Online Learning Update

By Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive
For the time being the traditional lecture format still works for higher education, but as “other organizations can create credentials of equal or greater value, universities, as they are currently structured, are in trouble,” wrote Steven Murphy, the president of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, in a guest post for The Globe and Mail.   Murphy contends that while most institutions are trying to experiment, the industry as a whole is lagging behind with innovation, especially as pressure mounts to improve efficiency and reduce operational costs.  To confront this challenge, Murphy offered three pieces of advice. First, institutions should partner with the private sector “to enhance experiential learning.” Second, they should turn risk management into an opportunity for embracing change, where disruptive technological advances can be beneficially leveraged; and, finally, institutions ought to educate administrators and boards of governors on how to prepare for disruption, setting “benchmarks to measure innovation outcomes.”

https://www.educationdive.com/news/in-the-digital-age-the-standard-lecture-may-not-be-enough/524499/

by IT News Africa

Most universities and colleges now offer online academic qualifications, making it easier for the career-committed to juggle a full-time job with an education. While some would bring into question the quality and effectiveness of online courses (especially considering that they might need to take out a Personal Loan to fund their lessons), the truth is that it has become a popular option for those looking to study part-time or unable to apply to a traditional learning institution. Technological advancement has made education accessible for people of all ages, and by incorporating different media including video tutorials and slideshows, arguably offers the same quality of learning as a physical classroom. In fact, there is debate around whether the virtual classroom will eventually replace the traditional school day (read what the forecasters are saying here).

http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2018/06/the-growth-of-digital-learning/

by Harvard Gazette

“There are many millions of students who, as a result of economic or geographic limitations, simply do not have access to one of the most central aspects of being a scientist, which is working in a laboratory,” said Robert Lue, principal investigator of LabXchange and professor of the practice of molecular and cellular biology at Harvard. “LabXchange addresses this issue with a platform that integrates dynamic experimental simulations with background curriculum and social networking — all created to more effectively expose students of varying backgrounds to the authentic and engaging experience of scientific discovery.”

As founding sponsor, Amgen has awarded $6.5 million in grant funding to Harvard to develop, launch, and grow LabXchange. Amgen will be engaged throughout the development, and its scientists with industry experience will play key advisory roles.

Virtual lab to extend reach of science education

By Jean Dimeo, Education Dive
Facebook is partnering with community colleges to share curriculum for digital advertising and media training, skills that a growing number of small business owners and staff say they lack, according to Inside Higher Ed.  Facebook recently announced partnerships with two-year institutions Des Moines Area Community College, Greenville Technical College and Central New Mexico Community College, and more partnerships are expected to be announced this week, Inside Higher Ed reported. Meanwhile, Google announced this week that it partnered with Udacity to offer free career and tech courses to recent graduates and mid-career professionals, according to Tech Crunch. Udacity and Google tested an online course in March; they now will together launch 12 free courses.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/facebook-google-offering-tech-career-courses/525069/

By Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge

In fact, three of the 10 most popular courses on Coursera aren’t produced by a college or university at all, but by a company. That company—called Deeplearning.ai—is a unique provider of higher education. It is essentially built on the reputation of its founder, Andrew Ng, who teaches all five of the courses it offers so far. Ng is seen as one of the leading figures in artificial intelligence, having founded and directed the Google Brain project and served as the chief scientist at the Chinese search giant Baidu, as well as having directed the artificial intelligence laboratory at Stanford University. He also happens to be the co-founder of Coursera itself, and it was his Stanford course on machine learning that helped launch the MOOC craze in the first place.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-06-07-andrew-ng-is-probably-teaching-more-students-than-anyone-else-on-the-planet-without-a-university-involved

By David Matthews, Times Higher Ed
Google and a Danish technology firm claim that they have removed the need for biology students to set foot in a laboratory by creating virtual reality simulations of experiments, clearing the way for the world’s first online-only biology degree. Arizona State is to be first university adopter of new technology, launching fully online biology degrees. The partnership is a sign that VR is beginning to change how the physical sciences are taught, although there is scepticism over whether the technology can entirely replace hands-on lab experience. Announcing the initiative at Google’s I/O developers conference, Jennifer Holland, a programme manager at the company, said that using VR labs, universities “will now be able to truly offer an online biology degree”.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/scepticism-over-google-plan-replace-labs-virtual-reality

Digital Shadows, Bank Info Security
As customers spend more and more money online each year, the opportunities for fraud increase in parallel; experts project a loss of $24 billion to payment card fraud by the end of 2018. Payment card fraudsters rely on a sophisticated ecosystem and support network that provides a wide range of credit card details, fraud tools and online tutorials. This whitepaper lifts the lid on e-learning credit card fraud courses. These programs coach aspiring criminals to make $12,000 in monthly earnings and point to the increased sophistication of the professional cybercriminal ecosystem as fraudsters seek to up-skill themselves. Think: High-paying job with a degree in cybercrime and membership to Bad Actor Fraternity from Fraudster University.

