Online Learning Update

by John Friedman, US News

While more on-site coding boot camps exist than online ones, the latter format has started growing in popularity, says Liz Eggleston, co-founder of Course Report, a website that provides reviews and industry research on coding boot camps. In addition to online-only boot camps like Thinkful and Bloc, some on-site boot camps that initially didn’t offer a virtual option – like the Flatiron School in New York – are moving into the online space to reach a wider audience, she says. For online learners, Eggleston says, boot camps provide a middle-ground option between online degrees and free online courses via websites like Codecademy. Experts say online coding boot camps generally last at least a few months and cost several thousand dollars, so prospective students should ask for a free trial to make sure they select a program that’s the best fit for them.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2016-08-11/4-things-to-know-about-online-coding-boot-camps

BY Morgan Lynch, MeriTalk

Online educational resources, which have become commonplace in higher education institutions across the United States, could be undergoing changes to facilitate better learning for students rather than favoring instructors. The Learning Management System (LMS) is used by 99 percent of colleges and universities as a software application that tracks and reports the use of electronic educational technology. The report argues that LMS should be rebuilt to be learner-centric and experiment with a variety of course styles. The report calls the ideal new software the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment (NGDLE).

https://www.meritalk.com/articles/online-education-shifts-favor-from-instructors-to-students/

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

Illinois State University’s badging program allows students to more creatively showcase volunteerism, technical training and skill development to potential employers and graduate schools. Officials use a third-party vendor, Credly, to administer the badges from criteria established by academic executives. The Lumina Foundation provided $2.5 million in seed funding to the badging company, a sign of support for the growing credentialing industry and its value to employers.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/institutional-badging-emerges-as-new-resume-booster/424192/

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

Stephen Downes, the designer of the first open source learning course, says education will not be revolutionized by technology that brings the current classroom environment and curriculum to digital platforms. Changes to curriculum, desired learning outcomes and professional preparation are the keys to innovation in higher education. Many campuses are changing curriculum to competency-based and adaptive learning models to encourage success, improve completion rates and boost interest among students.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/going-beyond-moocs-in-higher-education-innovation/424184/

By Rick Levin, CEO of Coursera

Because our collaboration with universities is so important, we need leaders within Coursera who deeply understand the process of building innovative online learning programs at large, complex institutions. For this reason, I am very excited to announce that Deanna Raineri has joined Coursera as Vice President of University Partnerships, Teaching & Learning. In this role, Deanna will work closely with university partners to deepen our engagements as we grow the portfolio of learning experiences offered on Coursera to learners around the world. She joins Coursera from the position of Associate Provost for Education Innovation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she established a campus-wide vision and leadership for innovations in classroom and online education.

http://coursera.tumblr.com/post/148695937512/university-leader-in-online-education-deanna

by AnnMarie Kuzel, CLO

Learning should fit into an employee’s work day and workflow – not take them out of it. The checklist of questions that learning leaders ask themselves before deciding which learning technology best fits their organization is long; which vendor is the best? What kind of platforms are available? What kind of content is most appropriate? What are the organization’s most important needs now and in the future? But CLOs often forget to ask one very important question: “Does the learning technology work cohesively with an employee’s everyday workflow?” Iain Scholnick, CEO of Braidio, a collaborative learning platform, talked to Chief Learning Officer about the importance of incorporating learning into an employee’s everyday workflow.

http://www.clomedia.com/2016/08/08/the-importance-of-day-to-day-learning/

by ALIZAH SALARIO, Metro

At Udacity, tech-savvy students earn nanodegrees for a fraction of the cost of a traditional degree. We live in tiny houses, make micropayments and use mini fridges. Naturally, now we can also earn micro-credentials. As the name suggests, micro-credentials quailfy individuals to execute specific skills, often in the fields math, science and technology. They’re earned in far less time than traditional degrees — and for a fraction of the cost. Think of them as the next generation of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), only more comprehensive, and with a credential at the finish line.

http://www.metro.us/lifestyle/are-micro-degrees-the-future-of-higher-education/zsJphh—Czgpd0JKEyP8E/

By Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed

More colleges are issuing digital badges to help their students display skills to employers or graduate programs, and colleges are tapping vendor platforms to create a verified form of the alternative credentials.Digital badges aren’t replacing the bachelor’s degree any time soon. But a growing number of colleges are working with vendors to use badges as an add-on to degrees, to help students display skills and accomplishments that transcripts fail to capture. Illinois State University is an early adopter. Students in the university’s honors program have earned roughly 7,400 digital badges as part of the experiment, which just began at full scale last year. The university brought in Credly, a badging platform provider, for the project.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/08/09/digital-badging-spreads-more-colleges-use-vendors-create-alternative-credentials

BY KIRK BAIRD, THE BLADE

Students are learning to use emerging technologies as future instructors. We can learn a lot from a video game. What basic power tool best repels a zombie horde, for example, or the proper combination of kicks and punches to bludgeon an opponent into submission. Even how to determine the volume of a swimming pool, as in measuring its dimensions and then multiplying length by width by height. Yes, math. In a video game. And not just in any video game, but one of the more popular games of all time, Minecraft, a LEGO-meets 8-bit open world game played by millions worldwide.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/08/08/when-minecraft-is-a-calculated-lesson-plan/

by eCampus News

College and universities can see how they stack up in terms of social media engagement using a new study that ranks the effectiveness of social media across higher-ed institutions. The study of 338 colleges and universities revealed key insights in who is driving the most engagement with social media–including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram–and showed which universities are winning at engaging their audiences via social. Engagement is defined as “measurable interaction on social media posts, including likes, comments, favorites, retweets, shares and reactions.”

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/social-networking/social-media-engagement/

by eCampus News

The Internet of Things (IoT) is coming (well, actually, it’s here), and with it, a demand for skilled graduates who know the ins and outs of connected devices. As colleges and universities work to address the challenges the IoT presents from an IT perspective, they also are addressing the needs of their students who will pursue IoT-related careers. Developing a comprehensive IoT strategy still remains the biggest challenge for industry adoption, according to 46.3 percent of 200 IT professionals surveyed at the Sensors Expo in San Jose by Northeastern University-Silicon Valley. Another top barrier for wide scale adoption involves security concerns (38.8 percent).

http://www.ecampusnews.com/curriculum/iot-colleges-curriculum/

by Business Today

In the MOOCs space, how does the Indian market differ from more developed nations such as the US?  The average age of people taking the courses in India is younger, unlike in the US. We have a lot of learners who have just finished college and are in the early stages of their career. Another difference is that Indians take up courses that help them with their career, whereas in the US people use online learning platforms for enrichment courses on poetry, culture and such. Based on this, we have started partnering with corporates such as Axis Bank and IBM to help their employees with skill building and creating a culture of learning in the workplace.

http://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/features/24-per-cent-of-learners-in-india-are-women/story/235890.html

by Econo Times

Coursera, a venture-backed educational technology company that offers massive open online courses, has introduced a free course on cryptocurrency, titled ‘Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies’ that will begin from September. According to the course website, the course will focus on understanding what is special about bitcoin and how it works at the technical level. It will also emphasize on key issues including the working mechanisms of bitcoin, its security and what makes it different, the anonymity of bitcoin users and what role regulation may play in the future. “After this course, you’ll know everything you need to be able to separate fact from fiction when reading claims about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. You’ll have the conceptual foundations you need to engineer secure software that interacts with the Bitcoin network. And you’ll be able to integrate ideas from Bitcoin in your own projects,” the course website stated.

http://www.econotimes.com/Coursera-rolls-out-first-course-on-cryptocurrency-for-free-245342

by Financial Express

Technology integrations like video lectures, online problem-solving features, graphic representations—and all of these on a smartphone—have made online learning interesting, accessible and far more engaging. With the Indian smartphone user base growing rapidly and especially with the mobile app boom, education technology (ed-tech) has also proliferated. In 2015, according to research firm IDC, the Indian smartphone market grew at 28.8% to 103.6 million units and smartphone shipments in the country crossed the 100-million mark. With more and more young people, including students, using smartphones, ed-tech players are redefining their strategy and presence in the online space. Earlier, the focus of ed-tech players was limited to entrance exam preparation, but now it has expanded to technical courses and even vocational education. In fact, today there are such courses in the online space that are also contributing to the Skill India mission.

http://www.financialexpress.com/industry/tech/education-technology-how-smartphones-make-learning-easy/340770/

