January 18, 2021
Sherri Spelic, EdSurge
If this year has taught me anything, it’s that teaching is not for the faint of heart. Nor is learning. With their adaptability, candor and heartfelt future orientation, my students have pulled me through this year. Their eyes are open for miracles when all we see is destruction. It’s amazing. They have their humanity and unlike us are not struggling to hold on to it. Watch them. You can’t help but notice.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-12-25-educators-hold-onto-humanity-with-both-hands-let-students-show-you-how
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January 17, 2021
Courtney Adkins and Linda L. García, EdSurge
The pandemic has amplified the inequities that already existed for many students, and it has become clear that colleges must dig deeper to understand the life barriers that affect their students. While colleges can’t solve all of the problems their students encounter, they can work to ensure that students have interpersonal foundations that are essential to their success. They can also help their students understand what they are working toward and assist them in developing a plan to get there. While developing relationships and the work of advising may look different in the virtual world, they remain essential.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-12-24-in-challenging-times-relationships-keep-students-engaged-in-college-learning
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LilyTodorinovaaZara T.Wilkinson, Journal of Academic Librarianship
This survey assessed the experiences of faculty who participated in a textbook affordability program at Rutgers University. The program provided incentive awards in exchange for replacing commercial textbooks with affordable course materials such as open educational resources (OER), self-developed course materials, course reserves, or library-licensed content. The survey collected faculty’s perceptions about the award program, experiences with OER, and interest in open textbook authoring. Responses suggest that the program is well received and that funds are adequate for adopting new course materials. However, they also indicate that even participating faculty vary greatly in their knowledge and use of OER and their interest in authoring open textbooks. Ultimately, these survey results indicate the lack of a “one size fits all” approach to incentivizing the adoption of affordable course materials, the use of OER, and the creation of new open resources.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0099133320301117
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By Dhawal Shah, EdSurge
Of all the learners that ever registered on a MOOC platform, one third did so in 2020, making 2020 MOOCs’ most consequential year since 2012, which has been dubbed “Year of the MOOC”. In 2020, the big MOOC providers got bigger, and the biggest one pulled further ahead of the rest.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-12-23-the-second-year-of-the-mooc-2020-saw-a-rush-to-large-scale-online-courses
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January 16, 2021
Victoria Masterson, World Economic Forum
Emotions can help and hinder attention, decision-making, relationships, health, and performance. So learning to manage them is vital – particularly for teachers and their students – and especially now, with the global pandemic fuelling anxiety. A third of people in the US have reported feeling stress, anxiety or sadness that was difficult to cope with since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. To help manage these feelings, a new 10-hour free online course called Managing Emotions in Times of Uncertainty & Stress is being launched by Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence.
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/12/yale-mooc-managing-emotions-uncertainty-stress/
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Tuugi Chuluun and Kevin L. Young, Brookings Institution
For example, only 37 of the companies listed on the Fortune 500 list this year have women CEOs. And only three of them are women of color. Within the public sector, several countries such as Rwanda and Argentina have instituted gender quota systems to increase the representation of women in government. As a result of these and other changes and reforms, the last couple of decades have seen some progress in increasing the number of women holding various positions of leadership globally. However, women, and especially women of color, remain dramatically underrepresented, and the coronavirus pandemic threatens progress we have made on this front because of gender inequality in the division of housework.
https://www.brookings.edu/essay/women-at-the-top-of-the-world-still-not-at-the-center-a-new-network-analysis-discovery/
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COURTNEY JOHNSON AND ALEC TYSON, Pew Research
As artificial intelligence (AI) plays a growing role in the everyday lives of people around the world, views on AI’s impact on society are mixed across 20 global publics, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey. Majorities in most Asian publics surveyed see AI as a good thing for society. A median of about half (53%) say the development of artificial intelligence, or the use of computer systems designed to imitate human behaviors, has been a good thing for society, while 33% say it has been a bad thing. Opinions are also divided on another major technological development: using robots to automate many jobs humans have done in the past. A median of 48% say job automation has been a good thing, while 42% say it’s had a negative impact on society.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/12/15/people-globally-offer-mixed-views-of-the-impact-of-artificial-intelligence-job-automation-on-society/
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January 15, 2021
LAURA ASCIONE, eCampus News
Colleges and universities across the globe have closed campuses and moved instruction online in an attempt to stop community spread of the novel coronavirus. Many students find themselves back home with family, quarantining while their campuses remain physically shut down. Others may be out of work and worrying about finances on top of attending online classes. Still others are international students who might not be able to return home. According to researchers at the University of California, Irvine, many people experience psychological distress resulting from repeated media exposure to the crisis.
