Online Learning Update

by Teach Online Canada

The tool collects student feedback data and uses it to adjust the grades for the group assignments using the logical structure of team-based learning (TBL). In the peer evaluation assignment students assess their group members on teamwork dimensions that are pre-identified by the instructor for example, “preparation”, “contribution” and “collaboration.” Students evaluate each of their teammates on a Likert scale and provide written comments that surface practices which are perceived to help or hinder team performance. The final grades for group assignments are automatically adjusted by the feedback from the group members received through the peer evaluation assignment(s) using the team based learning logic. After screening by the instructor, each student receives an anonymized summary of qualitative comments from group members and the instructor receives a compiled report for the whole class. Finally, to close the loop, students write a short, graded reflection on what they have learned from the process of giving and receiving feedback.

https://teachonline.ca/pockets-innovation/peer-evaluation-learning-and-assessment-strategy-school-business-simon-fraser-university-british

By Amy Ahearn, EdSurge

Most of our energy has been focused on designing physical learning spaces, even as more teaching and learning shifts online. Unfortunately, most massive open online course (MOOC) platforms still feel like drafty lecture halls instead of intimate seminar rooms. The majority of online learning environments are no more than video-hosting platforms with quizzes and a discussion forum. These default features force online instructors to use a style of teaching that feels more like shouting to the masses than engaging in meaningful conversations. This presents a challenge and an opportunity: How can we design online learning environments that achieve scale and intimacy? How do we make digital platforms feel as inviting as well-designed physical classrooms?

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-07-09-can-we-design-online-learning-platforms-that-feel-more-intimate-than-massive

By Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed

Berklee College of Music’s online program, priced at just over a third of tuition for the Massachusetts institution’s face-to-face degree offerings, raised eyebrows when it got off the ground in 2013. Conventional wisdom that online programs require more resources to produce had taken hold, and pricing models that favor online students were few and far between. Five years later, Berklee remains an anomaly in higher ed, as most institutions continue to charge the same or more for online programs as for their face-to-face equivalents. Some arguments hinge on a philosophical belief that online education should be valued equivalently to face-to-face programs, while others emphasize the significant financial burden of designing and launching online courses from scratch.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2018/07/11/berklee-college-music-defies-conventional-wisdom-low-price

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

What do you think of the online program management (OPM) industry? If you are like many higher ed people that I speak with, your answer may not be all that positive. Higher ed people simply don’t like the idea of long contract lock-ins (usually between five and 10 years) and revenue share arrangements that send half to three-quarters of tuition dollars to for-profit companies. Is it possible to be a critical and clear-eyed observer of the OPM industry and still believe that an OPM partnership should be on the table as institutions consider new online programs? I think the answer is yes, as I’ve come to believe that (a) the OPM industry is more complicated and nuanced than we often think, and (b) we need to think about OPM partnerships in a different way.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/technology-and-learning/5-misconceptions-about-online-program-management

BY KEITH RAJECKI, eCampus News

Many universities have been relatively slow to embrace the cloud for a few simple reasons. First, because it’s not always cheap or easy to overhaul IT systems. And second, because cloud represents a fundamental technological change and perceived challenges that many organizations do not feel they have the expertise, bandwidth, or resources to address.

Fortunately, there are ways around these challenges, and it starts by remembering that cloud computing is part of a journey to a modern campus—not the ultimate destination. What’s needed is a strategic approach that combines on-premise services with advanced cloud solutions.

5 things every college must know about cloud computing

byBeth Dumbauld, Straighter Line

StraighterLine, the student success and college readiness company, and the New Hampshire-based New England College have partnered to offer students an accelerated associate degree pathway program. New England College will use more than 20 of StraighterLine’s online general education credits for this new program, helping create an affordable and flexible option for students that costs less than $10,000. Offered 100% online, this accelerated program is offered thought the college’s School of Graduate and Professional Studies and provides students an opportunity to earn an Associate of Arts in Professional Studies in as little as 15 months. Interested students will start by successfully completing a free credit-bearing course. Once enrolled, remaining tuition is $9,900 for the entire 60-credit program and financial aid is available. Classes start August 20, 2018.

