Online Learning Update

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Ed tech company Knewton has launched a collection of digital courseware that integrates its adaptive technology with open education resources, with the intention of selling directly to instructors and students. Previously, the company licensed its adaptive functionality to textbook publishers for integration with their course content. Under the new strategy, the company noted, it could own “all aspects of the user experience” and “make a greater impact on outcomes and affordability.” Each title in the new line costs $44 for two years of digital access.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/01/25/knewton-releases-44-adaptive-digital-textbooks.aspx

by Study International
Distance learning is on the rise. But with online learning comes a need for (plenty of) self-motivation. Learning from home comes with many great benefits. You have near-total flexibility over your working hours, you don’t have to change out of your pyjamas if you don’t want to, you can have snacks whenever you want and, more importantly, you can even pursue other ventures like work or travel. But it isn’t without it’s drawbacks too. In the world of online learning you need to be dedicated, focused and committed. So here are five tips to keep yourself in tip-top shape.

5 ways to stay motivated when you are distance learning

By Kathy Gurchiek, SHRM

Augmented reality, microlearning, adaptive learning and massive open online courses (MOOCs): Digital learning plays a big role workplace learning.  It’s important to understand what digital learning is and what it is not, said Don Dequette, executive vice president at New York City-based General Physics Learning Solutions Group. “It is not a modality, it is not a type of learning,” he pointed out during a recent webinar.  These four learning trends can help your employees get up to speed, and they use some of the latest technology available for work and play.

https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/organizational-and-employee-development/Pages/4-Digital-Training-Options-for-Workplace-Learning.aspx

by Mike Kehoe, Harvard Business Review

Working in online learning, I’ve found that every year around this time there’s a burst of sign-ups from workers seeking new skills.   In one survey of more than 50,000 learners who completed MOOCs on Coursera, 72% reported career benefits such as doing their current job more effectively, finding a new job, or receiving a raise. Having worked in HR at a large banking corporation and in strategic HR consulting, I’ve seen the effects of learning and development on career mobility — and what leads people to let it fall by the wayside. Over time, working with users as well as learning experts, I’ve found that four crucial habits can make a tremendous difference.

https://hbr.org/2018/01/4-habits-of-people-who-are-always-learning-new-skills

by Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive
The boot camp industry shouldn’t be counted out, despite a year plagued by a number of closures and bad press, Inside Higher Ed reports. Estimated growth of the sector topped 50% last year, according to Course Report. Despite some setbacks in 2017, the industry is growing, not shrinking, and still leaving its mark on higher education as a whole — and potentially encroaching on some of the available public and private funding available to provide career and technical training to low-income students. The new Forever GI Bill signed into law by President Donald Trump in August 2017 takes effect this year, and provides for a $75 million experiment to allow nontraditional credential providers — including boot camps — to train veterans for tech careers. The House version of the PROSPER Act also includes proposals to make Pell grants and other funding available to those who want to attend boot camps and other nontraditional programs.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/boot-camps-saw-50-growth-in-2017/515990/

by Dhawal Shah, Class Central

The MOOC landscape has grown to include 9,400 courses, more than 500 MOOC-based credentials, and more than a dozen graduate degrees. The total number of MOOCs available to register for at any point of time is larger than ever, thanks to tweaks in the scheduling policy by MOOC providers. However, for the first time we are seeing a slowdown in the number of new learners, which is a direct result of a shift in priorities towards users who are willing to pay. According to data gathered by Class Central, around 20 million new learners signed up for their first MOOC in 2017. That’s fewer than the 23 million new learners who registered for a MOOC in 2016. The total number of MOOC learners is now 78 million.

A Product at Every Price: A Review of MOOC Stats and Trends in 2017

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed
A new analysis finds that students enrolling in certificate programs are more likely to experience economic gains from enrolling in programs at public institutions, generally community colleges, than at for-profit institutions. Further, the analysis finds that people may be better off economically by not pursuing any postsecondary education than by enrolling in a certificate program at a for-profit. The analysis comes amid significant debates over vocationally oriented higher education.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/12/study-finds-poor-economic-results-students-who-enroll-certificate-programs-profit

