Online Learning Update

Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

To help job seekers gain the skills they need for employment in today’s economy, Microsoft and LinkedIn are extending their global skills initiative through the end of 2021, providing free LinkedIn Learning and Microsoft Learn courses as well as low-cost certifications that align to in-demand jobs. Areas of focus include customer service, project management, data analysis, software development and more. “Over the past year, we’ve seen the pandemic hit people who can bear it the least,” said Microsoft President Brad Smith, in a statement. “We are doubling down at LinkedIn and across Microsoft with new work to support a more inclusive skills-based labor market, creating more alternatives, greater flexibility, and accessible learning paths that connect these more readily with new jobs.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/04/08/microsoft-and-linkedin-expand-global-skills-initiative.aspx

Jeff Falk, Rice University

OpenStax, Rice’s educational technology initiative, announced today that applications for its 2021-2022 Institutional Partner Program are now open. U.S. colleges and universities looking to expand open education advocacy and adoption of open educational resources (OER) to support their students can apply for the free program. The Institutional Partner Program provides higher education institutions with free coaching, training and support as they work to increase the use of OpenStax and other OER among their faculty and students. While the support that each school receives is individualized, admitted institutions will collaborate within a cohort and a larger network of over 50 colleges and universities that have completed the program since 2015. The deadline to apply is May 3. Institutions for the 2021-2022 cohort will be selected in July.

https://news.rice.edu/2021/04/06/rices-openstax-opens-applications-for-2021-2022-institutional-partner-program-2/

Stephanie Fairchild, Buchtelite

The pandemic has abruptly changed the lives of both students and faculty here at The University of Akron. After writing an article last fall about how students were feeling about the transition to online learning, I wanted to give the faculty a chance to showcase how they have innovated within the shift.  Four UA professors discuss adjustments and achievements in the classroom.

https://buchtelite.com/40851/uncategorized/ua-faculty-shifts-to-online-education-in-innovative-ways-due-to-covid-19/

Samantha De Loera, St. Xavier Student Media

There is a little bit over a month left of the spring semester at Saint Xavier. This semester has been really stressful for me, so I could not be happier that the semester is almost over. School is already stressful enough as is, and going to college during a pandemic is definitely not making it any easier. I am currently taking all online classes this semester, and I can say that there are both pros and cons to this. I like having all online classes because I am able to stay in the comfort of my own home while I do my homework or join zoom classes.

https://sxustudentmedia.com/online-learning-is-exhausting/

Knowledge at Wharton

Barankay said videoconferencing has replaced personal engagement, which is one of the biggest sources of creativity and innovation in an office setting. With video, there are no chance encounters, casual conversations, or other interactions that can spark ideas. It’s also harder for employees to feel connected to each other or to a larger mission when all their conversations are on screen. “People have to hop off one Zoom meeting and hop on to the next one. They don’t really have room to breathe, to then become really settled and engaged with the meeting,” he said.

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/zoom-meetings-are-here-to-stay-can-we-beat-the-fatigue/

Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Online learning platform Udacity has launched a School of Cybersecurity, a set of nanodegree programs aimed at training the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Each program offers instructor-led sessions and hands-on projects tailored to real-world scenarios, to provide learners with practical experience, skills and resources in the field. The School of Cybersecurity curriculum currently encompasses four nanodegrees.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/04/02/udacity-adds-school-of-cybersecurity.aspx

ALEXANDRA VILLARREAL, Hechinger Report
The trend could make college cost more and take longer, assuming that students even go. Estimates say is between 10 percent to 34 percent of high school students who take college-level courses that give them a head start on credits, save time and money and prepare them for the demands of higher education. But the number of students enrolling in and passing these classes has started slipping downward — dramatically, in some places — suggesting a potential decline ahead in the number of high school students who end up going to college. For those who do go, it means that getting a degree could take longer and cost more. “It definitely throws them off track,” said Samuel West, District P-16 director at Houston Community College.

https://hechingerreport.org/pandemic-reduces-number-of-high-school-students-taking-dual-enrollment-courses/

