Online Learning Update

by Robert Klecha, Business Because

After two years of growth through 2015 and 2016, applications to online MBA programs remained ever popular last year, according to the GMAC 2017 Application Trends Survey Report. This steady rise coincides with the growth of the global digital economy and is symptomatic of shifting preferences towards flexibility and mobility. With online programs having applicants with the highest level of work experience after Executive MBAs. 33% of applicants have 10 or more years of work experience, showing busy business leaders are looking online to upskill themselves. One area which is particularly in need of skilled employees is data analytics—making sense of big data and putting it to use—with a recent report from e-skills UK and SAS claiming the demand for data-savvy staff will increase by up to 23% per annum over the next five years.

https://www.businessbecause.com/news/mba-distance-learning/5087/online-mba-data-analytics

by Harvard Gazette

Have you ever wanted to make a career change, gain a skill, or just learn something new? On March 1, a group of community members gathered at the Harvard Ed Portal to find out how online learning could help them accomplish these and other goals at “Learn Anything: Exploring the World of Free Online Courses from Top Universities.” Casey Roehrig and Shilpa Idnani of the HarvardX Instructional Development team talked about the free online learning opportunities available. At the event, local residents registered for an edX account and learned how to sign up for and take an online course. Attendees browsed through the more than 100 HarvardX courses available for free, while others expanded their search to the almost 2,000 online courses available on the edX platform.

Online learning offers limitless opportunities to expand

By Meredith Roaten, GW Hatchet

The Faculty Senate passed a resolution Friday calling on the University to require that online courses undergo an identical review process as face-to-face classes within their schools. The resolution was passed following 90 minutes of debate and months of discussion about the quality of GW’s online programs, which faculty and officials agreed was strong despite a fall report that raised questions about oversight of courses taught online. Professors said the resolution will give faculty an outline of how to teach online classes and follow uniform procedures.

Faculty Senate passes resolution on monitoring online courses

by Meghan Bogardus Cortez, EdTech

Though cryptocurrencies like bitcoin seem to have an uncertain future, the same can’t be said about blockchain, the electronic ledger and database technology used to store them. At universities, blockchain is poised to help in aspects of data management, credentialing and research. From boosting security to enhancing access, the e-ledger tool has a lot of possibility. Here are four ways experts think blockchain has a place in higher education:

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2018/03/4-things-experts-want-you-know-about-blockchain-higher-ed

BY ALEXEI KOSEFF, Sacramento Bee

While the student bodies at California’s public colleges and universities are rapidly diversifying, the academic leadership has not kept up with the state’s changing demographics. A new report from The Campaign for College Opportunity found that more than two-thirds of faculty, senior administrators and board members in the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges systems are white. By contrast, more than two-thirds of the 2.8 million students at those schools are minorities. At UC, nearly 40 percent of undergraduates are Asian American, while Latinos make up more than 40 percent of enrollment at CSU and community colleges.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article203641349.html

by Ingrid Lunden, Tech Crunch

With traditional university programs getting more expensive and competitive, we’re seeing a boom in the number of alternative programs that are taking advantage of the internet and more flexible teaching and learning formats to fill the gap in the market. The latest development comes from Coursera. Today, the online education startup with 31 million students and some 2,700 courses is adding six new full degrees — including its first bachelors’ degree — in partnership with five top universities.

Coursera teams with 5 universities to expand its full masters and bachelors degree programs

By Jeffrey R. Young, Jenny Abamu, Michael Sano, Sydney Johnson, Tina Nazerian and Tony Wan, EdSurge

Monday marked day one of Open Education Week, and speakers at a panel used the opportunity to discuss the potential for open educational resources as an alternative to increasingly unaffordable textbooks—as well as the challenges and misconceptions that the open movement still faces. Panelists started by drawing attention to Austin Community College, where students are advised to budget at least $1,200—about a third of tuition costs—for textbooks. While OER was presented as one way to ease course material costs, other challenges remain, starting with understanding and awareness of what the term means. “‘Open’ is not the same thing as digital,” said Nicole Allen, director of open education at SPARC, an academic coalition that advocates for open sharing and resources. “And open doesn’t only mean ‘free.’”

