Online Learning Update

By Henry Kronk March, eLearning Inside

MOOCs, online courses, and other eLeraning initiatives have increased access to education for learners around the world. But there’s a kind of unspoken belief generally held in regard to online education: it works well with some subjects, but less so with others. STEM subjects, which typically require mastery of specific, discrete subject matter, are very popular online. But when it comes to more subjective matters, like social and emotional intelligence, the arts, or the fine arts, many find the online setting to pale in comparison to its in-person equivalent. But one company is changing that narrative. To fine art purists, Kadenze does the unthinkable. Not only does it offer art courses that span “Designing Synthesizer Sounds” to “Custom Handlettering”; it grades student work with artificial intelligence (AI).

Grading with AI: How Kadenze Powers Its Online Fine Arts Courses

BY MARY KYLE, Business.com

Businesses look for and need candidates with top notch accounting skills to help them navigate today’s complex financial world. Whether you’re an entrepreneur trying to go it alone or an established professional seeking to maintain currency, quality accounting skills is a must to maintain the financial health of your business. Obtaining or maintaining those accounting skills can be challenging, but fortunately, the internet has revolutionized learning, taking it out of the traditional classroom and moving it directly into the home.  If you’re not sure where to begin when it comes to online accounting training, below you’ll find some great online training resources we found to help you navigate your way through online learning.

https://www.business.com/articles/online-resources-improve-accounting-skills/

by Meghan Bogardus Cortez, EdTech

Chatbots assist people daily with everything from ordering pizza to dealing with customer service issues. So, it’s no surprise that higher education institutions are embracing them to interact with their No. 1 customer: students. Whether it’s navigating the admissions process or scheduling classes, universities have embraced artificial intelligence to streamline student interactions and offer timely support.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2018/03/universities-deploy-chatbots-aid-students-admissions-process-and-beyond

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News

Just roughly half (53 percent) of students believe their major will lead to a good job, according to a nationally-representative survey of 32,000 students at four-year universities. Only one-third of students said they think they will graduate with the skills and knowledge they need to be successful in the job market (34 percent) and in the workplace (36 percent), according to the Strada-Gallup 2017 College Student Survey.  The report points to a skills gap between higher ed and industry; 96 percent of chief academic officers said they believe their institution is very or somewhat effective at preparing students for the workforce, but just 11 percent of business leaders strongly agreed.

3 predictors of students’ workforce confidence

by Claudio Sanchez, NPR

Create a new, online community college for people in the workforce who’ve been shut out of higher education. It’s the brainchild of Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor for the California Community Colleges. He’s a product of California’s community college system — and now its chancellor. He says it’s a system that urgently needs to re-think how it delivers the courses students need, when and where they need them. It’s a fascinating idea, yet one that faces hurdles — not the least of which is the cost to get this new system up and running. Gov. Jerry Brown loves Oakley’s idea and has proposed $100 million in startup funding in his budget, which state legislators have yet to approve. I spoke with Oakley about his idea and why he thinks its time has come.

https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/03/09/589113650/reinventing-community-college-to-reach-millions-of-workers-online

by Urcoo
When people think of a college student, they often imagine an unmarried High school graduate in their late teens or early 20’s attending full time on campus. The reality is different, with diversity increasing in many key areas in recent years. Here is a breakdown of student demographics at American universities.

https://blog.ucroo.com/blog/2018/2/28/united-states-student-demographics

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

With over 80% of higher education students using some form of an online learning tool, and with the number of learners enrolled in online degree courses expected to hit 5 million by 2020, there is no denying that universities need to ensure that they are providing excellent quality in their online educations. An unforgettable online learning experience should be engaging, stimulating, and enjoyable. Here are three edtech tools that you can use to create these experiences for your students.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/create-unforgettable-online-learning-experiences/

By Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

Colleges are struggling to prepare for new distance education rules, which are scheduled to take effect in July. Under the new regulations, all higher education institutions that offer classes online must demonstrate that they are authorized to operate in every state where they enroll students who receive federal financial aid. The rules also mean that institutions must make clear their refund policies and procedures for receiving student complaints. Additionally, institutions must provide specific information to students who are pursuing professions that require state licensure, which is common for nurses, teachers and counselors, among others. Institutions will be required to inform students if they are taking a program that will not qualify them to practice their chosen profession where they live. This means every institution must track the requirements for professional licensing in every state where they operate. Failure to meet these requirements could result in institutions losing eligibility for federal financial aid.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/09/universities-stall-%E2%80%98confusing%E2%80%99-distance-education-regulations

by AEI

• American universities awarded roughly 760,000 master’s degrees during the 2014–15 academic year, yet we know little about the payoff associated with these degrees, especially by field of study.
• Using new data from three states, we show that field of study is closely related to postgraduation earnings from master’s degrees. Master’s graduates in fields such as philosophy, art, and early childhood education have the lowest median earnings—often less than graduates with bachelor’s or even associate degrees.
• The highest-paid graduates earned master’s degrees in fields such as business, information technology, engineering, or real estate. Differences in state labor markets also led to variance in postgraduate earnings, more so for high-paying fields than low-paying fields.

The Master’s as the New Bachelor’s Degree: In Search of the Labor Market Payoff

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Forty-two percent of managers believe that the adoption of robotics and automation will result in the elimination of jobs. And just 18 percent said that automation will help to create jobs. According to the report, a mix of hard and soft skills is key for employees to outperform robots. About 40 percent of managers, however, said that their employees are currently lacking in both areas. The soft skills that will best separate humans from robots include:

• Creative thinking (cited by 30 percent of respondents);
• Critical thinking (29 percent);
• Communication (21 percent);
• Decision-making (21 percent); and
• Negotiation (20 percent).

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/03/06/more-than-half-of-us-employees-fear-losing-their-job-to-robots.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Here’s a university that started planning its degree programs with the end in mind: making sure students had what they needed to find and keep a good job in their field. To get a bead on opportunities in the field of business analytics education, Montclair State University turned to a team of internal data experts to figure out what a new education program should cover — the very same people who would eventually be teaching its courses. In a paper published in 2015 in Information Systems Education Journal, three faculty members described how they used data to map out curriculum for a proposed business analytics program. Development of this kind of program was being undertaken in a highly competitive atmosphere. As the paper noted, graduate and undergraduate programs on business analytics had already been introduced at 130 institutions in just the previous five years. What set this effort apart, however, was its intended emphasis on “competency-based instruction” — if they could pinpoint just what that meant in this context.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/03/08/using-data-to-expose-industry-needs-and-design-degree-programs-accordingly.aspx

by JENNIFER LEWINGTON, Globe and Mail

Last fall, University of Alberta school of business accounting professor Michael Maier experimented with his traditional lecture delivery, giving students the opportunity to watch short videos on technical topics outside of class time.   His use of videos is one example of how business professors at U of A – and elsewhere – are experimenting with technology to imagine variations on the traditional lecture format. On mid-term exams last fall, the class average in his accounting course was 82 per cent – about 10 percentage points higher than average scores in the lecture-based classes he has taught over the past eight years.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/careers/business-education/professor-on-online-activities-they-get-students-talking-more-and-me-talking-less/article38232748/

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed
Many proponents of online education have speculated that the digital learning environment might be a meritocracy, where students are judged not on their race or gender, but on the comments they post. A study being released today by the Center for Education Policy Analysis at Stanford University, however, finds that bias appears to be strong in online course discussions. The study found that instructors are 94 percent more likely to respond to discussion forum posts by white male students than by other students. The authors write that they believe their work is the first to demonstrate with a large pool that the sort of bias that concerns many educators in face-to-face instruction is also present in online education.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/08/study-finds-evidence-racial-and-gender-bias-online-education

