Educational Technology

CapeCod.com
Cape Cod Community College has announced that distance learning formats will be utilized for all classes during the upcoming summer and fall semesters due to the COVID-19 outbreak. The following is from a press release published by Cape Cod Community College: “This decision ensures continuity and also creates flexibility for prospective students who may be displaced from 4-year institutions.

https://www.capecod.com/newscenter/cape-cod-community-college-moving-to-distance-learning-for-summer-fall/

Udemy

Udemy today released “Online Education Steps Up: What the World is Learning (from Home),” a special data report that provides a comprehensive look at online learning and teaching around the globe as the COVID-19 pandemic, shelter-in-place orders, and social distancing impact the world.  As remote working becomes the new normal, the findings reveal significantly increased demand globally across every segment:

425% increase in enrollments for consumers
55% increase in course creation by instructors
80% increase in usage from businesses and governments

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200430005243/en/

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf , Education Dive

Consumer protection groups are seeking changes to policies that govern how distance education is offered across state lines in most of the U.S. They have made several recommendations to NC-SARA, the organization that controls the nation’s only multistate reciprocity agreement for online learning, including proposed rule changes on professional licensing and resolving student complaints. While reciprocity agreements such as NC-SARA’s are meant to ease barriers for institutions to offer online education to out-of-state students, the organization has come under fire for having weak standards.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-groups-challenge-policies-of-interstate-distance-learning-pact/577116/

Jeb Bush, Washington Post

It’s time to learn the lessons from these heroic efforts and plan for a future in which public education can continue without access to classrooms — not just because of a pandemic but because that’s the future of learning. In the near term, many issues loom. A vaccine for covid-19 is months away. Even if schools are able to reopen this fall, rolling closures are likely when the pandemic reappears. Some parents simply won’t send their children to school — especially if family members have underlying health conditions — and will demand at-home accommodations.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/03/jeb-bush-its-time-embrace-distance-learning-not-just-because-coronavirus/

By Manikanta Immanni, TechDator
Harvard University is now directly allowing the public to take any course of their like from its list of 70+ free online courses. Any certificate from Harvard will be cool, if not great. Being a part of the Ivy League, Harvard’s reputation will be added to your resume if you add any of the works from there. So here’s your choice.

Ilker Koksal, Forbes
Online learning has shown significant growth over the last decade, as the internet and education combine to provide people with the opportunity to gain new skills. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, online learning has become more centric in people’s lives. The pandemic has forced schools, universities, and companies to remote working and this booms the usage of online learning. Even before the pandemic, Research and Markets forecasts the online education market as $350 Billion by 2025, so the numbers might be updated after analyzing the growth impacts of COVID-19 on the online learning market.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ilkerkoksal/2020/05/02/the-rise-of-online-learning/#73a2b77572f3

THE Journal

We developed the compilation by starting with a list of telecommunications companies that have signed the Federal Communications Commission’s “Keep Americans Connected” pledge. Editors culled through the list specifically seeking information online about those companies that provided free service to students in their coverage areas and/or free public WiFi hotspots that students could access for some portion of each day while sitting in their cars or otherwise being physically isolated from others in the vicinity.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2020/04/30/free-wifi-for-online-learning-during-covid19.aspx

Brian Runo, Market Space

On this special episode of the MarketScale Online Learning Minute with Brian Runo, Lenovo Director, Global Education Solutions Rich Henderson outlined the high points of gamification and game-based learning in today’s educational landscape – and how those concepts have driven tremendous results.

https://marketscale.com/industries/education-technology/virtual-reality-classroom-technology-lenovo/

Jeremy Bauer-Wolf, Education Dive

As the costs associated with the coronavirus pile up for colleges, it seems almost moot to point out that in certain areas, institutions are netting immediate savings. After all, some colleges and systems forecast losses in the tens of millions of dollars. So halting aspects of campus operations — as well as large-scale events such as commencements and recruitment fairs — can save some cash. But their losses are big enough that a little savings here and there won’t rescue their budgets.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/whats-next-as-colleges-make-cuts-new-ways-to-make-and-save-money-emerg/577039/

UPCEA

The field of Professional, Continuing, and Online Education (PCO) has truly come of age in the 21st century – and our importance and sophistication continues to expand exponentially as our members play an increasingly critical role in the success and survival of their institutions. This reality has prompted UPCEA to elevate the profession itself with the most significant initiative ever undertaken by the association: the creation of industry standards for what it means to be a professional in the PCO field, with certificate programs designed around those standards.

