Online Learning Update

By Colleen Williamson, Parsons Sun
Skylar Burzinski, though she took honors courses since her freshman year and achieved straight A’s throughout high school, will not be honored as a salutatorian or valedictorian, as she was unable to complete one of the Kansas Regents Curriculum courses required for the honor. While it would have been nice, there simply wasn’t enough time in Burzinski’s busy schedule working toward a greater reward — graduating with her high school diploma and graduating from Labette Community College with her associate degree in general studies, only days apart, giving her parents Jody and Thad Burzinski two commencements to attend back to back. Her junior year, Burzinski began “seriously” taking college classes, though receiving her degree by the time she graduated high school was not forefront in her mind at that time.

http://www.parsonssun.com/news/article_892baa64-5002-11e8-88ba-47d1e1808464.html

by Christian Guijosa , Observatory of Education/Innovation

Experts describe a future educational ecosystem in which students have new technological devices; classes happen in virtual and augmented reality classrooms; there are increased distance learning interactions; educational programs teach soft skills; among other characteristics still unexplored. On the other hand, automation and AI are expected to create new jobs that would demand specialized skills. How to face the educational challenge imposed by this rapid technological evolution? Teachers need to adapt and prepare continuously to achieve the success of the new educational programs. For this reason, we share ten free courses of educational tools so that you add skills and competencies to your professional career and begin to shape the future of education.

http://observatory.itesm.mx/edu-news/10-free-online-courses-to-shape-the-future-of-the-education

by Robert Hahn, Brookings

First, let’s make all firms in the internet space adhere to a single clear, common set of privacy principles. Right now, internet privacy is a grab bag. Many users were surprised to learn that they can actually control some of what Facebook shares, but its not intuitive, transparent or for many, easy. Think, for example, about how many times you tap the “I agree” button on your smartphone to download an app without having the slightest notion of what you’ve agreed to. Furthermore, the information that Facebook collects is different than what Google or LinkedIn collects, or what your internet service provider may ask for.

Congress must establish clear, equitable internet rules now

by Brett Samuels, the Hill

The Education Department has in recent months largely dismantled a team charged with investigating abuses by for-profit colleges, The New York Times reported Sunday. The investigative team was created in 2016 to look into widespread fraud claims against for-profit colleges. Roughly a dozen investigators and lawyers were later added to the unit. The Times reported that the team now consists of three employees, who focus mainly on student loan forgiveness applications. The investigations into for-profit colleges have largely come to a stop, according to the report.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/387507-education-department-dismantles-team-focused-on-fraud-at-for-profit

by SANDY STRUNK, Lancaster Online

Interim Chancellor Karen Whitney was quick to respond, “It would be relatively cheap and cowardly to close and merge.” Kenneth Mash, President of the Association of Pennsylvania State College and University Faculties agreed, stating the RAND report should have suggested more funding so the state system can “truly deliver on (its) legislatively mandated mission to provide a high-quality, affordable education for working-class Pennsylvanians.” In its July 2017 report assessing the viability of PSSHE, the National Center of Higher Education Management Systems described PSSHE’s “bleak fiscal future,” noting if the current trends continue, “it is just a matter of time before all of the universities become financially unsustainable. The report goes on to deliver a scathing indictment of the governance structure, which “stifles effective and strategic leadership.”

https://lancasteronline.com/opinion/columnists/higher-education-should-serve-state-s-working-class/article_26cbde6e-4f05-11e8-b629-eb55fb49d51b.html

by Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

New print textbooks can still cost students hundreds of dollars, but the cost of etextbooks is falling fast, according to data from etextbook distribution platforms VitalSource and RedShelf — both of which work with all major publishers. Since 2016, the average price of etextbooks on VitalSource has fallen by 31 percent, from $56.36 in 2016 to $38.65 in 2018. Some areas, such as mathematics, have seen more drastic change, said VitalSource. In 2016, the average math etextbook cost $79. Now it’s $39 — a decrease of almost 50 percent. RedShelf confirmed a similar price drop. In 2015, the average etextbook cost $53.11, the company said. Now it’s $39.24.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/05/01/publishers-race-reduce-costs-digital-textbooks

By Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge

You could call extension schools the original MOOCs. Universities first opened these offshoots more than 100 years ago, and at the time they were innovative—throwing open the campus gates by offering night classes without any admission requirements.  EdSurge recently sat down with the dean of Harvard’s Extension School, Hunt Lambert, to ask him to sort through all these offerings and give his vision of where his school is headed.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-05-03-how-harvard-is-trying-to-update-the-extension-school-for-the-mooc-age

By Victoria Bailey, WCBI

Ashley Jensen is now a Mississippi State University Alum but has never stepped foot on campus till graduation day. “Distance education at Mississippi State is really designed for adult learners, mostly, because we have so many students that have families, that have jobs, and as much as they would love to come to this beautiful campus sometimes you just can’t do that,”said Distance Education Director Dr. Susan Seal. Ashley now has a Masters in Middle Level Education.

The Perks Of Distance Learning

By JAKE COYLE, AP

Howard’s continued exhilaration for the challenges of filmmaking are evident in an online course he developed that debuted Thursday. The class, featuring 32 roughly 10-minute video lessons, is part of the online tutorial series MasterClass, an instructional program that gives paying students access to the advice and teachings of famous experts. (Customers can learn ball-handling from Steph Curry, jazz piano from Herbie Hancock, or screenwriting from Aaron Sorkin.)

http://journaltimes.com/news/national/before-solo-ron-howard-debuts-an-online-class/article_d0895fee-93ce-53f6-9deb-ccdce430cb44.html

by RONALD BROWNSTEIN, the Atlantic

Drawing almost no attention, the nation crossed an ominous milestone last year that threatens more economic polarization and social division: For the first time, public colleges and universities in most states received most of their revenue from tuition rather than government appropriations. This historic shift away from tax dollars funding the bulk of public higher education comes precisely as the nation’s youth population is crossing a succession of milestones to become more racially diverse than ever. As statisticians would say, it’s an open question whether these twin trends represent an example of causation or just correlation. But whether resources are shrinking because diversity is growing, or the two trends are proceeding independently, their convergence is still a dangerous development—not only for higher education, but also for the nation’s economic future.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/05/american-higher-education-hits-a-dangerous-milestone/559457/

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive
The Wall Street Journal profiles the growing culture of making higher education more accessible for adult learners. With 41% of students over the age of 25 and likely trying to balance school, work and family, students are receiving financial support to eliminate gaps in financial need after loans are applied to tuition costs. States like Tennessee and Indiana are using grants tied to workforce development or credential attainment to entice adults to enroll. Tennessee’s Reconnect Scholarship program pays tuition and fees for students enrolled at any public technical or community college or applied technology institution, while Indiana’s Workforce Ready grant funds enrollment in programs for construction, health sciences, manufacturing and other technical trades. Both programs require students to apply for federal financial aid as a prerequisite for receiving the state grants.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-embraces-the-new-traditional-student/522765/

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
Data USA, a free-and-open data-visualization platform that launched in April 2016, added profiles on more than 7,300 higher education institutions, with information including tuition costs, demographics, acceptance rates, financial aid and endowments sizes, among other statistics gleaned from U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).  The platform, a collaboration between Deloitte, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Datawheel, lets users observe publicly available data in an integrated, visualized format, according to César Hidalgo, director of MIT’s Collective Learning group, who told Education Dive the resource allows users to do things like “see the data and visualize it and merge points right away.” Hidalgo said users can compare yields, how many of the students are accepted at a university decided to go there, and much more.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/free-tool-allows-institutions-to-easily-analyze-compare-ipeds-data/522688/

by Brendan Murphy, AMA Wire

What medical students know is only as good as how they apply it. Bridging the gap is key to ensuring a successful transition from medical school to residency. “One of the things that is lacking overall [in medical education] is a way to successfully help students translate their book knowledge to action and taking care of patients,” said Rachel Gordon, MD, MPH, associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. “During medical school, you are either in the classroom or you’re on the wards, but sometimes you need a combination of the two.”

https://wire.ama-assn.org/education/online-simulation-scenarios-ready-med-students-residency

by BRAD FLAHIVE, Stuff

A growing cohort of Australian graduates are leaving university environment with more debts and few job prospects, the report says. Up to 40 per cent of existing degrees will become obsolete in Australia, an Ernst and Young report says. Universities need to move towards “lifelong learning”, delivered largely online, in the next five years to survive, according to the firm’s new research paper on the university of the future. However, executive director of Universities New Zealand Chris Whelan said that’s not what the market is indicating in New Zealand.  Chris Whelan, executive director of Universities New Zealand, says Kiwi universities outperform Australian counterparts when it comes to producing graduates that get jobs. “If the assumption that universities and polytechs were simply providing knowledge, they would be right, but that’s not what we provide,” said Whelan.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/103545583/nz-universities-say-online-learning-will-not-be-the-end-of-degrees

