Online Learning Update

By Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

Faculty members often fear administrative efforts to “optimize” academic operations. That’s because some such efforts result in the elimination or shrinkage of programs deemed to be unsuccessful by key metrics, but worthwhile in harder-to-measure ones: the program with low numbers of majors but that delivers a large share of general education credits, for example, or that rounds out the liberal arts curriculum. Sometimes, though, optimization efforts can actually help academic departments. Case in point: Stephen F. Austin State University, which used the services of Ad Astra Information Systems to close holes in its scheduling system — and then used newfound funds from expected higher course enrollments to approve 19 additional full-time, non-tenure-track faculty lines.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/07/10/stephen-f-austin-optimizes-course-schedule-add-faculty-lines-paid-themselves

by Marjorie Valbrun, Inside Higher Ed

Among the key findings of the report:

• Of the 44 percent of students who worked while enrolled in their first year of postsecondary education, 18 percent worked 35 hours or more per week, 14 percent worked between 21 and 34 hours per week, and 11 percent worked fewer than 21 hours per week.
• Twenty percent of beginning students who worked 20 hours or fewer while enrolled in 2011-12 had attained an associate degree by 2014, compared with 10 percent of students who did not work while enrolled in their first year and 9 percent of students who worked full-time during their first year.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/07/10/study-shows-how-working-community-college-students-fared

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed
Temple reveals that scandal over false information submitted for rankings of its online M.B.A. was much broader than earlier known. Dean, found to have dismantled system for checking accuracy of data, is ousted. Temple University on Monday announced that its business school had submitted false data for years for rankings purposes. The university said that it had asked Moshe Porat, dean of the business school, to resign, saying that he had dismantled the business school’s system for verifying the accuracy of data being submitted for rankings. An outside review found that the employee responsible for preparing the data said he did so at the dean’s direction, although Porat denied this to the outside investigator.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/07/10/temple-ousts-business-dean-after-report-finds-online-mba-program-years-submitted

by James Paterson, Education Dive
College that “never ends” may be the future, according to a Washington Post story describing a new University of Michigan program that offers scholarships for students to come back and take courses throughout their lives. It also describes a trend toward other online learning initiatives designed to re-educate or update workers. The program at Michigan’s Ross School of Business offers 42 courses in leadership, marketing, human resources and finance that would normally cost about $10,000 a week. Ross charges the students an up-front subscription fee to access the courses, which officials say are intended to be flexible and change with needs in the workforce and economy. In 2015-16, 40 students signed up for the program, and last year 200 of the university’s 580,000 alumni did.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/a-college-program-that-never-ends/526969/

By Deirdre Fernandes, Boston Globe
The Kakuma Refugee Camp, 80 miles from anywhere in northwest Kenya, is a world apart, a holding center for thousands dispossessed by war and conflict. Opportunity knocks rarely here, but a once-obscure New Hampshire university has made it the idealistic focus of its global plans. Under a thatched-roof shed at the edge of northwest Kenya, Achayo Loum logs on to her laptop to tackle the day’s assignment: writing a college essay on counterfeiting in the fashion industry. She is one of the first participants in a program at Kakuma that will, when she completes it, make her a graduate of a school she really only knows from website photos: Southern New Hampshire University. Loum’s world has an unlikely visitor.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/07/07/education-hope/o7JpxrSdkyxzhQH4YpTYdI/story.html

by Guide to Online Schools
These 55 colleges represent the most disability-friendly online schools for providing the highest level of support, the widest breadth of accommodations, and the most comprehensive resources for students with disabilities. All schools on this list received a Disability-Friendly score greater than 55, receiving high marks in most, if not all, of the following categories: thoroughness of resources, Universal Design for Learning training, availability of distance learning accommodations, and variety of services provided.

https://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/online-schools/students-with-disabilities

by Herald Republican

One of the features that originally drew Mike Thompson to Trine University’s Lou Holtz Master of Science in Leadership program was the flexibility of online classes. That flexibility became very important to Thompson when, halfway through the program, he was called to active duty by the U.S. Army and deployed to Kuwait. A member of the Army and Indiana National Guard for 26 years altogether, Thompson, who holds the rank of staff sergeant, has been able to continue working on his MSL while deployed, completing two classes from Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.

