Online Learning Update

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

What we see is just a huge blending. Right now we offer MOOCs, we offer specializations (packages of those single courses), we offer master tracks, which are those modules that count towards a degree. We only have three right now, but we’re going to be building up that library. And then we have degrees now. I talk to people who take who take a MOOC on blockchain. All they wanted was about 10 hours of very high-quality instruction. They didn’t need a degree. They literally just wanted to learn the material. Those kinds of people are not going to buy a degree. Then there are people who get a degree, and you’re like, “Why didn’t you take a bunch of MOOCs?” Because the degrees help them get a better job. So long as we believe there will be a range of needs from very, very rigorous and that ends up in a high-pedigreed credential to smaller learning that nevertheless teaches you something that’s really important, there’s absolutely no reason that MOOCs won’t exist and degrees won’t exist with a link between them. I think it’s going to be a continuum.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/09/12/courseras-ceo-on-the-evolving-meaning-of-mooc.aspx

by Maria Danilova, Associated Press
A federal court has ruled that it was “arbitrary and capricious” for Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to delay an Obama-era rule meant to protect students swindled by for-profit colleges. The decision is a significant blow to the Trump administration’s attempt to ease regulations for the industry. A judge in the nation’s capital ruled on Wednesday in favor of Democratic attorneys general from 19 states and the District of Columbia and former students. They had sued DeVos over her decision last year to postpone the rules finalized under President Barack Obama.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-betsy-devos-student-loan-lawsuit-for-profit-colleges-fraud-20180913-story.html

By Ann Kirschner and Dana Born, Boston Globe

VUCA stands for “volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous,” a handy shortcut used by the military to describe these uncertain times, and a framework to shape its leadership programs. We have a graduation gap, an employment gap, and a skills gap. These are global trends but perhaps most acute in the United States, where we have championed college education for all at the same time that we have not paid enough attention to the link between learning and earning. The false choice between vocational training and the lofty devotion to the life of the mind is particularly damaging to first-generation college students with no parental safety net or networks of their own. Career services remain the Siberia of most college campuses, visited rarely and woefully under-resourced.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2018/09/12/education-not-preparing-students-for-fast-changing-world/96vTGowaDypumwyLtPtLjP/story.html

Kristi Hedges, Harvard Business Review

The reality is that most people are not set up to take advantage of development opportunities. Many organizations view learning as something extra, something to fit in on top of the regular work. But to create a culture that encourages employee growth, managers need to make learning an expectation — not an option. Learning helps people keep a broad perspective. When we feel expert at something, sociologists have shown, the earned dogmatism effect sets in, causing us to be more close-minded and to disregard new ideas and perspectives. For managers, suggesting that team members go to a training or take an online course isn’t enough; for many professionals, that’s just more work on their plates. Instead, managers need to encourage continual learning with supportive behaviors that, in turn, will shape their company culture. Be a vocal role model. Managers should frame learning as a growth opportunity, not as a quid pro quo for promotion.

https://hbr.org/2018/09/make-sure-everyone-on-your-team-sees-learning-as-part-of-their-job

By Asha McLean, ZDNet

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Online will now be offering short courses in artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), thanks to a new partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS). RMIT’s newly launched courses — Developing AI Strategy, Developing AR and VR Strategy, and Developing AR and VR Applications — are adapted from the AWS Educate global program and are designed to address tech-driven changes in the workplace, AWS added. “They are intended to provide embedded pathways for professionals to gain AWS Cloud computing skills and prepare them to gain micro-credentials and AWS certifications,” the cloud giant continued. According to RMIT Online CEO Helen Souness, the short course offerings are expected to help address the skills gaps in the AI and AR/VR fields.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/rmit-online-launches-ar-and-vr-courses-using-amazon-sumerian/

by Jeff Selingo, Washington Post

At the beginning of last decade, college students who went to public universities paid for about one-third of their education. Today, in more than half the states, they pay for most of it. In that time, the College Board has found that the average price of tuition, room, board and fees at public institutions has risen more than 60 percent, to $20,770. Research by Douglas Webber, an associate professor in economics at Temple University, has found that colleges raise tuition by about $300 for every $1,000 in funds cut by the state.  The rapid disinvestment by states this century in public higher education happened not because of one event, but a confluence of factors that has made it more expensive for students and their families to attend most state colleges. First, funding levels failed to keep up with the influx of students to public campuses last decade because of the rising numbers of high school graduates. Second, the Great Recession of 2008 decimated state budgets. While after previous downturns higher education eventually recovered those dollars, not this time. In only six states have higher education budgets returned to or surpassed their pre-recession levels; in 19 states, expenditures per student are at least 20 percent lower than before the recession.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2018/09/08/states-decision-reduce-support-higher-education-comes-cost/

by Michael S. Roth, President, Wesleyan
Many readers of this blog know that I have championed pragmatic liberal learning—a broad education that combines skills and contextual understanding to provide a resource for life “beyond the university.” Students at Wesleyan hear me repeat the great line of former Wesleyan president Victor Butterfield: “If these turn out to be the best four years of your lives, then we have failed you.” Wesleyans learn to translate liberal learning into purposeful work after graduation.

