Online Learning Update

By Andrew Barbour, eCampus News

Technology advances and competition have made live streaming easier than ever to deploy, but schools must be careful to pick a solution that meets their needs—and their budgets.  With commencement season in full swing, parents and alumni are flooding campuses nationwide to partake in the festivities. For those unable to make the trek in person, many schools are now broadcasting the ceremonies via live streams, giving audiences a front-row view of the proceedings. Live streaming is nothing new, of course, but industry changes in recent years have made the technology far more accessible to institutions of higher education. As a result, schools are expanding their live-stream operations to encompass everything from graduation ceremonies to musical events, sports, and religious services.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/campus-live-streaming-787/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

While many competency-based education (CBE) programs do a decent job of documenting the competencies students need to master and the types of assessments used to measure student proficiency, that doesn’t go far enough, according to a new report on the topic of assessment in CBE. Moving forward, a new report from Pearson recommended, CBE program designers “should work to clarify the links between the tasks students complete on an assessment and the competencies those tasks are designed to measure.” On top of that, CBE programs need to be validated against external standards in order to prove to employers that a competency-based education is “credible evidence of students’ career readiness.”

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/05/20/report-competency-ed-needs-to-show-credible-evidence-to-prove-validity.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The same sophisticated approach to pattern matching that Siri and Cortana use to respond to questions more accurately is now helping a robot at the University of California Berkeley learn how to screw caps on bottles and rack up a hanger with an ever-growing repertoire of dexterity. Rather than programming each type of task, the researchers there are relying on algorithms that direct the robot to use trial and error, learning as it goes, more closely resembling the way humans learn. Among the activities already mastered by “BRETT” (Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks) are assembling a toy plane, fitting the claw of a toy hammer under a nail with various grasps and figuring out where the square peg belongs. BRETT is actually a Personal Robot 2 (PR2) produced by Willow Garage.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/05/21/uc-berkeley-develops-deep-learning-for-robot.aspx

by UC Davis

The University of California, Davis will launch a three-year study of online learning with a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. The University of California, Davis will launch a three-year study of online learning with a $1.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences. The study, which focuses on kindergarten to 12th grade virtual learning in Florida, will explore how online learning options affect students’ course progression, academic achievement and teacher effectiveness. Virtual schools have expanded rapidly in many states, and Florida has the nation’s largest K-12 virtual education sector. “We will also ask the students about the support they receive from teachers, such as feedback and encouragement,” Cassandra Hart, assistant professor, said in a statement. “And we will ask teachers about the support they receive from administrators, such as curricular materials and real-time coaching.”

http://www.universityherald.com/articles/19338/20150525/uc-davis-receives-grant-to-research-online-learning.htm

By Ryan Hickey, USA Today

Despite significant coverage of online education in recent years, finding a balanced perspective can be remarkably difficult since conversations tend to be highly partisan. Online schooling is either presented as the inevitable and awesome educational wave of the future or talked about as a cheap facsimile of the traditional classroom experience. For potential students trying to make a decision about their own educational journeys, this can be confusing and even distressing. You certainly don’t want to choose the wrong path for yourself, so how can you know if an online degree program is the right option for you?

http://college.usatoday.com/2015/05/25/the-pros-and-cons-of-getting-a-degree-online/

By Jordan Friedman, US News

There are plenty of perks associated with doing group work in an online course, experts say. Debbie Morrison, an instructional design consultant who works with California State University—Fullerton’s online programs, says group work in online courses provides students with important virtual collaboration skills for the 21st-century workforce. In general, she adds, group assignments are beneficial because they create an environment that involves learning from peers and gaining additional perspectives on different subjects. “It can expose a level of critical thinking,” Morrison says. But before students begin working on their online course group projects, experts say it’s important to follow these 5 steps.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2015/05/25/5-steps-to-take-before-starting-online-group-work