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-03-05-in-search-of-oer-s-future-and-edtech-s-missing-evidence-at-sxsw-edu

by Knowledge@Wharton

Traditional universities — including Ivy League schools — fail to deliver the kind of learning that ensures employability. That perspective inspired Ben Nelson, founder and CEO of the six-year-old Minerva Schools in San Francisco. His goal is to reinvent higher education and to provide students with high-quality learning opportunities at a fraction of the cost of an undergraduate degree at an elite school. While tuition at top-tier universities in the U.S. can run more than $40,000 a year, Minerva charges $12,950 a year, according to its website. In a recent test, its students showed superior results compared to traditional universities while also attracting a large number of applicants.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/can-the-minerva-model-of-learning-disrupt-higher-education/

by Meghan Bogardus Cortez, EdTech
Short, tailored programming makes it easier for businesses to support employees looking to continue education. Partnerships between businesses and universities have been integral to helping college graduates meet the changing technological demands in the workforce. But, what about people already in the workforce? How do they keep up? Allowing professionals to more easily seek out additional education was the impetus behind edX, a nonprofit company that MIT and Harvard established in 2012 to offer free versions of their online classes.  Evolving from the MOOCs it traditionally offered, MIT announced Digital Plus Programs, which allow enrolled professionals to seek out certificates, an EdSurge story reports. Instead of allowing for open enrollment, however, the online courses are only available to companies and organizations that pay for their employees to further their education. Each course is capped around 50 students, according to EdSurge.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2018/03/online-university-programs-and-microcredentials-enhance-professional-learning

by WSVN

A survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School will finish out her senior year online to give her extra time to advocate for increased gun control laws. Samantha Fuentes was among those students who returned to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Wednesday. However, instead of returning for class, she returned to withdraw and become an online student. “I’m withdrawing from school, so I can finish it online,” she said. “I feel mixed opinions, or mixed emotions. I mean, I want to be part of Stoneman Douglas, and I want to live out the rest of my high school career normally, but there is no such thing as normal anymore.” Fuentes was shot in both legs, and has several pieces of shrapnel lodged in her leg and face.

Stoneman Douglas survivor to take online classes while advocating for gun control

By Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed

Coursera is now putting much of its energy into — and staking much of its future on — academic programs launched in conjunction with some of the world’s leading universities, with Arizona State University, Imperial College London and the Universities of London and Michigan joining its degree-program ranks today. The company and its campus partners believe these new credentials can take advantage of the platform’s extensive reach of 31 million users to drive down the costs of recruiting students (and hence the tuitions they charge) and help the universities begin to slice their degree programs into shorter-term credentials. At the same time, he says, the company and its university partners are focused on “redesigning the degree to make it extremely compelling to learners around the world, and a formidable answer to any emerging credentials that might challenge the degree.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/03/06/coursera-purveyor-moocs-bets-big-university-degrees

by Tiffany Pennamon, Diverse Education

Although women have surpassed men in educational attainment, they still earn 81 cents for every dollar earned by men, according to a new study from researchers at Georgetown University. Released on Tuesday, the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce’s report — “Women Can’t Win: Despite Making Educational Gains and Pursuing High-Wage Majors, Women Still Earn Less than Men” – indicates that women must hold one more degree than men to achieve pay parity. Combining factors leading to pay inequity include gender discrimination and women’s historical concentration in lower-paying majors and occupations.

http://diverseeducation.com/article/111026/

by Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive

P.K. Agarwal, regional dean and CEO of Northeastern University–Silicon Valley said there will be a shortage of one million STEM workers in the next five years. So the challenge, he said, is taking people with bachelor’s degrees and re-skilling them to fill those gaps. At Northeastern, the approach is to not just equip students with additional credentials, but to provide six months of paid workforce experience through a co-op program to help ensure graduates are ready to hit the ground running once they’re hired. He identified three key things students should leave college having. “You need high-quality experiential learning, that’s one leg of the stool. The second part is that you need a network, … and third is that we also are very passionate about the fact that soft skills are very critical,” Agarwal said.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/preparing-students-for-work-requires-revised-approach-to-education/517738/

A Guide to Good OER Stewardship

by Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

Interest in open educational resources — freely accessible and openly licensed learning materials — is booming. But while OER’s growing popularity with faculty members has delighted supporters, it has also attracted the attention of commercial publishers. Macmillan Learning, Cengage, Pearson and McGraw-Hill have all recently introduced products that incorporate open educational resources into platforms that also include proprietary material. The development of these products has sparked concern among some OER advocates, who question whether OER that you pay to access is really still open. But publishers say they are adding value by making it easy for faculty members to adopt OER, by helping them find the best content and enhancing it with supplementary materials such as homework and exam questions.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/03/05/advocates-develop-framework-stewardship-open-educational

