Online Learning Update

February 28, 2019

Sources for Professional Development in Online Learning

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:04 am

By guest blogger, Ray Schroeder, Virtually Inspired Drexel

UPCEA, in partnership with its outstanding volunteer leaders, has developed what I consider two of the most remarkable aspirational guideline for institutions, the Hallmarks of Excellence in Professional and Continuing Education and the Hallmarks of Excellence in Online Leadership.  https://upcea.edu/hallmarks  I encourage you to take advantage of this Creative Commons open licensed document to share the Online Hallmarks on your campus. In the Professional Continuing and Online Education Update by UPCEA, http://continuingedupdate.blogspot.com/ which is freely available, we are now closing in on a million views.

https://virtuallyinspired.org/sources-for-professional-development-in-online-learning/

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Across the Country, Universities Are Answering the Call for Innovation

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:03 am

By Dan Sommer, EdSurge

Notably, they are expanding their continuing education departments—the arm of the school that has the most flexibility, can move quickly, and is organically connected to the local community. Once considered an unassuming part of the university serving a limited demographic, today’s continuing-ed departments resemble innovation labs, able to launch new programs, engage with outside partners, and respond to employment trends—all with the support and structure of the university. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that jobs for software developers will grow by 30 percent between 2016 and 2016, creating an additional 250,000 such openings available. This ’ crystallizes just one of the many opportunities—and challenges—these continuing education departments face. In my experience working with continuing-ed departments to bridge that gap, and speaking with deans of both large public research institutions and small private colleges, there are three specific areas of innovation that I am excited to see taking root: increased accessibility, more affordability, and a commitment to meet the fast-changing needs of local employers.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-02-16-across-the-country-universities-are-answering-the-call-for-innovation

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Michigan rural areas search for high-speed internet

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:02 am

By ZARIA PHILLIPS, News-Advocate

Frustrated by a lack of access to high-speed internet, some rural communities in western Michigan and the Upper Peninsula are inventing their own solutions. It will be years before solid high-speed internet cables can be run through the U.P., according to the region’s lawmakers. That causes problems now. Northern Michigan University in Marquette faced declining enrollment because students couldn’t do homework or take online classes, said state Rep. Sara Cambensy, D-Marquette. So the university put hotspots on the cell towers all over the U.P. and enrollment recovered.

http://news.pioneergroup.com/manisteenews/2019/02/17/michigan-rural-areas-search-for-high-speed-internet/

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February 27, 2019

Policy Briefs Authored by UPCEA, OLC, and WCET to US Dept of Ed and Other Policymakers

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 1:36 pm

UPCEA, OLC and WCET

UPCEA, OLC and WCET—have issued a set of policy briefs relating to necessary changes to federal regulations affecting the professional, continuing, and online education community. These papers address competency-based education, financial aid for the 21st century student, regular and substantive interaction, and state authorization. The organizations have jointly issued these papers while talks relating to the ongoing rulemaking session are currently underway at the Department of Education to provide additional information to policymakers about the challenges that contemporary learners, and the institutions that serve them, often face. While many of these topics will likely be addressed by the current Department of Education negotiated rulemaking committee, the organizations recognize that others may require Congressional action.

https://upcea.edu/policy-briefs-regular-and-substantive-interaction-state-authorization-competency-based-education-financial-aid-for-the-21st-century-learner/

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Survey: Faculty Development Most Important Teaching and Learning Issue for 2019

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:11 am

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

For the sixth year in a row, the topic of faculty development has turned up among the top three “teaching and learning issues” in an annual survey done by Educause. This year that same issue was also No. 1, getting 25 percent more votes than the next top choice: online and blended learning. As the survey explained, faculty development refers to the work of helping instructors produce active learning activities that will engage students and help them achieve learning objectives; online and blended learning refers to the creation of courses that will serve students both on campus and remotely.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/02/14/survey-faculty-development-most-important-teaching-and-learning-issue-for-2019.aspx?admgarea=news

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A Q&A with Alt-Ac Thomas J. Tobin

