelong and active learners.

https://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/internet/integrate-tech-with-education-to-create-adaptable-workforce/67634283

by Virtual College

With more than 8,500 learning and development professionals expected to visit Learning Technologies’ new home at the Excel, London, we look at some of the top trends in the industry for 2019 and the hot topics being covered in the long list of conferences and seminars held over the two-day event.

https://www.virtual-college.co.uk/news/virtual-college/2019/01/top-5-trends-we-expect-to-see-at-learning-tech-2019

Emily Alford, ClickZ

Chatbots have been a pretty big industry buzzword for a few years now. To recap, a chatbot is any computer program that can carry on conversation with humans in a natural, fluid way. In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at why marketers use chatbots, what they can be used for, and most importantly, four tips for how to make them part of your marketing strategy.

https://www.clickz.com/chatbots-part-of-your-marketing-strategy/224275/

By Charlie Osborne, ZDnet

It seems the enterprise is taking a serious interest in how the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) can provide a return on investment (ROI), as the number of companies implementing these technologies has grown by 270 percent in the past four years. On Monday, Gartner said that AI adoption has tripled in the last year alone, with an estimated 37 percent of firms now implementing AI in some form. According to the research agency’s 2019 CIO Survey, AI is being used in a variety of applications.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/enterprise-adoption-of-ai-has-grown-270-percent-over-the-past-four-years/

Hallie Busta, Education Dive
State funding for higher education rose modestly between the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years, but the gain was the smallest in the last five years and was concentrated in three states: California, Florida and Georgia. Overall state fiscal support increased 1.6% from 2017 to 2018, following a 4.2% gain from 2016 to 2017 and annual increases of 2.4%, 5% and 5.9% in three years prior, according to the annual Grapevine report from the Center for the Study of Education Policy at Illinois State University and the State Higher Education Executive Officers. Overall, state funding is up 20.7% from 2013. While three states saw big jumps from 2017 to 2018, funding rose just 0.2% across the remaining 47 states. In more than two-thirds of states, funding fell at rates between 0.1% and 14.6%. Ten states doled out less funding in 2018 than in 2013, led by Oklahoma (20.6% less), West Virginia (14.5%) and Alaska (12.2%).

https://www.educationdive.com/news/state-support-for-higher-ed-slowed-in-2018/546484/

by Ludhina, Tribune India

It is time that the educational institutes taught using modern techniques. They should teach the kids using videos, audios and check their performance through online exams or practice papers. Students should be made to explore the internet and trained to use it to the maximum of their advantage. Visual teaching should be used to the maximum. Through e learning, students can be made to learn at their own pace.

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/ludhiana/e-learning-a-way-to-connect-engage-students/717005.html

Adam McCann, Wallet Hub

For a growing number of Americans, a good education is the ticket to a better future. College opens doors to more career opportunities, higher earnings and new social connections, among other benefits. But how much schooling one receives also matters to some extent. Generally, the higher the level of education one completes, the higher their income potential and the lower their chances of unemployment become. In this study, WalletHub examined the key factors of a well-educated population: educational attainment, school quality and achievement gaps between genders and races. We compared all 50 states across 20 total metrics grouped into two categories. The data set ranges from share of adults aged 25 and older with at least a high school diploma to average university quality to gender gap in educational attainment.

https://wallethub.com/edu/most-educated-states/31075/

By IBL News

With nearly a million lines written in Python, mostly on the 2.7 version, the Open edX platform, has a large task ahead: convert its code to run on Python 3 by the end of this year. Python 2 is coming to its end; there won’t be more bug fixes after January 1, 2020, and Python 3 is not backward-compatible with Python 2. “Much of the work is not hard, it’s just extensive, and can’t all be done automatically. To help organize the effort, we’ve created the Incremental Improvements JIRA board: INCR,” explained in a blog post Ned Batchelder, edX Architect.

https://iblnews.org/2019/01/20/the-open-edx-platform-faces-a-huge-upgrade-into-python-3/

Sam Shead, Forbes

Facebook is backing an AI ethics institute at the Technical University of Munich with $7.5 million. The TUM Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, which was announced on Sunday, will aim to explore fundamental issues affecting the use and impact of AI, Facebook said. AI is poised to have a profound impact on areas like climate change and healthcare but it has its risks. “We will explore the ethical issues of AI and develop ethical guidelines for the responsible use of the technology in society and the economy.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/samshead/2019/01/20/facebook-backs-university-ai-ethics-institute-with-7-5-million/#5bffced71508

Katie Elizabeth, Forbes

In my search to for more innovative solutions to dramatically improve women’s education nationally and abroad, I found an AI centered education company, Squirrel AI Learning. I was able to meet with the team here in Silicon Valley, and was blown away by the genuineness and passion of the team members to see their work benefit all. Derek Haoyang Li, Founder and Chairman of Squirrel AI Learning of Yixue Group, told me this: “There is potential for a small grasshopper to jump 2 meters, but if you put it in a box with a cover, it can only jump to the height of the box – say half a meter.” In a way, low quality education can be considered that box – hindering and limiting individual’s potential.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/katieelizabeth1/2019/01/19/can-ai-powered-education-close-the-global-gender-gap/#67bbc3513a22

by Paranita Gohil, Entrepreneur

The quality of education provided to children in India is on a downward spiral, according to the Annual Status of Education Report 2016 (ASER). India aims to make the most skilled workforce in the world and though governments have sworn to make education accessible to all and the enrollment of children in schools in the country is as high as 97per cent, when it comes to quality of education being provided in these schools, it is well below average. One way to uplift the quality of education is through digitization.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/326631

By Cait Etherington, eLearning Inside

When you’re teaching in a traditional classroom, there is one thing that is usually obvious: When students are bored, lost, or distracted, they let you know. While most educators don’t love teaching to a sea of slouched bodies and yawning faces, these bodily signs offer important cues to help educators increase student engagement. But how do educators gauge engagement online? In the past, it was assumed that engagement detection was something beyond the scope of online education. Now advancements in computer vision have reached a point where it is possible to detect emotions in photographs and video footage. These advancements could transform engagement detection and online learning, but some people continue to wonder if the use of computer vision in educational settings is even ethical.

https://news.elearninginside.com/computer-vision-for-classroom-engagement-detection-is-it-ethical/

Maysa Jalbout, Brookings
Today, more than ever, we are in urgent need for universities to lead the charge in thinking much more openly, creatively, and ambitiously about the challenges we face in local communities and across the planet. Given the urgency, scale, and magnitude of the challenges we face—unprecedented numbers of refugees across the globe, persistent income inequality, and devastating loss of fertile land at the same time as exponential technological developments posing radical changes and threats to everything from our jobs to our security to our very own humanity—universities are best positioned to address them.

https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/universities-need-to-lead-in-serving-humanity/