Kelsey Sheehy, Josh Moody, U.S.News & World Report•
Online courses give students the flexibility to earn a college degree while juggling responsibilities such as work and family. But it is not uncommon for students to experience a few hiccups along the way. Smooth out your path to an online degree by avoiding these 10 big mistakes.
https://news.yahoo.com/10-big-mistakes-online-students-190519226.html
Share on FacebookA Q&A with Debora Steffen and Edward Berger, Campus Technology
A partnership at Purdue between the university’s Teaching and Learning Technologies organization and faculty exploring Gradescope has grown into a campus-wide initiative that includes an enterprise license of the tool and TLT support. The use of Gradescope accelerates the grading process — especially in large enrollment courses — and the related strategies that faculty share help improve assessment generally.
Share on FacebookBy Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed
The newly announced $24K BU MBA, created in partnership with edX, is a big deal. The Boston University Questrom School of Business is ranked in the top 50 global business schools by US News, in the top 70 by the Economist. Questrom is a brand name business school in a market where the value of the MBA is directly proportional to the status of the institution. Who are the losers in this $24K BU MBA? I’d say every regionally known MBA program. From looking at US News, it looks like there are 475 MBA programs.
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/5-reasons-why-bus-24k-mba-big-deal
Share on FacebookBy Hallie Busta, Education Dive
A “hypercompetitive” market for higher education along with a continued focus on affordability will constrain tuition revenue in the coming year even as state funding stabilizes, Moody’s analysts wrote in a report released this week. Low-to-negative net tuition revenue growth is likely for many regional public and private colleges, which will spur continued cost containment that pushes them to streamline programs and even merge, collaborate or close. While potential federal and state policy changes around student aid are the “greatest uncertainty” for higher ed, programs such as free college or loan forgiveness would “take several years to devise and implement,” the analysts wrote.
By Louise Fellows, IT Pro Portal
As seats of learning, higher education institutions they are uniquely placed to support early-stage, government-backed research exploring the cutting edge of innovation in a variety of fields. This is vital, not only to further national interests, but for the institutions to be able to differentiate themselves and generate revenue in an increasingly crowded marketplace. According to a recent survey Dell EMC and VMware conducted, research programmes are now worth on average £22 million to UK universities annually. However, the very nature of these programmes means they attract unwanted attention from hackers. Whether state-sponsored or financially motivated, the cybercriminals targeting UK universities have access to an increasingly sophisticated arsenal of digital weaponry which institutes of higher education may not be prepared for.
Share on FacebookBy Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
The Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction is one of the largest-scale experiments (at least if you measure scale by the number of institutions involved, rather than enrollments) in online postsecondary learning. Over the course of several years, 42 member institutions of the Council of Independent Colleges built a set of upper-level online and hybrid humanities courses to be shared by their peers. The goals: help them learn how to cost-effectively develop and launch high-quality online humanities classes, and give learners access to courses not available in their own curricula.
Few of us doubt that, at some point, we will all be driving battery-powered vehicles. Will teaching and learning in higher education move from mostly a face-to-face activity, to one that is mainly done online? This shift from residential to online learning is occurring rapidly at the graduate education level. Of the approximately 3 million graduate students studying at US institutions, about one-in-five are studying exclusively online. (About twice the proportion of undergraduates who are only enrolled in online learning).
https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/online-learning-electric-car-higher-ed
Share on FacebookRay Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
AI in many fields now applies affective communication algorithms that help to respond to humans. Customer service chat bots can sense when a client is angry or upset, advertising research can use AI to measure emotional responses of viewers and a mental health app can measure nuances of voice to identify anxiety and mood changes over the phone. With AI mediating our communication, we can look to a future of deeper communication that acknowledges human feelings and emotions. This will be able to enhance our communication in online classes even beyond the quality of face-to-face communication in campus-based classes.
BY LAURA LYNCH, eLearning Learning
Humans are social creatures. Even the most introverted among us benefit from learning relationships, whether with our instructors, our peers, our mentors, or our mentees. In online education, where learners tend to feel more isolated, this kind of social learning especially important. However, there are several social learning techniques you can use in your course to help learners create meaningful connections that will motivate them to keep moving forward with their course material. Here’s where to start.
Share on FacebookBY SUBBARAO KAMBHAMPATI, the Hill
Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short, has become quite the public buzzword. Companies and investors are pouring money into the field. Universities — even high schools — are rushing to start new degree programs or colleges dedicated to AI. Civil society organizations are scrambling to understand the impact of AI technology on humanity, and governments are competing to encourage or regulate AI research and deployment. One country, the United Arab Emirates, even boasts a minister for AI.
by JILL BARSHAY and SASHA ASLANIAN, Hechinger Report
There are indications that analytics may be having an impact. In 2016, after years of declines, national college graduation rates started ticking back up again and have continued rising for the past three years. But that progress may come at a cost. Critics say there are potential downsides to monitoring student data so closely. They worry about invasion of privacy and surveillance of students. And they say that the algorithms might be reinforcing historical inequities, funneling low-income students or students of color into easier majors.
Share on FacebookAnant Agarwal, Forbes
When MOOCs first burst onto the scene in 2012 — the year The New York Times dubbed ‘the year of the MOOC’ — their success was enabled largely by the convergence of four key technologies: cloud computing, video distribution at scale, gamification and social networking. Without these technologies, we would not have the high quality digital learning at scale that we now enjoy. What was the impact of these technologies and how have they developed?
