Educational Technology

Anthony P. Carnevale, et al; Georgetown University Center for Education and the Workforce

The new rules of the college and career game confirm that education level matters, and that more education is generally better when it comes to earnings potential.2 What is less well known is that program of study and major matter even more to potential earnings than education level. As a result, less education can often be worth more. In fact, some certificate holders can earn more than those with an associate’s or bachelor’s degree, and some associate’s degree holders can earn more than those with a bachelor’s degree. In other words, certificates and associate’s degrees—credentials on the middle-skills pathway—can be viable routes to
economic opportunity.

https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/CEW-SubBA.pdf

Cammie Johnson, DSU News

Dixie State University offers many online courses where you can stay in the comfort of your own home without worrying about your physical attendance. It requires more self discipline and time management and dedication in order to stay on track with the course, says Cammie Johnson. Photo by Jessica Johnson. It can’t get much better than earning your college degree from the comfort of your own home. Speaking from personal experience, online classes are just as good as attending a scheduled class. With the freedom to work from any location at any given time, you are able to fulfill your obligations while still earning your college degree.

https://dixiesunnews.com/news/articles/2020/01/23/online-courses-are-just-as-good-as-in-person/

By Brian Runo, Market Scale

The lightboard, or “learning glass,” as it’s sometimes known, is essentially a piece of glass with lights around the border that point inward, allowing content drawn directly on the glass to be illuminated. The “teacher” in the videos will be behind the glass and drawing as they would on a normal chalkboard or whiteboard. However, because of the transparent glass, they’ll be learner-facing. The effectiveness of this style is well-documented. One of the best things about the lightboard is its simplicity, which give the end user the freedom to teach their subject in a more natural way.

https://marketscale.com/industries/education-technology/contributor-using-lightboard/

Shelley Henderson, EdSurge

FIRST, an inclusive robotics community working to prepare young people for the future, understands the broad societal context of economic, educational and social factors historically leading to disproportionate access and outcomes. A vital part of our strategic intent is to serve an inclusive and diverse audience, reflecting the population of the communities we serve.  Bring engaging robotics programs to your school. Students engaged in STEM programs are prepared for success in the classroom and the workforce. According to a five year study by Brandeis University of FIRST participants, these students were three times more likely than their peers to show gains in STEM career interest. This impact is evident regardless of race, gender, income or community type.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-01-21-5-ways-to-prepare-every-student-for-the-stem-economy

Anayat Durrani, US News

“For international students who want to interact with learners from around the world without having to travel around the world, an online degree is a great option,” says Bill Fritz, director of admissions and financial aid at Pennsylvania State University—World Campus, which offers Penn State degrees entirely online. According to the most recent data available from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, 35% of international students took at least one online course in 2015-16, but only about 6% were enrolled in programs that were taught exclusively online.

https://www.usnews.com/higher-education/online-education/articles/why-international-students-should-consider-online-colleges-in-the-us

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Per a new report released by the Clayton Christensen Institute, “boot camps have a straightforward and simple value proposition: they are designed to help their graduates find good jobs.” The value of these educational boot camps comes in dollars saved for the learner. Rather than paying a premium to head to a traditional college and meet all sorts of degree requirements which may not even be passingly correlative with their field, learners can invest in these skill-focused boot camps which prep them for a particular job or field they are interested in. Are these boot camps viable over the long run? Are they really a powerful disruption waiting to happen for traditional universities? The answers to these questions remain unclear.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/are-boot-camps-the-higher-ed-disruptors-they-claim-to-be/

Joanne Kehoe and Olga Perkovic, McMaster

An Open Education reference of OER listed by subject area and disciplines with McMaster academic programming.  The OER by Discipline Guide: McMaster University, is an in-progress (open creation) this lists a broad range of open educational resources organized by Faculties and programs at McMaster. The purpose of this guide is to capture OER as possible — primarily open textbooks  — and organize them so faculty can easily locate resources in their subject area. This guide will be updated as new resources are identified.

https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/mcmasteroerdiscipline/

Scoop Empire

Online learning may seem perfect for students. You may study at home, from your own warm bed, in your favorite pajamas and with a cup of sweet cocoa. You may shift your schedule as you please, you may distribute the tasks evenly or take a day off whenever you want to do it. But still, online learning has one but very important drawback: it’s hard to stay motivated when you are studying online.

https://scoopempire.com/3-secrets-behind-students-motivation-to-learn-online/

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

The difference between having access to knowledge and having such knowledge primed for your discovery and consumption is huge. Just because things are available somewhere for someone to learn doesn’t mean that they’re going to be able to sift through the mass of content out there in order to find what they need. We need to be able to curate knowledge in such a way that the sifting is done for learners and the best sources of knowledge are made readily available and organized for their consumption. We need a Netflix of education, a service that streamlines content consumption and utilizes user ratings to augment/expand its base regularly.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/we-need-a-netflix-of-education/

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

Online learning provider Coursera took another step into the undergraduate education market yesterday with the launch of its first bachelor’s degree program at a university in the United States. The University of North Texas, a public research institution in Denton, Tex., will offer its bachelor of applied arts and sciences (B.A.A.S.) program through Coursera beginning in fall 2020.   The bachelor’s degree program is aimed at working adults with some college education and course credits but no degree, said Adam Fein, vice president for digital strategy and innovation at UNT. He hopes the degree will also attract community college students, veterans and students based overseas.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/01/24/coursera-launches-college-completion-pathway

Syed Balkhi, Entrepreneur

Creating a learning culture in the workplace is all about fostering an environment that empoweres people to pursue knowledge. This is important for individual evolution, but it’s also important for the growth of a company as a whole. According to Deloitte, companies with continuous learning cultures are 46 percent more likely to be first to market and 58 percent more prepared to meet future demand. Plus, they also have a 26 percent greater ability to deliver quality products and they experience 37 percent greater employee productivity.

