Online Learning Update

By Ellie Bothwell, Time Higher Education

Open and distance learning (ODL) universities must determine their “competitive advantage” rather than “parroting” that their value lies in convenience and flexibility, the director of the Observatory on Borderless Higher Education has claimed. Richard Garrett said that the rise of online education and the trend of traditional institutions becoming more versatile means that “the tide is against” ODL universities and the “onus” is on them to clarify their relevance. “I don’t think right now it’s clear enough from those institutions what their competitive advantage is, but there is more and more pressure for them to sort that out,” he told Times Higher Education. He suggested that their distinctive characteristics could be their size, expertise, student support or student outcomes.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/distance-learning-universities-must-prove-their-relevance

by John Daniel, Oxford University Press Blog

Four years after the MOOCs craze began, where are we today? MOOCs provide a good example of our tendency to overestimate the significance of innovations in the short term whilst underestimating their long-term impact. The early predictions of a revolution in higher education proved false, and the idea that MOOCs could be the answer to the capacity problems of universities in the developing world was especially silly. Nevertheless, MOOCs are a significant phenomenon. Over 4,000 MOOCs are available worldwide and register 35 million learners at any given time. As they have multiplied they have diversified, so that, as this cartoon implies, the meaning of every word in the acronym MOOC is now negotiable. So MOOCs themselves are not a revolution in higher education but they are having multiple knock-on effects in the way that it is offered. They have sparked a steady increase in the offering of all types of academic programmes online, stimulated trends towards shorter courses, and an expanded range of credentials.

http://blog.oup.com/2016/04/moocs-higher-education/

BY RONALD BETHKE, eCampus News

Digital presence via campus websites and social media can all majorly impact college decisions this year, say students. According to a new report, student survey data reinforces that higher education institutions must place greater emphasis on their digital presence, engaging students with digital communications that are most in line with their preferences in order to boost enrollment. The report, titled “The Digital Search for Education,” was commissioned by G/O Digital and is based on the results of a 2016 survey of over 1,520 U.S. adults enrolled in either full or part-time classes. The research study was conducted to understand how learners interact with colleges and career schools prior to enrolling, and how those interactions influence their decision to communicate with, and enroll in, a particular institution.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/digital-presence-enrollment/

By David Raths, Campus Technology

As more universities develop open courses, instructional designers and faculty members are experimenting with how to design environments that are compelling and valuable to participants. Curt Bonk, Ph.D., who teaches psychology and technology courses at Indiana University, has done a lot of thinking about the student experience in open courses. The author of The World Is Open, Bonk is conducting research in the field of self-directed open learning environments and online motivation. “The MOOC [massive open online course] is just one idea of many that are causing us to reflect on changes in higher education today,” he said. “There are a lot of derivatives of MOOCs, and there will continue to be more. Community-building, sharing and peer support are three key aspects of success in building new types of course experiences.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/29/the-keys-to-designing-successful-open-course-experiences.aspx

BY LAURA DEVANEY, eCampus News

As data collection becomes more common, how can higher education institutions leverage the availability of real-time data to improve learning?During the ASU+GSV Summit, in a session titled “Wearables on Campus: What Higher Education Can Learn from Fitbit,” a panel of higher-ed leaders, moderated by Bridget Burns, executive director of the University Innovation Alliance, discussed how what we know about data use and information can shift our behaviors.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/curriculum/data-use-wearables/

by JENNIFER WELLS, Impatient Optimists (Gates Foundation)

We are seeing the emergence of new technologies and approaches that are showing real results. These include courseware that adjusts to students’ needs, boosting student performance and reducing the amount of time needed to master content; integrated planning and advising services that provide “just in time” support to at-risk students, increasing retention and completion rates; and redesigned remedial programs that double pass rates in entry-level courses. These innovations—and others—are powerful by themselves, but we are learning that the real power comes from integrating them. We see this at Georgia State University, which has used data to pinpoint trouble spots for students and has developed a multi-pronged strategy that includes adaptive courseware, improved and expanded student advising, and retention grants that help students with unplanned expenses that can hinder their progress. The result? The university has eliminated attainment gaps across racial/ethnic groups.