http://roth.blogs.wesleyan.edu/2018/09/11/the-work-you-want-to-do-after-graduation/

Rock Springs resident Laura Schmid-Pizzato, who was appointed to the University of Wyoming Board of Trustees on Tuesday, told the Laramie Boomerang she’s largely interested in increasing access to UW education for citizens throughout the state.  part-time lecturer at Western Wyoming Community College, Schmid-Pizzato said she thinks the university should be able to increase course offering to residents around Wyoming who aren’t able to relocate to Laramie. “I want to make sure they have the opportunity for higher education,” she said. “I taught online classes and there’s lots of different ways to provide the education.”

https://www.gillettenewsrecord.com/news/wyoming/article_7ce8363d-2472-5621-a4a2-3f18c25ed434.html

by Kate Bueckert, CBC

The Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA) has relaunched it’s #TextbookBroke campaign to highlight the high cost of textbooks and urge professors to choose free alternatives. The group initially launched the campaign in January, and during it, students shared stories about how not being able to afford textbooks impacted their education. “We saw students were spending about an average of $500 on textbooks,” said Shannon Kelly, vice president of student affairs for the Wilfrid Laurier University Students’ Union and vice president of finance for OUSA. “Some students had to pick and choose between what textbooks they felt that they actually needed and could afford.”

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/university-waterloo-wilfrid-laurier-textbook-broke-free-1.4817656

by Jonathan Finkelstein , the Evolllution

As the distinction between learning at colleges, universities and workplaces continues to erode, credentials are supplanting the traditional role of the degree in terms of skills verification. Unlike the degree, credentials offer individuals the opportunity to showcase all aspects of “life-wide” learning, providing substantially more detailed insight into a person’s transferable abilities for both the classroom and the workforce. In Part One of this two-part interview, Jonathan Finkelstein discusses traditional postsecondary approaches to credentialing, and argues that the increasingly transactional nature of credentials justifies a more granular approach to skills verification.

The Evolving Transactional Nature of Credentialing: Alternative Credentials Today

by James Paterson, Education Dive
Community colleges rely heavily on adjunct professors, but new research suggests that the part-time instructors may adversely affect student performance at two-year institutions, particularly in STEM and health field courses. Research conducted by Di Xu, an assistant professor of educational policy at the University of California, Irvine, shows that while students having an adjunct instructor got better grades in introductory courses, they were more likely to drop subsequent courses in the field of study or get, on average, 4% lower grades than if they were instructed by a full-time faculty member. The research notes that the use of adjuncts is greatest at community colleges, which play “a critical role in addressing the national equity agenda by disproportionately serving underrepresented groups.”

https://www.educationdive.com/news/adjunct-instructors-can-cause-lower-grades-for-students/532033/

By Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge

Crafting an efficient schedule of college course offerings means solving a complex puzzle. And more colleges these days are turning to algorithms to help reduce the number of classes that are either overloaded or full of empty seats. A study out last week of about 200 colleges found that many course schedules are “unbalanced,” with 45 percent of courses analyzed filled to less than 70 percent capacity and 23 percent of courses classified as “overloaded,” meaning more than 95 percent full. That inefficiency is having an impact on retention, the study found. The greater the inefficiency of the course catalog, the lower the graduation rate at the institutions analyzed.  But even if an AI system can show college leaders where they need to create more courses, there’s still a bigger problem: The college may not have the resources to hire additional faculty to create those sections.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-09-11-many-college-courses-are-either-overloaded-or-underfilled-that-may-be-hurting-retention

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News
MSI presidents–and higher-ed presidents in general–can greatly benefit from a few key social media practices.  Only slightly more than one-third (36 percent) of presidents at minority-serving institutions (MSIs) use Twitter, compared to 55 percent of all college and university presidents–and they’re missing out on a big opportunity, according to new research. Of that MSI group, most don’t post or tweet regularly, meaning they miss chances to connect with current and prospective students, as well as stakeholders and supporters, according to Presidential Engagement of Students at Minority Serving Institutions, which gauges how MSI leaders can use social media to connect with and engage students. The report comes from the Penn Center for Minority Serving Institutions, and its leader profiles and social media suggestions aren’t necessarily limited to MSI presidents.

11 ways presidents can engage students with social media

by Ramona Schindelheim, Working Nation

It is clear colleges and universities will be facing some major headwinds unless they rethink their roles in preparing students for the workforce, according to one respected expert on higher education. “There’s a rising demand for talent, and colleges and universities are a major engine of talent production in this country. I continue to argue that they will be for the foreseeable future, but their position is much more precarious than it was a few years ago,” according to Jamie Merisotis, the President and CEO of the Lumina Foundation, a foundation whose mission is to make post-high school learning opportunities available to all.