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/345204

Sharuna Segaren, Study International

Higher education is going through a tough and uncertain time. The industry is continuously being disrupted, with the past decade seeing shifts in nearly every aspect of higher education. Students are asking for their return on investment more than ever, as tuition fees continue to skyrocket. More and more members of the younger generation are looking towards alternatives to “traditional” college pathways such as apprenticeships and part-time study. So what does the future look like for higher education as we head into the 2020s? Here are four predictions according to multiple experts.

https://www.studyinternational.com/news/4-higher-education-predictions-for-the-coming-decade/

Edward J. Maloney and Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

If you read our book, Learning Innovation and the Future of Higher Education, you will discover that we see much to celebrate. The main argument of the book is that higher education is in the midst of an underrecognized and underappreciated renaissance in teaching and learning.  If we are optimistic about the future of learning, what are we worried most about? We have lots of concerns about the next decade in higher education, concerns that could take up another book-length project. Instead, we wanted to share our top four worries about the next decade in higher education.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/learning-innovation/4-worries-about-higher-education-2020s

Tyler Kern, Marketscale

Personally, I use backwards design in the majority of my developments because I want to be absolutely sure that the learning objectives are assessed correctly and content is more oriented toward the big picture. Instead of building out a course in a linear fashion, you’ll want to first start with identifying the desired results, or setting up your learning objectives. Next, you’ll begin working on the assessments and determining what evidence would demonstrate that the learner has acquired the necessary knowledge. Last, you’ll build out the content to support those assessments.

https://marketscale.com/industries/education-technology/the-online-learning-minute-what-is-backwards-design/

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Often overlooked until something goes wrong, web browsers are the unsung hero of the connectivity generation. The market is packed full of free web browser options that promise varying levels of customization and privacy while delivering varied results. Whether you’re a student, a teacher, or just a web surfer looking for the tallest waves, a web browser is at its best when it’s minimally invasive and completely effective. We took the liberty of testing a litany of web browsers and whittled them down for our definitive list of the 4 Best Web Browsers For 2020. There are some familiar names and some surprises on this list, but all of them offer the same ease of use and peak functionality that is essential for the best of web browsers.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/the-best-web-browsers-of-2020-all-the-faster-and-most-secure-ways-to-surf-the-web/

by Kate Roesch, Ben Shulman and D. Christopher Brooks

EDUCAUSE Review

Ideally, our incomes should be a fair reflection of the work we do and should enable us to meet our needs and live comfortably. Higher education IT employees’ salaries are competitive even by private-sector standards.2 ECAR developed models of higher education IT salary using data gathered from the IT Workforce Survey, 2018. The interactive salary calculator was built to represent the results of those models and allow users to explore the predicted effects of several factors on salary. So, how does it work?

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/1/a-higher-education-it-workforce-interactive-salary-calculator

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News

Most surveyed faculty don’t use online student success tools, but when they do use them, most find them at least moderately helpful. The research examines four online student success tools, and for each of them, between 27 percent and 39 percent of faculty report not using the tools. When faculty did use the tools, roughly one-third rated them as very or extremely useful. Students say they find success tools more useful than faculty. When it comes to overall technology, faculty satisfaction with their experience has declined slightly, from 71 percent of faculty deeming their experience good or excellent to 64 percent saying the same in 2019.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2020/01/22/5-ways-to-support-faculty-technology-use-and-preferences/

Mike Brown, LendedU

Massachusetts had the highest average monthly student loan payment — $229.02. It was followed by New Jersey ($225.56), Connecticut ($225.26), New York ($223.10), and California ($221.17).
Wyoming had the lowest average monthly student loan payment — $176.46. It was followed by Idaho ($176.98), Nevada ($190.57), South Dakota ($191.74), and Louisiana ($192.62).
Nationwide, the average monthly student loan payment was $210.73. Nationwide, the average student loan payoff time was 11.30 years.

https://lendedu.com/blog/average-student-loan-payment/

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

The evolution of artificial intelligence and its impact on virtual assistants is stunning week by week, let alone month by month or year by year. Virtual assistants are becoming less prone to informational parroting and are starting to be developed with conversational capacities far exceeding what’s currently on the market. With enhanced virtual assistants in tow built to specifications, they could begin to have an impact on all sorts of new areas in the higher education process. They could also be used as custom study agents. And even crazier, they could be used as supplemental resources for lectures. In time, they could even become advanced enough to work as a teacher’s assistant normally would – fielding questions, helping grade certain assignments, etc.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/how-digital-assistants-are-changing-higher-ed/

By Natalie Schwartz, Education Dive
Having more community colleges per capita increases the chances that students will complete high school and graduate from college, according to a new working paper.  It is also linked with higher earnings, especially among white and Hispanic people, and a slew of positive health behaviors, including an increase in the frequency of exercise and a lower chance of smoking. The findings come as federal and state policymakers debate whether to lower or eliminate tuition for community colleges in order to boost their enrollment.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/study-community-college-access-linked-to-higher-earnings-health-benefits/570807/

Indermit Gill, Brookings

So, who’s most likely to succeed during the next decade? My money is on the United States. Productivity growth will pick up again as businesses take advantage of new technologies, consumers will take home big price and quality gains, and policy types will stop fretting about fears of secular stagnation. If enough of the tax burden is shifted from labor to capital, the incomes of middle-income households will keep pace. Expect the United States to call the shots for the rest of the century.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/01/17/whoever-leads-in-artificial-intelligence-in-2030-will-rule-the-world-until-2100/