By Kaitlin Hurtado, ULoop
Online courses may be the last thing on your mind when it comes to registering for classes, but if you have the chance to take an online course, you should considering taking an online course because of its value. It definitely won’t be your standard class experience of going to scheduled lectures, but online courses may be a better option for you when it comes to fitting in class time to your busy lifestyle or catering to your learning style.

https://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/260498/The-Value-in-Taking-Online-Courses

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

When Americans think about the artificial intelligence “revolution,” they expect it to have a positive impact on life and work, but a negative impact on the workforce and the economy. While only nine percent believe AI will “decrease inequality,” seven times as many (63 percent) think it will increase inequality. And while 14 percent anticipate AI creating more jobs than it eliminates, five times as many (73 percent) predict just the opposite. However, while nearly a quarter (23 percent) are afraid they’ll lose their job to AI, three-quarters (77 percent) have no fears about that. Also, 76 percent “agree” or “strongly agree” that AI “will fundamentally change” the way we live and work over the next decade.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/02/27/survey-in-an-ai-world-retraining-will-come-from-employers-not-higher-ed.aspx

by Mary Beth Faller, Arizona State University

ASU President Michael M. Crow says thirty years from now, by 2048, ASU will have created new ways of engaging with learners through technology, he said. But not recklessly. “We do need to be careful about technology. We’re finding ways to enhance learning, not replace learning. We’re finding ways to enhance reality, not replace reality,” he said. The new “national service university” model will be less rigidly connected to age than the current system of preschool and then K-12 followed by technical school or university and then a career. “We’re evolving a model capable of being of service to all learners, at all stages of work and learning, from all socioeconomic backgrounds, through education, training and skill-building opportunities,” he said.

https://asunow.asu.edu/20180301-creativity-asu-crow-community-conversation-lifelong-learning-future

By Amy X. Wang, Quartz

As crucial as a university degree has become for working in the modern economy, it is not the only route forward into a wildly lucrative and satisfying career—just ask famous dropouts Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg. In the future, a single bachelor’s degree in a particular subject will no longer suffice for many of us anyway. As robots and automation sweep the global workforce, hundreds of millions of people—the majority of whom do not have the time or money to go pick up a brand-new four-year degree—will have to “re-skill” in order to land new jobs. The question that employees and employers alike face is how to get that done quickly, efficiently, and, most importantly to many, cheaply.

https://work.qz.com/1209523/how-to-get-a-world-class-education-for-free-on-the-internet/

by Laurie Pickard, Class Central

With 66 courses in subjects spanning business, engineering, and social sciences, and over 1.7 million enrollments to date, Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) is a powerhouse MOOC producer. TU Delft is consistently ranked among the top European technology universities. Just as in on-campus courses, TU Delft strives to make its MOOCs professionally relevant and highly practical. As one might expect from a university with “technology” in its name, TU Delft has embraced online learning in its many forms. In addition to TU Delft’s own impressive MOOC offering, we at Class Central became intrigued by the university’s Virtual Exchange program, which allows students to earn academic credit for MOOCs from other universities.

TU Delft Students Can Earn Credit For MOOCs From Other Universities

by Dhawal Shah, Class Central

Udacity made a stunning announcement – the company’s revenues touched $70M in 2017, up from $29M in 2016. Revenue grew across the board in “consumer, business, government and non-profit customers and partners,” according to Udacity CFO Nikhil Abraham. Udacity still not profitable, but it seems to be investing heavily in growth. Udacity is a global company with over 400 employees and operations in seven countries. They are also hiring aggressively.

Udacity’s Revenues Reach $70 Million in 2017

By Joe McKendrick, RTI

MIT proposes taking IoT to its next natural cognitive level. This means adding some AI across the entire IoT network to make it self-aware.  Up until now, the Internet of Things (IoT) has basically consisted of sensors and devices shipping data to some centralized or semi-centralized environment for processing. With fog computing, there are efforts to introduce processing and analytics power close to, or within, the devices themselves, thereby reducing latency. Now, some researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology propose taking things to even a higher level. That is, adding some intelligence across the entire IoT network. Artificial intelligence, that is.

https://www.rtinsights.com/now-the-internet-of-things-can-be-made-self-aware/