Online Learning Update

University of Gronigen Library

Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming more prominent in higher education. They facilitate a quicker transition to online teaching, help educators reuse and create innovative learner-centered materials, improve access to education, and save resources. This video introduces the topic of OER, explores their practical application in courses, and encourages teachers to use them with the support available at the UG Library. Explore the accompanying slides with additional information on OER in the slide notes.

https://www.rug.nl/library/home-news/how-you-can-use-open-educational-resources

Dan Bauman, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Since the World Health Organization declared a pandemic in March of 2020, institutions of higher education have shed a net total of at least 570,000 workers, according to preliminary, seasonally adjusted figures from the U.S. Labor Department. Put another way, for every nine workers employed in academe in February 2020, at least one had lost or left that job a year later.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/heres-who-was-hit-hardest-by-higher-eds-pandemic-driven-job-losses

Murat Turk, Faculty Focus

There are many ways in which instructors might use AODs in their online courses, but traditionally, online students are asked in discussions to post once and respond a specific number of times. A challenge with this strategy is that once each student completes their postings and responses, they often quit reading, responding to, and engaging with what others say or think about the issue or topic under study, thus missing out on useful insights and experiences. One effective solution is to incorporate peer moderation or facilitation of online discussions, which I have been using in my own online courses since summer 2020 when I read Milman’s (2014) article about co-facilitation of online discussions.

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-student-engagement/co-facilitated-discussions-to-truly-engage-your-online-students-with-course-content/

Carol Nixon, EDUCAUSE Review

Accountability measures in higher education have shifted dramatically from enrollment to completion, given persistent disparities in persistence across race, ethnicity, and income.Footnote1 Institutions of higher education across the United States have dramatically increased their investments in technology-mediated advising as a key component of holistic student-support systems. And since 2020, the pandemic has magnified concerns about equity, given resource disparities across students and institutions. Some students struggle to access essential technologies, not only for advising and support services but also for teaching and learning. Although some exemplary institutions have successfully transformed their student support and advising systems and demonstrated significant gains on key institutional indicators, these improvements have not materialized widely.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/4/effective-use-of-technologies-in-student-advising-is-there-a-yellow-brick-road

Byron K. Hargrove, eCampus News

A Berkeley College professor speaks about how responsiveness and compassion with students paid off during the pandemic. The two central lessons I found to be extremely helpful during the COVID-19 pandemic have to do with being more open and adaptive to online learning and finding ways to be uber responsive, flexible and caring with my students.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2021/04/21/two-principles-guiding-this-professors-pandemic-teaching/

John O’Brien, EDUCAUSE Review

Inevitably, student engagement “by design” must not happen in isolation but, rather, in the larger context of digital transformation (Dx). No narrow strategy has a chance of bringing together faculty, curriculum, facilities, recreation, student support, technology infrastructure, and engaging and innovative digital tools and courseware. For this reason, the EDUCAUSE Dx Journey microsite invites leaders and staff at every college and every university to consider Dx as a framing design strategy while contemplating student engagement initiatives on campus.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/3/engaging-students-by-design

Phil Cox, eCampus News

Traditionally, hybrid learning is defined as the combination of face-to-face and online delivery of course materials. The disruption of COVID-19 meant that all the face-to-face interactions for my classes took place online. However, I find that offering a blend of asynchronous and synchronous instruction has been key to the success of my virtual classroom. Here are a few of the benefits of this approach, along with some strategies and tools that I will continue using in the coming school year, regardless of where learning takes place

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2021/04/16/3-ways-online-learning-has-forever-altered-my-instruction/

Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
Dartmouth College has deployed an artificial intelligence solution from Aisera to enhance communication with students and faculty during COVID-19. The virtual assistant, dubbed the Dart InfoBot, can answer support requests in natural language either via Slack or on the institution’s client services portal. Aisera’s AI Service Desk automates answers to common support questions, providing a user experience that’s designed to be personalized, context-aware and conversational, according to the company. Using the self-service technology with its user base of 10,000 faculty and students, Dartmouth was able to improve auto-resolution of support requests by more than 60 percent, with a mean time to resolve of just 50 seconds.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/04/12/dartmouth-employs-ai-virtual-assistant-to-support-students-and-faculty.aspx