https://www.ecampusnews.com/2020/12/21/6-mental-health-resources-students/
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COVID Collaborative
Remarkably, this report is written by all the former Directors of the Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education: Linda Roberts, John Bailey, Karen Cator, Richard Culatta, Tim Magner, Susan Patrick, and Joseph South; and by Katrina Stevens, former Deputy Director. Foreword by former U.S. Secretaries of Education Arne Duncan, John B. King, Rod Paige, Richard Riley and Margaret Spellings.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5f85f5a156091e113f96e4d3/t/5fbbc55458f7584e716bd479/1606141269131/OnlineLearningPaper_FINAL_11.20_reducedsize.pdf
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ERIC KOLENICH, Richmond Times-Dispatch
College students largely took their final exams at home this semester, trading in blue books for laptops, webcams and specialized proctoring software. In some instances, students answered questions while being filmed by their own computers. Other software isn’t so invasive. Certain tools can prevent a student from opening a new window and Googling the answers to the questions. Yet some professors have steered clear of the high-tech software altogether and administered open-book tests, making duplicity impossible.
https://dailyprogress.com/news/state-and-regional/with-exams-now-online-colleges-look-to-new-tools-to-prevent-cheating/article_4887c70d-222c-5796-8b1c-27428edf6b24.html
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January 14, 2021
Daphne Leprince-Ringuet, ZDNet
Although the timeline is still unclear, offices will inevitably re-open in the future – leaving many wondering what kind of a workspace they will be stepping into on the day that they get to dust off their office shoes. Analysis firm CCS Insights predicts that in 2022 more than half of all office-based employees will still work mainly remotely. Whether you are team WFH, or increasingly desperate to return to the comfort of an office desk, one thing is for certain: with half of the workforce at home, at least on a semi-permanent basis, workspaces will no longer be designed to accommodate floods of employees coming in every morning for another nine-to-five shift.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/back-to-the-office-in-2021-here-are-ten-things-that-will-have-changed/
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Daphne Leprince-Ringuet, ZDNet
The Covid-19 pandemic has only accelerated the adoption of AI systems in industry: research carried out by the World Economic Forum (WEF) this year showed that 80% of decision-makers around the world are now planning on accelerating the automation of their work processes. The technology is expected to displace roles such as data entry clerks, accountants or factory workers. Michael Wooldridge, professor of computer science at the University of Oxford, said “Certainly some jobs will be lost, and many more will be created. The difficulty is that the jobs created are not necessarily in the same place as those lost.” “It is not an AI-specific problem,” he continues. “Technology evolves at a rapid pace, and this is about technology skills generally. Re-training and up-skilling are issues that will unwind over the next decades.”
https://www.zdnet.com/article/ai-will-take-away-lots-of-jobs-and-we-are-nowhere-near-ready-to-replace-them/
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BRIA BELL, Spectrum News
A new generation of teachers is learning how to reach students online right out of the gate. Ready, Set, Teach is a program for high school students who want to become teachers. Everything is now online and that fact is giving these future teachers a leg up. Being a student in online classes during the pandemic is great practice for soon to be teachers. Cedar Hill High School students Jessica Graciano and Sydne Webb are picking up lessons from their own teachers about what works and what’s frustrating from a student and teacher’s perspective.
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/san-antonio/news/2020/12/18/virtual-tutoring-program-helps-prepare-future-teachers
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January 13, 2021
Massive workforce shifts in 2020 have forced countless workers to refresh their current skills — and build new ones. If you’re wondering what skills are critical to you moving into 2021, it depends entirely on who you are, where you work, and what you do. We’ve organized the following data by your country, industry, and job role to help you identify where skills are most at-risk of becoming obsolete. Our aim is to help workers, team managers, and business leaders focus their limited energy and investments on developing the most urgent skills.