By Anthony Kinney, The Advocate
With the demand of online courses growing throughout the state, Contra Costa College moves to do its part to provide California community college students with a universal online alternative to the traditional classroom setting. CCC was one of 33 community colleges selected to join the California Community Colleges Online Education Initiative 2018 online equity cohort. The program is purposed with helping close the state’s growing academic achievement gap by collaborating to ease the process of enrolling in digital classrooms.

College joins online learning initiative

By David Raths, Campus Technology

With education technologies increasingly using analytics to measure and assess student learning, there is a lot of data flying around on higher education campuses. How are institutions establishing principles and polices around the responsible use of that data? So far, few have published clear definitions of learning data or guidelines for how students’ data can be used or shared. One exception is the University of California system, which has created a team to develop UC learning data privacy principles and recommended best practices for its campuses. The issues being addressed involve both student consent as well as university contractual relationships with third-party vendors.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/05/02/when-learning-analytics-violate-student-privacy.aspx

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News

Nearly all administrators (91 percent) in a recent survey say innovation is a top strategic or academic priority, but just 40 percent say their institution has a dedicated university innovation budget, according to a new report that explores the drivers and barriers to higher-ed innovation. The State of Innovation in Higher Education: A Survey of Academic Administrators, from The Learning Counsel and the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), surveyed more than 100 U.S. academic administrators and seeks to highlight how higher-ed institutions define and employ such innovation.

4 key findings about university innovation

by Barnes & Noble College, Education Dive

The core benefits of open educational resources (OER) are decreased costs for students, as well as increased access and engagement. These benefits address some of the central challenges facing higher education. So, why isn’t that translating into more widespread adoption of OER? After thousands of conversations with faculty across the U.S., Barnes & Noble Education (BNED) has pinpointed three central concerns related to OER adoption: awareness, change and choice. The concerns are valid, but OER can provide meaningful answers and solutions for teaching and learning. To dispel some of the OER myths and questions that often arise, here are the realities, based on faculty feedback and results.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/oer-myths-realities-and-results-in-todays-classroom/522532/

by Darrell M. West and John R. Allen, Brookings

Despite its widespread lack of familiarity, AI is a technology that is transforming every walk of life. It is a wide-ranging tool that enables people to rethink how we integrate information, analyze data, and use the resulting insights to improve decision making. Our hope through this comprehensive overview is to explain AI to an audience of policymakers, opinion leaders, and interested observers, and demonstrate how AI already is altering the world and raising important questions for society, the economy, and governance.

How artificial intelligence is transforming the world

by Susan M. Dynarski and Judith Scott-Clayton, Brookings

Economists George Bulman and Caroline Hoxby scoured hundreds of millions of tax returns searching for an effect of the tax credits and tuition deduction on educational outcomes.^[1] They inspected anonymized, detailed, individual-level administrative data from the IRS on the population of potential tax filers. The IRS has developed secure mechanisms that allow these data to be analyzed without compromising the privacy of taxpayers.  Bulman and Hoxby use a regression-discontinuity design to estimate the effects of the tuition tax deduction for families around the maximum income cutoff for eligibility.^[2] Again, they find no evidence that the deduction increases college enrollment. They also find no effect of the deduction on enrollment intensity, college choice, tuition paid, or student debt.⁠

The tax benefits for education don’t increase education

By Henry Kronk, eLearning Inside

A new study conducted by researchers at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, Canada examines the performance of students using open education resources (OER) in both print and digital formats compared to a traditional textbook from a commercial publisher. The study found that students using OER spent less time overall studying for the class while scoring comparably with those who used a commercially published textbook. The news is encouraging considering the cost of educational materials has drastically increased in the past decade. As reported recently by Student PIRGs, it has risen nearly four times the rate of inflation in the U.S. What’s more, as many as 65% of students don’t purchase all of the educational materials assigned by professors because of their high cost.

A New Study Found OER to Match and Even Outperform a Commercial Textbook