Training Industry
For National Distance Learning Week, Ken Conn (past president and chairman of the board, U.S. Distance Learning Association) and Melissa Loble (senior vice president of customer success and partnerships, Instructure) share their thoughts on distance learning, what the future of online training looks like, and what corporate L&D leaders can learn from K-12 and university education.
Share on Facebookby Kayla Westra, EDUCAUSE Review
While many colleges and universities are offering online student services to support their online learners, the types and levels of support vary widely. Accrediting bodies have been concerned with student services for online students for some time, and a very simple tenet to follow is that whatever student services are offered for on-campus students should be offered in an equitable fashion for online students. While this tenet may seem simple, its implementation can be complex and involved.
Share on FacebookBy: Mary Jane Pearson, Faculty Focus
Recent findings indicate that higher education enrollment is being outpaced by online enrollments while overall enrollment in higher education has declined over the last three years (Betts, 2017). Data analyzed from the U.S. Department of Education confirm that enrollment in online courses in higher education has more than tripled in the years from 2002 to 2014: 2002, 1.6 million; 2014, 5.8 million (Poulin & Straut, 2016). Robinia (2008), in a study on the efficacy of online teaching faculty, found that effective faculty supported the value of instructional expertise and peer/mentoring support. Mentoring adjunct faculty is beneficial as it helps them become connected and part of a community; they feel valued and inspired, and they are invested in the university in which they teach (Linton, 2017). Moreover, such mentoring should exist throughout the retention of the adjunct faculty member, and not be limited to only new adjunct faculty, to continue to achieve positive results with students.
https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/an-online-mentoring-model-that-works/
Share on FacebookNatalie Schwartz, Education Dive
Technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality (VR) are rapidly expanding opportunities for teaching and learning, and they are giving college administrators new and different ways to track student outcomes. To learn more about the impact of these technologies, we attended a handful of panels on the topic led by higher education and technology leaders at Educause’s annual conference in Denver this week. From teaching with VR to tracking student success with AI, we explore how colleges and universities are using new technologies to conduct research, teach students and create smarter campuses.
by Ray Schroeder, Inside Digital Education
Yet, the value of Google search increasingly is tarnished as more and more nefarious players have become sophisticated in promulgating their materials on sites that look more like places that we have come to trust. And, of course we are constantly combating sites that install malware and steal information from browsers. This has not gone unnoticed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Danny Hillis, SJ Klein and Travis Rich are developing Underlay — a new knowledge base. As described at the MIT site, the concept of Underlay is to provide deeper citations of sources in order to better inform users
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/search-post-truth-era
Share on FacebookBY SUSANNA WILLIAMS, eCampus News
Connecting students to experience and resources should be your college’s mission. What would a post-secondary institution that was designed for maximum student success look like? What would a college look like where a student could define what they were looking to get out of the experience?
“I want an education that allows me to:
work full time / go to school full time
continue earning enough money to pay my rent and living expenses / focus on my studies
increase my income by ____% $____ per hour or year / pursue my passion for _____”
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by Peace Chiu, South China Morning Post
Speaking in Cambridge, Massachusetts last week, edX founder and CEO Professor Anant Agarwal said the firm was working towards launching “stackable” MicroBachelors courses in three years. “You can think of education as Lego,” said the electrical engineering and computer science expert, who was recently awarded a Yidan Prize for his innovations in education development. He said MicroBachelors courses could be used to customise an undergraduate degree and shorten study time.
Share on FacebookBy Michael M. Crow, Devez
For the first time in history, technological advances in online educational delivery and personalized learning have made cost-effective, high-scale teaching and learning possible, creating the opportunity for democratic and inclusive educational pathways. We can usher in an era of universal learning that serves learners from all socioeconomic backgrounds, at every stage of work and learning, with educational, training, and skill-building opportunities. Through novel institutional models and partnerships that effectively apply new technologies in teaching and learning, we can not only democratize education globally, but also dramatically enhance the effectiveness of development practitioners in emerging countries.
Share on FacebookBy John Loeffler
There is no doubt the rise of AI will affect the employment sector. We take a look at which jobs are the most vulnerable, which are the most resistant and which engineering jobs may even thrive. According to the World Economic Forum’s The Future Of Jobs Report, within the next five years alone, a majority of companies expect to scale back their full-time workforce to make room for automation. The chief economist for the Bank of England predicted that there might be as many as 80 million jobs automated in the US alone. With fully half of all workplace tasks being performed via automation within the next decade, some jobs are more susceptible to this shift than others.
https://interestingengineering.com/the-rise-of-ai-and-employment-how-jobs-will-change-to-adapt
Share on Facebookby Doug Black, Enterprise Tech
This time, AI isn’t fooling around. This time, AI is in earnest, and so are its related technologies: robotics, 3-D printing, genomics, machine/deep learning, man-machine interface, IoT, HPC at the edge, quantum – the gamut of new data-driven technologies. In decades past, AI has gotten off to hyped false starts, but not this time, the building blocks are in place for the convergence of data-driven power evolving toward an AI supernova that will bring with it profound changes to human existence over the decades to come. With this expectation has come serious thinking – and worrying – about AI’s potential negative impacts. Naturally, AI investors and developers are going full speed ahead while airily dismissing AI fear as generally baseless. Rarely from within the industry do we hear voices – Elon Musk’s is an exception – calling for controls on AI.
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by ILYA BAÑARES, the Star
Alex Jung, an MA candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto, is the institution’s first Wikipedian in Residence. It’s a new role. “The purpose behind the position, ultimately, is to go where our community is,” said Jesse Carliner, Communications Librarian. “Everybody, whether they admit to it or not, uses Wikipedia as a starting point for their research if they don’t know anything about a topic.”