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

AAC&U survey of employers shows liberal arts skills are valued and sought out in the workplace but raises questions about student preparation. First the good: employers generally have confidence in higher education and value the college degree. They believe that a liberal education — or preparation for more than a specific job — provides knowledge and skills that are important for career success. And increasingly, employers say, college graduates are more effective at explaining what they bring to the table. Now the not-so-great findings: employers see room for improvement in how colleges and universities prepare students for work.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/04/06/aacu-survey-finds-employers-want-candidates-liberal-arts-skills-cite-preparedness

RAJA PRABHALA, MICHAEL CHENEY, KEVIN WALLIOR AND ACE ARROYO, Idaho Statesman
To the honorable members of the Idaho Senate and House of Representatives, We the undersigned, all of us veterans of the U.S. military and alumni of Boise State University, write to you in support of diversity at our state institutions of higher learning, particularly our alma mater. We have witnessed with concern opposition to Boise State University’s annual budget due to its support of diversity programs. As members of the U.S. armed forces, we served in one of the most diverse institutions in the United States. The U.S. military attracts highly qualified men and women from all 50 states and our U.S. territories who represent a wide variety of creeds, religions, races, ethnicities, sexual orientations and other attributes that make the people of this country stronger together. We saw firsthand how that rich diversity of perspective produces innovative solutions.

https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article250324036.html

Natalie Schwartz, Highered Dive

Western Governors, Grand Canyon and Southern New Hampshire are using their scale to help students cope with crises in their communities. Western Governors isn’t the only online megauniversity looking out for large-scale disasters that could impede student progress. Southern New Hampshire and Grand Canyon universities, which collectively enroll more than 180,000 students online, have similar but less formal strategies. “It depends on the situation,” said Kelly Palese, Grand Canyon’s senior vice president of faculty operations. “If their internet is down for a day, it’s probably not the end of the world. But we have had students where their houses were flooded and they’re displaced.”Southern New Hampshire takes a similar approach, alerting faculty members and advisers about potential pitfalls and relying on them to craft one-on-one plans with students.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/how-3-megauniversities-get-local-to-help-students-during-natural-disasters/597751/

Rick Seltzer, Inside Higher Ed

The U.S. higher education sector will feel a revenue hit for several years from a low number of international students enrolling in colleges and universities this fall, according to a report issued last week by Moody’s Investors Service. The development has a negative impact on the sector’s credit profile, according to the bond ratings agency. International student enrollments at four-year U.S. colleges and universities fell by 13.6 percent in the fall. A rebound in the upcoming fall may be likely, especially given reports of rising applications from international students, but small classes one year flow on to future years. Several factors could also slow recovery — coronavirus travel restrictions, reputational effects of hard-line federal immigration policies under former president Trump and increased competition overseas among them.

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2021/04/05/international-enrollment-drop-hit-higher-eds-credit-years

Julien Barbier, University World News

The team-based project approach, meanwhile, is well suited to teaching students professional skills. Increasingly, employers are dropping the requirement of a college degree and are looking at student portfolios instead. “The real magic in an educational programme like this is in the project design,” said Michael Feldstein, CEO of Empirical Educator Project and publisher of e-Literate, an online journal about higher education. “Finding relevant content is the easy part.”The assumption of 19th century education was that building a student’s knowledge base is everything. But, today, with the biggest library that has ever existed at everyone’s fingertips (the internet), skills are what matter. The OS of education approach shifts 90% to 95% of a typical student’s time to applied learning. Content is not the problem. Learning how to learn is the future of education.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210329143743399

Andrew Kakabadse, University World News

Some higher education leaders believe as many as 20% of UK universities will not survive in this new environment and some institutions are already failing, while others downsize staff numbers and reduce entry levels in a desperate attempt to increase student numbers. The result is an overall lowering of quality, which the private sector is more than willing to address with their emergent and sophisticated expertise in online programmes.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210329112744837

Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
In a recent survey, the majority of faculty (71 percent) reported that their teaching in Fall 2020 was “very different” or included a “number of changes” compared to pre-pandemic times. And almost half (47 percent) felt those changes would remain in place post-pandemic. That’s according to Cengage’s third Digital Learning Pulse Survey, conducted by Bay View Analytics in partnership with the Online Learning Consortium, WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA) and Canadian Digital Learning Research Association. The survey polled 1,702 faculty at 967 institutions across the United States to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on teaching and learning in higher education.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/04/01/nearly-half-of-faculty-say-pandemic-changes-to-teaching-are-here-to-stay.aspx

Kenneth Ronkowitz Lynnette Condro Ronkowitz, Wiley Online Library

A number of lessons were learned from the pandemic about online learning. If an online course is built with integrity, meaning that it is well constructed using all of the design elements, it can be delivered using other modalities, including F2F. During the pandemic, students and faculty understood that they needed to become more digitally literate.  Some observers have called the coronavirus a “black swan” moment—an unforeseen event that could change everything for higher education. Investments were made to shift education online, and that shift could be transformational. But we question whether the changes will be permanent, and if past is precedent, it still will be left up to the individual institutions.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ajes.12377

Natalie Schwartz, HigherEd Dive

The spring term spelled the end for at least three liberal arts colleges, which will soon either cease operating or accepting new students. The colleges — Becker, Mills and Concordia New York — all said the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated existing financial woes. Higher education experts predict more consolidation among all types of colleges and an uptick in closures.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/are-more-college-closures-ahead/597746/

Elizabeth Shockman, Sahan Journal

Nationwide, there are similar trends. Close to 80 percent of Asian, 64 percent of Black and Hispanic and 41 percent of Native American eighth grade students were in distance learning scenarios in February and March. That’s compared to only 32 percent of white students, according to a U.S. Department of Education survey.

https://sahanjournal.com/education/students-of-color-disproportionately-choosing-distance-learning/

Stephanie Saul, NY Times
The community colleges largely serving low-income, Black and Latino students are reeling, and experts worry that inequality in education will increase. Colleges of all types are struggling under the shadow of the coronavirus, but the nation’s community college system has been disproportionately hurt, with tens of thousands of students being forced to delay school or drop out because of the pandemic and the economic crisis it has created. Enrollment is down by 9.5 percent at the more than 1,000 two-year colleges in the United States compared with numbers from last spring, according to figures from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit organization that found a similar drop last fall. That is more than double the loss experienced by four-year schools.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/02/us/politics/enrollment-covid-community-colleges.html

College of Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Science Daily

New collaborative research examines how changes in internal states, such as engagement, can affect the learning process using BCI technology. The collaborative research, published in Nature Neuroscience, examined how changes in internal states, such as arousal, attention, motivation, and engagement can affect the learning process using brain-computer interface (BCI) technology. Findings suggest that changes in internal states can systematically influence how behavior improves with learning, thus paving the way for more effective methods to teach people skills quickly, and to a higher level of proficiency.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/04/210401131158.htm

Julie Delich, University Business

Many advisors who work on campus know a student is struggling before they say a word. After all, the student’s expression and body language can reveal their frustration and anxiety. But online advising is different. Advisors often work with online students by phone, email, or text — formats that don’t offer the same cues as in-person advising. Therefore, online advisors must use different tactics to discern a student’s mental state or desire for help. Even so, many colleges base online advising on their campus-based practices. This approach seems logical because the destination of online and in-person programs — a degree or certificate — is the same. But the online journey follows a different path, raising the need for tailored support.

https://universitybusiness.com/finally-an-online-advising-model-that-actually-works-lp

Andre M. Perry, Brookings
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona is refusing to back down on a federal requirement that states must administer standardized tests this year, although a letter to state leaders from the Department of Education last month said that states will have flexibility on how to apply results. States concerned about the safety of administering a test during a pandemic may implement shortened versions of assessments.Amid a pandemic, testing is a necessary inconvenience to help us understand how we can better address structural racism and other root causes of academic disparities. But if tests aren’t used as a way to support Black districts, students, and families by leading to solutions for structural inequities, then they will only facilitate the epidemic of racism that existed before the pandemic.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2021/03/30/standardized-tests-arent-the-problem-its-how-we-use-them/