July 31, 2019
Scott F. Latham, the Conversation
The problem is, at present, higher education is designed for the last industrial revolution, not the current one. Universities and colleges deliver degrees at a glacial pace. The average completion time for a bachelor degree is five years. That’s too slow. Imagine a young computer science major entering a college this fall and graduating in 2024 – at which point researchers expect AI to be capable of coding in complex computer languages like Python. By the time she graduates, not only will she be competing against humans for jobs, but she’ll also be going up against a more efficient and cheaper AI bot.
https://www.myplainview.com/news/article/What-Amazon-s-decision-to-retrain-a-third-of-its-14107770.php
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Adam McCann, Wallet Hub
To determine where the most educated Americans are putting their degrees to work, WalletHub compared the 150 largest metropolitan statistical areas, or MSAs, across 11 key metrics. Our data set ranges from share of adults aged 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher to quality of the public school system to gender education gap. Read on for our findings, expert insight from a panel of researchers and a full description of our methodology.
https://wallethub.com/edu/most-and-least-educated-cities/6656/
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Yuval Noah Harari, Forge Medium
In such a world, the last thing a teacher needs to give her pupils is more information. They already have far too much of it. Instead, people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and, above all, to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world.
https://forge.medium.com/yuval-noah-harari-21-lessons-21st-century-what-kids-need-to-learn-now-to-succeed-in-2050-1b72a3fb4bcf
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July 30, 2019
By Donna Lu, New Scientist
Artificial intelligence has passed a classic theory of mind test used with chimpanzees. The test probes the ability to perceive the world from the view of another individual and so AIs with this skill could be better at cooperating and communicating with humans and each other. AIs with theory of mind are key to building machines that can understand the world around them. In recent years, the skill has emerged in a robot whose memories are modelled on human brains and in DeepMind’s ToM-net, which understands that others can have false beliefs.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2210508-ai-passes-theory-of-mind-test-by-imagining-itself-in-anothers-shoes/
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by Matt Lynch, Tech Edvocate
Despite being labeled ‘digital natives’, most students today lack the ability to transfer the knowledge and technological skills they have to practical tasks like finding a job. This is why it is important for teachers to teach digital literacy, particularly as it applies to students’ academic and professional lives.
https://www.thetechedvocate.org/teaching-students-how-to-use-digital-literacy-to-find-a-job/
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By James McCusker, Herald Net
State legislatures in New York and New Jersey have proposed legislation that represents the first, tentative steps at regulation. While the two proposed laws are different, they both have elements of information gathering about the risks to such things as privacy, security and economic fairness. Both states owe a debt to the New York City’s efforts to understand what AI is, exactly, so it could be defined in law. The initial group established by the City Council could not agree on a definition, which may explain why some of the proposed laws aim at algorithm-based decisions rather than the broader concept of AI. This may be a good start to regulating the use of algorithms in the stock market – the city’s primary interest — but clearly leaves a lot undone.
https://www.heraldnet.com/business/governments-take-first-tentative-steps-at-regulating-ai/
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July 29, 2019
Ashley A. Smith, EdSurge
Tens of thousands of online California students are no longer at risk of losing federal financial aid after the state moved quickly to create a new system for addressing complaints from students against out-of-state colleges and universities. The California Department of Consumer Affairs responded by creating a complaint system for those students. The department already has a process for receiving complaints from students enrolled in for-profit colleges and universities. The new set-up satisfies federal requirements, said Russ Heimerich, deputy secretary of communications for the state Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency, which oversees the consumer affairs department, in an email. “This will be our permanent solution.”
