Online Learning Update

by Sue Gee, i-programmer

Two new courses from Microsoft, one on XAML, the other on jQuery, start next week on edX. Other of the edX/Microsoft courses are now self-paced so you can begin them whenever you want. Microsoft partnered with edX earlier this year to run MOOCs taught by Microsoft trainers and taking advantage of the edX delivery platform. Both the new courses are relatively short. DEV206.1x: Introduction to XAML and Application Development, which starts on September 14th lasts 4 weeks with an estimated workload of 3-5 hours per week. Its prerequisites are: Experience developing .NET applications with C# and Experience using Visual Studio and its intended audience is people interested in developing Universal Windows apps.

http://i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/8978-more-microsoft-courses-on-edx.html

by Campus Technology

Beginning in January, students who take select courses in Harvard Business School’s online digital education initiative, also known as HBX, will receive college credit for them. Students who receive the HBX Certificate of Readiness (CORe) after passing three business fundamentals courses — business analytics, economics for managers and financial accounting — will receive eight undergraduate credits from the Harvard Extension School. Previously, those who took the courses, conceived a year and a half ago as an online counterpart to the on-campus Harvard Business School experience, received only the credential but no college credit. The eight units can count toward an undergraduate degree from the extension school and, if transferable, used toward a degree at another university.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/09/10/harvard-business-school-begins-offering-credit-for-some-online-extension-courses.aspx?admgarea=news

By Toni Fuhrman, Campus Technology

Using an app he created, in classes he has configured around mobile technology, Ronald Yaros is preparing his students for a future that will revolve around their technological skills. “Today’s students are tomorrow’s information producers and consumers,” said Yaros, who is an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism. “In the past five years, we have seen tectonic changes in how younger people adopt, adapt, and utilize mobile technology for virtually every aspect of their lives. For the next five years, I’m interested in how evolving technology will continue to change the ways in which users interact with information.” According to Yaros, without a systemic change in how we engage students in and outside of class, technology can be — and often is — viewed as getting in the way of learning.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/09/08/why-we-should-build-classes-around-mobile-tech.aspx

By David Weldon, Campus Technology

Jane LeClair, chief operating officer at the National Cybersecurity Institute at Excelsior College in Washington, DC, recently stressed the need for higher education to step up its game around IT security. And she urged colleges and universities that haven’t already done so to embrace the role of the chief information security officer, or CISO. LeClair appeared at the Campus Technology 2015 conference in Boston speaking on the topic “Cybersecurity at the C-Level: Preparing Future Leaders.’ While she discussed the need for more cybersecurity professionals at all levels of the organization, she stressed the growing demand for a single accountable IT security individual that can hold his or her own with other top executives in the organization.

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/09/10/why-higher-ed-needs-to-step-up-its-it-security-game.aspx

By Kelli Rogers, Devex

Short-term courses and certificates are gaining ground, especially for mid-career professionals who might not have the wish, time or money to devote to a full-time master’s degree. Diving into details of 3-D printing for social good, earning a certificate in refugees, displacement and forced migration studies or tackling the essentials of nonprofit strategy is only getting easier when it comes to education access — especially when it can all be accomplished online. Startups like TechChange, along with established institutions like Massachusetts’ Clark University or the U.K.’s distance learning focused Open University are beefing up both their short-term and online learning options. Last week’s newly launched Philanthropy University, meanwhile, is offering its online classroom for free to students around the world who wish to do social good.

https://www.devex.com/news/will-future-global-development-education-be-short-and-online-86755

by GREG HINZ, Crain’s Chicago

“While it’s encouraging to see accelerated growth in STEM-related college programs, the slowdown in overall degree completions—especially those tied to developing strong communications and critical-thinking skills—is concerning,” said CareerBuilder CEO Matt Ferguson. His reference was to the fact that while the number of new degrees grew a healthy 6.9 percent in 2011 compared with 2010, the year-to-year hike in 2014 was just 0.8 percent. “Nearly half of employers say they currently have job vacancies but can’t find skilled candidates to fill them,” Ferguson added. “We need to do a better job informing students and workers about which fields are in demand and growing.”

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20150908/BLOGS02/150909867/which-college-degrees-are-in-the-most-least-demand

by UC Irvine

University of California, Irvine Extension, the continuing education unit of UC Irvine and an innovator in online and open education, today announced that five new Specializations will be available through Coursera, the world’s largest open online education provider. The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are designed to Expand Learning Opportunities for Gaining Skills and Marketability in Today’s Workforce. The five Specializations consist of online training and a sequence of development sessions specific to in demand interest fields such as ‘The Internet of Things,’ ‘Academic English for non-English speakers,’ ‘Optobotics,’ ‘iOS Programming,’ and ‘Conflict Management.’

