Online Learning Update

by Jim Fong, UPCEA / Christine Chmura & Patrick Clapp, Chmura

This report illustrates a number of major occupational shifts in technology, healthcare, and other industries, and their impact on higher education. While new occupational categories are certain to arise, and existing ones may change, UPCEA and Chmura hope to shed greater light on this complex topic. The U.S. is at a unique period in time. An aging Baby Boomer population, the unique dynamics related to maturing Millennial and Generation Z learners, technological advances, and shifting labor needs are rapidly changing the economic and occupational landscape. Taking these factors into consideration, and coupling them with the country’s deeply-rooted four-year degree model, will challenge many institutions to adopt or consider new or alternative educational models.

UPCEA/Chmura Study: Occupational Shifts and Higher Education Credentials

By Dian Schaffhauser, THE Journal

Two undergraduate computer science students at the University of California, Berkeley have undertaken a job Twitter has been struggling with: figuring out when incendiary tweets have come from a bot instead of a real person. Ash Bhat and Rohan Phadte recently released Botcheck.me, a Google Chrome browser extension that places a button onto every Twitter profile and tweet. By clicking the Botcheck.me button, a user can tell whether the account is likely run by a person or an automated program. As the duo explained in a report published in Medium, they undertook the work specifically to address political propaganda bots, which are intended to weaken and subvert American political discourse.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2017/11/15/browser-extension-helps-identify-fake-news-accounts-on-twitter.aspx

By Xu Xinchen, Women of China

Chinese students’ eagerness for higher quality education is well documented but, in recent years, many are turning to the Internet for their learning needs. In 2013, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the web, which gained access to the Chinese market, and online learning suddenly took off. According to the China Industrial Information Network, over 100 million people took online classes last year – more than doubling that of 2010. The number of people taking online classes is expected to continue to grow at an annual average of 15 percent.

http://www.womenofchina.cn/womenofchina/html1/features/education/1711/3563-1.htm

By Helen O’Sullivan, Econo Times
Take a moment to think back to the first classroom you ever entered, whether it was at school, or nursery, chances are there was a blackboard, with coloured chalk where you focused most of your attention. You were probably working from a booklet or on paper using pencil and crayons and drawing pictures by hand. Now fast forward to the classroom of 2017 and everything has changed. Gone are the chalks and the crayons – which have been replaced by screens, social networks, cloud computing and augmented reality. Technology has changed the way classrooms work, not just at school, but right throughout the education system. So from nursery to university, students these days engage with online learning from day one. And yet, despite this increased growth in technological advances, higher education institutions are operating in an increasingly competitive and unstable market.

https://www.econotimes.com/Online-learning-can-prepare-students-for-a-fast-changing-future–wherever-they-are-1015869

By Ashley A. Smith, Inside Higher Ed

California community colleges look to create a new statewide​, online-only college that will focus on helping adult students earn credentials. More than two million Californians have attended college but don’t have a degree, which is a problem the state’s two-year system is trying to help solve with a new statewide, online-only college. Today the system will submit three options for the college to its Board of Governors. “What we’re trying to do is provide access to a population we’re not serving,” said Jose Fierro, president of Cerritos College and co-chair of the group that developed the three online options. “We’re trying to look to the future to provide as many options for upward mobility given the changes in the economy and population in the state.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/11/13/california-mulls-three-options-new-online-community-college

By Pat Donachie, Education Dive

Corporate learning is increasingly moving towards an educational experience marked by competency or skills development, and higher ed institutions must be cognizant of the changes, or they risk falling behind market and technological trends and pressure, according to Sean Gallagher, the founder and executive director of Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy. Gallagher writes in EdSurge that employers have gradually spent less on employee training and development in recent years, despite industries bemoaning the lack of experienced job applicants. Gallagher suggests this is due to more options in terms of MOOCs and online resources like Coursera, which have specialized in targeting corporate skills development in many of its offerings. Corporate experts see this move towards “microlearning” leading to increased use of “learning experience platforms,” which would allow its users to select educational content pertaining to their education or job, with Gallagher likening it to the way someone can select a movie to TV show on Netflix or Amazon.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-the-corporate-worlds-microlearning-approach-can-shake-up-the-indust/510820/