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:04 am

Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

My advice to everyone working on a Ph.D. or other terminal degree: look beyond the department walls. Ask after people who studied in your field and landed successfully in other areas of higher education. Find out what they did to get prepared not to be a faculty member—things like taking courses in the business school as electives or interning with an academic press. Spending even twenty minutes at a time talking with colleagues and exploring options can pay big dividends after the excitement of getting your doctoral hood turns into “what comes next?” For those of you who have established careers and are looking to make a wise move to something bigger, more stable, or more engaging: you’re in luck. Consider trying out various alt-ac roles, such as speaking, consulting, writing, and publishing.

https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/qa-alt-ac-thomas-j-tobin

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Multitasking increases in online courses compared to face-to-face

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:03 am

Science Daily
The phenomenon of multitasking across three or four internet-connected devices simultaneously is increasingly common. Researchers were curious to know how often this happens during online education, a method of delivering college and even high school courses entirely via an internet-connected computer as opposed to a traditional face-to-face course with a teacher physically present.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/02/190214153135.htm

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February 26, 2019

As MBAs decline, U of Miami shifts to specialization

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:07 am

By Natalie Schwartz, Education Dive
Applications to MBA programs have slid downward for the fourth straight year — a trend from which not even elite institutions have been immune. In fact, more than two-thirds (70%) of two-year, full-time MBA programs saw a drop in applications in 2018, including heavy-hitters like Harvard, Wharton and Stanford. Experts offer several explanations for the waning interest in the degree, including a strong job market, declining international enrollment, and students growing wary of high tuition and loan payments. Amid these circumstances, some colleges have been shutting down their MBA programs entirely, citing low demand. Yet others have been able to buck the trend. At the University of Miami’s business school, MBA enrollment grew 12% last year, and officials note a rising interest in its specialist master’s programs.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/as-mbas-decline-u-of-miami-shifts-to-specialization/548049/

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The technology behind OpenAI’s fiction-writing, fake-news-spewing AI, explained

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:04 am

by Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review

The language model can write like a human, but it doesn’t have a clue what it’s saying. The passages of text that the model produces are good enough to masquerade as something human-written. But this ability should not be confused with a genuine understanding of language—the ultimate goal of the subfield of AI known as natural-language processing (NLP). (There’s an analogue in computer vision: an algorithm can synthesize highly realistic images without any true visual comprehension.) In fact, getting machines to that level of understanding is a task that has largely eluded NLP researchers. That goal could take years, even decades, to achieve, surmises Liang, and is likely to involve techniques that don’t yet exist.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612975/ai-natural-language-processing-explained/

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Learn With Facebook Aims To Train 1 Million People And Small Business Owners By 2020

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:03 am

Robyn D. Shulman, Forbes

To accommodate the rapid changes we’re seeing within in the workforce, it is imperative that every person who is either entering the workforce, runs a business, or has been working for decades takes time to become a life-long learner.  Learn with Facebook is for anyone looking for an introductory set of skills to help them find a new job, make a career change, return to the workforce or improve in their current role. The courses teach skills that are applicable to a range of jobs in the digital economy including digital marketing, customer service, and data analyst roles, among others.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robynshulman/2019/02/16/learn-with-facebook-aims-to-train-1-million-people-and-small-business-owners-by-2020/#3c1590dbce50

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February 25, 2019

A new era of microcredentials and experiential learning

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:09 am

by Sean Gallagher, University World News

At Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy in the United States, we recently conducted a survey of 750 hiring leaders in the United States – across all sectors and organisational sizes. One of the foundational findings was that a majority – 64% – of executives felt that the need for continuous lifelong learning will demand more credential attainment from job seekers and higher levels of education in the future.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20190213103113978

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This AI is Too Powerful to Release to The Public

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

Michael Kan, PCMag

The AI system from OpenAI can pump out fiction. It can also write fake news or divisive social media posts. All you have to do is serve up the topic or the beginning first sentence, and the AI will do the rest by trying to write human-like text. Researchers have developed an AI that is so good at writing text they’ve decided to keep the technology behind it secret over fears it’ll be exploited to write high-quality fake news. “Due to our concerns about malicious applications of the technology, we are not releasing the trained model,” the research company OpenAI wrote in a blog post on Thursday. The AI, called GPT-2, can produce text of “unprecedented quality” when compared with other computing systems by simply giving it a short writing prompt. For instance, the AI can pump out fiction. It can also finish a homework assignment. All you have to do is serve up the topic or the beginning first sentence, and the AI will do the rest.  [Ray notes: Image students using this to complete creative writing assignments and more]

https://www.pcmag.com/news/366572/this-ai-is-too-powerful-to-release-to-the-public?

