Online Learning Update

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
It has been just about 12 months since the University System of Maryland (USM) announced a partnership with edX to deliver four MicroMasters programs: non-credit master’s level courses intended to accelerate the process of earning an advanced degree. The idea was to support an “inverted admissions process.” Students could try out the master’s-level coursework before making the commitment to a full-on master’s degree program. Even in those earliest days, the system made no promises about the possible results they were expecting. A headline for a news release at the time used the word, “may,” as in, “may accelerate [the] path to advanced degrees and save students thousands of dollars.” As with much about MOOCs, nobody knew whether the “mini-master” concept would gain traction among students, let alone become a “gateway” to advanced degrees.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/02/27/moocs-and-the-masters-degree.aspx

By Wade Tyler Millward, EdSurge

Almost 30 percent of industry-recognized credentials American students recently earned relate to careers in architecture and construction. Yet just 8 percent of them are in demand by employers. And only .1 percent of students earned a particular credential that could lead to a nearly $82,000 information technology job. These are just some of the findings teased Monday at a SXSW EDU panel on industry-recognized credentials developed or adopted by businesses to verify students have the technical skills needed for certain jobs.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-03-08-report-the-credentials-people-get-are-not-always-the-ones-companies-want

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
Ninety-seven percent of faculty members who took our 2018 Teaching with Technology Survey reported a positive outlook on the future of technology in education. The survey asked higher education faculty at colleges and universities across the country about tech’s role in education, what technologies will become important in the future, what will fizzle out and more. While faculty see a bright future for ed tech in general, they also acknowledged that certain technologies might be nearing their expiration date. When asked to predict which technologies would be dead and gone in the next decade, the No. 1 response was desktop computers, followed by non-interactive projects and displays, document cameras/overhead projectors, printed textbooks and clickers.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/03/06/future-of-ed-tech-is-bright-according-to-faculty-survey.aspx

By Scott Rappaport
UC Santa Cruz has launched a new online course open to the public through the Coursera platform. Titled “Feminism and Social Justice” it is an adaptation of a popular course taught on campus for nearly a decade by Distinguished Professor of Feminist Studies Bettina Aptheker. The condensed, four-lecture course critically examines three significant post World War II movements for social justice in the United States from feminist perspectives–considering how participants in these movements thought about race, gender, and class; how they organized; and what progressive changes may have resulted from their efforts.

https://news.ucsc.edu/2019/03/aptheker-online-course.html

By Henry Kronk, eLearning Inside

There’s an issue with online higher education that has yet to be resolved. For learners to apply for federal student loans, and for institutions to receive these Title IV funds, online or distance programs must demonstrate “regular and substantive interaction” (RSI) between students and instructors. There’s just one issue in following this guideline. No policymaker has ever clearly defined RSI. Three groups—The University Professional and Continuing Education Association, the Online Learning Consortium, and the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies—have teamed up to offer a series of policy recommendations, including guidelines for RSI.

https://news.elearninginside.com/what-is-regular-and-substantive-interaction-the-term-that-has-defined-online-learning-still-lacks-clear-definition/

Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

In our field, we have a wide array of risks — technological infrastructure within and outside the university, including bandwidth, physical interruptions due to hurricane, tornado, earthquake or related natural disasters; policy and regulatory at the state and federal levels; accessibility shortcomings; global malware challenges; online, in-class verbal sexist, gender-preference, racist and analogous abuse; academic integrity issues; competitive risks in meeting game-changing new models of degree and certificate offerings; and maintaining our reputation as leaders in the field. These are the things we think about when we wake up in the middle of the night. These are the what-if challenges that are always in the back of our minds.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/identifying-and-mitigating-most-important-risks-online

Hunt Lambert, The EvoLLLution
Sticking to the status quo will end in disaster for most postsecondary institutions. To stay relevant, institutions have to rethink all aspects of the higher Fast-changing labor demands, evolving learner expectations and transformed market realities are forcing college and university leaders to rethink the traditional postsecondary model and find ways to serve the growing numbers of lifelong learners. This idea has been broadly articulated as the 60-Year Curriculum (60YC), and executing on this vision demands a fundamental change in how higher education institutions must operate to serve students. In this interview, Hunt Lambert expands on the 60YC vision and shares his insights into how the organizational models of postsecondary institutions need to evolve to adapt to this approach.