Janakiram MSV, Forbes
Thanks to the advancements in AI, text-to-speech has evolved to become more natural and realistic to an extent that it may be hard to distinguish it from a human voice. Already, the output from voice-based services such as Alexa and Siri sounds natural. With the most recent improvements in AI, these assistants are set to sound smoother, natural, and realistic.
Share on FacebookAnna Frazzetto, CIO
While many businesses are fueled by their ambition to implement AI initiatives, few understand how it can work for their businesses. How do we keep our AI ambitions in line with the business needs of our organization? A simple Google search will tell you that AI has now moved into prime gold rush position. Where once Cloud, Big Data, Cryptocurrency and Block Chain held the position of top tech trend in business, AI is now everywhere and, for many reasons, it should be. AI offers advanced data processing and analytical capabilities that people simple cannot match.
https://www.cio.com/article/3430782/are-you-blinded-by-the-promise-of-ai.html
Share on FacebookINC.
According to research, over 75% of Americans feel little or no passion at work. That’s terrible..but it doesn’t need to be the case. Here’s why Learning and Development is the key to changing that dynamic. There are important business reasons for companies to provide significant learning and development opportunities to employees, and even more important reasons for employees to make learning and development a priority. In order to get a deeper understanding of the power of learning, and why employees should take advantage of these resources, I interviewed Mary Shindler, Senior Program Manager on the Learning and Development Team at LinkedIn.
https://www.inc.com/andrew-thomas/4-ways-to-advance-your-career-be-happier-at-work.html
Share on FacebookBy Study International Staff
Virtual schools are becoming increasingly popular. These accredited online schools allow students to receive a primary or secondary-level education anywhere at any time, so long as they have access to an internet connection and computer. These institutions are fast becoming the new home school – where learners are educated from home, either by a parent or special home tutor, the preferred alternative to attending a typical school before technology became so integrated into our daily lives. More and more parents are choosing to keep their kids at home to attend school online. According to eLearning Inside, “Stanly County Schools, a district roughly an hour outside of Charlotte, N.C., is in a unique situation. According to the Stanly News & Press, overall enrollment is down 12.5% over the past decade, while the homeschool population has grown by 112%.
https://www.studyinternational.com/news/virtual-schools-new-home-school-us/
Share on FacebookBy Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed
Seven reasons why the new 2U powered, University of London, $24K online undergraduate degree in data science and business analytics is so fascinating:
#1 – Status:
The BS will be conferred by the University of London, in collaboration and with faculty from the London School of Economics. These are brand name, internationally recognized institutions. This will be a high-status degree, with substantial value in the marketplace.
#2 – Price:
A price tag of $24K for an undergraduate degree is not all that interesting. There are many options for low-cost degrees from community colleges and other accredited institutions of higher learning. What is interesting is that this is a $24K degree from a high-status institution.
Share on FacebookEconomic Times
“Learning in the context of work, though essential, isn’t always enjoyable and engaging, therefore, new models of training, more relevant to the workforce of today and tomorrow are being explored and games-based learning is one such model,” Schoolguru Eduserve CEO and founder Shantanu Rooj told PTI here. “The combination method of skilling, a recent phenomenon in corporates, is used across sectors providing play-like simulation with the additional learning or improving functional proficiency and social interaction. I expect 38 per cent growth in the segment to about Rs 3,000 crore in the next two years,” he added.
Share on FacebookGiorgia Guglielmi, Nature
Some researchers have turned to crowdfunding campaigns to pay for supplies and several scientific institutes are rationing electricity to save money. Mexico’s budget cuts are affecting the country’s researchers, including scientists working on improving forest conservation strategies. Austerity measures recently enacted by Mexico’s president are pushing the country’s scientific efforts — chronically underfunded for years — to a breaking point, according to researchers. As part of broader cost-cutting measures aimed at freeing up money for poverty-alleviation programmes, in May, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador cut 30–50% of the money that federally funded institutions — including centres supported by Mexico’s main research funding agency, the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) — spend on travel, petrol, office supplies and salaries for temporary workers.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02332-x
Share on FacebookBy Hallie Busta, Education Dive
2U announced Monday that it is entering the undergraduate degree market with an online bachelor’s offered in partnership with the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). It is expected to launch in October 2020. The 36-month program in data science and business analytics is on a 10-year contract between 2U and LSE. About three-fourths of the content will be asynchronous and one-fourth will be synchronous, Andrew Hermalyn, 2U’s president of university partnerships, told Education Dive. It is priced around $21,000 for United Kingdom-based students and $25,000 for international students. The news comes less than a week after the online program manager told analysts and investors it was shifting its strategy beyond high-priced graduate degrees to include a wider array of program types and price points as well as the use of fee-for-service contracts.
By Rebecca Koenig, EdSurge
“Most students who attend an online program still attend a program that’s within 50 to 100 miles of their home,” says Dave Jarrat, senior vice president of strategic engagement and growth at InsideTrack, an organization that provides coaching services at colleges. Recognizing this paradox, a few online course providers have opened physical campus centers designed to offer students a space to interact both with each other and employees who provide support services. They’re a mashup of a co-working space, an administrative center and a library—sans the books.
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