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Key Reasons to Teach an Online Course – Benefits of Online Teaching

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:03 am

by SEO Manager

There are many benefits of online teaching; if you have the right set of skill sets and are looking for an opportunity which does not require frequent travels. The Key reasons why a person can choose to teach online are the following:

1. Good mix of students
Through online classes, students of various culture can enrol themselves and can represent various religion, age, culture, ethnicity and even geography. You get an opportunity to address a group of students who can bring in numerous kind of experiences and that’s how you can get exposed to cultural diversity from one single platform. See the other benefits below:

https://securityboulevard.com/2019/02/key-reasons-to-teach-an-online-course-benefits-of-online-teaching/

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February 24, 2019

A New Way to Motivate Faculty Adoption of OER

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:09 am

By Chuck Staben, Inside Higher Ed
To drive professors’ embrace of open educational resources, college leaders should offer incentives — a share of the financial savings — to academic departments, teaching centers and libraries, Chuck Staben suggests. We propose a different motivation structure for OER adoption. Our plan is to give some of the estimated yearly savings from OER use to the department, our teaching and learning center, and our library (5 percent/2.5 percent/2.5 percent, respectively). As an example, if a biology course enrolls 1,000 students per year, and the typical text savings would be $100 per student, adoption might save students $100,000 per year. Providing even 5 percent of the projected savings from OER adoption directly to the department as flexible money would be highly motivating to many departments; the teaching center and library are incentivized to support adoption and access. Although the savings from such a plan would accrue to the students, the retention of even one or two additional students due to better textbook usage by the students would, from an institutional perspective, pay for such an initiative. And, particularly for public universities, controlling cost, increasing access and enhancing success align with our mission.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2019/02/13/encourage-faculty-adoption-oer-share-savings-departments-and

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Extending the Conversation on Online Course Length

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed

Two weeks ago, “Inside Digital Learning” published an article exploring the decision-making process for institutions tweaking the length of their online courses. If you missed that piece, catch up before reading this one. A significant volley of Twitter mentions of the article — and a few email messages in our in-box — left us thinking about additional angles to explore on this topic. Teaching a short online course can be a learning experience for instructors. Penelope Moon is the former director of online programs in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies at Arizona State University and is currently responsible for elearning planning and design with the Office of Digital Learning and Innovation at the University of Washington’s Bothell campus. For eight years at Arizona State, she taught 7.5-week-long online courses, and she continues to do so as an associate clinical professor. At another institution, she previously taught the same course online in a semester-length format. In a shorter course, she’s more focused on outcomes — how to ensure that students leave the class having learned a set of knowledge and skills. “It really forces faculty to identify what’s essential in a course, and to trim the fat,” Moon said.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/02/13/shorter-online-courses-offer-flexible-alternatives-students-pose

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Could On-Demand Online Tutoring Be The Gateway To Personalizing Learning For Colleges?

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

Michael Horn, Forbes

If colleges and universities cannot redesign their processes and priorities—or introduce new models with new and different processes and priorities—then bolting online tutoring on top of their existing model could be a critical sustaining innovation that allows them to capture some of the benefits of personalizing learning to become student-ready institutions. The reason why is that tutoring is inherently adaptive. Even if a college course can’t slow its pace of learning or accommodate learners with different levels of background knowledge about a subject, tutors can adjust and fill in what’s missing—even if it’s knowledge entirely outside the scope of the class that dates back to earlier concepts a student should have mastered in high school.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelhorn/2019/02/14/could-on-demand-online-tutoring-be-the-gateway-to-personalizing-learning-for-colleges/#574d2a1b560b