Alex Saad-Falcon, Information Week

Machine learning models are not infallible. In order to prevent attackers from exploiting a model, researchers have designed various techniques to make machine learning models more robust.
All neural networks are susceptible to “adversarial attacks,” where an attacker provides an example intended to fool the neural network. Any system that uses a neural network can be exploited. Luckily, there are known techniques that can mitigate or even prevent adversarial attacks completely. The field of adversarial machine learning is growing rapidly as companies realize the dangers of adversarial attacks.

https://www.informationweek.com/big-data/ai-machine-learning/how-to-ensure-your-machine-learning-models-arent-fooled/a/d-id/1340630

Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive

The pandemic reinvigorated calls to upskill large swaths of the population, and its harm to the economy also highlighted the need for states and colleges to remove potential cost barriers to postsecondary education. “Finances will no longer be the barrier to getting a college degree if you’re over 25,” said Mike Hansen, president of the Michigan Community College Association. “As we start to see increasing requirements of higher skills … you’ll also see therefore the demand pick up for adult students to come back.”

https://www.highereddive.com/news/what-other-states-can-learn-from-michigan-about-serving-adult-students/598562/

Nic Napier, Indiana Daily Student

Indiana lawmakers are considering an amendment to Senate Bill 414, which deals with various education changes, that would require a report from public college campuses on student perspectives of free speech. It is unclear if this will be a one-time report or a recurring practice. The bill originally did not include a requirement for reports on students’ perceptions of free speech on campuses. The amendment was added to the bill after being passed through the House Education Committee, and it passed the Indiana House of Representatives Tuesday.

https://www.idsnews.com/article/2021/04/indiana-free-speech-college-lawmakers

Jennifer Brown and Christopher Lynch, Lompoc Record

Online instruction opens access to those who need flexibility in classes for childcare, for scheduling conflicts and because of socio-economic pressure. The pandemic has only increased the reasons remote access is needed, with many families having faced a dual pandemic of COVID-19 and economic loss. Many of our student parents no longer have childcare, or face other circumstances preventing them from immediately returning to campus. Online coursework must not be considered an inferior or cheaper option. Getting online right requires a significant investment in course development guided by professional course designers who focus on achieving and assessing learning outcomes. Best practices show that developing a quality online course takes about 10 weeks to build with the faculty member working closely alongside an instructional/course designer, and research has shown that in-person instruction improves after working with instructional designers.

https://lompocrecord.com/opinion/columnists/jennifer-brown-and-christopher-lynch-quality-online-education-for-higher-ed-requires-public-investment/article_512e95ce-fae0-5d0b-917c-3a2f9232ad74.html

Michael Kan, PC Magazine

Currently, SpaceX geo-restricts every Starlink dish to the subscriber’s registered residence. Hence, customers generally can’t use the dish at another location unless it’s nearby. But the tweet from Musk indicates the company will lift the restriction, enabling customers to move it from one place to the next. In the meantime, the company still needs more time to build up the Starlink satellite network, which currently numbers at more than 1,300 satellites. In March, SpaceX then filed an application with the FCC for clearance to operate Starlink on moving vehicles—including trucks, boats, and aircraft—in the US.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/movable-satellite-internet-spacex-to-lift-geo-restriction-on-starlink-dishes

Neil J. Rubenking, PC Magazine

Chances are good you’ve never seen malware up close and personal. Even if you threw caution to the winds and visited a dangerous site or clicked a treacherous link, your antivirus software probably wiped out any offending program before the latter could say boo. So, you might wonder, just what does malware look like? Would I even recognize a malware program if I saw it? To be fair, a lot of malicious programs don’t look like anything at all. A virus, for example, tries its best to hide from view while infecting other files and computers. A bot sits quietly on your computer until it gets orders from the command and control center to spew some spam or participate in a DDoS attack on a major website. Trojans, by contrast, appear to be useful, legitimate programs, putting up a pretty facade to hide background activities like stealing your personal data. And when ransomware hollers for your attention, it’s bad news.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-many-faces-of-malware-a-tour-of-real-world-samples