By Joshua Bolkan, THE Journal

Edmodo, a social network for schools, has rolled out a collection of updates focused on communication, collaboration and resource sharing and discovery ahead of the beginning of the 2016-2017 school year. Updates to the platform, which claims more than 65 million users from 370,000 schools around the world, include:

The ability for users to view Google Drive documents directly in Edmodoand to attach them to assignments and notes;

The ability for users to sign in to Edmodo with their Google credentials;

A new “topics” feature that allows teachers to see who else is interested in a topic to begin quickly collaborating with colleagues from around the world;

Play, a self-guided environment designed to encourage students to answer high-quality questions;

Group directories for administrators; and

New tools designed to encourage parental engagement.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/03/edmodo-updates-social-networking-platform-to-improve-collaboration-resource-sharing.aspx

By Richard Chang, THE Journal

Someone with access to materials for upcoming versions of the redesigned SAT exam has taken hundreds of questions and provided them to Reuters, the wire agency reported this week. The confidential test items included 21 reading passages — each with about a dozen questions — and about 160 math problems. Reuters does not know how widely the items have circulated. The news agency said it has no evidence that the materials have fallen into the hands of what the College Board, which administers the SAT college entrance exam, calls “bad actors,” or groups that “will lie, cheat and steal for personal gain,” the board said.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2016/08/05/massive-breach-exposes-hundreds-of-questions-for-future-sat-exams.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

A summer-time enrichment experience for high schoolers at Penn State has taken on a heightened level of excitement with the use of the same development toolset behind the global phenom Pokémon Go. Penn State and five other institutions host multi-week programs that give students a chance to taste university life while getting intensive introductions to subjects ranging from art to sports marketing. The video game development program is led by Madis Pihlak, an associate professor of art and architecture at Penn State, who has taught the two-week class for four years. Besides Unity, the platform used by Niantic to create Pokémon Go and other popular games, the course also introduces students to AutoDesk’s Maya, a program used for 3D animation, modeling, simulation and rendering.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/08/04/summer-program-intros-teens-to-software-behind-pokemon-go.aspx

by Vala Afshar, Huffington Post

Throughout my career as chief customer officer, and chief marketing officer, I’ve had the privilege to collaborate and serve numerous executives in the higher education industry. Based on my experience, I strongly believe that two of the most disruptive executive thought leaders in higher education are Dr. Marni Baker Stein and Phil Komarny at the University of Texas System (UTx) and the Institute for Transformational Learning (ITL).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vala-afshar/disrupting-higher-educati_b_11341146.html

by Emerging Technology, MIT Technology Review

The first machine-based search of online hacker marketplaces identifies over 300 significant cyberthreats every week. In February 2015, Microsoft identified a critical vulnerability in its Windows operating system that potentially allowed a malicious attacker to remotely control the targeted computer. The problem affected a wide variety of Windows operating systems including, Vista, 7, 8 and various others designed for servers and mobile computers. The company immediately issued a fix. But it didn’t take long for details of the vulnerability to spread through the hacker community.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602115/machine-learning-algorithm-combs-the-darknet-for-zero-day-exploits-and-finds-them/

by CBC News

New moms can turn to their smartphones for quick answers to important breastfeeding questions with a new online video developed by two Saskatoon nurses. Cindy Leclerc and Jana Stockham developed the online teaching tool in response to queries from moms-to-be who weren’t able to get to pre-natal classes. The video covers topics such as the benefits of using breast milk, how to know if the baby is getting enough milk and the most comfortable positions. Stockham said it was designed to build confidence in new mothers by helping them prepare for when the baby arrives.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/online-breastfeeding-course-saskatoon-1.3710461

by Eleanor Lamb, MeriTalk

Each year, 50,000 students participate in Carnegie Mellon University’s online academic courses as part of the institution’s Open Learning Initiative (OLI). OLI, which began in the early 2000s, is an online learning platform that features not only readings and videos, but also modules, problem-solving exercises, and virtual labs. Norman Bier, Director of OLI and Core Collaborations at CMU, said the initiative aims to create an enriching learning experience for CMU students. “We’re fairly proud of the approach we take,” Bier said. “Those smaller activities are embedded in the flow of watching videos and reading.”

https://www.meritalk.com/articles/carnegie-mellons-open-learning-initiative-draws-50000/