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Tonya Drake, Statesman Journal
The pandemic catapulted online learning into the spotlight, prompting many people to question online learning’s ability to deliver quality education to postsecondary students. In recent years, many students have realized that being physically present in a classroom is no longer the only (or best) learning option for everyone. With technology, learners have access to a quality education whenever and wherever they want, as long as they have access to a computer and broadband internet. In 2021 and beyond, online learning will continue to grow and become a leading approach to delivering education.
https://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/opinion/2020/12/19/guest-opinion-online-education-improve-2021/3947676001/
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Adam Stone, EdTech
Digital tools help make this possible. “Throughout this pandemic, resources such as Google and Zoom have evolved with features such as breakout rooms and hangouts,” Hirsch says. “Students can still come together to communicate and collaborate around learning. They can problem-solve, debate and discuss multiple learning topics. They can continue to create and then share their ideas.” Now that districts have seen that remote learning is practical, some say it’s unlikely that they will ever return to weather-related shutdowns. “It would be a huge mistake if we tried to just go back to what we were doing before,” Jessica Tang, president of the Boston Teachers Union in Massachusetts, tells The New York Times.
https://edtechmagazine.com/k12/article/2020/12/how-virtual-education-supports-seamless-learning-opportunities-perfcon
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January 12, 2021
Business Insider
In 2020, a record number of people turned to online learning as a source of hope, growth, and resilience amid economic uncertainty, and campus and workplace disruptions. The list of the ten most popular courses in healthcare domain in India was topped by Introduction to Psychology (Yale University), Social Psychology (Wesleyan University), COVID-19 Contact Tracing (Johns Hopkins University), Mind Control: Managing Your Mental Health During COVID-19 (University of Toronto) and A Life of Happiness and Fulfilment (Indian School of Business).
https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/online-courses-on-mental-and-physical-health-were-the-most-popular-in-2020/articleshow/79794139.cms
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Science News
“We want to be sure that the quantum computer we are developing can help solve relevant problems early on. Therefore, we work in close collaboration with industrial companies,” says theoretical physicist Giulia Ferrini, one of the leaders of Chalmers University of Technology’s quantum computer project, which began in 2018. Together with Göran Johansson, Giulia Ferrini led the theoretical work when a team of researchers at Chalmers, including an industrial doctoral student from the aviation logistics company Jeppesen, recently showed that a quantum computer can solve an instance of a real problem in the aviation industry.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/12/201217090404.htm
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Rebecca Turner, Australian Broadcasting
About 40 per cent of students are aged 25 and over, and the majority of these are women, according to conjoint associate professor Cathy Stone of the University of Newcastle. Dr Stone, an online education expert, said one-third of students were studying part-time and about one-quarter of undergraduate students did their degrees online. Women among those benefitting the most. Of these online students, the average bachelor degree student is a woman aged over 25 and juggling part-time study with work and family responsibilities.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-12-18/online-learning-helps-students-on-fringes-despite-digital-divide/12971838
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January 11, 2021
Sara Morrison and Rebecca Heilweil, Vox
As the fall semester began at the University of Nevada, Reno, psychology professor Mark Lescroart faced an increasingly common dilemma for teachers: How to prevent his newly remote students from cheating on the quizzes and exams he’d designed to be taken in class with supervision. “I have been uncomfortable with the idea that cheating is pretty easy when you’re online,” Lescroart told Recode in October. But Lescroart didn’t like the prospect of third-party software recording and analyzing his students in their homes. Ultimately, he decided that violating their privacy was worse than leaving a potential cheater uncaught.
https://www.vox.com/recode/22175021/school-cheating-student-privacy-remote-learning
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Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate
For some odd reason, most educators and learning developers don’t like engaging learners in discussions. As a result, most classes and learning products lack options that allow learners space to interact with other learners or even with the teacher. We are always learning, absorbing knowledge and skills from pretty much anything! Along with other kinds of social interaction between teachers and learners, a discussion is a necessary component of learning according to learning theories. It gives learners the chance to engage in active cognitive processing. It also demands that they participate in constructing their meaning and, it forces them to contextualize that meaning among a social group.
https://www.thetechedvocate.org/leveraging-the-power-of-discussion-in-online-learning/
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