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
Here’s a university that started planning its degree programs with the end in mind: making sure students had what they needed to find and keep a good job in their field. The concept of student success holds many meanings, with data at the core of all of them. For some schools it’s wrapped around the notion of alerts pinned to particular student activities: Gosh, he hasn’t logged into the learning management system in two weeks; inform the instructor to reach out. Or, oh, she’s not using her meal card; notify her adviser for follow-up. For others, it’s all about targeting “best-fit” students and better managing recruitment and enrollment funnels. But, really, in this era of accountability, maybe the ultimate definition of student success ought to be somebody graduating with the smarts, skills and connections needed to get a good job in a given field.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/03/08/using-data-to-expose-industry-needs-and-design-degree-programs-accordingly.aspx

by Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive

“Ultimately, I think that there won’t be for-profit universities or institutions as we know them today. And by the same token, I don’t think there’s going to be traditional universities the way we know them today” either, said former University of Phoenix President Bill Pepicello in a recent phone conversation. Pointing to the industry-disrupting model initiated by Purdue University’s acquisition of Kaplan University, Pepicello predicts “the future of higher ed in general is going to be an institution that comes out of the morphing of for-profit and traditional institutions.” “What I predict is the Purdue-Kaplan thing will begin to develop a business model that looks more like a for-profit business model. Whether you’re a fan of for-profit or not, it does have a functioning business model, and in that fact, I think that’s where higher ed in the U.S. is suffering right now: The current business model is not sustainable,” he said.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/what-is-the-future-of-for-profit-higher-ed/

By James DeVaney, Inside Higher Ed

MOOCs are far from dead. Rather, they appear to hatch derivatives. Sean Gallagher of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy refers to this as “the new ecology of credentials”, a landscape transforming rapidly as we move from the early knowledge economy to the digital, AI, Gig economy. Which leads those of us close to the action to reflect often upon the original big idea for MOOCs. Typically stating a goal to “democratize” is followed by “access to” something. In hindsight, it’s clear we hadn’t fully considered the potential of what we might be democratizing. What, in fact, are we scaling? Is it content and courses? Curriculum and credentials? Communities and college towns?

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/reflecting-original-big-idea-moocs

By Study International

A free, online course offered by Harvard University kicked off this week, aiming to teach the international community more about each other’s religions in order to promote better interfaith understanding and tolerance. Entitled Religious Literacy: Traditions and Scriptures, the course seeks to help students “better understand the rich and complex ways that religions function in historic and contemporary contexts” by exploring the faith systems of Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism.

Harvard offers free online course to teach the world about religion

By Hector Molina, WWLP

The University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan wants to improve access to online learning options. Meehan has outlined a five-point plan to keep UMass financially within reach for students of all backgrounds. Affordability is one of UMass top priorities. One affordability option is to offer more online courses. UMass already serves more than 30,000 students online, and plans to improve technology and work with students and industry to reach more people.

Improving online courses could help make UMass more affordable

by Times Higher Ed
Online learning platform Coursera is set to offer its first degrees from UK universities, including its first ever bachelor’s programme. The Californian company announced on 6 March that it would host a new public health master’s from Imperial College London, as well as a computer science bachelor’s from the University of London.  It also announced four new master’s degrees from US institutions, including computer science programmes from Arizona State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and public health and applied data science degrees from the University of Michigan. The new programmes, which bring the number of degrees available via Coursera up to 10, are all expected to launch later this year or in 2019.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/coursera-offer-degrees-uk-universities

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvoate

The college classroom often maintains the status quo of traditional teaching tactics, but there is a high likelihood that a shift toward edtech could be useful. Universities haven’t often considered the value of retaining their student population year over year. In fact, few of them have even considered what the driving forces behind their low retention and graduation rates could be. With the push toward edtech, your university may suddenly be more likely to increase their graduation rate. How is it possible that instituting more technology in the classroom could lead to better student success? Here are a few key ways that colleges are making use of the developing technology.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/edtech-can-help-increase-universitys-graduation-rate/

by Jacob Bane, EDUCAUSE Review

The need to ensure student identity and academic integrity is paramount across education sectors. Although this issue is not new, it has been brought to the forefront by the continued expansion of distance learning. Academic integrity is critical for the accurate assessment of student learning. It protects the integrity of an institution and ensures compliance — the Higher Education Reauthorization Act of 2008 requires institutions to verify that the student who registers for a course is the same student who completes the coursework.

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2018/2/bolstering-academic-integrity-in-the-online-classroom