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/uc-irvine-extension-launches-five-new-online-specializations-through-coursera-2015-09-08

by EdSurge

Shortly after the “Big Three” MOOC providers launched in 2012, nearly everyone focused on user numbers as a sign of their scale and reach. For anyone still keeping tabs on the numbers race, Udacity, Coursera and edX recently shared new figures. EdX shared it hit the 5 million student mark in August. That same month, Coursera claimed 15 million registered users to accompany news of its latest funding round. And in a recent interview with The Economist, Udacity CEO Sebastian Thrun said the company serves “some 4 [million] registered users worldwide, and about 60,000 working on nanodegrees at anyone one time.” He also added that more than 60 percent of Udacity students complete their courses.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-09-08-udacity-coursera-and-edx-now-claim-over-24-million-students

by Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed

Many parents and some psychologists decry videogames as a waste of time – or worse, as actually harmful. Videogames, according to this view, are socially isolating and desensitizing, conveying age-inappropriate images, fostering addictive behavior, creating attention problems, discouraging physical activity, inducing repetitive stress injuries, hypersexualizing men and demeaning women, suppressing emotional responses to aggression and violence, and cultivating feelings of hostility, aggression, and misogyny. However accurate or inaccurate such claims might be, there is no doubt that videogames offer important lessons that can improve teaching and learning.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/higher-ed-beta/gamifying-educational-experience

By Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

Roughly 600 colleges are in the design phase for a new competency-based education program, are actively creating one or already have a program in place. That’s up from an estimated 52 institutions last year. Amid this quick expansion, a group of college officials is meeting in Phoenix next month to share information about how to develop competency-based credentials. The agenda also features discussions about what academic quality should look like in those programs. Public Agenda, a nonprofit group that seeks to bring a nonpartisan lens to tricky issues, is hosting the meeting, dubbed the CBExchange. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the work.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/09/10/amid-competency-based-education-boom-meeting-help-colleges-do-it-right

by: Rosebank College, Johannesburg

What does the future of higher education look like? According to Moses Motha, Teaching and Learning Manager at Rosebank College, a brand of The Independent Institute of Education: “The future of higher education is intricately intertwined with the use of technology and online learning.” Technology will be used to integrate teaching and learning both inside and outside the classroom. This technology will be used to engage students by making lectures more interactive, while at the same time allowing lecturers to keep track of whether students understand the material. Technology will also help instructors offer a wide range of learning opportunities and types of information for students.

http://pressoffice.mg.co.za/rosebankcollege/PressRelease.php?StoryID=261124

by Kim Kozlowski, The Detroit News

Oakland Community College plans to reapply for accreditation for a virtual campus, hoping to undo a snag that could lead to most of its online classes being canceled for the winter term. The possibility of mass course cancellations arose after the state’s largest community college was denied accreditation for online programs that would let students earn degrees while taking most or all of their courses outside traditional classrooms. Officials would not characterize the magnitude of the cuts to online classes, taken by 3,000 students, or about 12 percent of OCC’s 24,000 students. But OCC is examining 257 accredited courses to see if they meet standards for online degrees set by the Chicago-based Higher Learning Commission, one of six regional institutions that evaluate colleges.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/oakland-county/2015/08/28/occ-online/71290028/

By Elizabeth A. Harris, The New York Times

As summer began, Dan Akim, a junior at Manhattan’s ultracompetitive Stuyvesant High School, planned to attend debate camp, to study for the PSATs and to go on some family vacations. Yet he felt that he could pack more into these months, so he also signed up for three online courses, in precalculus, computer science and public health. While on car rides with his family in Italy, he would sometimes use a mobile hot spot to chip away at one of the courses, while his mother asked why he was not soaking up the view instead.

http://www.santafenewmexican.com/news/education/online-summer-courses-attracting-college-bound-high-schoolers/article_17f360df-2ee4-5440-a5e2-b748dad1668e.html

BY TREVOR METCALFE, Register-Bee

Danville Community College student Jessica Newman is taking 18 credit hours this fall, with a tuition price tag of about $2,500. When Newman looked for the books for her five classes at the DCC bookstore, she said the cost was just over $1,000. “That’s nearly half of my tuition spent again on textbooks,” Newman said. With college textbook prices rising exponentially during the past several years, local students and teachers say they are seeking alternatives to purchasing new books every semester. According to data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, textbook priced have risen three times the rate of inflation since 1977.

