Online Learning Update

By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post

Eight colleges will team up with companies that run computer coding boot camps or online courses for an experiment that lets students pay for nontraditional training programs with federal grants and loans, the Education Department said Tuesday. Short-term courses, such as coding boot camps, have become a popular model for acquiring skills and credentials without spending years in school, yet they’ve only been available to people who can afford thousands of dollars for six-week classes. The objective of the experiment, dubbed the Educational Quality through Innovative Partnerships, is to provide people with modest means access to innovative education and to ensure that they receive quality training.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/08/16/colleges-partner-with-training-bootcamps-and-online-course-providers-for-federal-experiment/

By Kristine Walker, Parent Herald

In an era where modern technology has become a valuable influence in the lives of humans, it’s safe to assume that technology will be able to enhance the learning experience of educators and students, especially in higher education and online learning. As experts combined education technology (EdTech) and artificial intelligence (AI), a powerful tool to potentially transform education has been born.

http://www.parentherald.com/articles/60947/20160813/education-technology-latest-news-updates-how-edtech-artificial-intelligence-help-transform-higher-education-online-learning.htm

By Tess Taylor, HR Dive

The way in which learners encounter course content within a learning management system is just as important as what’s being presented. This is referred to as the user experience or UX. There are 3 major components of UX that need to be in place to ensure learners are getting the most from online training, including: design, communication, and measurement. The UX is, “a quantitative and qualitative measure, because it examines both the platform’s functions, and the user’s perception of them,” says Rajlakshmi Saikia, assistant vice president of corporate L&D at Genpact, who also contributes to ATD. Learning content that’s well-designed includes the ability for users to easily login to the learning management system, access their courses, and find the information they need. The other components of great UX include a system for managing user progress and gathering feedback from learners. There should always be support to orient users to the LMS as well as a help guide for troubleshooting.

http://www.hrdive.com/news/online-learning-3-components-of-a-great-user-experience/424558/

by Dina Kurzweil and Sean Baker, Educause Review

Given the phenomenal growth of connected devices in the Internet of Things, the issue of how higher education supports educators with the IoT in learning environments becomes a key consideration in teaching and learning. An educational environment explicitly focused on supporting learning with the IoT could be extremely beneficial; we call it the Educators’ and Learners’ Internet of Things, or ELIoT. What we have to decide is whether we will prepare, through the design of distributed, adaptive systems and methodologies, to give the ELIoT a warm welcome in higher education while managing the accompanying serious considerations.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/8/the-internet-of-things-for-educators-and-learners

by Seth Atkinson and Rob Curtin, Educause Review

The Internet of Things enables multiple benefits in higher education, from cost savings in building and energy management to new career opportunities for students. Integrated data and automation provide a safe, personalized, and always connected student experience. Cloud-enabled machine-learning models applied to student engagement and performance data can help institutions materially increase graduation rates. Cloud computing provides the centralized collection, storage, and analytics systems and algorithms necessary to make sense of the resulting masses of data produced by the IoT.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/8/connected-campus-experiences-in-the-age-of-iot

BY MERIS STANSBURY, eCampus News

Gen Z’s dependence on tech and tech support not mirrored in their career choices; IT dearth a massive problem on the horizon. According to recent data, Gen Z demands that devices and software—and the support required to use them—be woven into their daily lives; yet, most of this digital native generation has no interest in having an IT career. So who, exactly, will provide the technology and support needed to satisfy the future generation? It’s yet another cold water splash on the STEM fields that have been in crisis in the U.S. for years. However, unlike the somewhat vague notion of there being less engineers and mathematicians to better the collective intelligence and innovation of a nation, the fact that almost none of the future generation have any interest in information technology will have a direct, negative impact on not only individual consumers, but on entire ecosystems (like higher education) that are becoming increasingly dependent on IT.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/featured/featured-on-ecampus-news/gen-z-it/

by Merris Stansbury, eCampus News

As online learning evolves from amateur experimentation to a mainstream professional entity on campus, new standards for quality online learning leadership are emerging in order to not only sustain these distance programs, but ensure they meet the growing demands of 21st-century academe. The University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) has released a report detailing seven hallmarks of excellence in online leadership. These standards of excellence for online learning leadership are an attempt to articulate those features and principles that will create opportunities for students that “far exceed anything already achieved in higher education, take pedagogy to a new level, and demonstrate the capacity of universities to be an even more vital force in our society,” notes the report. Hallmarks range from advocacy to entrepreneurial initiatives and much more.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/resource/online-learning-leadership/