https://www.straighterline.com/press/straighterline-launches-new-partnership-new-england-college-offer-new-englands-affordable-associate-degree/

by Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive
The merger between Capella University’s parent company, Capella Education Company, and Strayer Education Inc., the parent company of Strayer University, has been approved by the Higher Learning Commission and is expected to close on or before Aug. 1. The resulting company will be named Strategic Education Inc., according to a July 9 Security Exchange Commission filing.  The $1.9 billion deal will create one of the largest for-profit companies in the country, serving roughly 80,000 students between them. The two institutions will continue to operate as “independent and separately accredited institutions.”  Strayer shareholders will own 52% of the combined stock and Capella shareholders will own 48%.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/accreditor-clears-path-for-19-billion-strayer-capella-merger/527421/

By Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

Faculty members often fear administrative efforts to “optimize” academic operations. That’s because some such efforts result in the elimination or shrinkage of programs deemed to be unsuccessful by key metrics, but worthwhile in harder-to-measure ones: the program with low numbers of majors but that delivers a large share of general education credits, for example, or that rounds out the liberal arts curriculum. Sometimes, though, optimization efforts can actually help academic departments. Case in point: Stephen F. Austin State University, which used the services of Ad Astra Information Systems to close holes in its scheduling system — and then used newfound funds from expected higher course enrollments to approve 19 additional full-time, non-tenure-track faculty lines.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/07/10/stephen-f-austin-optimizes-course-schedule-add-faculty-lines-paid-themselves

by Marjorie Valbrun, Inside Higher Ed

Among the key findings of the report:

• Of the 44 percent of students who worked while enrolled in their first year of postsecondary education, 18 percent worked 35 hours or more per week, 14 percent worked between 21 and 34 hours per week, and 11 percent worked fewer than 21 hours per week.
• Twenty percent of beginning students who worked 20 hours or fewer while enrolled in 2011-12 had attained an associate degree by 2014, compared with 10 percent of students who did not work while enrolled in their first year and 9 percent of students who worked full-time during their first year.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2018/07/10/study-shows-how-working-community-college-students-fared

By Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed
Temple reveals that scandal over false information submitted for rankings of its online M.B.A. was much broader than earlier known. Dean, found to have dismantled system for checking accuracy of data, is ousted. Temple University on Monday announced that its business school had submitted false data for years for rankings purposes. The university said that it had asked Moshe Porat, dean of the business school, to resign, saying that he had dismantled the business school’s system for verifying the accuracy of data being submitted for rankings. An outside review found that the employee responsible for preparing the data said he did so at the dean’s direction, although Porat denied this to the outside investigator.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/07/10/temple-ousts-business-dean-after-report-finds-online-mba-program-years-submitted

by James Paterson, Education Dive
College that “never ends” may be the future, according to a Washington Post story describing a new University of Michigan program that offers scholarships for students to come back and take courses throughout their lives. It also describes a trend toward other online learning initiatives designed to re-educate or update workers. The program at Michigan’s Ross School of Business offers 42 courses in leadership, marketing, human resources and finance that would normally cost about $10,000 a week. Ross charges the students an up-front subscription fee to access the courses, which officials say are intended to be flexible and change with needs in the workforce and economy. In 2015-16, 40 students signed up for the program, and last year 200 of the university’s 580,000 alumni did.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/a-college-program-that-never-ends/526969/

By Deirdre Fernandes, Boston Globe
The Kakuma Refugee Camp, 80 miles from anywhere in northwest Kenya, is a world apart, a holding center for thousands dispossessed by war and conflict. Opportunity knocks rarely here, but a once-obscure New Hampshire university has made it the idealistic focus of its global plans. Under a thatched-roof shed at the edge of northwest Kenya, Achayo Loum logs on to her laptop to tackle the day’s assignment: writing a college essay on counterfeiting in the fashion industry. She is one of the first participants in a program at Kakuma that will, when she completes it, make her a graduate of a school she really only knows from website photos: Southern New Hampshire University. Loum’s world has an unlikely visitor.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/07/07/education-hope/o7JpxrSdkyxzhQH4YpTYdI/story.html

by Guide to Online Schools
These 55 colleges represent the most disability-friendly online schools for providing the highest level of support, the widest breadth of accommodations, and the most comprehensive resources for students with disabilities. All schools on this list received a Disability-Friendly score greater than 55, receiving high marks in most, if not all, of the following categories: thoroughness of resources, Universal Design for Learning training, availability of distance learning accommodations, and variety of services provided.

https://www.guidetoonlineschools.com/online-schools/students-with-disabilities

by Herald Republican

One of the features that originally drew Mike Thompson to Trine University’s Lou Holtz Master of Science in Leadership program was the flexibility of online classes. That flexibility became very important to Thompson when, halfway through the program, he was called to active duty by the U.S. Army and deployed to Kuwait. A member of the Army and Indiana National Guard for 26 years altogether, Thompson, who holds the rank of staff sergeant, has been able to continue working on his MSL while deployed, completing two classes from Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.