by Grace Bird, Inside Higher Ed

A little more than half of both blue- and white-collar American workers think they’ll need more education to find a similar job if they lose theirs to new technology. However, only 18 percent of employed Americans feel “extremely confident” about securing this additional education. To Joseph Aoun, president of Northeastern University, colleges need to adapt to the impending artificial intelligence revolution. This means institutions must teach humans to become “robot-proof” (as the title of Aoun’s book suggests) or in other words, “to do the jobs only humans can do.” “Universities with the audacity to change represent humanity’s best chance to win the jobs of the future,” Aoun wrote.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/01/31/many-americans-feel-positive-about-artificial-intelligence-study-says

by Amy X. Wang, Quartz

A spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that Candace Thille will work “with our Global Learning Development Team to scale and innovate workplace learning at Amazon”; Thille herself said she is “not really at liberty to discuss” her new project. What could Amazon want with a higher education expert? The company already has footholds in the learning market, running several educational resource platforms. But Thille is famous specifically for her data-driven work, conducted at Stanford and Carnegie Mellon University, on nontraditional ways of learning, teaching, and training—all of which are perfect, perhaps even necessary, for the education of employees. Corporate learning is a freshly lucrative market, estimated to be over $130 billion in size, and still booming.

https://qz.com/1191619/amazon-is-becoming-its-own-university/

By Leigh Buehler-Rappold, In Cyberdefense

In an effort to expand its workforce, Amazon has hired Candace Thille to work with its Global Learning Development Team and create an innovative learning workplace. Thille is a pioneer in learning science and open educational delivery. The details of Thille’s new position are still being worked out, so it is difficult to say exactly what she will do at Amazon. However, considering Amazon’s business relies heavily on data analytics and unremitting experimentation, it makes sense that this giant retailer would look to a learning scientist to advance its workforce training.

https://incyberdefense.com/featured/amazons-newest-hire-big-impact-online-open-education-resources/

by Shalina Chatlani & Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive

The United States has one of the highest college dropout rates in the industrial world according to a Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 2014 report. Administrators are acutely aware that it’s not enough to just get students into college. Once they have enrolled, how and why they depart matters just as equally. But data suggests the situation is improving slowly. Overall, U.S full-time student retention is 74.4% for full-time students. At 81.6%, four-year private not-for-profit colleges had the h

https://www.educationdive.com/news/the-state-of-retention-and-completion-in-higher-education-in-9-charts/515382/

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
The appeal of online education parallels an industry trend of growth in nontraditional students seeking faster, more flexible credentialing options. But while online enrollment may be going up across the board, retaining students in programs is a different kind of challenge. Statistics from two Babson Survey Research Group reports, “Distance Education Enrollment Report 2017” and “Grade Increase: ​Tracking Distance Education in the United States,” show schools with some of the largest online programs — as well as institutions that are entirely online — have seen substantial drops in enrollment between 2015 and 2016. For instance, two for-profit institutions had significant drops in online student enrollment. The University of Phoenix saw a decline in about 30,000 online students, down from a total of 162,003 in 2015, while Kaplan saw a decline of about 8,000, down from 45,268 in 2015.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/are-mobile-apps-a-key-to-online-student-retention-success/515141/

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

Faculty satisfaction in online courses at liberal arts colleges does not necessarily translate to high student enrollment, a report by Ithaka S&R suggests. The report, published today, looked at the results of a Teagle Foundation initiative that provided grants to liberal arts colleges to work together to develop online or hybrid online courses and educational resources. While many faculty members who took part said they were pleased with the results, the online courses typically did not have higher enrollment than equivalent face-to-face courses.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/01/29/study-suggests-ways-liberal-arts-colleges-can-create-online

By Jeffrey J. Selingo, Washington Post

In “Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education,” Nathan D. Grawe, an economics professor at Carleton College, in Minnesota, explores the overall decline in high school graduates in greater detail.  In researching his book, Grawe created something he calls the “Higher Education Demand Index.” It attempts to adapt population trends into college-attendance forecasts, using federal education data to estimate the probability that different populations from different cities and states will go to college. “Unless something unexpected intervenes, the confluence of current demographic changes foretells an unprecedented reduction in postsecondary demand about a decade ahead,” Grawe writes. Overall, he estimates that four-year colleges nationwide in just one four-year period at the end of the 2020s stand to lose almost 280,000 students.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2018/01/27/higher-education-is-headed-for-a-supply-and-demand-crisis/

