Online Learning Update

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

Recognizing that data science is becoming the lingua franca of the 21st century, Purdue University has kicked off a new initiative to embed it in courses, physical spaces and industry collaborations. According to campus officials, the new Integrative Data Science Initiative (IDSI) will make data science education a part of every student’s learning experiences on campus, no matter what field he or she is studying. This follows on the university’s shift in 2013 to strengthen its institutional vision, “Purdue Moves,” in the area of STEM education.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/04/19/purdue-to-embed-data-science-into-every-major.aspx

By Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive

Now, the relatively new Internet-based innovation — blockchain technology — is gaining popularity, with the long-term potential to transform the way institutions provide value not only to students but also businesses.  Colleges and universities are recognizing that degrees are much like currency. They are sheets of paper that serve as an exchange with employers to signal the graduate has the types of skills that are necessary for the job. The better the degree, the more value a student may have in the workforce. By moving degrees into a form of digital record where the student can own it as a type of currency, rather than the institution holding it, they can put that currency into a massive decentralized network, much like bitcoin. This would allow employers to see students’ records more easily.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/institutional-innovation-how-blockchain-could-transform-student-roi/521540/

by Dan and Beckie, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Exams seem to present an unusually ripe opportunity to foster learning. And, the researchers wrote, two-stage exams “exploit what can be a highly productive learning environment, including high student motivation, high incentives for collaboration and communication, and immediate feedback on individual performance.”

https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-to-Turn-Your-Exams-Into/243164

by Knowledge at Wharton

Mindfulness is a centuries-old idea that has been reinvented to address the challenges of our digital age. In essence, mindfulness describes a state of being present in the moment and leaving behind one’s tendency to judge. It allows one to pause amid the constant inflow of stimuli and consciously decide how to act, rather than react reflexively with ingrained behavior patterns. Mindfulness, therefore, is perfectly suited to counterbalance the digital-age challenges of information overload and constant distraction.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-companies-can-instill-mindfulness/

by Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technologies

A new Virginia law mandates creation of guidelines for open educational resources at colleges and universities. HB 454 requires the governing boards of public institutions to implement guidelines for the adoption and use of low-cost and no-cost OER in their courses offered at such institution. However, while the policies and procedures are required, no instructor would be forced to use OER. The guidelines can also address the use of “low-cost commercially published materials.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/04/19/new-virginia-law-mandates-creation-of-oer-guidelines.aspx

by Joshua Hummell, BU Pipedreams

Currently, in the academic world, there is a push to use open educational resources. Basically, open educational resources are supplemental materials for a course that can be publicly accessed. They can be resources in the public domain, which everyone has access to, or they can be licensed by Creative Commons, through which the owner still owns it, but others can still use it. Let’s say you are in a freshman seminar for Western civilization. There could be an open educational resource available to your professor that is as simple as a syllabus for the required readings (some primary sources are out of copyright), or an in-depth open educational resource that has PowerPoints, videos or other materials for a whole course. You could also have access to a whole textbook, like the textbooks on Open SUNY or OpenStax.

https://www.bupipedream.com/opinions/94005/bu-should-establish-open-educational-resources/

By Mary Grush, Campus Technology
In most sectors, the modern workplace is experiencing a trend toward more ongoing professional education. Along one’s career path, advanced degrees, retraining, and certifications are now common expectations in almost any field. Many postsecondary professional schools are recognizing that they must develop innovative programs to address the changing environment that surrounds them as well as the new requirements their graduates currently face. Here, CT talks with Dean and Professor of Information Thomas A. Finholt at the University of Michigan School of Information to find out what changes UMSI is anticipating, at the graduate and master’s program levels in particular.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/04/16/transforming-the-postsecondary-professional-education-experience.aspx

by JEFFREY SELINGO, the Atlantic

Online learning has come a long way since the turn of the millennium. It certainly hasn’t displaced traditional colleges, as its biggest proponents said it had the potential to, but it has gained widespread popularity: The number of students in the U.S. enrolled in at least one online course rose from 1.6 million in 2002 to more than 6 million in 2016. As online learning extends its reach, though, it is starting to run into a major obstacle: There are undeniable advantages, as traditional colleges have long known, to learning in a shared physical space. Recognizing this, some online programs are gradually incorporating elements of the old-school, brick-and-mortar model—just as online retailers such as Bonobos and Warby Parker use relatively small physical outlets to spark sales on their websites and increase customer loyalty. Perhaps the future of higher education sits somewhere between the physical and the digital.