By Patti Zarling and Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive

A new higher education advocacy group — Higher Learning Advocates — has emerged to specifically focus on nontraditional students and federal education policies addressing them.  Among some of the concerns cited by the group at its first public event is tuition affordability for older students that don’t qualify for scholarship, but are working full-time and raising families — recommending federal financial aid standards to address that.  With federal statistics showing 75% of U.S. college students did not begin their higher education directly out of high school and nearly half of them are over 25, with the number expected to grow, nontraditional student advocates argue institutions ought to reconsider their business models to be more flexible.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/nontraditional-students-gaining-steam-in-higher-ed-discussions/510865/

by Jordan Powell, Yale Herald
I, too, arrived on campus, wondering what it would be like to sit in a classroom with Claudia Rankine, or daydream in the back of Akhil Amar’s lecture after months of hearing my father gush over his favorite legal scholar. And I was bemoaning the fact that I’d have to wait until the spring to take “Death” with Shelly Kagan when my friend told me over a plate of Yale Mac ‘n Cheese that Kagan’s lectures had been available online for the past 10 years. Indeed this is true: lectures by the university’s most notable faculty from Jonathan Holloway to David Blight can be found online, accompanied by required course materials such as readings, exams, and homework on a platform known as Open Yale Courses (OYC), started by program director and Dunham Professor in the History of Art Diana E.E. Kleiner in 2001. The goal of the program is to expand the accessibility of a Yale education to the general public through an online platform.

https://yaleherald.com/a-seat-at-the-coursetable-4e362b6dd6d7

by Michael McRobbie, Indianapolis Business Journal

When we created our IU Online education initiative over five years ago, we intended to add a highly convenient option for our current students to help them graduate on time and also reach new students who might not otherwise have considered a college education. In other words, our goal was to deliver an authentic—and authentically IU—higher education experience. The results of this effort have been quite outstanding. This fall at IU, we have seen a record 5,066 students enrolled in more than 115 online degrees and over 2,000 online courses offered by IU, a 4 percent increase over last year’s record. A remarkable 29,000 students—nearly a third of our total enrollment—are enrolled in at least one online course, a figure that has surged dramatically in the past four years, and those courses are accounting for more than one-tenth of all credit hours across the university and matching revenue.

https://www.ibj.com/articles/66315-mcrobbie-delivering-value-beyond-school-walls

by Helen O’Sullivan, the Conversation

Technology has changed the way classrooms work, not just at school, but right throughout the education system. So from nursery to university, students these days engage with online learning from day one. And yet, despite this increased growth in technological advances, higher education institutions are operating in an increasingly competitive and unstable market. It is clear then that online programmes can and should be viewed as an innovative platform through which access to higher education can continue. This is important because online learning breaks down barriers that are otherwise difficult to overcome and helps to share knowledge across the globe.  But, for this to happen, higher education institutions must continue to adapt, and develop new ways to deliver programmes and courses.

http://theconversation.com/online-learning-can-prepare-students-for-a-fast-changing-future-wherever-they-are-80497

by David Hutchins, EdTech

Personalized learning, which tailors educational content to the unique needs of individual students, has become a huge component of K–12 education. A growing number of college educators are embracing the trend, taking advantage of data analytics and artificial intelligence to deliver just-right, just-in-time learning to their students. Data-driven insights are becoming integral to business and financial decision-making by institutional leaders, and educators are quickly finding ways to leverage analytics to increase student retention. Applying data analytics to adaptive learning programs is proving to be another smart application. In adaptive learning, educators collect data on various aspects of student performance — from engagement with course content to exam performance — and tailor material to each student’s knowledge level and ideal learning style.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2017/11/ai-boosts-personalized-learning-higher-education

By Tina Nazerian, EdSurge

There’s a correlation between burnout and health-care costs, Stout said. But burnout also leads to low employee morale, a reduced likelihood that an instructor will stick with an institution and a lesser likelihood that an instructor will be engaged. Disengaged instructors are less likely to care about their students. And what’s more, a burnout might result in an instructor objectifying students. “That person is no longer a person, it’s just a name on a screen,” Stout said. Stout told the audience about the Maslach Burnout Inventory test, which quantifies burnout into three subscales: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and (reduced) personal achievement. It’s the most-commonly used instrument to measure burnout, she said, and there’s even one that’s tailored to measure burnout among educators.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2017-11-16-how-online-instructors-can-avoid-burnout

By Lorena Roberts, Uloop
Taking an online class isn’t rare anymore — more and more universities are moving to online models. If you’re taking an online class, you might be afraid of what you’re getting into. You may not know how to take an online class, or how to study.
Here are some hacks for tackling online courses if you’ve never done it before.

https://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/252324/14-Study-Hacks-for-Online-Courses