https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/whitepapers/inside-look-at-online-carding-courses-for-cybercriminals-w-4397

Daily Bruin Editorial

Evaluations are written into the University of California’s decision-making process when it comes to academic employees. But given the lack of standardization and the heavy presence of bias in conventional course evaluations methods, it’s high time the University changed its policies to use evaluations exclusively for feedback purposes, not for its personnel matters…. A 2014 study found that when online instructors disguised a woman as a man and a man as a woman, the female identity received lower performance reviews. A 2015 study looking at student reviews on the website RateMyProfessors.com found that instructors with Asian last names were rated lower on “clarity” and “helpfulness” than instructors with Western names. And in January, former UCLA psychology professor David Jentsch tweeted about an evaluation that complains about not the content of his course or teaching style, but that “It’s disgusting that UCLA allows gay people to teach our courses.” This demonstrates that students don’t see instructors in a vacuum. Identity politics, not to mention other nonacademic factors, can play a role in how they evaluate a course.

http://dailybruin.com/2018/06/06/editorial-uc-should-make-changes-to-its-course-evaluation-process-to-prevent-bias/

By Cait Etherington, eLearning Inside

In a 2017 interview with the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, Dean Hunt Lambert, who leads Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, emphasized that the 60-year curriculum recognizes that people begin their learning careers in earnest in their teens, continue learning throughout their work years, and even continue their educations during their retirements. Continuing education programs evidently play an integral part in the learning lives of most adults, but this will expand as the need to reskill increases over the coming decades. As several recent studies have found, in today’s disrupted economy, life-long learning is no longer just for ambitious upskillers. To survive in today’s economy, everyone needs to commit to reskilling on a constant basis. The idea of 60-year curriculum captures this shift, and this weekend’s symposium is a chance for thought leaders to begin exploring its far-reaching implications on higher education.

Harvard Hosts 60-Year Curriculum Symposium

By: Danielle Geary, Faculty Focus

Online students need to feel an instructor presence in their classes. Thorough explanations and effective communication help fulfill this need and can transform a mediocre online course into a great one—and it all starts with the syllabus. Structure and communication. That’s what I’ve found to be the keys to an effective online course syllabus. Well, that, and something I call a chapter checklist, to go along with the syllabus. I’ve discovered both to be essential to my asynchronous online foreign language course.

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/ideas-for-creating-an-effective-syllabus-for-online-learning/

by Scroll India

On May 24, the University Grants Commission, India’s higher education regulator, approved new regulations for online education. The regulations are yet to be formally notified but the commission said they “will be made applicable from the academic session 2018-19”. The regulations clear the way for universities that rank high in the government’s ranking and rating systems to offer even degree programmes online. In theory at least, a student will be able to earn a bachelor’s degree without attending college. Lectures will be recorded or delivered through video-conferencing and discussed in an online discussion forum; e-content will replace textbooks and there will be a provision for self-assessment.

https://scroll.in/article/880977/indias-top-universities-can-now-offer-full-degree-programmes-online-but-there-are-reservations

by Shweta Ganjoo, India Today

We all know that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is an avid reader. Over the years the business manganate has shared numerous book recommendations on his blog. The list of his recommended books include Walter Isaacson’s Leonardo Da Vinci, Kate Bowler’s Everything Happens For A Reason and Neal Stephenson’s Sebeneves among others. And now Gates in his blog has listed another recommendation. But this time it’s not a book but an online course. Gates, in a recent post on his blog, recommended an course online titled “Big History” by an Australian historian Christian David. Interestingly, unlike most online courses this one is absolutely free. “As the creator of Big History- my favorite course of all time- David is well-suited to write about how we came to be,” he wrote in his blog praising the author.

https://www.indiatoday.in/technology/news/story/bill-gates-wants-everyone-to-take-this-free-online-course-because-it-explains-origin-and-future-of-humans-1247768-2018-06-01

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
The California State University and California Community Colleges systems have teamed up to launch a new online course finder that will provide students enrolled at either set of institutions access to more than 10,000 online, transferable classes. The program is live in time for students to take summer 2018 classes. “Finish Faster,” as it’s called, is part of the Online Education Initiative, a collaborative effort among several community colleges in the state to push students to finish their educational goals faster. Besides the online courses, the project incorporates resources to help online students succeed, including counseling, tutoring and access to library services.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/05/31/california-universities-and-ccs-launch-online-course-finder-with-10000-classes.aspx

What 6 Colleges Learned About Improving Their Online Courses

Chronicle of Higher Ed

“Making Digital Learning Work: Success Strategies From Six Leading Universities and Community Colleges” wades into those waters with a study of three community colleges and three public research universities, all of which have at least 20,000 students, and enroll significant percentages of Pell-eligible students and students who take online classes. The authors crunched a lot of data to determine how digital technologies affect access, student outcomes, and return on investment. First, the good news. Researchers from Arizona State University and the Boston Consulting Group found that online education can boost retention and graduation rates, while saving students time and money. But — and this is a big one — to be successful, colleges need to develop a variety of delivery models to match students’ needs, and make significant investments in things like instructional design and student support services. In other words, don’t expect a series of videotaped lectures to get the job done.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/What-6-Colleges-Learned-About/243540