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/04/college-online-degree-blended-learning/557642/

by Matthew Lynley, TechCrunch

Ankur Nagpal started Teachable, a platform for experts that want to create a business around their coursework that helps them build an entire online education suite beyond just platforms like Coursera or Udemy. Niche expertise can be way too valuable for just a simple marketplace like Coursera,  Nagpal says, and experts in those areas — even seminars on mindfulness or Feng Shui — should be able to make more than just a few thousand dollars a year off that coursework. Nagpal said the company has raised an additional $4 million in equity from existing investors Accomplice Ventures and AngelList co-founder Naval Ravikant.

Teachable raises $4M to create a tool to turn any online class into a true business

by Sarah Gosner, Hechinger Report

Career and technical education (CTE) programs such as those offered at MST — which feature academically and professionally rigorous classes and send graduates off to postsecondary programs at high rates — may be uniquely positioned to prepare young adults for the future of work. As traditional blue-collar industries decline across the country, the casualties of automation and offshoring, they are increasingly being replaced by skilled service jobs such as those in health care, information technology and finance, according to research by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. While good middle-class jobs are disappearing for people with only high-school diplomas, New Hampshire, with its workforce aging, is struggling to fill 17,000 jobs, many of them in skilled occupations.

http://hechingerreport.org/revamped-and-rigorous-career-and-technical-education-is-ready-to-be-taken-seriously/

by Tereza Litsa, ClickZ

What the declining time spent on Facebook means for marketers.  Facebook users seem to spend 24% less time on the platform. Is this the end of Facebook’s domination? And where do the users really go? What does this mean for marketers and their Facebook strategy?  Not everything is grim for the social platform though, as the last quarter of 2017 brought an increase in the advertising revenue by 48% YoY to $12.8B. Moreover, when it comes to daily usage, Statista found in February that 62% of US online users access Facebook at least once a day. This shows that there is still a significant engagement and of course, Facebook still remains the most popular platform, having currently 2.2 billion monthly active users.

What the declining time spent on Facebook means for marketers

By Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

Concerned about the quality of graduate student advising, Stanford professors approve changes to advising requirements and guidelines.  In changes aimed at improving the quality of graduate student advising, Stanford University’s Faculty Senate last week voted to require departments to spell out advising expectations for both professors and students.  The body also voted to limit who can serve as a principal dissertation adviser for Ph.D. candidates to current Stanford professors who are active members of the campus’s Academic Council.

Advising remains a key area of concern for Stanford’s 9,400 graduate students, as revealed during a recent planning process for graduate education and four years of student exit survey data, Patricia J. Gumport, vice provost for graduate education, told the Senate at its meeting Thursday.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/04/16/stanford-seeks-improve-graduate-student-advising

by Arab News

The Saudi Cybersecurity, Artificial Intelligence and Programming Academy signed a memorandum of understanding with Coursera Inc., the world’s largest provider of interactive distance training and academic programs. Coursera is a venture-backed, education-focused technology company founded by Stanford professors in California. The Saudi Press Agency reported the agreement was co-signed on behalf of the academy by the Adviser at the Royal Court and President of the Saudi Federation for Cybersecurity and Programming Saud Al-Qahtani and the Dean of the academy Dr. Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Dahlawi.

http://www.arabnews.com/node/1284891/saudi-arabia

By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post

A revolution in college course materials is raising questions about cost, access and fairness. Publishers say their high-tech courseware — electronic books glowing with videos and interactive study guides — can improve the quality of learning at a small fraction of the cost of traditional textbooks. But student advocates call for adoption of open-source textbooks that can be downloaded for free, and worry that the same companies that drove up the price of print textbooks are dominating the digital space and will ultimately introduce higher costs there. Now, Congress has stepped into the fray by committing $5 million in the fiscal 2018 budget to support the creation or expansion of open textbooks on college campuses. The money is the first major investment by the federal government in open-source materials and could advance the movement.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/battle-over-college-course-material-is-a-textbook-example-of-technological-change/2018/04/14/fb3d0394-0db5-11e8-95a5-c396801049ef_story.html

by Carol Scheidenhelm, Forbes

Walking away from the job I love, the career I worked so hard to establish, the obstacles I overcame to get where I am today will be hard. As a woman who has worked in a technology-related teaching field, my career challenges have been abundant. When I started, there were no instructional designers and no technologists with teaching-related interests. We figured out what would work from the tools we had. I started teaching writing in the computer lab before we had effective networking abilities. I wrote webpages in html until Netscape came out with its editor. I taught online courses when technologies were basic and insufficient. I’ve learned the technology, figured out how to apply it to teaching and taught others to use these tools in pedagogically sound ways…. [ed note: To Carol, thank you for all of your contributions to our field – we are grateful]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nextavenue/2018/04/09/walking-away-from-the-job-i-loved/

