Online Learning Update

by Aaron Skonnard, VentureBeat

Teaching coding languages and skills is a critical need in today’s technology-infused society, but we’re falling behind in the talent wars. Even though programming jobs are some of the best paying in the world, the gap of qualified developers and programmers is only projected to increase in the next several years. In fact, it’s estimated that there will be 1 million jobs left vacant by 2020 because of this alarming lack of qualified developers. The lack of qualified talent in the computer science field has created fertile ground for the growing number of coding boot camps popping up across the nation. While boot camps can assist with providing new skillsets and helping fill the talent gap, they are still somewhat limited in what they can offer. Here are a few reasons why e-learning is a better alternative.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/07/5-reasons-you-should-forget-the-coding-bootcamp-study-online-instead/

A new kind of online training program designed by businesses will prepare thousands of workers and job-seekers for high-demand jobs in the tech industry. Carving out a fresh new category of on-line degrees, AT&T and Udacity will launch the first nanodegree program this fall in the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) format. The first courses will focus on entry-level software skills.  Udacity will manage the program with personalized coaching and career services. AT&T will provide direction on course content. AT&T and Udacity will support diverse access through scholarships. AT&T will offer up to 100 paid internships for nanodegree graduates. Students will be certified for the skills they learn through this new educational pathway. The nanodegree will be fully recognized for entry-level software jobs at AT&T. Udacity and AT&T are encouraging other businesses to recognize the first nanodegrees. New nanodegrees from additional companies are being developed over the coming months.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/efficient-accessible-affordable-online-program-will-help-job-seekers-get-high-demand-technical-skills-2014-06-16

By Marilyn Ault, eSchool News

Games that are highly engaging create a sense of “flow” for the players. Flow is the experience of being totally involved in an activity and usually involves high levels of both concentration and enjoyment. Game developers strive to create a sense of flow during game play because when a player achieves a state of total or compete focus, complete immersion, and limited awareness of time, there is also created a strong desire to repeat or extend the experience. There are a number of game features that have been identified as helping create a sense of flow. Some of these include, for example, ease of use, simplicity of play, clear goals, feedback, interactivity, competition, control over actions, and a sense of community. These features of a game do not have to be a part of the educational content of the game and can actually involve actions that are separate from the content that is the focus of the game.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/06/06/games-engage-students-241/

By Peter Schworm, Boston Globe

Almost three-quarters of students who enrolled in the first year of online classes under a joint Harvard-MIT initiative were from outside the United States, demonstrating the global reach and growing popularity of the large-scale open courses.  Of the 842,000 students who registered for the free online classes offered by the edX initiative in the 2012-2013 school year, just 28 percent were from the United States. About 13 percent were from India, followed by the United Kingdom, Brazil, Canada, and Spain. The most typical edX student was a male with a bachelor’s degree who is 26 or older. But less than 1 in 3 students fit that profile, researchers found, suggesting there is a broad array of different types of students.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/06/06/nearly-three-quarters-online-students-harvard-mit-are-from-outside-report-finds/BuZiQngGDHkpwEWwLEhMrM/story.html

by Udemy

Americans are increasingly turning to technology-focused online courses to develop tech skills and find success in the current job market, according to findings from the first-ever Udemy Skills Index. The Skills Index, an analysis of trends in American skills development based on data from Udemy’s top 100 paid online courses, found that technology courses have the highest enrollment numbers of any subject among Udemy students in the United States. In a recent survey of more than 7,000 Udemy students, 73 percent reported a desire for skills improvement as the main motivation for signing up for classes. A majority (52 percent) of American Udemy students sign up for technology courses, followed by business and design courses. Udemy’s most avid technology students are new to the workforce: young people aged 25-34, followed by those aged between 35 and 44. More than 30 percent of Udemy students consume their courses via iPhone, iPad and Android mobile devices.

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/americans-honing-tech-skills-compete-120000179.html

by Avi Wolfman-Arent, Chronicle of Higher Ed

In 2011, Tim Peterson was your archetypal frustrated academic. He’d just landed a paper in the journal Cell but had grown disillusioned with the publishing process after nine months of back-and-forth among his team, the reviewers, and the editors. he taught himself to code. And finally, on May 14, all that thinking and coding converged to form a website, Onarbor. The site is intended as a publishing and funding platform for academics, kind of like a Kickstarter for scholarly work. Among its features is that it allows donors to support projects with either Bitcoin or Dogecoin. Onarbor is designed to circumvent the traditional mechanisms of peer review by fostering a community of user-reviewers modeled on the popular tech-help website Stack Overflow. There, users earn reputation points based on the quality of their responses.

http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/frustrated-scholar-creates-new-route-for-funding-and-publishing-academic-work/53073

By Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed

Administrators at the Georgia Institute of Technology are optimistic but “not declaring victory” after one semester of its affordable online master’s degree program in computer science. While the program has been well-received by students, administrators are still striving to solve an equation that balances cost, academic quality and support services. “We’re not all the way there yet, but I couldn’t ask for a much better start,” Zvi Galil, dean of the College of Computing, wrote last month in an email to Georgia Tech faculty on the one-year anniversary of the program’s announcement. The initiative has been closely watched since last spring’s announcement — and not just because of the dramatic savings it offers compared to the university’s on-campus program. A three-credit-hour online course costs less than a single credit hour of face-to-face education — $402 versus $472, based on spring 2013 tuition rates. The goal is to get much larger than a traditional program could sustain, but also much smaller than the average MOOC.

