Educational Technology

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Teachers appreciate tools that help their students succeed. But many school administrators fail to enlist teachers’ support when adopting and implementing new education technologies. Some administrators simply mandate that the product is used, which threatens teachers’ autonomy. Others make a brief announcement introducing the new technology without offering instruction on how it works, meaning that few, if any, teachers will still be using it as the school year goes on. Here are three easy tips on avoiding those scenarios and making sure that your district gets the best possible return on its edtech investment.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/three-tips-to-ease-implementation-of-new-edtech/

Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed

If this country is to achieve its postsecondary attainment goals and bring many more Americans to a bright future, community colleges will bear much of the responsibility. Community colleges are the cornerstone of American higher education. These institutions enroll nearly half of all college students and a majority of African American and Latino/a students, as well as substantial numbers of low-income, first-generation, and older students. Community colleges have a critical role to play in addressing this country’s greatest challenges: stagnant family incomes, disparities in income and wealth, and political polarization.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-gamma/community-colleges-and-future-higher-education

Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

In our field, we have a wide array of risks — technological infrastructure within and outside the university, including bandwidth, physical interruptions due to hurricane, tornado, earthquake or related natural disasters; policy and regulatory at the state and federal levels; accessibility shortcomings; global malware challenges; online, in-class verbal sexist, gender-preference, racist and analogous abuse; academic integrity issues; competitive risks in meeting game-changing new models of degree and certificate offerings; and maintaining our reputation as leaders in the field. These are the things we think about when we wake up in the middle of the night. These are the what-if challenges that are always in the back of our minds.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/identifying-and-mitigating-most-important-risks-online

By Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix, Migration Policy
As the U.S. workforce ages, baby boomers retire, and birth rates decline, the United States is facing an estimated shortfall of 8 million workers between now and 2027. At the same time, the U.S. economy is becoming ever more knowledge-based. Having a marketable postsecondary credential, whether an academic degree or a professional certification or license, has become more of a necessity to secure a job that pays a family-sustaining wage. Amid these economic changes, immigrant-origin adults—that is, immigrants and their U.S.-born children—are projected to be the primary source of future labor-force growth. Yet about 30 million of the 58 million immigrant-origin adults in the country as of 2017 did not have a postsecondary credential, representing 30 percent of all U.S. adults without one. These immigrants and their children are thus an important target group for efforts by governments, educational institutions, civil society, and employers to boost the credential attainment of U.S. workers.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/credentials-immigrant-origin-adults-united-states

by Zoe Mackay, IBL News

“MOOCs haven’t died. They are alive,” said Zvi Galil, Dean of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the pioneer of the Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS), during an interview at the IBL Studios in New York. In today’s job market, continuing education is a lifelong effort. As technology is constantly changing and employment sectors necessitate continuous learning from their employees, online education is an ideal and flexible model. “We are moving into a period where we must have adult education. We must have lifelong learning. And online will be a major tool to do it. Some very capable people can take the time off to move, to go to a place where they can have classes, and some do, but a majority, I believe, will be using online courses or degrees or certificates.”

https://iblnews.org/2019/03/08/massive-online-courses-are-alive-said-pioneer-of-omscs-affordable-degree/

BY BILL BERGMAN, eCampus News
Even though I never saw the 50 college students I taught in back-to-back sessions last summer, I feel especially close to them. Our digital relationships were just as powerful as the relationships I have with face-to-face students.  Online conversations helped students take learning to the next level. Students were required to post daily comments on a private group Facebook page, and ask questions via email or text. Once I started responding to their posts, I began to feel a stronger connection to the students than I do in a traditional classroom.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/03/07/taught-online-courses-formed-stronger-relationships-with-students/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
A survey of chief academic officers at public colleges and universities found that while most online courses are taught by full-time faculty, their preparation for and oversight in doing so is highly inconsistent. The survey was undertaken by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) working in tandem with Learning House, a Wiley division that provides online program management services. Researchers received responses from 95 CAOs, representing a quarter of AASCU’s membership. According to the results, two-thirds of courses are currently being taught by full-time faculty, and almost all of those instructors (98 percent) are “expected” to teach online as part of their regular workload.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/03/07/faculty-training-support-for-online-teaching-needs-improvement.aspx