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive

California State University Channel Islands (CSUCI) assistant nursing professor Jaime Hannans, Jill Leafstedt, CSU’s executive director of Teaching and Learning Innovations, and Michelle Pacansky-Brock,​ faculty mentor, Digital Innovation for the California Community Colleges Online Education Initiative write in EdSurge about the value of online learning as an important element of the school’s mission as a Hispanic Serving Institution. With more than 54% of its student body comprised of first-generation students and more than half having transferred from community colleges, they write about online learning as a tool to defray the invisible college costs of transportation and time away from family and work.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/the-importance-of-online-learning-for-hispanic-students/524559/

by Dhawal Shah, Class Central

These days, more and more universities are offering for-credit programs via MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses. What started with a small number of degree programs, such as the iMBA from the University of Illinois (Coursera) and Georgia Tech’s Online Master of Science in Computer Science (Udacity), has given way to dozens of MOOC-based programs that can confer university credit. Many of these new programs are essentially partial degrees, for example, edX’s MicroMasters, which can result in credit amounting to around one semester of a master’s degree. A small number of courses are also the same courses used by on-campus students.

370 Online Courses With Real College Credit That You Can Access For Free

by Lindsay MacKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

Is a shakeout in the offing? Most analysts and observers say yes, given the number of providers, the lack of differentiation among many of them and growing qualms from some college officials about the industry’s traditional business model of revenue shares and long-term lock-ins. The latter has spawned even more competition, from a new set of companies charging fees for specific services, rather than the bundles that the OPMs have historically used. “I think there is a roll-up coming in the OPM industry,” said Joshua Kim, director of digital learning initiatives at the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning (and an Inside Higher Ed blogger). “There are just too many players.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/06/04/shakeout-coming-online-program-management-companies

By Henry Kronk, eLearning Inside

Delivering a keynote address at this week’s Open edX 2018 conference, MOOC expert Fiona Hollands made two predictions about the future of her research subject.  Hollands’ first prediction was more of a directive and a call to action. She began by describing the students for whom MOOCs work quite well and compared them with others who don’t thrive on the format. She then applied that to the cost-saving some universities have begun to see with replacing entry-level courses with MOOCs. “If you can save money by offering education at scale to highly motivated students by replacing some introductory materials with some NDLEs,” Hollands said, “then take those savings and invest in experiential learning for the students who don’t fare well in online learning experiences. So far, MOOCs have made more of a dent in how business provide employee training than in how higher education operates.”

MOOC Expert Fiona Hollands Makes A Suggestion and a Prediction

By Henry Kronk. eLearning Inside

For the most ambitious, Agarwal hopes to attract 100 million learners to edX in five years’ time. The non-profit MOOC provider has, one might argue, remained truest to the original promise of MOOCs (keeping them open and massive) when they exploded in 2011 and 2012. The platform has trained 16 million learners with courses from over 130 different institutions. Using the Open edX platform, a further 18 million + have taken at least one university course, bringing the total number to roughly 35 million.  In addition to a few other goals, Argawal wants to foster a culture in which university credits are more transferable and widely accepted. “Why is it so hard to do?” he asked. He hopes to generate a community in which 25% of edX courses will count anywhere. “Let’s say I want to launch an online masters degree in computer science and I want to teach AI as part of it,” Argawal said.

edX CEO Anant Agarwal Announces Ambitious Goals for 2022

by Karthik Reddy, HR Technologist

eLearning can be described as using electronic technology for any educational activities, and over the past few years, it has steadily grown in popularity, particularly to online course distributors like Udemy. This is especially true for the younger generation who have not only grown up using the internet but also have begun to use technology in schools. There are many different types of eLearning, each coming with various benefits. Everyone has a kind of learning that works best for them, but often it can be the most effective if different methodologies are used in conjunction with each other.

https://www.hrtechnologist.com/articles/learning-development/a-new-type-of-learning/

by London School of Business

Online MBA programs offer students the ability to study anywhere and at any time they choose, even while holding down a job, so long as they have access to the internet. According to the Graduate Management Admissions Council, flexibility, and having access to high-quality programs without the need for travel, are two of the biggest reasons why students are choosing to take an MBA program online rather than on a traditional campus. There are a wide array of MPA programs beginning to pop up online, and while most require at least some campus time for students, a growing number are delivering their courses completely online. Online degrees can be more affordable for students but without sacrificing anything in the way of quality instruction or academic rigour, and many graduates prefer the new method of learning.

https://www.lsbf.org.uk/blog/news/education-careers/distance-learning-on-the-rise/115816