https://edsource.org/2019/california-finds-solution-to-save-distance-learners-financial-aid/615662
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Ryan Drawdy and Ray Schroeder, Helix Education Blog
Quantum courses have been around for a while, but today, the theories are becoming reality. The idea has already bubbled up in technical areas such as computer science, management of information systems, physics, and computer engineering. But there are also futuristic curricula that need to take into account the advantages of quantum computing. “The computers do exist,” Ray said. “Probably in the near term, they’ll be in the cloud, and we will pay for a millisecond or a second or five seconds of use of the computer at most, so it probably won’t be sitting on your desk.” (ed note: check out the two minute animation of my explanation of quantum computing)
https://www.helixeducation.com/resources/uncategorized/quantum-computing-university-illinois-springfield/
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By Miranda Faulkner, EA Courier
The Havasupai tribe is falling behind in education, health and emergency needs because, like many rural communities, it lacks affordable, reliable and high-speed broadband, a tribal councilwoman told a House committee Thursday. Ophelia Watahomigie-Corliss was one of several witnesses who said rural areas are “in jeopardy” of being left behind without the high-speed internet access of broadband, which is used for everything from telemedicine to distance learning to up-to-the-minute market reports for farmers. “Community members can better their lives and their education through future broadband expansion,” Watahomigie-Corliss said in testimony prepared for a House Agriculture subcommittee.
https://www.eacourier.com/free-access/lack-of-broadband-puts-tribal-rural-areas-in-jeopardy/article_dd74d508-aa44-11e9-94a7-f37b39843d58.html
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N PRABHUDEV, Deccan Chronicle
It’s changing the education system, too. Technology is playing an increasingly prominent role, allowing for new approaches like inverted classrooms, Massive Open Online Courses and ‘mobile learning’. Technology will bring about a radical transformation in schools and colleges. The ‘inverted’ or ‘flipped’ classroom usually refers to a different way of thinking about teaching and learning. In a traditional pedagogical model, a faculty member is a “sage on the stage,” while this is opening up towards a more interactive, collaborative setting.
https://www.deccanchronicle.com/nation/current-affairs/200719/eternal-student-tech-brings-people-back-to-learning.html
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July 28, 2019
Jessica Hallman, Penn State
In a recent study, a team of researchers from Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology found that creating computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) environments could help students identify common characteristics and life experiences they share with peers, which can build community and increase the likelihood that students remain in the program. “The online world is missing social opportunities,” said Na Sun, doctoral student in the College of IST and lead researcher on the project. “Unlike face-to-face contact, it’s hard to reach out to others when you can’t see them. That kind of presence and sense of community is very important.”
https://news.psu.edu/story/581285/2019/07/19/research/how-do-distance-learners-connect
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Julie Wootton-Greener, Education Dive
Esports are live video game competitions, held either online or in venues with an audience where the competition is also broadcast to online channels. Popular titles include League of Legends and Fortnite, and the games are played by amateurs and professionals alike. It’s a growing industry, in which money is made from activities such as streaming, franchising and sponsorships. Global esports revenues are expected to hit $1.1 billion this year, up 27% from last year, according to market research firm Newzoo, which provides gaming and esports analytics. North America is its largest market, accounting for more than a third of all revenue.
https://www.educationdive.com/news/colleges-expand-esports-programs-to-keep-pace-with-growing-industry/558925/
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By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
California State University’s Affordable Learning Solutions (AL$) initiative has partnered with Lumen Learning to make courseware from the open educational resources provider available to faculty and students across the system. Since 2010, CSU AL$ has worked with courseware providers to assemble a broad selection of free and low-cost course materials, to make it easier for faculty to find and adopt affordable textbooks and reduce the overall cost of education for CSU students. Materials are reviewed for accessibility as well as quality and integrity of the learning content. Through the partnership, Lumen’s digital courseware is now available to CSU instructors as a low-cost textbook option for many general education courses.
https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/07/18/cal-state-adds-lumen-learning-courseware-to-menu-of-affordable-textbooks.aspx
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July 27, 2019
Alex Adamopoulos, Information Week
CIOs and IT leaders struggle to fill IT positions with staff who hold the right skills. But the answer is right under their noses: Educate existing teams. This problem was crystallized by a recent study, which surveyed 100 chief information officers across the UK and found that large majorities of them are already feeling the pinch of a skills gap in IT:
78% are concerned about whether their IT talent will require upskilling;
76% are worried about recruiting the IT staff they need to remain competitive;
69% point to upskilling as something critically or highly important to their IT teams;
https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/team-building-and-staffing/continuous-learning-the-key-to-it-skills-gap/a/d-id/1335070?