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News
A growing consensus recognizes educator micro-credentials as promising new professional learning resources. Educator micro-credentials are gaining more mainstream acceptance, but it’s important to ensure the process surrounding micro-credentials is grounded in rigorous research, according to a new whitepaper from Digital Promise. The whitepaper highlights Digital Promise’s micro-credentialing framework and takes a close look at the processes involved in producing educator micro-credentials.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2019/03/08/research-educator-micro-credentials/

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
Ninety-seven percent of faculty members who took our 2018 Teaching with Technology Survey reported a positive outlook on the future of technology in education. The survey asked higher education faculty at colleges and universities across the country about tech’s role in education, what technologies will become important in the future, what will fizzle out and more. While faculty see a bright future for ed tech in general, they also acknowledged that certain technologies might be nearing their expiration date. When asked to predict which technologies would be dead and gone in the next decade, the No. 1 response was desktop computers, followed by non-interactive projects and displays, document cameras/overhead projectors, printed textbooks and clickers.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/03/06/future-of-ed-tech-is-bright-according-to-faculty-survey.aspx

Ellie Ashford, Community College Daily

The data analysis isn’t finished, but the most compelling finding so far is the effect on students who needed financial aid to complete. Students who received need-based aid had incomes that were 23 percent higher five years after completion than their peers who didn’t receive need-based aid, Weber said. Those who didn’t need financial aid also saw a salary jump, but not as much.  The college will use the findings from the study to boost its marketing efforts and to make decisions about specific programs. “We believe that with some career programs, staying and earning credentials will pay off in the long run,” Weber said. When the data is analyzed, the college should be able to have solid evidence to prove that assumption.

http://www.ccdaily.com/2019/03/salaries-prove-colleges-value/

Sean Gallagher, Evolllution

The world of credentialing is changing fast. Employer needs have evolved in concert with improving hiring support technologies. Higher education institutions are now in a difficult position, responding to changing employer and student demands for credentials that signal job readiness. In Educational Credentials Come of Age, Sean Gallagher shares the results of a comprehensive study on the progress and growth of non-degree credentials when it comes to supporting employability. In this interview, he expands on some of those findings.

https://evolllution.com/programming/credentials/the-growing-profile-of-non-degree-credentials-diving-deeper-into-education-credentials-come-of-age/

Education Dive

We’re keeping track of major college and university closings, mergers, acquisitions and other consolidation from 2016 to the present. Did we miss something? Let us know by using this form. Read our ongoing analysis of the list.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/tracker-college-and-university-closings-and-consolidation/539961/

Jackie Snow, Fast Company

A new machine learning paper shows how AI can take footage of someone and duplicate the video with the subject looking an age the researchers specify. The team behind the paper, from the University of Arkansas, Clemson University, Carnegie Mellon University, and Concordia University in Canada, claim that this is one of the first methods to use AI to tackle aging in videos. The system was trained on an expanded dataset of photos of showing individuals at different ages. Reinforcement learning, a technique that rewards an AI model for getting a task correct, comes into play by rewarding the system when the synthesized features, like wrinkles, appear similarly across consecutive video frames. Similar approaches power the “deepfake” technology that has raised alarms about the prospect of AI-powered video propaganda.

https://www.fastcompany.com/90314606/this-new-ai-tool-makes-creepily-realistic-videos-of-faces-in-the-future

By Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
A South African university research center issued a report this week that assesses how different universities are working with outside companies to deliver their online academic programs. The report was produced by the Center for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town. It looks at common funding models, the nature of the arrangements and institutional use cases.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/insights/2019/03/06/advice-using-private-companies-online-education

the complete report:

https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/29813/Czerniewicz_Walji2019.pdf