https://upcea.edu/professional-development-certificates/

Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

“You want to be able create a fully online version and a fully face-to-face version and find ways to bring them together into a single course experience that has multiple participation paths … And the student gets to control whether they’re doing it online or in the classroom.” Creating an instructional model that allows students to toggle back and forth between educationally comparable in-person and virtual formats depending on the circumstances at the moment has a lot of resonance at a time like this.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2020/05/13/one-option-delivering-instruction-if-campuses-open-fall-hyflex

BY KIMBERLY COY, e-Campus News

Leveraging Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, will help ensure effectiveness and a level of normalcy in an unexpected new learning reality.  UDL comes from an educational framework first conceptualized in architecture with Universal Design – creating spaces that are accessible to all – and the challenges of special education, where learning and teaching based on the “average” student was not effective.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2020/04/30/udl-is-essential-in-post-secondary-pandemic-learning/

Michael Horn, Campus Technology

Higher education’s current move to [remote-teaching] online learning may be leaving a sour taste in the mouths of students and faculty across the country, but there is a silver lining. On the bad side, given that college and university faculty hastily moved courses online without much support, online learning is being done poorly in many quarters of the United States. It’s consequently getting a bad reputation at many campuses…. Online learning will grow from where it was pre-COVID-19, when already over a third of postsecondary students took at least one online class and roughly 30 percent of graduate students studied exclusively online.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/04/30/covid19s-ultimate-impact-on-online-learning-the-good-and-the-bad.aspx

Brian Runo, MarketScale

Brian Runo shares a quick comparison of the differences in creating online learning courses for universities versus corporations in this episode of MarketScale’s Online Learning Minute. There are a few main differences that make online learning much simpler to execute for corporations.

https://marketscale.com/industries/education-technology/online-learning-courses/

Maryse Zeidler · CBC News
The Great Courses, MasterClass and Coursera see big rise in new subscriptions.  As the coronavirus pandemic forces many to hunker down at home, a growing number of people have turned to online learning resources like MasterClass, the Great Courses and Mango Languages. The Toronto and Vancouver public libraries say patrons have flocked to the online learning services they offer.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/online-learning-services-covid-19-1.5591100

Voice of America

Upali Sedere writes about education and serves as an advisor to Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Education. He notes that online learning is available to children and adults in many areas, but not others. “One section of the population is enjoying online learning, with virtual classrooms, with all kinds of apps, whereas recently the UNESCO indicated a total of 826 million students are kept out of classrooms – and only 43 percent of this number has access to some form of [online] learning today.”

https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/only-half-of-world-s-learners-able-to-take-part-in-distance-learning/5395163.html

Shannon Riggs, EDUCAUSE Review

While online and remote education may not be synonymous, today’s new remote educators can benefit from the “lessons learned” by experienced online educators who are providing high-quality, engaging learning experiences for their students. The one “lesson learned” I see as the most significant for faculty as they begin to teach from a distance is to consider the new learning environment from a student-centered perspective.

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/4/student-centered-remote-teaching-lessons-learned-from-online-education

Javier Soltero, Google

Today, we’re making Google Meet, our premium video conferencing product, free for everyone, with availability rolling out over the coming weeks. We’ve invested years in making Meet a secure and reliable video conferencing solution that’s trusted by schools, governments and enterprises around the world, and in recent months we’ve accelerated the release of top-requested features to make it even more helpful. Starting in early May, anyone with an email address can sign up for Meet and enjoy many of the same features available to our business and education users, such as simple scheduling and screen sharing, real-time captions, and layouts that adapt to your preference, including an expanded tiled view.

https://www.blog.google/products/meet/bringing-google-meet-to-more-people/

Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly all higher education institutions (90 percent) in a recent survey used some form of emergency distance education to complete the Spring 2020 term. And 56 percent of faculty who moved courses online were using teaching methods they had never used before. That’s according to “Digital Learning Pulse Survey: Immediate Priorities,” a study conducted by Bay View Analytics (formerly known as the Babson Survey Research Group), which surveyed 826 higher education faculty and administrators across 641 institutions within the United States. Even experienced online instructors reported navigating unfamiliar territory: Fifty-one percent of those respondents said they were using new teaching methods in their courses.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/04/22/survey-emergency-move-online-forced-more-than-half-of-faculty-to-learn-new-teaching-methods.aspx