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/06/06/one-semester-students-satisfied-unfinished-georgia-tech-online-degree-program#sthash.i7q8TuTw.dpbs

by Julia Choate, George Kotsanas, Phillip Dawson, AJET

Lecturers using tablet PCs with specialised pens can utilise real-time changes in lecture delivery via digital inking. We investigated student perceptions and lecturer experiences of tablet PC lectures in large-enrolment biomedicine subjects. Lecturers used PowerPoint or Classroom Presenter software for lecture preparation and in-lecture pen-based inking. Using surveys and lecturer interviews, students and lecturers were asked to reflect on their tablet PC lectures in comparison to non-tablet lectures that used prepared images and a laser pointer. Quantitative survey responses suggested that students felt that the tablet lectures were more interesting, that they were more capable of keeping up with the lecturer, and they enhanced their understanding of the lecture content. Qualitative analysis of written comments indicated that students appreciated the real-time writing and drawings, particularly because these were visible on lecture recordings. When reflecting on their non-tablet lectures, most lecturers used the pen-based writing, drawing and highlighting tablet functions and reduced lecture pace and content for their tablet lectures. Long-term tablet use led to lecturers making more use of digital inking, with less use of prepared images. Our results support the idea that tablet PC-supported lectures are conducive to improved management of cognitive load via reduced lecture pace and content.

http://ascilite.org.au/ajet/submission/index.php/AJET/article/view/334

by Zaffar Ahmed Shaikh, Shakeel Ahmed Khoja, AJET

This paper presents the results of research using an online Delphi method, which aimed to explore university teacher roles and readiness for learner-centred pedagogy, driven by personal learning environments (PLEs). Using a modified Policy Delphi technique, a group of researchers worked with 34 international experts who are university teachers by profession, but who are currently associated with PLEs as PLE-practising teachers, researchers, and developers. A questionnaire based on the relevant literature published between 2006 and 2012 was developed to serve the panel as the starting point for the Delphi debate. This questionnaire sought Delphi experts’ consensus on the names and task descriptions of 36 university teacher roles categorized into five core competencies. During the three rounds of this study, the experts changed the names of many roles and modified their task descriptions. The study concluded by identifying the 28 roles on which the Delphi panel was able to reach a consensus. The results also revealed that the university teacher today is ready to carry out the new roles suggested by this study.

http://ascilite.org.au/ajet/submission/index.php/AJET/article/view/324

by Andrew J. Cavanaugh & Liyan Song, JOLT

Providing feedback to students on their writing represents perhaps the most important task of a composition instructor and also possibly the most time-consuming task. In online composition classes, this task becomes more daunting, as there are no opportunities for face-to-face conversations with students. Typically, online instructors provide comments to students in text form. The use of audio comments through MP3 files has become an alternative. The purpose of this case study was to examine students’ and instructors’ perceptions of audio feedback and written feedback for student papers in online composition classes. Data were collected through surveys and interviews. The results show that instructors had mixed feelings about the use of audio, while students tended to have positive feelings toward it. The findings also reveal that teachers tended to give more global commentary when using audio comments and more local commentary when using written comments. Finally, the findings indicate that students’ methods of revising their papers based on the feedback they receive may impact their preference for one modality over the other. Implications for further research are discussed at the end of the paper.

http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no1/cavanaugh_0314.pdf

by Dorothy J. Della Noce, Debora L. Scheffel, May Lowry; JOLT

On online asynchronous discussion boards, instructor questions are considered a driving force in student engagement and learning. Yet, students can and do choose not to answer questions from instructors. In this paper, the authors report on a qualitative study in which they analyzed instructor–student interaction on an asynchronous discussion board in order to determine which instructor’s questions students were more likely to answer and why. They found that students were more likely to answer those instructor questions that were authentic and exhibited uptake of students’ comments. Moreover, the students’ orientation to those features suggests that students actively choose to engage in – and construct – coherent instructional interactions that characterize conversation rather than recitation.

http://jolt.merlot.org/vol10no1/young_0314.pdf

By Michael Sharnoff, eCampus News

Although the majority of Vine video clips are for fun and personal use, educators and administrators in higher education could capitalize on the growing popularity of this social media application. Striking the right balance of engaging, quality academic content online is challenging, and the following suggestions to incorporate Vine can help enhance your university’s presence.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/universities-media-vine-249/

By KIT EATON, New York Times

Massive Open Online Courses — or MOOCs — are a snowballing revolution in education. Thousands of courses from some of the world’s finest institutions are available free online, covering everything from astrophysics to the arts. For each course, students, sometimes numbering in the thousands, take part from home — where they view video lectures, take tests and submit essays through a Web interface. It’s a digital classroom with no actual “room,” and where you can study more or less when you like. Nowadays of course, your smartphone means you can also study when you’re on the move. Coursera’s free iOS and Android app is perhaps the very best way to take part in a MOOC through a phone or tablet — maybe during your commute to work or your lunch break. The app gives you limited access to Coursera’s list of available courses as well as any you have already signed up for.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/05/technology/personaltech/Moocs-via-tablet-or-smartphone-are-gateway-to-free-education.html