Association of Community College Trustees

Policymakers focused on economic recovery also have taken note of the potential of apprenticeships to connect people to postsecondary education and careers, thus ultimately improving their opportunities for prosperity. At the federal level, both President Donald Trump and former President Barack Obama have called for increased investments in registered apprenticeships, especially by expanding across states and into new industries. This paper provides an overview of registered apprenticeship programs, including pre-apprenticeships and youth apprenticeships, and describes their recent growth.

https://www.acct.org/files/Publications/2019/ACCT_Apprenticeships_2019.pdf#overlay-context=

Brian Benchoff, Hackaday
Google has promised us new hardware products for machine learning at the edge, and now it’s finally out. The thing you’re going to take away from this is that Google built a Raspberry Pi with machine learning. This is Google’s Coral, with an Edge TPU platform, a custom-made ASIC that is designed to run machine learning algorithms ‘at the edge’.

https://hackaday.com/2019/03/05/google-launches-ai-platform-that-looks-remarkably-like-a-raspberry-pi/

Gaby Del Valle, Vox

Textbook publishers, for their part, have begun acknowledging that textbooks and other course materials have become so expensive that some students simply can’t afford them, even if it means their grades will suffer as a result. Publishers claim that new technologies, like digital textbooks and Netflix-style subscription services, make textbooks more affordable for all. But affordability advocates say that if anyone is to blame for the fact that textbook costs have risen more than 1,000 percent since the 1970s, it’s the publishers — and, advocates claim, these new technologies are publishers’ attempt to maintain their stranglehold on the industry while disguising it as reform.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/6/18252322/college-textbooks-cost-expensive-pearson-cengage-mcgraw-hill

BY ELLEN ULLMAN, eSchool Ness

According to Code.org, the majority of Americans want schools to teach computer science, but only 35 percent of high schools teach it. And even though 15 states have adopted a policy to give all high school students access to computer science courses, universities prepare way fewer computer science teachers than we need. It’s more abysmal in the younger grades, with only six states giving all K-12 students access. For teachers who would like to bring computer science into their classrooms, there are several great resources to assist. Code.org’s free online courses teach programming languages or how to create games, apps, and websites. The site also features a database of in-person programming classes and opportunities.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2019/03/07/why-love-coding-robotics-tools/

by Emily Alford, ClickZ

According to Gartner, 50% of search will shift to voice search by 2020. And in the cases of personal assistants, if your business doesn’t come in first, it comes in last. Marketers scrambling to make sure they’re optimized to take those top spots ranked voice search high on their list of 2019 priorities, with 36.1% naming voice search a top trend. Holmes says that as voice search becomes more common, search queries will most likely get more specific and companies need to start anticipating those queries sooner, rather than later.

https://www.clickz.com/business-ready-search-trends-2019/226655/

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eSchool News

Introducing a robot into the classroom is a surefire way to grab students’ attention–but robots do more than excite. When educators use programmable robots for K-12 learning, they’re helping students develop important skills such as critical thinking and teamwork. Robots are accessible for students of all ages–even younger students who don’t yet have strong coding and programming skills. Research says students are more likely to maintain their interest in coding if they’re exposed to it at an early age. One engaging solution: robots for K-12 classes.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2019/03/06/6-fun-robots-for-k12/

By Cynthia Clay, TD

Training participants often log into our virtual classrooms ready to passively observe a monologue. It’s up to us to create the kind of learning environment that shifts them from passive to active learners. As you prepare to deliver an online training experience, think about the human needs of your participants: the need to be included, the need to feel safe, the need to be right, the need to be competent, and the need to be appreciated. More importantly, think about what a skilled virtual facilitator should do to meet those needs. Let’s take a closer look at each need.

https://www.td.org/insights/meeting-human-needs-in-the-virtual-classroom