BY MERIS STANSBURY, eCampus News

UX innovator discusses what forward-thinking schools are doing now, and what AI in education will look like in the near future. If you ask kids today why phrases like “hang up” the phone or “roll down” the window exist, chances are they’ll have no idea. Fast-forward to the near future and “search the web” may also cause a few head scratches. “We’re evolving, but remain electronic ‘hunters and gatherers,’” explained Ralph Lucci, cofounder and user experience director at Behavior Design. But that’s about to change thanks to today’s quickly emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technology for practically every industry, including education. “The day will soon come when we’ll sardonically ask ourselves: ‘Remember when we had to visit a website and look around for what we needed?’ Now the data comes to us.” And while mainstream AI isn’t at that level just yet, innovative industries and some schools are already either beginning to implement AI basics or planning to structure entire departments or services on the potential power of AI.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/disruptions-and-innovations/ai-educations-future/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

More than seven in 10 students (72 percent) wait until a new course has started before they invest in course material. Another 27 percent never buy the course material at all. Fifty-five percent say they’ve gone with old versions of the content and 47 percent say they’ve shared materials with a classmate as strategies for lowering the financial outlay they have to make. These results come from a survey done in May 2016 of 500 currently enrolled college students by Wakefield Research on behalf of VitalSource. The latter is a company that provides a platform for delivering curriculum in digital form.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/08/16/students-delay-getting-course-material-face-poorer-grades.aspx

by Carl Straumsheim

Faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro experiment with a model for course redesign they say can increase access and quality and lower costs. Quality, cost, access — pick two. That’s the traditional view of higher education’s “iron triangle” — that trying to adjust for one of the three main factors of a college education will influence the other two. The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is the latest institution to challenge that axiom. Over the last two academic years, the university has been involved in a project where faculty members redesigned four courses according to design principles they named CRAFT (the acronym is short for Create and curate content, Replace lectures with Active, and Flipped, Team-based learning). The project targeted general education requirements and courses with high rates of students withdrawing or earning a D, F or an incomplete.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/17/flipped-classroom-project-north-carolina-greensboro-produces-promising-results

by MIT Office of Digital Learning

If one of the core philosophies of online learning is to democratize education, then a new verified certificate option for a philosophy course on MITx on edX — the massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by the Institute — brings the concept full circle. Starting Aug. 29, Introduction to Philosophy: God, Knowledge and Consciousness will enable students to obtain a verified ID certificate and have their work graded and commented upon by professional philosophers. Learners from any background, anywhere in the world, can pursue the certificate option to add credibility and value to the accomplishment of completing the course. “This is a big deal — the first MITx humanities course to offer students the chance to write a paper and have it carefully reviewed by instructors,” says Caspar Hare, who will be running the popular MOOC for the third time. “Listening to lectures and reading books is great, but philosophy is all about taking complex ideas and organizing them in a simple way.”

http://news.mit.edu/2016/mitx-philosophy-mooc-introduces-instructor-grading-0815

By Sophie Quinton, Pew Charitable Trust

Under a new state law, Rhode Island’s public colleges won’t get additional state funding simply for enrolling more students. They will have to prove that they’re making progress on goals such as increasing graduation rates. Over 30 states now partially—or in Tennessee’s case, almost completely—fund higher education based on metrics such as graduation rates, course completions and the share of low-income students enrolled. States have applied these formulas only to two-year colleges, only to four-year colleges, or to all their public institutions. It’s not yet clear whether such funding incentives will lead to progress on the goals lawmakers have identified. Some critics worry that outcomes-based funding models will just pressure colleges to become more selective in admissions, for example.

http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2016/08/15/more-states-start-funding-colleges-based-on-outcomes

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

St. George’s University has increased the pass rate of students in its public health massive open online course by more than 500%, and nearly 10 times the national completion rate for similar distance learning modules. The course uses flipped classroom models, peer review and industrial infusion to make lessons more engaging and enriched for students. The model follows a similar approach taken by Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley in its graduate business courses.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/how-to-increase-mooc-completion-rates/424532/