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Lisa Morgan, Information Week
Affective computing systems, including care robots and virtual assistants, can facilitate more intimate human-machine relationships. Already, systems have been designed to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression and dementia. Meanwhile, individuals are being nudged in ways that impact their consumption and political choices, whether they realize it or not. Recognizing emotion and responding appropriately to it are more difficult problems, let alone creating AI systems that actually experience emotion. Nevertheless, humans want AI to at least sense emotion now because they’re tired of screaming at interactive voice recognition (IVR) systems, chatbots and virtual assistants out of frustration.
https://www.informationweek.com/strategic-cio/why-affective-computing-systems-need-synthetic-emotion/a/d-id/1335257?
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by Natalie Nezhati, the Guardian
Leading the way for female edtech representation globally is Daphne Koller, a Stanford University professor and creator of online learning platform, Coursera. She founded Coursera in 2012 with friend and fellow educator, Andrew Ng, after delivering one of her classes online through video.“The traditional education system needs to move on,” says Melody Lang, who launched her own purpose-driven investment company in January 2019. An experienced educational researcher and adaptive learning developer, Lang is “driven by making things better”. Mental health, wellness, soft skills and lifelong learning are at the top of her agenda.
https://www.theguardian.com/careers/2019/jul/18/how-women-created-some-of-the-worlds-biggest-education-tech-companies
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July 26, 2019
by LINDSAY JONES and TED MITCHELL, Hechinger Report
Students with disabilities, and especially those with invisible disabilities that affect how they learn, often struggle because of public misperceptions and stigmas. While nearly one in five college students has some type of disability, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, the median percentage across all institutions of undergraduate students formally registered as having a disability was only 6 percent in 2017. This is a serious concern, and one that colleges and universities must address head-on. Earlier this year, our organizations, along with the American Association of University Administrators, partnered to release new resources focused on actions that college leaders and faculty can take to empower students with disabilities.
https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-higher-ed-and-learning-disabilities/
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Paul Fain, Inside Higher Ed
Amazon moves deeper into offering postsecondary credentials, following Google and other big employers, but largely bypasses traditional colleges with the expanded training options. Resistance by many colleges to adapt to the economy and evolving education and training needs may be a reason why Amazon is building its own credential infrastructure, said Jim Fong, chief research officer for the University Professional and Continuing Education Association. “The message is really more about core competencies and who can do it better, cheaper and faster and whether colleges and universities can do that anymore,” he said via email. But Fong added that the Amazon news “might be the shot in the arm that higher education may need to accelerate what may be a slow and bureaucratic process regarding content and credentials needed in the marketplace.”
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/07/17/amazon-google-and-other-tech-companies-expand-their
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Allana Akhtar, SFgate
College is more expensive than ever, leading many business leaders and experts to offer ways to get good jobs without needing a degree. Yet college graduates still earn more than non-college graduates in every state in the US, according to data from the 2017 American Consumer Survey. Here’s how much more college graduates make in every state.
https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/College-grads-still-earn-more-than-workers-with-13844245.php
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July 25, 2019
By Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
Ray Schroeder discusses the unusual mix of qualities that prepare people to succeed in the realm of faculty support. Effective leadership is a mix of knowledge, skill, inspiration, a passion of purpose and an essence of care and joy. These might seem to be a rare combination of qualities, but I have seen them come together time and again in the successful leaders and their operations at colleges and universities across the country. I write often about the changing technologies and trends, but today I want to address the special qualities of successful leadership in this field that make this field special.
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/leading-faculty-support-online-learning
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By Robert Ubell, EdSurge
As college leaders scroll through their perilous spreadsheets this summer, anxiously looking for the most productive way to spend their meager resources, this may be the time for them to rethink their usual approach—and aggressively invest in online education. After all, with national on-campus enrollments faltering, online numbers continue to speed forward.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-07-10-colleges-should-build-online-programs-not-new-gyms-and-climbing-walls
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