http://www.godanriver.com/news/danville/as-textbook-prices-skyrocket-college-students-professors-seek-alternatives/article_2ac96ef0-5354-11e5-b787-e726b65ce323.html

BY FRIEDA K. EDGETTE, NATALIE S. MATTHEWS, Government Technology

It’s gotten harder to get government workers the training they need. Online learning can help to fill the gap. GovLoop, an online training and collaboration community that describes itself as “the knowledge network for government,” surveyed its members and found that almost 90 percent of respondents had attended at least one virtual learning event in 2014, up 2 percent from 2013. It’s not hard to see why that number has been growing: Going virtual eliminates geographic, spatial and time constraints, since learners can attend from any convenient location. Webinars and virtual classroom tools such as surveys, whiteboards and text chat facilitate session engagement and appeal to participants’ different learning styles. Archived recordings of sessions allow for on-demand and repeat viewings. And the cost savings related to travel, lodging, and lost time and office productivity are significant.

http://www.govtech.com/internet/Adopting-Virtual-Learning-for-the-Government-Worker.html

By Bianca Spinosa, FCW

So given the increasing demand for workers with cybersecurity and data analytics skills, could MOOCs be one of the keys to federal training needs? Ryan Corey believes they can help. Corey has been in the cybersecurity field for 13 years, and in January, he co-founded Cybrary, a company that offers free courses on a range of cyber skills. Corey said he launched Cybrary in part because he thinks people — and federal workers in particular — shouldn’t have to pay big bucks for IT and cybersecurity training and because it was clear that cyber skills should be more broadly distributed. To stay afloat without charging tuition, Cybrary relies on advertising and fees students must pay if they want certificates of completion. The company also offers an enterprise platform that teaches compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act and end-user security awareness training for organizations. He has even turned to Kickstarter for funding.

http://fcw.com/articles/2015/09/04/feature-moocs.aspx

by BORIS VILIC, Courier-Post

Over the last decade, we have witnessed tremendous changes in distance learning. For example, in 2014 a record-breaking 5.2 million higher education students enrolled in at least one online course. The number of chief academic officers who consider online education as critical to their institution’s strategy also reached an all-time high (at 70.8 percent). However, despite this tremendous growth and myriad studies examining student learning outcomes in online classes, the question whether “distance learning is making the grade” still reverberates in the halls of the Academy. When engaging in lively discussion about distance education, and rather than solely relying on statistics and research data, I usually try to tell my colleagues personal stories to explain why I believe in distance education.

http://www.courierpostonline.com/story/opinion/columnists/2015/09/04/issue-compelling-statistics-distance-learning/71722750/

By Emily Mertz, Global News

It first paved the way as a free, online course open to all and now Dino 101 is being offered as an electronic textbook in app form. The University of Alberta will offer Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology, starting Sept. 4, through Coursera. It’s the university’s first foray into the ever-expanding world of open online education. “We’re mindful of our students and the tremendous pressures on them with tuition and the additional costs of education such as textbooks,” said Jonathan Schaeffer, dean of the faculty of science. “We wanted to build something that was fun, engaging and at a price point that added real value to the student learning experience.”

http://globalnews.ca/news/2202782/university-of-alberta-offers-popular-dino-101-course-in-app-form/

by JENNIFER LEWINGTON, The Globe and Mail

First came the MOOCs, referring to massive open online courses that offer free access to higher-education learning through the Internet. Now comes the GROOC: a group-based version of MOOCs developed and delivered by professors at McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management, including internationally recognized management guru Henry Mintzberg. So far, students from more than 100 countries have signed up for Social Learning for Social Impact, an 11-week online course beginning Sept. 16 with the goal of inspiring global collaboration on sustainable social change.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/business-education/meet-grooc-new-online-course-has-a-group-learning-twist/article26215533/

By Sherrie Negrea, University Business

After years of quiet evolution, the competency-based education movement is now poised for explosive growth, with several hundred colleges and universities developing programs that fundamentally redefine the college degree. An estimated 34 U.S. institutions now offer some form of competency-based learning, according to research by Robert Kelchen, an assistant professor of higher education at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. But that number is expected to multiply significantly as a new wave of schools embraces the model.

http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/competency-programs-reimagine-college-credit