Is college the right, or only, path to a good-paying job?

by Jill Barshay, Hechinger Report

Only a handful of states, colored in blue, are predicted to see an increase in the number of students attending regional four-year colleges and universities between 2012 and 2029. The rest will see declines in students. In the red-colored states, the drop in students will exceed 15%. The dots represent large metropolitan areas. These urban college markets, such as San Diego, may diverge from their state’s or region’s trends. Nathan D. Grawe, Carleton College.  What does the declining birthrate mean for colleges and universities and the students who hope to get a college degree a decade from now? The answer depends on where you live in the United States and how selective the college is. For most colleges and universities, the outlook is grim. But that could be a good thing for their future students.

But student demand is expected to grow for the nation’s most elite colleges and universities between 2012 and 2029. The dots represent large metropolitan areas, which sometimes diverge from their state’s growth forecasts. Nathan D. Grawe, Carleton College

Nathan Grawe, an economist at Carleton College in Minnesota, predicts that the college-going population will drop by 15 percent between 2025 and 2029 and continue to decline by another percentage point or two thereafter.

College students predicted to fall by more than 15% after the year 2025

By Common Sense Education

Social media can pose risks to students’ privacy, but these risks can be managed with informed, intentional use. There’s also a huge upside: Teachers can use social media to share best practices, provide an authentic audience for students’ work, cultivate and model digital citizenship among their students and build more connected school communities.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2018/09/10/protecting-your-students-privacy-on-social-media.aspx

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
In a pilot program at Berkeley College, members of a Virtual Reality Faculty Interest Group tested the use of virtual reality to immerse students in a variety of learning experiences. During winter 2018, seven different instructors in nearly as many disciplines used inexpensive Google Cardboard headsets along with apps on smartphones to virtually place students in North Korea, a taxicab and other environments as part of their classwork. Participants used free mobile applications such as Within, the New York Times VR, Discovery VR, Jaunt VR and YouTube VR. Their courses included critical writing, international business, business essentials, medical terminology, international banking, public speaking and crisis management.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/09/05/berkeley-college-faculty-test-vr-for-learning.aspx

by David Raths, Campus Technology

Columbus State Community College created a multimedia e-book for English composition students that reduces textbook costs and reimagines the ways learners engage with course material.   CSCC’s “iComp: A Guide to First-Year Writing” Multi-Touch iBook has completed a two-semester, seven-class pilot phase and is now being rolled out to four courses. According to the project team, the book eliminates the need for traditional textbooks and re-frames the ways students engage with course material. While it is important that students are saving money, the hope is that the innovative curriculum design will increase student success and retention. “We wanted to have the textbook be something students are constantly interacting with as a means of doing the work, not a supplementary thing,” explained Nicholas Lakostik, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition and one of the four authors of the book.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/09/05/making-etextbooks-more-interactive.aspx

by University of Florida

University of Florida Online is once again partnering with a leading employer – The Walt Disney Company – to expand access to high quality online bachelor’s degrees. Disney Aspire, recently launched by The Walt Disney Company, is a comprehensive education benefits program focused on the career development of Disney’s workforce. With the Disney Aspire initiative, more than 80,000 full-time and part-time hourly employees, who have more than 90 days of service, will be eligible to have 100 percent of their tuition, required textbooks and course materials, plus application and program fees paid up front by the company. As part of this relationship, Disney employees may apply to one of several fully online bachelor’s degrees – the Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science in business administration from the Warrington College of Business; the Bachelor of Science in sport management from the College of Health and Human Performance; and the Bachelor of Science in public relations, and the Bachelor of Science in telecommunication from the College of Journalism and Communications. If granted admission by the University of Florida, Disney cast members could begin UF Online classes in January 2019 as part of the University’s spring semester. Disney employees and Cast Members can learn more and sign up at aspire.disney.com.

http://news.ufl.edu/articles/2018/09/expanded-uf-online-partnership-will-provide-education-benefits-to-more-than-80000-hourly-disney-employees-nationwide.php

by Northern Kentucky Tribune
Sullivan University’s Center for Learning- Northern Kentucky closed its doors over the weekend. A spokesperson for the university said the majority of students were enrolling in online degrees or in the culinary programs in Louisville and Lexington. Vicki Berling, director of the center, confirmed the closing. Sullivan University is undergoing a significant reorganization, a merger of the Sullivan College of Technology and Design and Spencerian College into the university. This was approved by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges and was final in June.

https://www.nkytribune.com/2018/09/sullivan-universitys-northern-kentucky-center-for-learning-has-closed-majority-studying-online/

by Kathleen Golden, Smart Brief

Online courses give learners and instructors flexible class options, but they also pose difficulties that instructors must overcome. Research shows that online students crave more interactions with their peers and instructors. Unfortunately, it’s challenging to forge meaningful connections with people in the course through email or text-driven forums alone. The distance between students and their instructor often creates a divide — one that’s been proven to affect learning outcomes as well as student satisfaction. Video assessment can help online teachers bridge this divide. Video assessment refers to instructors evaluating recordings of students completing a task, demonstrating a skill or any other activity that showcases their knowledge.

http://www.smartbrief.com/original/2018/09/close-distance