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February 23, 2019

Ed Dept. backpedals its proposed distance learning stance with latest revision

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:08 am

By Ben Unglesbee , Education Dive
The Education Department has revised its proposed rules around distance education to clarify the role of subject-matter experts and their interaction with students, Inside Higher Ed reported. The changes are part of the department’s ongoing negotiated rulemaking on accreditation.  The latest proposal nixes language letting accreditors define distance education. The revision also calls for a subject matter expert to lead, rather than simply be included in, an instructional team. It also ensures subject-matter experts are responsible for assessing student learning, and it includes academic credentials in addition to work experience as criteria for a subject-matter expert. The revisions also add specificity to the definition of “regular and substantive” interaction between students and instructors. Regular is now defined as once-per-week interaction for courses worth three or more credit hours and every two weeks for courses less than three credit hours. Some subcommittee members proposed an alternative definition that accounted more for academic progress than duration, which favor emerging models of online learning.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/ed-dept-backpedals-its-proposed-distance-learning-stance-with-latest-revis/548435/

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Report: Why Tech for Adult Learning So Often Misses the Mark

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

When deploying new education technology for adult learners, is there such a thing as an ideal adoption pathway? Some “key actions,” such as administrators using research and data on adult ed tech to inform their purchase decisions, can make the difference, according to a new report from the U.S. Department of Education-funded LINCS system. “From Creation to Adoption: How to Develop and Deploy Successful Edtech,” written by consultancy Luminary Labs, is the third in a series to look at the state of the tech market specifically for adult learners. The first report examined the many problems that tech faces in serving the unique needs of this user. The second report made the case for further investment in tech to transform the segment. The third report explored why so many ed tech products generate “suboptimal outcomes” in terms of efficacy and use; it also proposed solutions.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/02/12/report-why-tech-for-adult-learning-so-often-misses-the-mark.aspx

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More states are recognizing the importance of non-degree credentials

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:03 am

BY LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News
Although no state has comprehensive data about all types of non-degree credentials, including certificates, licenses, and industry certifications, states are improving their data-collection practices around non-degree credential attainment, according to Measuring Non-Degree Credential Attainment from the Workforce Data Quality Campaign. States are most likely to have data about public for-credit certificate programs, registered apprenticeship certificates, and licenses. Thirty-six states report having most or all individual-level data on for-credit certificates from public two-year institutions in their state. Twenty-seven states report having most or all data about registered apprenticeship certificates, and 22 states report having most or all licensing data.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/02/12/more-states-are-recognizing-the-importance-of-non-degree-credentials/

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February 22, 2019

Open SUNY teaching ambassadors promote value of online courses

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:09 am

SUNY Oswego

SUNY Oswego professors Arvind Diddi and Murat Yasar have new standing to offer tips for successful online teaching: They recently began a year as Open SUNY Online Teaching Ambassadors. An innovative collaboration that opens the digital door to online-enabled teaching and learning opportunities across all 64 SUNY institutions, Open SUNY requires its teaching ambassadors to be “exemplary online educators, who are enthusiastic and effective in online teaching, and who can be positive and strong advocates for online teaching in our SUNY community.”

https://www.oswego.edu/news/story/open-suny-teaching-ambassadors-promote-value-online-courses

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Five ways professionals will experience 5G, and when

Filed under: Online Learning News — Ray Schroeder @ 12:05 am

James Sanders, ZDNet

As mobile network operators sprint to deploy 5G in more localities around the world, interest in and hype around the benefits of 5G is accelerating to Autobahn speeds. With the advent of a mobile network capable of effectively supplanting a wireline internet connection, this can serve to benefit people who rely exclusively on a smartphone for internet connectivity. According to a report from the Brookings Institution, 35 percent of Hispanics and 24 percent of African-Americans “have no other online connection except through their smartphones or other mobile devices,” while the same is true of only 14 percent of whites. The economic effects of this disparity can be observed in education, as the report notes that internet use for homework is lowest among Hispanic and African-American students. For families without the means to pay for wired and wireless internet access, 5G levels the field in terms of connection quality. In addition to supplemental educational resources for homework, students in distance and online education courses that rely on streaming video instruction will not require a dedicated wired connection to participate.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/five-ways-professionals-will-experience-5g-and-when/

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