Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
Presidents weren’t wowed by their colleges’ performance in delivering instruction this spring. Their worries about how effectively they can teach online, and students’ potential dissatisfaction with that learning, are part of what’s driving most of them to physically reopen their campuses this fall. (Yes, money is a major factor, too.) They may be overestimating their ability to ensure a safe and comfortable physical environment for learning.
Share on FacebookAmelia Pang, Educational Tech
As colleges and universities across the nation plan for an unprecedented transition to hybrid learning, what are some common issues they should be anticipating? And how can schools help their faculty and instructors better prepare? We asked two higher education experts to share their plans and solutions: Joe Way, director of learning environments at the University of Southern California, and John Hulen, national education director at Crestron Electronics.
Share on FacebookSydney Finkelstein, Knowledge at Wharton
What is common between leaders like San Francisco 49ers head coach Bill Walsh, Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison and California cuisine pioneer Alice Waters? They, and scores of others like them, “generate and regenerate talent on a continuous basis,” according to Sydney Finkelstein, a professor of management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.
Share on FacebookELISSA NADWORNY, NPR
Around the U.S., coronavirus cases are rising among young people. The spread of the virus has been connected to college-related events such as fraternity parties, drinking at off-campus bars and athletic practices. For colleges planning to bring thousands of students together in the fall, student spread is a real worry. And the stakes are high: If there are outbreaks, campuses may once again be forced to shut down, scattering students and disrupting academics and college finances all over again. To keep that from happening, schools have created robust guidelines — but those plans rely on a major wild card: students following the rules.
Share on FacebookJackie Chris, EdTech
The beauty of an e-learning classroom is its malleability, and the potential for it to be as accommodating, accessible and collaborative as possible to meet the needs of professors and students. Improvement comes from a willingness from students to take full advantage of platform features and offer substantive feedback — and from instructors working to determine best practices for virtual classrooms. While we are making the most of being alone together, we should also be striving to find new ways of connecting to one another.
Share on FacebookTeresa Valerio Parrot and Erin Hennessy, Inside Higher Ed
Each day, colleges and universities announce their fall semester plans with great confidence, fanfare and media coverage. And yet somewhere out there is the first institution — and the second institution, and the third and so on — to be forced by circumstances outside its control to pivot from those plans to something different. Fall plans were created with wiggle room built in, however, communications about a shift must be carefully constructed to retain credibility and preserve enrollment while accepting the reality that health and safety of our communities have to supersede the value of the on-campus experience and ideology of in-person learning.
Share on FacebookNews-Republican
Along with nationally-known institutions such as Arizona State University, Rice University, NYU, and Western Governors University, Doane University has joined this prestigious group of schools to offer a MicroBachelors program to learners all across the globe. “This marks an exciting milestone for our partnership with Doane University with the announcement of a new MicroBachelors program,” says Anant Agarwal, CEO and founder of edX. “This modular program offers learners with some or no college the opportunity to gain a credential that delivers on the skills and knowledge necessary to further their career.
https://www.newsrepublican.com/news/20200627/doane-to-offer-online-microbachelors-program
Share on FacebookSenegal Alfred Mabry, EdSurge
As colleges plan to welcome students back for the fall semester—while preparing for a possible second outbreak of the coronavirus that would force classes back online–one thing is for sure: Community is more important than ever. Families debating the value of virtual college classes fear that schools in the fall will lack the real “college experience,” and that students will struggle with online learning and feel more isolated than engaged. And so many students will fail to get the most out of their education—and dollars—if colleges don’t innovate what they are doing to make students feel welcome.
Share on FacebookDavid Brancaccio and Candace Manriquez Wrenn, Marketplace
Coursera CEO Jeff Maggioncalda says a class on the science of well-being is the most popular on the platform right now. “Very job-relevant, practical courses seem to be the ones that most people are turning to.” Even before the coronavirus pandemic, online learning options were growing. But now, with around a billion and a half students worldwide displaced from schools, education institutions are scrambling to offer e-learning tools.
Share on FacebookImran Mojib, Gulf Today
Technology has become a great equaliser now, this e-learning experience will pave the way for new educational technology tools to come in to classrooms to enhance the learning experience, and bandwidth needs will continue to grow as we support more and more e-learning avenues going forward. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will continue to enhance student learning, by providing teachers deeper data insights into individual student attainment, allowing them to tailor learning experiences for each child. Augmented reality (AR) will also provide unprecedented virtual learning opportunities for students, allowing them to truly experience the past, present and future!