http://www.kpcnews.com/heraldrepublican/article_e695d617-724d-53a3-8edb-cd7a337332a3.html

by Carmen Reinicke, CNBC

“New-collar jobs,” positions that require skills but not a bachelor’s degree, are in demand right now, according to ZipRecruiter. When Josh Hannaford saw that IBM used the phrase “no degree, no problem,” advertising for its apprenticeship program, he cried. Then, he applied. “It just blew me away that a company like IBM was recognizing that there was a whole untapped workforce out there and they were going to give us a chance,” said the 21-year-old Hannaford. So-called new-collar jobs, positions that require specific skills but not a bachelor’s degree, are in high demand, according to ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace. The skills gap, in which jobs stay vacant for lack of qualified applicants, has given opportunities to people like Hannaford who take the initiative to train for hotly desired skills.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/want-to-increase-your-salary-learn-these-key-skills.html

by Luke Dormehl, Digital Trends

The reason for this is the unimaginable pace at which we currently produce data. Each day, around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created, courtesy of the 3.7 billion humans who now use the internet. In the last two years alone, a mind-boggling 90 percent of the world’s data has been created. That’s where Park and fellow MIT scientist and co-founder Nathaniel Roquet enter the picture. Their startup Catalog has developed technology they believe could transform data storage as we know it; allowing, or so they claim, the entirety of the world’s data to be comfortably fit into a space the size of a coat closet. Catalog’s solution? By encoding data into DNA. That might sound like the plot of a Michael Crichton novel, but their scalable and affordable solution is serious, and has so far received $9 million in venture funding — along with the support of leading professors from Stanford and Harvard Universities.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/dna-data-catalog-startup/

by Leigh Guidry, Lafayette Daily Advertiser

About two-thirds of prisoners go back to jail within three years of being released, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But an online learning platform at 15 correctional facilities are helping Louisiana inmates create a new future for themselves.  The state tested Lantern, an educational program for the incarcerated created through a partnership with Ashland University in Ohio, first in the Louisiana Transition Center for Women in Madison Parish.  Kim Barnette, retired state director of correction education in Louisiana, said it was a success in that not only were the women educated, but it also reduced their discipline issues inside the institution. Not only are inmates 43 percent less likely to go back behind bars but they also are more likely to get a job, according to the research.

https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/education/2018/07/06/online-learning-helping-louisiana-inmates-stay-out-prison/742154002/

By: Amy Ballard, Faculty Focus

Establishing a healthy learning environment is key to teaching. But opportunities for making personal connections and relationships with students are greatly reduced in online classes. Thus, online instructors need to make a special effort to foster relationships in their online courses.

https://www.facultyfocus.com/resources/online-learning/teaching-strategies-and-techniques-online-learning/ways-to-improve-relationships-in-online-classes/

by IBL News

edX is building a transferrable student records tool, which will be ready in the next “Ironwood” version of the Open edX platform, scheduled for the first quarter of 2019. Bill De Rusha, an edX engineer, shared some insights about this development on a talk from the 2018 Open edX conference in Montreal. The first implementation of transferrable student records will be available on edx.org in the coming weeks. This software is a need today for learners who want to apply their MicroMasters credentials as transfer credits and share their edX records with partner institutions.

EdX Engineers Are Building a Transferrable Student Records Tool

by Vivek Ranjan in Education, Sci-Tech

So, what should be the promise for the next generation’ education? Who will be the stakeholders? What would be the mechanism? No single system or mechanism is going to solve everything. There have to be many interdependent elements aiding each other which would create a robust education ecosystem. But one element which can improve the quality of education is more encouragement to MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. These are courses delivered online with some set mechanisms like deadlines for taking assignments and quizzes.

https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2018/07/new-generation-education-learning-the-mooc-way/

by Futurelearn
Explore how code breakers and spies influenced cryptography and explore the role it plays in modern secure communication.Is it possible to prove the security of encrypted data? Will every algorithm fail given sufficient time or computing power? On this course you will get an introduction to cryptography and cryptanalysis. From ancient examples of secret messages and the spies that cracked them to modern cryptographic applications, you will have the opportunity to explore the foundations of data security. During the course you will also get an opportunity to try encrypting data yourself by completing a cryptography and cryptanalysis challenge.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/cryptography

by Wharton
The blockchain is one of the most significant, fundamental advances in digital platforms since the internet and also probably the most overhyped technology in current times, according to Kevin Werbach, Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics, at the inaugural annual Penn Wharton Budget Model Spring Policy Forum, held recently in Washington. The basic idea behind blockchain is that one can trust the system as a whole without necessarily trusting any of the participants, Werbach said. The blockchain is a ledger — record of transactions in a database — distributed to people in a network. Everyone on that network has their own copy of the ledger and be “actually confident, based on mathematical structures of cryptography, that every copy is the same.” So even though there is no central intermediary — like Equifax, a bank or the Federal Reserve — all the players in the blockchain network can trust the information.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/blockchain-can-transform-government/