BY GEORGIA MARIANI, eCampus News

Nine years ago, like many university IR offices, Alabama’s was manually pulling information, printing it on pieces of paper, and transcribing that information into spreadsheets that were distributed as responses. It was a tedious and time-consuming process. Now, the OIRA team monitors things like the graduation rates of our students, and the fail and withdrawal rates associated with specific courses. They look at time-to-degree information, faculty teaching loads and salary analyses for Alabama compared to peer institutions. In addition, they receive 500 to 600 information requests annually, which they attempt to answer within 10 working days. Much of the time, they respond within 24 hours because many requests seek similar information.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/campus-administration/analytics-game-changer/

by David Raths, Campus Technology

According to Helen Chen, director of e-portfolio initiatives in Stanford’s Office of the University Registrar, that dissatisfaction with the limitations of the basic transcript has spurred the university to launch several projects to explore new representations of the student record that might do a better job of conveying a student’s learning as well as co-curricular activities. One prototype sought to organize the student record not chronologically, but according to learning outcomes. “Our general education courses define learning outcomes,” Chen said. “What if you could organize the student record according to those outcomes rather than an emphasis on courses and grades?” Another effort called “Edusalsa” wondered what would happen if students could color-code their transcripts based on interests, strengths and weaknesses, to facilitate internal advising conversations.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/11/15/building-a-three-dimensional-record-of-student-learning.aspx

by Eden Estopace, Slator

Leah Wiedenmann, Udacity’s Marketing and Communications Manager in Europe, told Slator that all courses are available in English but select courses are available in Brazilian Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese, and Arabic. “Students across Europe and India take Udacity’s courses in English. In China and Brazil, nanodegree programs and courses are translated into Mandarin Chinese and Brazilian Portuguese, respectively,” she says. “Udacity also has widespread localized course offerings in Arabic, Bahasa, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. [More importantly,] beyond localization of content, we also localize our services.”

https://slator.com/features/udacity-localizes-meet-worlds-booming-demand-technical-skills/

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

In a recent survey, most chief academic officers (CAOs) at 359 two- and four-year institutions (86 percent) agreed that digital content and learning can improve the student experience. Eighty-seven percent of CAOs said digital learning resources “make learning more efficient and effective for students”; and 74 percent agreed that digital content would provide a richer and more personalized learning experience over print resources. However, a big hold-up to going “all digital” is a lack of student access to devices.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2017/11/15/campuses-see-value-of-digital-learning-but-lack-a-plan.aspx

by Hannah Kuchler, Financial Times
This September, his start-up, MissionU, accepted its first intake of students — 30 would-be data analysts who are starting a one-year course with no upfront costs. Designed to prepare them for the workplace, MissionU works closely with businesses ranging from Lyft, the ride-hailing app, to digital music streaming service Spotify to teach both technical and soft skills. The deal is that students repay 15 per cent of their income to MissionU for the first three years after graduation in which they earn at least $50,000.

https://www.ft.com/content/e3f6f18e-a9c6-11e7-ab66-21cc87a2edde

By Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Faculty unions at Eastern Michigan U. distributed fliers objecting to the university’s deal with a provider of online courses. Professors at Eastern Michigan University are objecting to its partnership with a private company to market and support online programs, making it the latest institution to grapple with questions about the quality of online instruction. The unions representing Eastern Michigan’s faculty members and lecturers are asking campus leaders to stop marketing online programs with the company, Academic Partnerships, until they can review the arrangement. And they’re rolling out an advertising campaign in an effort to build public support for their position.

http://www.chronicle.com/article/faculty-members-at-one-more/241788

by Robert Hansen, Hechinger Report

During the days when nearly every college graduate could expect a good job at the end of their educational journey, colleges differentiated themselves through selectivity, prestige, and rankings. Yet, the same approach today offers diminishing returns; powerful demographic and cultural shifts may explain why. Colleges and universities are starting to retool their approach to today’s economic realities — just as their own students are doing through lifelong learning. Decades of established practice are catching up with the needs of today’s increasingly diverse and career-driven learners. Is your institution up for it? 

http://hechingerreport.org/opinion-3-ways-forward-thinking-colleges-usher-new-generation-students/

by JARRETT LYONS, Salon.com

Half of the colleges and universities in the United States are in danger of bankruptcy over the coming decades.
Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen said that the number — up to 2,000 schools could be affected over the next 10 to 15 years — is thanks to online education. In Christensen’s most recent book, “The Innovative University,” he and co-author Henry Eyring theorized that online education will dominate the marketplace for higher education and drive more traditional schools into bankruptcy. At the a recent Salceforce.org Higher Education Summit, he said “If you’re asking whether the providers get disrupted within a decade — I might bet that it takes nine years rather than 10,” according to CNBC.

https://www.salon.com/2017/11/15/the-bubble-is-going-to-burst-for-colleges-and-universities-professor-says/