http://www.impatientoptimists.org/Posts/2016/04/Transforming-Institutions-Transforming-Lives

by Nancy Crotti, Twin Cities Business

Online higher education aims to make courses more engaging and interactive for students of all ages. Adult learners in particular have found that online courses fit better with their work and home schedules than showing up on campus two or three nights a week. They still have quizzes, exams and projects, and they must participate in online discussions or their grades will suffer. U of M Crookston offers 14 fully online majors to students like Thurston, many of whom began college years before but did not graduate, for financial, personal or work relocation reasons. Now quite a few are seeking a “lane change” in their careers, according to Crookston campus chancellor Fred Wood. Most take nine credits per semester while working full time. He considers online education an extension of the land-grant idea that the University of Minnesota was founded on: to educate and train the state’s workforce.

http://tcbmag.com/Industries/Education-and-Training/A-Digital-Approach-To-Education

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

Henry Lucas, a faculty chair at the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and author of Technology and the Disruption of Higher Education: Saving the American University, argues faculty must come around to online education to keep their universities alive. For the Washington Post, Lucas writes schools that do not embrace technology-enhanced education, and do so with strong faculty at the helm, will go out of business as students flock to more convenient and affordable programs. Lucas sees faculty as the ones who most have to change in favor of online education and the ones most resistant to it, urging administrators to go around them, if necessary.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/despite-some-professors-discomfort-online-ed-here-to-stay/418289/

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive

The Tech Entrepreneur Nanodegree from Udacity represents a Google-designed curriculum that focuses on creation, development, implementation and marketing apps. Academia Apps reports the program is designed for a non-technical user, which could open the door for educators to take the MOOC and develop apps for their courses. Like Udacity’s other nanodegree offerings, the MOOC content is free but completing the program for a certificate costs $199 per month, and a 50% rebate goes to any student who can do so in one year.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/google-udacity-partnership-teaches-mobile-app-development/418366/

By Casey Newton, TheVerge.com

The rise of smartphones has transformed the way students communicate and entertain themselves. But the classrooms they spend so much of their time in remain stubbornly resistant to transformation. Bill Gates is working to change all that. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Microsoft’s co-founder and chairman has invested more than $120 million to date in a developing field known as “personalized learning.” It’s a diffuse set of initiatives, led mostly by private companies, to develop software that creates individual lesson plans for students based on their performance, coaching them through trouble spots until they have mastered the subject at hand. Teachers still play a central role in the classroom, but they do less lecturing and more one-on-one coaching.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/04/25/can-ai-fix-education-we-asked-bill-gates.html

By Liam Tung, ZD Net

Never mind the world’s shrinking smartphone market, Google CEO Sundar Pichai foresees a time when devices will completely vanish, to be replaced by omnipresent artificial intelligence. Machine learning, task automation and robotics are already widely used in business. These and other AI technologies are about to multiply, and we look at how organizations can best take advantage of them. “Looking to the future, the next big step will be for the very concept of the ‘device’ to fade away,” Pichai said in his first letter to shareholders on Thursday. “Over time, the computer itself, whatever its form factor, will be an intelligent assistant helping you through your day. We will move from mobile-first to an AI-first world,” he continued.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-ceo-pichai-says-devices-will-fade-away-but-launches-new-hardware-division/

by Carol Trehearn, Inscriber Magazine

Not only is online learning just as credible as classroom learning, in some cases it can be even better. When you’re learning in a traditional classroom setting, you’re a part of an often large class who the teacher or lecturer has to divide his/her time amongst. Contrary to popular belief, many employers often look favorably upon those who have completed an online-only degree. Why? Well, when you think about it, completing an online degree can often require a lot more self-study, discipline and determination than completing a traditional classroom based course. No matter what you may have heard, online degrees are worth exactly the same as traditional classroom based degrees. Just because you are not attending in-person lectures and seminars doesn’t mean that you’re not fully studying all of the learning materials and completing the set assignments.

http://theinscribermag.com/insc/living-can-an-online-education-actually-land-you-a-job.html

by Daphne Koller, Huffington Post

Coursera’s goals and priorities are very well-aligned with those of our partner institutions – that’s a large part of the reason that we’ve been able to partner with over 140 of the world’s best universities. Every partner brings a slightly different perspective and strategy to their open online programs, and the primary motivation varies across institutions, but there a few major motivations that most have in common. Global impact: On Coursera, an instructor can teach more students in a single course than they might teach in an entire career on campus. For someone who’s passionate about their area of expertise and about sharing their ideas with others, this is an incredible opportunity. Instructors on our platform are often people who have spent their lives achieving mastery in a very specific topic, and Coursera allows them to reach the largest possible audience of learners who are interested in that topic and can benefit from the knowledge that an instructor has to share.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/quora/the-secret-benefits-of-on_b_9795420.html?ir=Education

by Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed

By Mary Grush, Campus Technology

“There is a difference between being digitally native and digitally literate. My new students find out quickly that their high degree of facility with cell phones and social media is simply not enough.” — April O’Brien The transition from print to digital modes is going on all around us, changing how we work, teach, and learn. Colleges and universities are re-examining their digital literacy strategies, hoping that students who come to college steeped in consumer technology will be transformed into able producers and contributors of digital content by the time they graduate from their technology-supported academic programs. Leaders at Clemson University’s Center of Excellence in Digital Creativity have taken an all-or-nothing approach: Nearly 30,000 students and faculty all have access to all the software tools in the Adobe Creative Cloud, along with an impressive collaboratory filled with high-end hardware, collaboration tools, and expert guidance.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/26/scaling-up-digital-literacy.aspx

By Arpan Chakraborty, Udacity Blog

The excitement around our Machine Learning Nanodegree program has been amazing to witness, and the vitality and dynamism in the space right now is pretty incredible. There are so many fascinating storylines in the world of Machine Learning, it’s sometimes hard to even know what to focus on. But unquestionably, the people working in this field—those individuals at the cutting-edge of these new technologies—are a critical part of the Machine Learning narrative. One of the things I find personally really exciting is how many women are shaping the future of Machine Learning. My former colleague Katie Malone is a wonderful example of this, and I’m very grateful she was able to take some time recently to talk Machine Learning with us!

http://blog.udacity.com/2016/04/women-in-machine-learning-katie-malone.html

By Michael Hart, Campus Technology

Many are familiar with the Southern New Hampshire University story — how Paul LeBlanc, in the depths of the recession, transformed a financially troubled but otherwise unremarkable brick-and-mortar New England institution into one of the fastest growing not-for-profit online educators in the world. However, LeBlanc, SNHU’s president, was not willing to stop there. He started an innovation lab called Pathways that eventually morphed into College for America, which provides low-cost, high-quality education for adults and became the first competency-based program to grant associate’s degrees eligible for federal financial aid in 2012. Fast-forward to late 2015, and the ever-restless LeBlanc was ready for the next phase in Southern New Hampshire’s growth and development — which would be what? Good question, and one he has hired Michelle Weise to help answer.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/04/27/incubating-innovation-at-southern-new-hampshire-u.aspx

By Tyler Collins, Newswire

Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine Poses Five Must-Ask Questions to Ask Before Choosing an Online College. Hispanic higher education students looking to simplify their search for the right online degree program need to look no further than the May issue of Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education Magazine, which features a list of five essential questions students should ask before investing in any online program. This issue also spotlights 10 notable online programs for students pursuing an MBA degree. “Online learning is very attractive alternative route for Hispanic students seeking degrees. It can be less expensive than traditional brick and mortar options and afford them the flexibility of fulfilling family obligations and work commitments while pursuing higher education,” says Mary Ann Cooper, editor in chief of Hispanic Outlook Magazine. “That’s why we felt it was important to give Hispanic students the information and tools they need to make the best possible choice among online learning options.”

http://newswire.net/newsroom/pr/00092466-hispanic-outlook-magazine-lists-online-learning-options.html

By Matthew Reisen, Daily Lobo

According to UNM press release, the University’s best online courses are being recognized in an awards ceremony on Thursday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. in the SUB ballroom, sponsored by the UNM Center for Teaching & Learning. In 2012, the University of New Mexico Provost Chaouki Abdallah tasked the Online Course Advisory Council to establish online course standards. Standards that are grounded in research-based practices, according to the release, reflect Higher Learning Commission and federal requirements for online distance teaching and learning. The initiative was intended to address quality course development, effective teaching and learning, outcomes assessment and academic integrity, according to the release.

http://www.dailylobo.com/article/2016/04/27-online-course-recognition-brief

By Molly Bloom, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

This is what Sharell Latimore fears: That she’ll graduate from Atlanta’s Crim High School, enroll in college and find out she’s “the dumbest one there.” Crim is one of two Atlanta high schools that switched over the past two years from classes taught by teachers to “blended learning,” where students sit in classrooms clicking through online lessons as teachers supervise. Advocates say this lets students learn at their own pace and get help from a teacher when they need it. Atlanta’s West End Academy, another alternative school, has successfully used blended learning for more than a decade, school staff say. But the results from Atlanta’s latest and largest move to teach students who have struggled in traditional classrooms through online instruction have been decidedly mixed.

http://www.myajc.com/news/news/local-education/switching-struggling-students-to-online-classes-sh/nrCHR/