http://www.kpcnews.com/heraldrepublican/article_e695d617-724d-53a3-8edb-cd7a337332a3.html

by Carmen Reinicke, CNBC

“New-collar jobs,” positions that require skills but not a bachelor’s degree, are in demand right now, according to ZipRecruiter. When Josh Hannaford saw that IBM used the phrase “no degree, no problem,” advertising for its apprenticeship program, he cried. Then, he applied. “It just blew me away that a company like IBM was recognizing that there was a whole untapped workforce out there and they were going to give us a chance,” said the 21-year-old Hannaford. So-called new-collar jobs, positions that require specific skills but not a bachelor’s degree, are in high demand, according to ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace. The skills gap, in which jobs stay vacant for lack of qualified applicants, has given opportunities to people like Hannaford who take the initiative to train for hotly desired skills.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/want-to-increase-your-salary-learn-these-key-skills.html

by Luke Dormehl, Digital Trends

The reason for this is the unimaginable pace at which we currently produce data. Each day, around 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is created, courtesy of the 3.7 billion humans who now use the internet. In the last two years alone, a mind-boggling 90 percent of the world’s data has been created. That’s where Park and fellow MIT scientist and co-founder Nathaniel Roquet enter the picture. Their startup Catalog has developed technology they believe could transform data storage as we know it; allowing, or so they claim, the entirety of the world’s data to be comfortably fit into a space the size of a coat closet. Catalog’s solution? By encoding data into DNA. That might sound like the plot of a Michael Crichton novel, but their scalable and affordable solution is serious, and has so far received $9 million in venture funding — along with the support of leading professors from Stanford and Harvard Universities.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/dna-data-catalog-startup/

by Leigh Guidry, Lafayette Daily Advertiser

About two-thirds of prisoners go back to jail within three years of being released, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. But an online learning platform at 15 correctional facilities are helping Louisiana inmates create a new future for themselves.  The state tested Lantern, an educational program for the incarcerated created through a partnership with Ashland University in Ohio, first in the Louisiana Transition Center for Women in Madison Parish.  Kim Barnette, retired state director of correction education in Louisiana, said it was a success in that not only were the women educated, but it also reduced their discipline issues inside the institution. Not only are inmates 43 percent less likely to go back behind bars but they also are more likely to get a job, according to the research.

https://www.theadvertiser.com/story/news/local/education/2018/07/06/online-learning-helping-louisiana-inmates-stay-out-prison/742154002/

By: Amy Ballard, Faculty Focus

Establishing a healthy learning environment is key to teaching. But opportunities for making personal connections and relationships with students are greatly reduced in online classes. Thus, online instructors need to make a special effort to foster relationships in their online courses.

https://www.facultyfocus.com/resources/online-learning/teaching-strategies-and-techniques-online-learning/ways-to-improve-relationships-in-online-classes/

by IBL News

edX is building a transferrable student records tool, which will be ready in the next “Ironwood” version of the Open edX platform, scheduled for the first quarter of 2019. Bill De Rusha, an edX engineer, shared some insights about this development on a talk from the 2018 Open edX conference in Montreal. The first implementation of transferrable student records will be available on edx.org in the coming weeks. This software is a need today for learners who want to apply their MicroMasters credentials as transfer credits and share their edX records with partner institutions.

EdX Engineers Are Building a Transferrable Student Records Tool

by Vivek Ranjan in Education, Sci-Tech

So, what should be the promise for the next generation’ education? Who will be the stakeholders? What would be the mechanism? No single system or mechanism is going to solve everything. There have to be many interdependent elements aiding each other which would create a robust education ecosystem. But one element which can improve the quality of education is more encouragement to MOOCs, or Massive Open Online Courses. These are courses delivered online with some set mechanisms like deadlines for taking assignments and quizzes.

https://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2018/07/new-generation-education-learning-the-mooc-way/

by Futurelearn
Explore how code breakers and spies influenced cryptography and explore the role it plays in modern secure communication.Is it possible to prove the security of encrypted data? Will every algorithm fail given sufficient time or computing power? On this course you will get an introduction to cryptography and cryptanalysis. From ancient examples of secret messages and the spies that cracked them to modern cryptographic applications, you will have the opportunity to explore the foundations of data security. During the course you will also get an opportunity to try encrypting data yourself by completing a cryptography and cryptanalysis challenge.

https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/cryptography