https://evolllution.com/revenue-streams/market_opportunities/redefining-norms-critical-to-sustained-relevance-in-the-changing-postsecondary-environment/

BY BILL BERGMAN, eCampus News
Even though I never saw the 50 college students I taught in back-to-back sessions last summer, I feel especially close to them. Our digital relationships were just as powerful as the relationships I have with face-to-face students.  Online conversations helped students take learning to the next level. Students were required to post daily comments on a private group Facebook page, and ask questions via email or text. Once I started responding to their posts, I began to feel a stronger connection to the students than I do in a traditional classroom.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/03/07/taught-online-courses-formed-stronger-relationships-with-students/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
A survey of chief academic officers at public colleges and universities found that while most online courses are taught by full-time faculty, their preparation for and oversight in doing so is highly inconsistent. The survey was undertaken by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) working in tandem with Learning House, a Wiley division that provides online program management services. Researchers received responses from 95 CAOs, representing a quarter of AASCU’s membership. According to the results, two-thirds of courses are currently being taught by full-time faculty, and almost all of those instructors (98 percent) are “expected” to teach online as part of their regular workload.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/03/07/faculty-training-support-for-online-teaching-needs-improvement.aspx

Hallie Busta, Education Dive
Four years, a leafy campus, full-time attendees. What it has long meant to attend college in the U.S. is being turned on its head as institutions find new ways to cater to students’ unique postsecondary education needs. Today about one-quarter of full-time students also work full-time, and a similar share are parents. And for the majority of education consumers — about six in 10 — getting a good job is the main reason they enroll in college, said Ben Wildavsky, senior vice president of national engagement at the Strada Education Network, during a panel on the topic at SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas, this week.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/sxsw-edu-2019-what-it-means-to-treat-students-as-consumers-of-higher-ed/549970/

By Jeanne Batalova and Michael Fix, Migration Policy
As the U.S. workforce ages, baby boomers retire, and birth rates decline, the United States is facing an estimated shortfall of 8 million workers between now and 2027. At the same time, the U.S. economy is becoming ever more knowledge-based. Having a marketable postsecondary credential, whether an academic degree or a professional certification or license, has become more of a necessity to secure a job that pays a family-sustaining wage. Amid these economic changes, immigrant-origin adults—that is, immigrants and their U.S.-born children—are projected to be the primary source of future labor-force growth. Yet about 30 million of the 58 million immigrant-origin adults in the country as of 2017 did not have a postsecondary credential, representing 30 percent of all U.S. adults without one. These immigrants and their children are thus an important target group for efforts by governments, educational institutions, civil society, and employers to boost the credential attainment of U.S. workers.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/credentials-immigrant-origin-adults-united-states

By Angela Chen, the Verge
Google’s Arts & Culture division, the team behind the viral art-matching selfie trend from last year, has partnered with museums from around the world to create a collection of videos and images dedicated to honoring science and human discovery. The Once Upon a Try project is available both online and within the Google Arts & Culture app on Android and iOS. Built in collaboration with groups such as NASA, CERN, and the Smithsonian, it features over 200,000 artifacts from around the world.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/6/18253133/google-arts-culture-once-upon-a-try-science-discovery-museum-nasa-cern-exhibit

Sean Gallagher, Evolllution

The world of credentialing is changing fast. Employer needs have evolved in concert with improving hiring support technologies. Higher education institutions are now in a difficult position, responding to changing employer and student demands for credentials that signal job readiness. In Educational Credentials Come of Age, Sean Gallagher shares the results of a comprehensive study on the progress and growth of non-degree credentials when it comes to supporting employability. In this interview, he expands on some of those findings.

https://evolllution.com/programming/credentials/the-growing-profile-of-non-degree-credentials-diving-deeper-into-education-credentials-come-of-age/

