Online Learning Update

By Jordan Friedman, US News

While the field of law has been slower than most to embrace online learning, some J.D. program professors are straying from the traditional teaching model and incorporating blended courses – those partially online, partially on campus – into their curriculums, experts say. There are currently no fully online J.D. programs accredited by the American Bar Association – though recognized online Master of Laws Degrees, or LL.M.s, and other legal master’s degrees and certificates do exist. A few law schools are, however, designating entire J.D. programs as blended to emphasize their convenience for busy adults. “I think the legal profession and legal education are just very resistant to change,” says Gregory Duhl, associate dean for strategic initiatives at the Mitchell Hamline School of Law, a recent merger between Hamline University and the William Mitchell College of Law. But since the Great Recession, when legal jobs were scarce, law schools have faced pressures to innovate, he says.

http://www.usnews.com/education/best-graduate-schools/top-law-schools/articles/2016-11-07/law-schools-experiment-with-partially-online-learning

by Seb Murray, Business Because

Students are increasingly questioning the value of a traditional business school degree. Meanwhile, online learning is booming as costs come down and the technology improves. But will advances in online learning disrupt the MBA? By some metrics, the MBA is already falling out of fashion. The Graduate Management Admissions Council says applications to MBA programs fell in 53% of US business schools this year. Conversely, the number of distance learning students is up by 3.9% year-over-year, says the Online Learning Consortium. Nearly six million students are going viral. Rather than making a significant investment of time and money in advanced degrees, students are increasingly using stackable courses like Moocs and certificates to create their own customized educational packages. These aren’t degrees but instead are hybrid credentials that focus on specific niches such as project management or data science. Biz students are using stackable certificates to create customized online degrees.

https://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-distance-learning/4301/online-learning-will-disrupt-the-mba

By Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

A new website is asking students and others to “expose and document” professors who “discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The site, called Professor Watchlist, is not without precedent — predecessors include the now-defunct NoIndoctrination.org, which logged accounts of alleged bias in the classroom. The group’s founder, Charlie Kirk — a millennial who has emerged in some conservative political circles as a major player — in a write-up of the project, said, “It’s no secret that some of America’s college professors are totally out of line” and that he often hears stories about “professors who attack and target conservatives, promote liberal propaganda and use their position of power to advance liberal agendas in their classroom. Turning Point USA is saying enough is enough. It’s time we expose these professors.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/22/new-website-seeks-register-professors-accused-liberal-bias-and-anti-american-values

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

I would be recommending The Content Trap even if the final section of the book had not been devoted to the HBX – the Harvard Business School’s (HBS) online education initiative. Anand was one of the founding faculty members behind HBX, and is able to provide the first insider account (that I know of) of the thinking behind the launch of HBX. The central ideas behind The Content Trap will be familiar to any student of learning. The goal of every instructional designer (and Teaching and Learning Center) is to move teaching from a content-centered to a learner-centered activity. Anyone who has been paying attention to the research on learning will understand the futility of content transmission approach to teaching.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/content-trap-and-hbx-story

By Nicole Mendez, Campus News

All in all, online classes are like any other class; they are what you make them. To be successful, the student must take it seriously, be organized, be committed to deadlines, be willing to learn, and most importantly be very near to a giant can of Red Bull; because chances are on top of the overwhelming work these classes bring, the average community college student will also be juggling a job, family, friends, and real time classrooms. When starting, take one online class to become acquainted with how they work, don’t forget your trusty planner, and most importantly hang in there, because in the end, class in your pajamas isn’t so bad.

http://cccnews.info/2014/01/05/are-online-classes-the-real-deal/

By Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Ed

The likely next chair of the U.S. House education committee weighs in on GOP higher education priorities a week after Republicans captured the White House and retained both chambers of Congress. Representative Virginia Foxx is poised to assume leadership of the full committee in the next Congress. And the longtime critic of the Obama administration’s higher education policies says she and other Republicans are ready to reverse course on many of those policies. “I think we will early on in the committee have to spend some time on work force issues because of all of those onerous rules and regulations that were put in. There also some on the education side — the gainful employment rule, the state authorization rules, the credit-hour rule. So, there’s a lot of rules on both sides of the committee’s structure that I think we will need to deal with. Obviously, the big elephant in the room is the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/11/17/virginia-foxx-weighs-gops-higher-education-priorities

By Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

The number of postsecondary institutions in the United States declined by 1.8 percent from 2014-15 to 2015-16, with all of the decline occurring in the for-profit sector of higher education, new federal data show. The data, contained in an annual report from the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, show that the number of U.S. institutions that award federal financial aid declined from 7,151 to 7,021. The number of public institutions actually increased by one from 2014-15 to 2015-16, while the number of private nonprofit colleges grew from 1,827 to 1,859. The number of for-profit institutions fell from 3,360 to 3,197. The same report shows that the number of degrees and other credentials conferred by American postsecondary institutions grew by 1.2 percent from 2013-14 to 2014-15, from 4.525 million to 4.581 million.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2016/11/16/number-colleges-declines-while-credentials-awarded-rises

by Hugh Son, Bloomberg

Financial institutions traditionally coveted graduates from Stanford and other big-name schools and people already working in Silicon Valley. But that system tends to overlook good programmers from other schools or gifted dropouts, according to recruiters. And besides, banks need to fill so many programming jobs that elite schools can’t possibly pump out enough candidates. So the industry is looking in places it never did, turning to outside firms to evaluate prospective programmers based on objective measurements, not their pedigree. The idea is that people lacking a computer science degree — art majors, graphic designers and chemistry graduates from the University of Delaware like Furlong — can still make the leap to well-paid careers in technology. By using algorithms to spot talented coders, HackerRank and competitors with names like Codility claim they’ve essentially increased the world’s supply of developers.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-banks-coders-55d26040-9cf3-11e6-b552-b1f85e484086-20161029-story.html

BY MERIS STANSBURY, eCampus News

Leaders from Learning Machine, MIT Media Lab, and Carnegie Mellon University engaged in a groundbreaking conversation with a packed house of EdTech vendors and education leaders at the annual EDUCAUSE conference. Together, they introduced Blockcerts, the open standard for issuing secure, verifiable digital credentials. Hosted by Learning Machine CEO, Chris Jagers, the panel brought together research from the MIT Media Lab (Principal Engineer Kim Duffy), real-world perspective from the Registrar of Carnegie Mellon University (John Papinchak), implementation details from Learning Machine leadership (COO Dan Hughes), and the societal implications of distributed technologies (Learning Machine Anthropologist Natalie Smolenski). The panelists described a future in which learners are able to act as their own lifelong registrars with blockchain credentialing.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/alternative-pathways/blockchain-credentialing-movement/

BY LAURA DEVANEY, eCampus News

The University of California, Los Angeles announced the launch of a joint partnership between UCLA Extension, UCLA Alumni Affairs, and the UCLA Career Center to deliver individualized and customized online career coaching to all UCLA alumni and all UCLA Extension students and alumni through InsideTrack, the nation’s leading provider of student success coaching. Participants in this new venture can select from three affordable subscription options that offer various levels of access to InsideTrack support resources, such as one-on-one meetings with a professional career coach; templates and tools to help create a career search plan; live workshops that teach the skills employers are looking for; and/or video tutorials offering job-search and career-development advice.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/news/ucla-career-coaching/

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Educause recently revealed its Top 10 IT Issues for 2017, prioritizing information security for the second year in a row and emphasizing data, infrastructure and IT leadership. The issues for 2017 were, on the surface, notably IT-centric, with information security topping the list for the second year in a row and a heavy emphasis on data, infrastructure and IT leadership (see box at right). Three new issues made the list for the new year: strategic leadership, defined as “repositioning or reinforcing the role of IT leadership as a strategic partner with institutional leadership”; higher education affordability, “prioritizing IT investments and resources in the context of increasing demand and limited resources”; and next-gen enterprise IT, “developing an implementing enterprise IT applications, architectures and sourcing strategies to achieve agility, scalability, cost-effectiveness and effective analytics.” Teaching and learning made the bottom of the list with issue No. 10.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/11/10/the-it-issues-ahead.aspx

by DIANE JERMYN, Globe and Mail

Laura Hotham, a psychology professor at Niagara College, teaches the abnormal psychology course that Ms. Pillwein is taking at the Welland, Ont., campus. Ms. Hotham finds that the combination of two hours of classroom lecture and then one hour of online activity for the week is an effective way of teaching the material, particularly because it gives students time to take away what has been said and digest it. After two years of teaching the course with the online component and one year before that of teaching without it, she says the student grades are higher than when she taught only in the classroom.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/students-appreciate-flexibility-of-distance-learning/article32799209/