By David Weldon, Campus Technology

At the Campus Technology conference in Boston, Stephen Downes explained the difference between innovation and transformation. Much of what is passing for innovation in education today is not really that, Downes said. And in the industry overall, is it innovation we are achieving — or change? “Change is done to you,” Downes stressed. “Innovation you do.” Downes is no stranger to dramatic change in education. In 2008 he co-created the first massive open online course in the world, setting off a revolution in online education. But that sort of thing isn’t what will transform education, Downes said. MOOCs are delivery methods – not changes in curriculum. If we want to change education, we have to change how we think about teaching and content. Downes didn’t offer a blueprint for how to do that, but challenged the audience to think about transformation in what we teach, how we teach it and how we personalize the experience.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/08/09/why-todays-moocs-are-not-innovative.aspx

By Frank DiMaria, Campus Technology

Research and education networks (RENs) have been designed to meet the needs of some of the most demanding internet users in the country: scientists, academics and researchers in the nation’s leading academic institutions. These networks are engineered to support high-quality services that remain consistent regardless of the number of users on the network. They have the speed, quality, flexibility and support to readily adapt to new experiments or projects that place new demands on the network. RENs “have enormous capabilities and potential for all schools, small and large, to realize new capabilities in teaching, learning, research and administration,” according to Rob Vietzke, vice president of network services at Internet2, a member-owned advanced technology community that operates the largest and fastest coast-to-coast research and education network in the U.S. REN services are technologically ahead of the curve, enabling communication and collaboration on a high-speed network free of the noise and friction found on most commercial providers.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/08/11/tapping-into-research-and-education-networks.aspx

By Katy Murphy, Mercury News

Banned from college in Iran because of her Baha’i faith, Niknaz Aftahi risked everything to learn, studying architecture at a storied underground university that moved from living room to living room, at times meeting at her family’s home in Tehran. Now in the Bay Area, with a master’s degree and architecture job, Aftahi is repaying her debt of gratitude, offering the same hope to the next generation of Baha’i students. She is part of a growing network of mostly Baha’i faculty locally and around the world who teach and mentor the students from afar, for free. “Just the fact that I feel like I’m contributing a little bit brings me a lot of satisfaction and happiness,” she said. “Some of my students are such good designers and when I teach them, I really want to do my best because I feel like I’m the only resource they have.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_30245999/underground-university-bay-area-teachers-beam-secret-online

by Priceonomics

We found that the number of four-year schools with online degree programs rose significantly. Among top-ranked schools, nearly 75% offer online degrees, and about half are increasing their online degree offerings. The fastest adopters of online learning include both public and private colleges and universities, including some academic heavyweights like Harvard and Johns Hopkins. Online degrees are most commonly offered in fields like business and health, which have long been popular among distance learners. But they are increasingly common for other fields like education and engineering. The craze over Massive Open Online Courses, which led some enthusiasts to prophesize the decline of traditional universities, has died down. But our analysis suggests that traditional universities are steadily embracing online courses.

https://priceonomics.com/the-rise-of-the-online-degree-at-americas-top/

by Christopher Pappas, Litmos

Planning and research are vital to the success of your online training program. You should learn as much as possible about the background of your online learners, the goals that must be achieved, as well as the performance gaps that need to be filled if you want to develop a succinct and successful online training course for your organization. Here are 10 questions that will help you narrow the scope of your online training program and ensure that all of the key takeaways are included.

http://www.litmos.com/blog/elearning/10-questions-to-ask-before-you-start-developing-online-training-courses

by Benzinga

New online graduate degrees and certificates, and undergraduate degrees offered by The Citadel are now available to students across the U.S. and beyond with the same high standards and quality used to educate principled leaders for almost 175 years. Members of the U.S. military living around the country or on installations overseas are among those registering for The Citadel Graduate College’s newly online masters’ degrees and certificates, and undergraduate degrees. The non-cadet programs are ideal for busy professionals and military service members and their spouses wanting to continue their education.

http://www.benzinga.com/pressreleases/16/08/p8347810/u-s-military-members-among-those-now-learning-online-from-the-citadel

by Gabrielle Pfeiffer, Huffington Post

While the “higher ups” at universities may not be too thrilled about the advancement in online learning, it is great news for the rest of us. Those of us who have bills to pay on a limited income now have a better chance at expanding our knowledge and learning some very valuable skills. Hopefully this is just the beginning of a new era, and the online course world will keep expanding. I think that people will be more excited to learn if they get to choose how and what they are learning, on a schedule that is more convenient for them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gabrielle-pfeiffer/just-how-important-is-a-c_b_11437210.html