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News

The study estimates the skills gap between future talent supply and demand will occur in 20 major economies at three milestones: 2020, 2025 and 2030, and across three sectors: financial and business services; technology, media and telecommunications; and manufacturing. It found that left to run its course, this shortage will create 85.2 million unfilled jobs and nearly $8.5 trillion in unrealized revenue in the economies analyzed. What’s more, a shortage of what the report calls “Level A” workers–those who have completed postsecondary education or a high-level trade college qualification–could equal 21 percent of the highly-skilled workforce of the 20 countries in the study.

Skills gap could have alarming consequences

by LAURA PAPPANO , Hechinger Report

Amid all the bellowing about charters, school choice and vouchers, a potentially more revolutionary reform movement is bubbling up. Philanthropists, state education officials, reform advocates — even charter school leaders — are examining personalized learning. The big idea is to create a customized path so students learn at their own pace, in the manner that resonates best with them, with content tailored to their interests, aided by their computers. It feels natural to a generation groomed to presume that everything is calibrated to their needs and wants — whether it’s online shopping, news or math homework — and raised with smartphones in their hands.  It sounds benign, and wonderful, to many parents. Schools, districts and even entire states are embracing it. Teacher unions cautiously endorse it, while flagging the concern that teachers could be replaced by technology. But personalized learning raises big questions about educational equity.

Is the new education reform hiding in plain sight?

by Lauren Barack, Education Dive
Summer school for students in California’s West Sonoma County Union High School District is now entirely online starting this year, a financial decision that shaved costs down by half. Students will be able to test out of lessons they don’t need, letting them finish more quickly — in some cases in two weeks instead of six, wrote The Press Democrat. The savings will be used to boost budgets at schools with a higher enrollment of English language learners and students from low-income families.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/online-classes-give-students-a-digital-edge/526924/

by Russ Poulin, WCET

Regardless of the status of a federal regulation, we wish to be emphatic that every institution must thoroughly understand that compliance for out-of-state activities of the institution must be maintained per the following:

State regulations. For both institutional authorization on professional licensure programs, institutions need to know the requirements of any state in which they are recruiting and/or enrolling students.
SARA requirements (see the SARA Manual). These remain in effect for member institutions.
Federal regulations currently in effect (we will write more on these in an upcoming post):
34 CFR 43(b) – Institutional Information (Student Complaint location);
34 CFR 71 and 34 CFR 668.72 (c) (2) Misrepresentation – with specific language about professional licensure;
34 CFR 17(g)(2) – at registration or enrollment, in writing, notify students of any projected additional student charges (proctoring).
Department of Defense (DoD) Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) requires participating institutions to comply with all state authorization requirements for providing distance education to participate in the Tuition Assistance Program for active duty military students.
These requirements did not get delayed. As a matter of fact, compliance with the above requirements and regulations should already be in place for every institution.

The Announcement of the Delay was Delayed, but the Result is a Delay!

By James Paterson, Education Dive
More Americans believe a four-year degree is not worth the financial cost, according to a CNBC All-American Economic Survey, which found the the number had increased to 44% from about 40% five years ago. The survey also found that fewer felt a four-year college degree was the best type of training, down to about 50% from nearly 60%. About 60% of Democrats favor a bachelor’s degree and 40% of Republicans. The survey additionally found that more people believe two-year schools may be of greater value. The biggest increase was seen for trade schools, which 26% of Americans felt were a good value, compared to 18% in 2013.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/yet-another-report-says-fewer-americans-value-4-year-degree/526820/

by Tom Wheeler, Brookings

*Internet services will likely not jump on this quickly and begin to extract the advantages of this repeal, but they will begin to discriminate in subtle way

*There is a pending court appeal that challenges the FCC’s ability to repeal Net Neutrality

*The Congressional Review Act, which has already passed the Senate, would repeal the FCC’s decision

*To understand what impact the repeal of the Open Internet rule might have, you have to understand why it was put in place to begin with

*The underlying concept of networks in America, all the way back to the telegraph, has been that there needs to be first-come, first-serve, non-discriminatory access

*The reason why we have this rule is because of monopoly networks

Unpacked: Repeal of Open Internet Rule enables monopoly networks