By Jarrett Carter, Education Dive
Faculty members from the University of Central Florida wrote in Evolllution about the strategies to building engagement for online students. Citing common factors leading to “transactional distance” for students, such as a lack of feedback or unresponsiveness from admissions officers or instructors, poor course design or detachment from campus life, the authors say that building student confidence begins with the school’s readiness to answer questions and to provide support for the online learning process.  Transactional distance is defined as space felt between a faculty member and a student in the learning process, which is exacerbated in distance learning platforms where students are not able to enhance their learning with in-class dialog, in-person exchange, or lack of exposure to campus culture. This distance, the writers say, can lead to students feeling isolated, unsupported and usually precedes a student withdrawing from a course. They suggest using online coaches to encourage students to completion.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/reducing-distance-is-key-to-online-learner-success/521166/

by MIT Open Learning
Additive manufacturing (AM), also known as 3-D printing, is poised to transform product design, manufacturing, and maintenance. However, limited knowledge of the fundamental principles, applications, and business implications of AM is a barrier to its broad and rapid adoption. To help professionals and organizations realize AM’s potential and accelerate its use, MIT and Boeing are collaborating on a new online course for professionals: Additive Manufacturing for Innovative Design and Production.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-boeing-collaboration-aims-to-scale-learning-in-additive-manufacturing-0412

By Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge

All of these colleges set up extensive centralized staffs to support online offerings, which the report identifies as a key component to their success. UCF, for example, has a 90-person team “that includes instructional designers, media support resources, faculty professional development staff, and quality assurance staff.” At ASU, a centralized innovation team called EdPlus employs 250 people. With that kind of large-scale and strategic effort, the report suggests that the costs of delivering education can be reduced. “When we compared the overall costs of online courses with average costs at four of the institutions in the study, we found that the savings for online courses ranged from $12 to $66 per credit hour, a difference of from 3 percent to 50 percent of the average credit hour costs,” the report says

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-12-do-online-courses-really-save-money-a-new-study-explores-roi-for-colleges-and-students

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Schools and universities are beginning to understand that their security networks are too vulnerable to protect sensitive information. Keeping key documents and student information safe should be a priority for the administration at all universities. However, many schools are struggling to figure out the first steps they need to take in order to make themselves less vulnerable to an attack. Many universities wait until the cyber-attack happens before they implement some much-needed change. With a few well-thought-out shifts in the network, schools might be able to prevent many of these attacks from ever occurring. Consider some of these simple shifts that universities can make in order to reduce the likelihood of falling victim to a major cyber-attack.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/how-to-make-your-university-network-less-vulnerable/

by Michael Prebil, New America

Blockchain is a record-keeping system comprised of a continuously growing list of data batches called blocks. The most recent block serves as a ledger of each user’s current resources; the set of all blocks ever written (the blockchain) contains the whole history of transactions made by users. For the moment, possible uses for blockchain in education and employment center on two objectives: increasing the shareability of educational credentials and enabling workforce collaboration between competing employers.

https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/blockchain-for-education-and-skills/

by Connie Chen, Business Insider

Thankfully, online learning sites like Coursera and edX are helping to increase access to high-quality education for everyone. Their free and low-priced courses are taught by instructors from the best universities and academic institutions around the world, allowing anyone to advance their education, professional goals, or personal interests. Both Coursera and edX allow you to audit any course for free. You get access to course materials and follow along with the class as it progresses. For an additional $40 to $160 (depending on the course) on edX, you receive a verified certificate that you can include in your resume or on your LinkedIn profile. Meanwhile, expanded access to Coursera courses includes assignments, tests, and a final grade, and costs $29 to $99 per course.

http://www.businessinsider.com/free-online-courses-from-the-best-colleges-2018-4