Ben Unglesbee, Education Dive
Speakers at this year’s meeting of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), in January, often struck an existential note about their role in the higher ed regulatory “triad”: federal and state governments and nonprofit accreditors together tasked with safeguarding educational quality and more than $120 billion in federal student aid spending. “It’s a dangerous time,” said James Gaudino, president of Central Washington University and a CHEA director, at the event. “Imagine what’s going to happen if we don’t change,” he added, invoking the possibility accreditors could be pushed “out of existence” by for-profit organizations or “quasi-government” entities.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/whats-at-stake-in-a-possible-accreditation-overhaul/549946/

by Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed

John Brown University is one of six of that consortium members overseen by the Council of Christian Colleges & Universities, that are also participating in a larger online course-sharing consortium organized by the Council of Independent Colleges. More than 50 colleges are in the process of joining, and 250 others have expressed interest, according to Richard Ekman, president of CIC. Both agreements are made possible by College Consortium, a tech company that offers institutions an online course-sharing platform and services like transferring academic credit and disbursing revenue. As competition for enrollment grows steeper and news of closures, mergers and acquisitions ramps up, institutions that lack public funding or nationwide name recognition are striving for efficiency. The arrangements are designed to help institutions pool resources and serve students a wider range of academic options.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/03/06/online-course-sharing-grows-more-complex-support-college

By Cynthia Clay, TD

Training participants often log into our virtual classrooms ready to passively observe a monologue. It’s up to us to create the kind of learning environment that shifts them from passive to active learners. As you prepare to deliver an online training experience, think about the human needs of your participants: the need to be included, the need to feel safe, the need to be right, the need to be competent, and the need to be appreciated. More importantly, think about what a skilled virtual facilitator should do to meet those needs. Let’s take a closer look at each need.

https://www.td.org/insights/meeting-human-needs-in-the-virtual-classroom

By Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
A South African university research center issued a report this week that assesses how different universities are working with outside companies to deliver their online academic programs. The report was produced by the Center for Innovation in Learning and Teaching at the University of Cape Town. It looks at common funding models, the nature of the arrangements and institutional use cases.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/insights/2019/03/06/advice-using-private-companies-online-education

the complete report:

https://open.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11427/29813/Czerniewicz_Walji2019.pdf

Gaby Del Valle, Vox

Textbook publishers, for their part, have begun acknowledging that textbooks and other course materials have become so expensive that some students simply can’t afford them, even if it means their grades will suffer as a result. Publishers claim that new technologies, like digital textbooks and Netflix-style subscription services, make textbooks more affordable for all. But affordability advocates say that if anyone is to blame for the fact that textbook costs have risen more than 1,000 percent since the 1970s, it’s the publishers — and, advocates claim, these new technologies are publishers’ attempt to maintain their stranglehold on the industry while disguising it as reform.
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/3/6/18252322/college-textbooks-cost-expensive-pearson-cengage-mcgraw-hill

BY DARIA KIRPACH, BizEd AACSB
Because so many of their students struggle with the cost of course materials, more professors are opting to use free open educational resources (OER) in their courses, rather than expensive traditional textbooks. But other faculty worry that the quality of OER might not equal that of traditional textbooks, according to a report conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

https://bized.aacsb.edu/articles/2019/march/what-do-faculty-think-of-open-educational-resources

By Hallie Busta, Education Dive

Mike Silagadze, CEO and co-founder of Top Hat, a digital learning company that offers OER, acknowledges those issues. The solution, he said, is creating a peer-led community around producing OER content. “Until that happens, OER is going to continue not being up to par with what the textbook publishers are providing,” he said. Last spring, the company hired a chief product officer to help it find new revenue opportunities. The company has reached more than 2.8 million students at North American institutions.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/sxsw-edu-taking-oer-to-the-next-level/549850/

by AARON GETTINGER, Hechinger report

Colleges and universities prefer to recruit at high schools in communities where the average family income is above $100,000, while forgoing visits to those where it’s $70,000 or lower, according to a study of 140 institutions conducted by researchers at UCLA and the University of Arizona. They also concentrate disproportionately on private schools. Rural areas usually have neither wealthy families nor private schools. This anemic outreach is among the reasons comparatively low numbers of high school graduates from rural high schools end up in college the following fall — 59 percent, compared to 62 percent of urban and 67 percent of suburban high school grads, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which tracks this.

https://hechingerreport.org/a-big-reason-rural-students-never-go-to-college-colleges-dont-recruit-them/