Kiana Burks, Texas State University Star

“One of my concerns is about how we get information about services available to all of the faculty,” Davenport says. “The other is addressing that faculty may be feeling overwhelmed because [of] very little time, I wish there was a way that we could incentivize participation in things like trainings.”  Faculty Senate chair and professor in the Department of Physical Therapy Janet Bezner agrees there are faculty needs that have not been met in relation to online curriculum and says she is glad to address concerns with the Office of Distance and Extended Learning. “I think this conversation is exactly what we need, and I would also say, a broad-scale assessment of faculty needs has to be a part of this because we’re all different, our disciplines are different and our needs are different,” Bezner says.

https://www.universitystar.com/covid-19/faculty-senate-discusses-needs-regarding-online-courses/article_4ba38316-9ee6-11eb-9ffd-b70535955f31.html

Jennifer Buckingham, Financial Review

Innovation is always on the agenda in education but the pandemic in 2020 made it a top priority. Many schools made a swift and more or less successful transition to online teaching.  Innovative methodologies can be simple and powerful. The schools that did so most successfully were largely those that were already high functioning, with strong collaborative teaching cultures and robust systems in place. The widespread adoption of technology for teaching was not a disruptive force that changed the traditional stratifications in education systems. Education still needs to be evidence-informed. Innovation is not an excuse to disregard everything we know about effective teaching and learning. Otherwise, doing something is not better than doing nothing.

https://www.afr.com/work-and-careers/education/education-needs-to-be-evidence-informed-20210412-p57iku

Sara Weissman, Inside Higher Ed
Enrollment at California Community Colleges fell even more than an already shocking national average last fall. Campus leaders hope to stem further declines as the COVID-19 pandemic continues.  The California Community College system had a 12 percent enrollment decline from fall 2019 to fall 2020, a staggering figure for the largest college system in the country and a likely harbinger of the demographic and fiscal challenges that lie ahead for the sector nationally. The downward trend is occurring at community colleges across the country — the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center recently reported a 9.5 percent decline at community colleges nationwide — and is being compounded by the acute socioeconomic effects of the pandemic on students.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/15/california-community-college-fall-enrollment-plunges

Shannon O’Connor, eCampus News
Through seed money provided by foundations and donors, Carthage College is offering teletherapy to expand access to counseling services. Survey data from the Spring 2019 National College Health Assessment by the American College Health Association indicated that in the previous year, three out of five students experienced overwhelming anxiety, and two out of five students were too depressed to function. Many struggled with these and other mental health concerns, including substance abuse. Student mental health has been a growing concern for higher-ed administrators in recent years… then the COVID pandemic took hold, bringing with it disruptions to all aspects of campus life, including decreased or no access for students to medical and mental health services. According to an April 2020 survey by Active Minds, a national mental health advocacy group, 80 percent of college students say the pandemic has negatively affected their mental health.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2021/04/05/teletherapy-expands-access-to-student-mental-health-support/

Philip Rous, Yvette Mozie-Ross, Sarah Shin and John Fritz; EDUCAUSE Review

To be sure, moving nearly all teaching and learning online so quickly was challenging, especially at the undergraduate level, but one unexpected outcome was successfully recovering or “re-recruiting” 123 former students who (for one reason or another) left UMBC before finishing their degrees. Below, we describe why and how we planned and implemented the Finish Line near-completer reengagement program—which leveraged our predominantly online classes in fall 2020—and what we learned from the process. We then suggest ways to support adult learners, help them feel welcome, and foster their sense of belonging in the institution.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/4/a-pandemic-silver-lining-helping-former-students-finish-degrees-online