By Madison White, ULoop

Work from home, when you want, wherever you want — what could be difficult about online classes? For many students, online courses are a great tool in managing the busy schedule of a student and employee. However, many students also assume that every online class will be much easier than a normal class when this simply isn’t the case. Here are four reasons why online classes aren’t easy.

http://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/219200/Why-Online-Classes-Arent-Easy

By Lornajane, University Herald

In the advancement of technology, online courses have been seen as the place for accessible and affordable education in the future. Whether you just up to learning more skills and gaining some credentials or you are just entering the workforce, even when you are just into changing your entire future, taking online courses could a help for you. Here are some reasons why online courses should be at the top of your priority list First, they are inexpensive or free. Most students do not want another burden in paying, they have enough student loan debt. Acquiring Impressive Credentials is possible. It is easy to access and convenient. With the wide range of online courses available, there will be no limitation in your chosen route.

http://www.universityherald.com/articles/48473/20161110/4-top-reasons-why-online-courses-beneficial-ones-career.htm

by Katie Lobosco and Drew Griffin, CNN Money

Donald Trump has agreed to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits against Trump University. The deal will keep the president-elect from having to testify in a trial in San Diego that was set to begin November 28. The settlement ends a suit brought by New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, as well as two class action suits in California. About 6,000 former students are covered by the settlement. Trump University is the defunct, for-profit real estate seminar business Trump created in 2005. Former students say they were hoodwinked by the program and claimed that teachers were not hand-picked by Trump as advertised. Some paid tens of thousands of dollars to participate. The settlement is a complete turnaround from Trump’s earlier position on the lawsuits.

http://money.cnn.com/2016/11/18/news/trump-university-settlement/index.html

by Mary Keck,Indiana University

Nearly 27,000 students took advantage of IU Online in fall 2016 by taking one or more distance classes, according to the Office of Online Education. Among those who find that taking online courses is a good fit are students who are active in the military or veterans. “Our students who are active service members or veterans find that online learning works best because it offers flexibility when they are deployed overseas or have other service commitments,” said John Applegate, executive vice president for univeristy academic affairs. “Many of our military-connected students with families like the ability to adjust their class schedules around their responsibilities at home while still being able to continue their education at a world-class university.”

http://inside.iu.edu/editors-picks/technology/2016-11-09-online-education.shtml

By Ellie Bothwell, Times Higher Education

Students on courses that combine online delivery with face-to-face interaction are the least satisfied in Times Higher Education’s US student survey. US students on blended learning courses are generally less engaged with the teaching at their institution than their counterparts taking purely online or purely face-to-face degrees, according to a Times Higher Education survey that may question the notion that blended learning could result in a “great revolution in university teaching”. Students undertaking courses that combine both online delivery with face-to-face interaction were less likely to say that they felt prepared for a career,

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/us-blended-learning-students-least-engaged-teaching

by Jane Fried with Peter Troiano, Tomorrow’s Professor

There are at least two keys to effective group facilitation. One is active listening and the other is observing group dynamics.

* When you listen to what students are saying, try not to think about what you are going to say afterward. Listen with a clear mind (see Appendix B) and listen for themes. Then tell the students what you have heard or seen. For example, “You seem to be confused about who’s at fault in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. You seem to want to place the blame on one of the groups.” Rephrasing what the student said before responding assures the student that you have understood the student’s intended meaning. The student is then more open to listening to new information. This process creates the beginnings of a dialogue.

https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1522

by Laurence Bradford, Fortune

Especially in recent years, online courses have officially claimed their place as the future of affordable, accessible education. Whether you’re just entering the workforce and want more skills and credentials to pad your resume, you’re looking to upskill early to late in your career, or you want to change careers entirely, here’s why taking courses online should be at the top of your priority list.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/laurencebradford/2016/11/07/4-reasons-why-online-courses-can-get-you-out-of-a-career-rut/

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

Credentialing processor Parchment.com offers 3 tips on how to successfully package and promote skills earned to parlay them into quality chances at career entry or advanced degrees. Parchment recommends making credentials digitally deliverable, aesthetically appealing and accessible to graduates throughout their lives are essential to making the most out of earned skills. The ability to list and see pathways of how credentials can be “stacked” together makes students and potential employees more marketable in fields which demand workers with increasing diversity in skills sets and knowledge.

http://www.educationdive.com/news/3-tips-for-turning-credentials-into-degree-and-job-opportunities/429859/