By Joshua Bolkan, Campus Technology

“The traditional resume is on its way out and online tools that work for mid-career professionals don’t effectively show a college student’s skills and accomplishments or truly distinguish their talents,” said Jay Bhatt, CEO of Blackboard, in a prepared statement. “It just makes sense to leverage the environment students are in every day to house their educational information, to also showcase their skills and connect them to job opportunities.” The company has also announced a redesign of Portfolios. “While the Enhanced Cloud Profile allows for a high-level view of the educational identity of a student, Portfolios allows for a more in-depth look at specific project work and course assignments. Together, the features enhance the ability for students to illustrate their competencies and achievements through Blackboard Learn.”

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2014/06/02/blackboard-learn-adds-professional-profiles-for-students.aspx

by Deborah Everhart, Frederick M. Hurst, and Ellen Wagner, EDUCAUSE Review

Extending low-cost, quality educational opportunities was the focus of the recent “Badges to Breakthroughs” panel session at EDUCAUSE 2013. Here, session participants offer individual summaries of their views on positioning MOOCs, exploring personalized learning, and examining how badges can provide value in the stakeholder ecosystem. Taken together, their perspectives illustrate the many breakthroughs occurring that both activate learner potential and validate alternative learning credentials.

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/badges-breakthroughs-unleashing-learner-potential-through-competency-based-achievements

By Sean Coughlan, BBC News

A major US online university network says restrictions are to be partially lifted on providing online courses for students in Iran. Online university courses have been caught up in US trade sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan, so that students in those countries were blocked from many free courses from US universities. Coursera says it has been “working closely with governing authorities to navigate licences and permissions” and, as a result, “Iranian learners will now regain access to the majority of Coursera’s courses”. The California-based Coursera has almost eight million registered students, making it one of the world’s biggest providers of so-called Moocs – massive open online courses.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27637817

By Devon Haynie, US News

As the price of higher education continues to skyrocket, some universities believe they have found the key to keeping tuition costs down — online education. Recently, for example, Georgia Institute of Technology announced it would be offering an online master’s degree in computer science for $6,600 — about $35,000 less than its on-ground program. The University of the People, an accredited, online-only school, is now offering degrees with no tuition. And massive open online courses, or MOOCs, have been hailed as free educational resources that people could eventually use to complete a degree. Although these developments in online education may influence the overall price of college eventually, students might not see dramatic changes soon, experts say.

http://news.yahoo.com/why-online-education-may-drive-down-cost-degree-140000842.html

By Max Nisen, Quartz

Late last year, Harvard’s prestigious business school announced that it was making a foray into online education. A nine-week set of three courses will cost $1,500. Clayton Christensen, arguably the institution’s best-known professor completely disagrees with the school’s strategy. He dismisses it as an extremely expensive system that could potentially be upended by a cheaper technology option. “What they’re doing is, in my language, a sustaining innovation,” Christensen said. Put baldly, Harvard is putting itself on track for irrelevance, more like Kodak or Blackberry than like Google, Christensen argues. The school is following a strategy closer to one espoused by the long-time professor Michael Porter who has argued Harvard should online courses, but in a way that uses its strengths without hurting its current business.

http://qz.com/215676/harvards-two-most-famous-business-professors-are-at-odds-over-online-mbas/

by the University of Pennsylvania

Data from a University of Pennsylvania study of massive open online courses offered by Penn’s Wharton School suggest that MOOCs aren’t a threat to traditional business programs, but rather an opportunity to expand to underserved markets. The findings were published today in the Harvard Business Review. The study is the first of its kind to focus on MOOC participants taking business classes. The researchers were Ezekiel Emanuel, Penn’s vice provost for global initiatives; Gayle Christensen, executive director of Penn Global; and Brandon Alcorn, Penn Global project manager. They surveyed more than 875,000 students enrolled in nine MOOCs offered by Wharton. They found that business MOOCs do not appear to be cannibalizing existing programs but are reaching at least three new student populations: those from outside the United States, especially those in developing countries; foreign-born Americans; and under-represented American minorities.

http://www.upenn.edu/pennnews/news/penn-study-massive-open-online-courses-not-threat-traditional-business-schools

by Distance Minnesota

Even with technology upgrades, students still need to manage their education to make certain they get the most out of it. For the nearly half of working adults who are interested in taking an online course, plugging into online education is easier than ever before. Online instruction is similar in many ways to on-campus instruction. Courses involve faculty, classmates, books and other learning resources. You are required to participate in courses and complete assignments on time. As a student, you can expect to be an active learner! Successful learners typically set aside 12-15 hours of study time each week per course, just as you would for a traditional classroom course. Online learning is best suited for those who are self-motivated and self-directed learners. It requires that you go beyond listening to a lecture or reading course notes.

http://pressnews.com/2014/06/02/working-adults-plug-into-online-education/