https://www.gulftoday.ae/news/2020/06/27/e-learning-experience-to-drive-further-innovation-in-edtech
Share on FacebookMichael Garbade, Coin Telegraph
Peer-to-peer learning is changing as the online education sector grows. Some students prefer to watch video content instead of reading notes. The same thing can be said for young professionals who are likely more interested in watching practical projects in advancing their careers. Peer-to-peer learning platforms are aimed to bridge this gap by providing practical step-by-step learning content delivered in video format.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/the-future-of-peer-to-peer-online-learning-amid-the-covid-19-pandemic
Share on FacebookShawn Hubler, NY Times
Mayor Steve Patterson of Athens estimates an undercount could cost his small city up to $40 million over the next 10 years “for things like community development block grants, jobs and family services and senior services that rely on a strong census count to get a full funding.” “We could be feeling this for the next decade,” Mr. Patterson said. In California, where Democrats have prioritized the census, the city of Davis and its surrounding county partnered long before the pandemic with the university to maximize its response rate, which is now higher than the state average. But the exodus of students has cut sales tax revenues by 50 percent, Mr. Frerichs said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/28/us/coronavirus-college-towns.html
Share on FacebookSara Weissman, Diverse Education
A new guide for faculty, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, aims to help professors plan their online courses for fall as the coronavirus pandemic continues. The faculty playbook, called “Delivering High-Quality Instruction Online in Response to COVID-19,” came out of a collaboration between Every Learner Everywhere, a network of non-profits focused on student outcomes, and two of its member organizations, the Online Learning Consortium and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU). Their aim is to offer equity-minded online education strategies, especially for faculty who made their first foray into online education this year.
https://diverseeducation.com/article/180188/
Share on FacebookDara Melnyk and Daniel Kontowski, University World News
Not all universities will survive the COVID-19 crisis. Many niche institutions will alter their models to stay afloat. Other vulnerable higher education institutions without effective safety nets may downsize, consider mergers or declare bankruptcy. New institutions with new solutions will come to replace them.
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200624152437652
Share on FacebookAshish Rangnekar, Chief Learning Officer
When you choose to put a training program online, the technology you choose to buy is one of the most important considerations. Sure, you need great design, too, but without the right technology you can’t provide the training your employees need. According to WestMonroe’s 2019 report, “The Upskilling Crisis: Effectively Enabling and Retraining Employees for the Future,” 70 percent of companies introduced a new technology in the past year. Yet, a third of employees report never being trained on the new technology. Obviously, untrained employees won’t provide the promised benefits. Employees need on-demand, digital training programs to increase digital adoption. However, online training programs are only as good as the underlying learning technology.
Share on FacebookMICHAEL M. CROW and JEFFREY SELINGO, Politico
Thirty years after the internet age began, the pandemic has shown us that it is long overdue for the federal government to help higher education capitalize on the promise of digital resources. If digital education is a critical piece of our national security infrastructure, we need to know more about its reach and efficacy. A similar benefit to the nation can occur with a new digital education interstate system, one that might initially be built to deal with a national emergency like the one we’re living through now, but whose ultimate impact will be far greater on a generation of learners.
https://www.politico.com/news/agenda/2020/06/25/the-smart-way-to-improve-online-learning-338664
Share on FacebookUri Berliner, NPR
Tech companies Twitter and Facebook captured headlines with announcements about permanent work from home. But the news from a 94-year-old company based in the heartland — Columbus, Ohio — may have been even more significant. Nationwide Insurance is shutting five regional offices since remote work has gone off so smoothly during the pandemic. And thousands of employees will permanently ditch their commutes for home offices. According to Global Workplace Analytics, “a typical employer can save about $11,000 year for every person who works remotely half of the time.” And workers can bank between $2,500 and $4,000 a year working remotely half time.
https://www.npr.org/2020/06/22/870029658/get-a-comfortable-chair-permanent-work-from-home-is-coming
Share on FacebookCPA Practice Advisor
The COVID-19 pandemic has presented a unique opportunity to expand your professional knowledge and accelerate your lifelong learning. While the coronavirus has forced many large venues to close their doors, preventing in-person training and conferences, many organizations, including the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (Association), which combines the strength of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), have successfully transitioned to online conferences, webcasts and online trainings to assure members stay current in their professions.
Stefan Hrastinski, EDUCAUSE Review
Although there is an abundance of digital education resources, we must find better ways to support learners when and where they have a need. What if learning could be supported anywhere, anytime, based on the needs of learners? Although an abundance of digital education resources are available online, learners have questions and need guidance when they are studying. Just-in-time online tutoring attempts to meet this need. It also has great potential as a complement to scheduled education. Just-in-time learning has been defined as “anywhere, anytime learning that is just enough, just for me and just in time.”1 Margaret Riel outlines three principles of just-in-time learning.
Alan Jones, Suzan Harkness and Nathan Mondragon, EDUCAUSE Review
The increased growth of emerging technologies and AI interviewing provides a multifaceted approach to candidate profiling and screening. Competency and personality-trait profiles can be created with AI-trained algorithms to identify and score behaviors and responses during the recorded interviews. The AI-based profiles can then be mitigated for bias (which, if successful, could increase the diversity of candidate pools). The resulting profiles would then be used to screen and select candidates to move forward in the process, thereby significantly improving the efficiencies of the hiring process.
Share on FacebookPaul Fain, Inside Higher Ed
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