Online Learning Update

By Alyssa Laffitte, ULoop
College is very different now than it was 10 years ago. Nowadays, we have options that can help us get our degrees faster, like online courses. Most universities give you the option to complete some classes online. If you are still unsure about whether or not you should take an online class, here are some reasons why an online course might be for you!  Clearly, there are many reasons you should take an online class. Of course, you know yourself best, so take a good look at your educational situation and decide whether or not taking an online class would work for you.

https://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/245379/4-Reasons-Online-Courses-Might-Be-For-You

BY TOM RUFF, eCampus News

Many higher education institutions have already invested heavily in security solutions, but the bad actors continue to bypass many of the current security controls. Other institutions have underinvested and only have basic protections in place, but now realize that it is simply a matter of time before this approach fails.  The key driver for breaking into a college or university – or any organization, for that matter – is typically financial, which means that there is a game of cat and mouse played between the bad actors and institutions.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/eschool-media/cybersecurity-problem-higher-ed/

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News
Institutions are focused on strategic technologies that help support student success and other initiatives.  Technologies for planning and mapping students’ educational plans, along with mobile app development, are among the top strategic technologies covered in EDUCAUSE’s 2017 Integrated Planning for Advising and Student Success (iPASS) trends and technologies report. The report examines higher ed’s top strategic technology priorities. Strategic technologies are newer compared to mature and commonly-deployed technologies such as financial information systems, and these newer technologies are the technologies on which institutions will likely spend most of their time implementing, planning, and tracking this year.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/it-newsletter/technologies-fall-higher-ed/

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
Our 2017 Teaching with Technology Survey found that faculty have a positive outlook about technology’s impact on their work, teaching effectiveness, student learning and more. In a survey of faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States, 73 percent of respondents said technology has made their jobs “easier” or “much easier.” And nary a one considered their job “much harder” thanks to tech. Those findings came out of Campus Technology’s second annual Teaching with Technology Survey, in which we asked faculty to dish on their use of technology, likes and dislikes, views of the future and more. Their responses revealed a lot about the business of teaching and learning with technology today — and how it has changed over the last year.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/08/23/most-faculty-say-technology-has-made-their-jobs-easier.aspx

By CRAIG CALHOUN, NY Times

Davidson argues persuasively that student-centered, active learning can transform classrooms and even online courses. Technology itself is neither the enemy nor the solution (recent fantasies about massive open online courses, or MOOCs, notwithstanding). She rightly rails against both rising costs and a public defunding of higher education that together mean students graduate with huge debt burdens and accordingly make educational choices based on guesses at how they can best pay them off rather than what they want to learn or how they can best contribute to the world. She criticizes disciplinary departments as too dominant and points out that neither the world’s problems nor its jobs are organized entirely by academic disciplines. She complains that ubiquitous grading and ranking of both students and schools have produced not only an obsession with hierarchical standing but also an approach focused more on exclusivity and weeding out than on helping everyone learn.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/books/review/cathy-davidson-new-education.html

By Manuela Ekowo, EdSurge

This October, two open education pioneers are teaming up to pilot a new edX course titled “Introduction to Open Education” with hopes to amplify and answer some of these questions. George Siemens, professor and education technology researcher at the University of Texas at Arlington, and David Wiley, co-founder and chief academic officer at OER company Lumen Learning, will lead the free course that aims to introduce graduate students (though anyone with internet access can take the classes) to open education, and how the field has evolved. The six-week long MOOC will touch on topics including open educational resources (OER), open pedagogy and practice, open knowledge and open research.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-08-23-george-siemens-and-david-wiley-join-forces-for-a-mooc-about-open-education

by David Raths, Campus Technology

As campus executives start to develop their IoT strategies, it is not just CIOs who have to be involved. Sometimes, facilities groups have their own IT executives working on data pipelines from IoT devices. Chuck Benson, assistant director for IT in Facilities Services at the University of Washington, chairs a campuswide IoT risk mitigation task force.  Energy management is a great example of where IoT is having an impact, Benson said. With help from a federal grant, UW has made an effort to meter much of the campus. There are about 2,000 data points where power and building controls are sampled. “I work with our energy conservation managers making sure all the samples are coming through,” he said. Data flows into an aggregation point and from there to consumption for reports, dashboards or ongoing research. “We do a lot of work in building that data pipeline, and there are challenges all along the way that involve different groups on campus,” Benson explained. If a meter goes offline, initially you don’t know why — or who is responsible.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/08/24/smart-campuses-invest-in-the-internet-of-things.aspx