by Jeremy House, Education Dive
An American Enterprise Institute study recommends a number of changes to boost the earnings power of the typical associate of arts degree offered at community colleges because graduates with these degrees earn less than those with associate degrees in more technical fields. Generally, community college studies are oriented around general education course, suitable for transferring to four-year colleges. Of the the 670,000 awarded associate degrees in 2015, 40% were in a single field of study: liberal arts, general studies and humanities. Another 100,000 associate degrees were awarded in related transfer-oriented programs. Because most community college enrollees never obtain bachelor’s degrees, many are in the job market with a general education degree that provides limited work skills and earnings power. With a few additional skills, the study’s authors argue, community college graduates would be more competitive for jobs earning at least $40,000. Looking at jobs data, the authors suggested enhancing the traditional associate of arts degree with more marketable skills like Photoshop, website design or project management.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-to-boost-the-earnings-power-of-associate-of-arts-degrees/515757/

by Rob Watts Icon, PC Mag
As the tech giant continues to grow its AI operations, one of its research teams has built an AI that rivals a human’s reading comprehension abilities.  This month, it announced that its Microsoft Research Asia team has written AI software that can read and answer questions about a document with the same proficiency of a human reader. The software, which is already being used in its Bing search engine, has many applications for use in its products and services. The research team used an established framework known as the Stanford Question Answering Dataset (SQuAD). The dataset is composed of more than 100,000 question-answer pairs on more than 500 different Wikipedia articles.

https://www.pcmag.com/article/358741/microsoft-created-ai-that-reads-just-as-well-as-humans

By Olena Reid, US News

With less in-person contact in an online course, a prospective student should expect ample written communication with classmates, school staff and professors. nteracting with faculty outside of the virtual classroom is an essential part of successfully completing an online degree program. Here are four ways to connect with instructors in online courses. Online students have various opportunities to interact with instructors via email, the school’s portal, videoconferencing or even in-person meetings. Each channel is an opportunity to address concerns and answer their questions. They should remember to acknowledge their professor’s preferred method of communication and be proactive in the process.

https://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/articles/2018-01-26/4-ways-to-communicate-with-professors-in-online-courses

by Champlain College

A new survey from Champlain College Online says that while most adults see the value in higher education to prepare them for advancement in the workplace, ongoing concerns over incurring student debt and affordability are the major barriers to returning to school to complete a certificate, associate degree or bachelor’s degree.

https://mms.businesswire.com/media/20180123005437/en/636418/5/CHC-FINAL.jpg

by CINDY MILES & PHIL BLAIR, San Diego Union

This new independent online campus will be unlike any other public online education platform in existence. The online college will focus predominantly on sub-associate degree credentials tailored to the needs of working learners who simply cannot attend a traditional school campus but wish to increase their value in the workforce and advance educationally and economically. It will rely more on competency-based learning, in which students are measured by the skills they have learned in addition to tests and grades.

http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/sd-utbg-online-community-college-benefits-20180126-story.html

By: Rebecca Zambrano, Faculty Focus

Many faculty members express concern that discussion in their online courses is shallow or sparse. What is it that makes meaningful dialogue so elusive in online courses? Some practices in online course design and discussion facilitation can actually encourage superficial dialogue. Faculty grading and feedback that require too much formality of language can scare students into virtual silence, sticking to exactly what the text says or saying what they think the professor wants to hear. Focusing on lower-level writing issues, such as grammar, APA style, or academic language, takes students away from content issues toward format issues. Although faculty might expect students to use formal academic language in their essays and research papers, it is not ideal for discussion.

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/deepen-online-dialogue/

By NICHOLAS W. SUNDBERG, Harvard Crimson

A new online course from the Graduate School of Design will offer students from around the world the opportunity to study the fundamentals of architecture from Harvard professors for free. The 10-week course, which launches Feb. 28, will explore a variety of topics spanning the history of influences of architecture. Design School professors Erika Naginski, Antoine Picon, and K. Michael Hays, alongside PhD student Lisa Haber-Thomson, produced the lessons. According to a course summary posted online, the purpose of the initiative is to give students a greater understanding of the wider impacts of architecture, as well as the discipline’s influence on technology and history.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/1/26/architecture-online-course/