Share on FacebookBy Lottie Watters, DevEX
From university degrees to specialized online courses, there are many ways to learn new skills and enhance your knowledge in particular fields of development. The Humanitarian Leadership Academy, for example, offers 350 free courses in up to 10 languages online, as well as in-person workshops to teach people how to prepare for and respond to crises in their own countries. Another online option is the SickKids Public Health Nutrition Course, which is designed for health professionals looking at nutrition-related health challenges, particularly in low-resource settings, with contributors from Harvard Medical School and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. University College London has several online short courses, such as development and planning in African cities.
https://www.devex.com/news/sign-me-up-20-unique-courses-and-programs-in-global-development-93709
Share on FacebookKnowledge@Wharton
Developing countries such as India, Kenya and others in East Africa are discovering an increasing array of applications for blockchain, the decentralized ledger technology that promises a secure, peer-to-peer mechanism for verifying information. Blockchain is essentially a growing list of so-called “blocks” (a record of transactions in a decentralized ledger), which form a “chain” in a peer-to-peer network. Participants in the network verify or validate the blocks, eliminating the need for a trusted entity like a regulator or an accounting firm to authenticate the information in them. According to experts, the blockchain is secure and tamper-proof by design because transactions cannot be changed once the network has verified them.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/blockchain-brings-social-benefits-emerging-economies/
Share on FacebookBy Sam E. Sharfstein and Connor J. Wagaman, Harvard Crimson
Government Professor Michael J. Sandel spoke about the importance of civic education Thursday evening at a talk titled “Civic Education Goes Global.” Sandel, a pioneer of and advocate for “massive open online courses,” highlighted the importance of creating a global community of respectful discourse through education. In the discussion, Sandel said his goal is “to take the distance out of distance learning” and to replicate an engaging classroom experience for online learners.
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/11/2/ed-school-sandel-talk/
Share on FacebookKathleen Walch, Forbes
Artificial intelligence is not a technology. Asking the question whether or not some particular technology is or isn’t AI is missing the point. Artificial intelligence is the journey. It’s the quest for the intelligent machine. All the technologies we’ve developed on the route to that quest are things that are individually useful, but all together, have not yet gotten us to the goal. This is why it’s important to understand that artificial intelligence is not a technology, in much the same way that the Space Race is not a technology.
Share on Facebookby Alina Tugend, NY Times
David Danks, a professor of philosophy and psychology at Carnegie Mellon, just started teaching a class, “A.I, Society and Humanity.” The class is an outgrowth of faculty coming together over the past three years to create shared research projects, he said, because students need to learn from both those who are trained in the technology and those who are trained in asking ethical questions. “The key is to make sure they have the opportunities to really explore the ways technology can have an impact — to think how this will affect people in poorer communities or how it can be abused,” he said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/02/education/learning/colleges-grapple-with-teaching-ai.html
Share on Facebookby Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate
Only a quarter of top higher education schools across the country have established Chief Innovation Officer roles, which may leave you wondering if colleges and universities need CIOs. his senior leadership position not only works closely with the university president but must also reach out to all the departments at the campus to foster collaboration, collegiality, and innovation. These outreach activities can include encouraging incubators, identifying funding opportunities for research and scholarship promoting discoveries, and improving the culture and rapport between departments. The Chief Innovation Officer is integral to overall university success by assisting with funding, building collaboration, and promoting innovation.
https://www.thetechedvocate.org/why-higher-education-needs-more-chief-innovation-officers/
Share on FacebookBy Tina Nazerian, EdSurge
One way professors can use artificial intelligence is to help find new materials to add to their lessons, said Bowen. An instructor can type in a concept or idea, such as “industrial design,” into the tool his team built, called Eureka!, which acts like a recommendation engine. Eureka! uses Wikipedia as a source of information. Once the tool generates results, the instructor can identify which ones are most like what he means by “industrial design” or whichever term he used. Eureka! will then use that information to refine the definition of that original term.
Share on FacebookBY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News
2019’s trends will be all about building the “Intelligent Digital Mesh,” which David Cearley, vice president and Gartner Fellow, says has been a consistent theme in recent years.
That intelligent digital mesh focuses on three things:
1. Intelligence: AI drives everything we do across many systems going into the future
2. Digital: The digital world brings the virtual and real worlds together in a new digital reality
3. Mesh: Connecting people, processes, and things together in new and interesting ways
The convergence of these three things supports a continuous innovation process.
https://www.ecampusnews.com/2018/11/01/2019-promises-to-be-a-big-year-of-technology-trends/
Share on FacebookBy Jordan Friedman, US News
An online degree program can be a big investment. Luckily for 37-year-old northern Virginia resident Grant Clough, his employer offers workers $8,000 per year toward tuition reimbursement for those who choose to continue their education. Clough, director of talent acquisition at AARP, initially considered an MBA program, possibly on campus. But he ultimately decided against pursuing another business degree, in part because he studied accounting as an undergraduate. He then came across the online Master of Studies in Law at Wake Forest University, and it turned out that his employer would be covering nearly all his tuition. With the online format, he would also have more flexibility to study around his schedule.
Share on FacebookBy Sean Gallagher, EdSurge
Today, more than three million students pursue higher education fully online, representing a $20-billion market. While online students are still only about 15 percent of all higher education enrollment in the U.S., it’s an area that is likely to continue to grow and make up a larger piece of the overall pie, given growing interest from students, more offerings from colleges, and increasing acceptance by employers. However, as the online degree market reaches a state of maturity, it is entering an entirely new era in its evolution – an era characterized by a changing competitive landscape, new technological developments and consumer preferences, and growing overlap with non-degree learning.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-10-30-the-beginning-of-a-new-era-in-the-online-degree-market
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