Online Learning Update

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Adaptive learning is transforming education, changing the way learning content is delivered and contributing to better learning outcomes. Adaptive learning uses artificial intelligence to tailor content to each individual’s needs actively. The technique doesn’t only create customized learning experiences for learners, but also provides personalized feedback, which further enhances learning. There are various benefits adaptive learning can provide corporate learners. Let’s go through them to apply adaptive learning in corporate training programs better.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/how-adaptive-learning-revolutionizes-corporate-training/

Jim Larimore, University World News

Already, AI systems are optimising some online learning and are pointing to a future which is radically different from the education paradigms of the past. Algorithms can now uncover patterns about how students perform and algorithms can help teachers optimise their strategies accordingly. ‘AI tutors’, software systems that students interact with online, can give every student greater access to the individualised attention they need. These systems don’t replace teachers, nor should they, but they can take over much of the drudge work of teaching – grading, for example, and give teachers more time to teach. They can collect meaningful data about each student’s performance to help teachers personalise their instruction. They are, in effect, a tireless and attentive teachers’ aide, focusing with eternal patience on the progress and needs of each student.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20201211123616908

REX CRUM, Boston Herald

Leading the LinkedIn list is artificial intelligence specialist, or someone who focuses on machine learning and ways to incorporate artificial intelligence technology into business environments. LinkedIn said that AI specialist jobs have grown annually by 74% over the last five years as demand in computer software, internet, information technology and consumer electronics industries has increased. AI specialist salaries also have a lot to be excited about, as LinkedIn said its data shows such jobs average $136,000 a year.  LinkedIn said the San Francisco Bay Area is among the top regions in the country for such positions. Hiring is also strong in New York, Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles.

https://www.bostonherald.com/2019/12/16/the-emerging-jobs-for-2020-according-to-linkedin/

Education Trust

For millions of college-going students, one of the most urgent concerns is the rising cost of college and how to pay for it — and not just for tuition but other necessities like textbooks, housing, food, and transportation. The idea that one can work one’s way through college with a minimum-wage job is, in most cases, a myth. In the vast majority of states, students at public four-year institutions would have to work an excessive number of hours per week to cover such costs. The same goes for students at many public community and technical colleges. In one of the costliest scenarios, students would have to work 45 hours a week to be exact, leaving nearly no time to focus on academics.

https://s3-us-east-2.amazonaws.com/edtrustmain/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/16202752/How-Affordable-Are-Public-Colleges-in-Your-State-December-2019.pdf

Sophia Matveeva, Forbes

Technology is changing business and enabling us to do more than we have ever done. Coding bootcamps and online programming courses are creating new developers and governments are launching programs to get more students to learn STEM subjects. Yet, without good leadership, technologies are nothing but blunt hammers. In the quest for coding skills, many businesses are becoming dismissive of the essential human skill it takes to grow an organization.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sophiamatveeva/2019/12/15/leadership-lessons-in-the-age-of-technology/#2bbd2606a8c0

CHRISTINE LEE, eCampus News

So if feedback is core to student learning, what then is the most effective kind of feedback? How can feedback be most valuable for students? University of Auckland professors Helen Timperly and John Hattie (2007) describe how student feedback should be insightful, giving students actionable information about what they’re doing right or wrong and next steps towards improvement. A comment like “Great job!” or “This paragraph needs work” lacks enough specificity to help students do better the next time.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/12/16/three-ways-technology-can-enhance-student-feedback/

Abigail Hess, CNBC

During the 1978 – 1979 school year, it cost the modern equivalent of $17,680 per year to attend a private college and $8,250 per year to attend a public college. By the 2008 – 2009 school year those costs had grown to $38,720 at private colleges and $16,460 at public colleges. Today, those costs are closer to $48,510 and $21,370, respectively. That means costs increased by roughly 25.3% at private colleges and about 29.8% at public colleges.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/13/cost-of-college-increased-by-more-than-25percent-in-the-last-10-years.html

Hallie Busta, Education Dive

The number of students enrolled in college has dipped slightly below 18 million for the first time in a decade, according to new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Overall higher ed enrollment fell 1.3%, or more than 231,000 students, year-over-year in the fall of 2019. While four-year, for-profit schools experienced the biggest percentage drop, public two- and four-year schools and private nonprofits also saw enrollment decreases during the period. There are some bright spots in the data: enrollment at private nonprofit institutions that enroll at least 10,000 students increased by 2.7% during the period. Public two-year colleges, meanwhile, saw their dual enrollment population increase for the second-straight year.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-enrollment-reaches-10-year-low-federal-data-shows/569091/

James McBride, THE Journal

A 50-year veteran of psychometrics — the science of measuring mental abilities and processes — offers a brief history and insights into the future of testing. Adaptive testing has been around since at least the early part of the 20th century. The goal has always been to measure something — such as IQ, academic progress or personality traits — with the same precision as more traditional assessments but with fewer questions and less time, or with greater precision. Early efforts had their drawbacks, of course, but we’ve come a long way in the intervening century or so. There is still much progress to be made, but some promising research today will likely  change the way we assess students in the coming decade and beyond.

https://thejournal.com/articles/2019/12/11/what-will-the-2020s-hold-assessment-trends-past-and-future.aspx

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

One reads quite a lot about the importance of piloting an online course before launching it, but exactly what does that entail. What is meant by “pilot”? To pilot something means to test it to find out whether it will be successful. In other words, you pilot your online course to test whether learners will like it and would be likely to enroll for it. It’s a kind of initial evaluation by potential customers. Here are a few things to keep in mind when conducting your online course pilot.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/yes-you-should-pilot-your-online-course-a-few-things-to-consider-as-you-do/

BY STEPHANIE MARKEN, Gallup

About half of U.S. adults (51%) now consider a college education to be “very important,” down from 70% in 2013. Over the same period, the percentages rating college as “fairly important” and “not too important” have both increased, to 36% and 13%, respectively.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/270008/half-consider-college-education-important.aspx

CHRIS ARNOLD, NPR

“Once again, it’s the mismatch between the debt and the borrower’s income, their ability to repay,” Calhoun says. This time around it’s the government making the vast majority of the loans. That’s effectively turned the Department of Education into the country’s largest consumer lender. And, Calhoun says, more and more people can’t pay. “Already in the student loan world, we are seeing default levels that approach what there was in the subprime mortgage world,” he says.

https://www.npr.org/2019/12/09/785527874/student-loans-a-lot-like-the-subprime-mortgage-debacle-watchdog-says

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed

Online conversation shines a spotlight on graduate programs that teach students how to teach — and those programs that don’t.   And of course many Ph.D.s do still want, and snag, part- or full-time professorships across a variety of institution types. Yet graduate education has historically treated this fact a kind of inconvenient truth, overlooking or flat out ignoring students’ need for pedagogical training. That’s explicit pedagogical training, not the sink-or-swim method adopted by so many programs that throw their graduate student instructors into teaching undergraduates with no real preparation.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/12/13/online-conversation-shines-spotlight-graduate-programs-teach-students-how-teach

Jeff Arthur, Campus Technology

It’s been just over a year since the East Coast Polytechnic Institute began issuing digital diplomas as an early adopter of blockchain technology and the Blockcerts open standard. During that time, our institution has issued nearly 1,600 digital diplomas and become a leading advocate for the use of blockchain for secure digital credentials. I realized that the blockchain work being done at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) had the potential to dramatically change the way graduates interacted with the school and future employers. Instead of relying on paper diplomas or alterable PDF files and lengthy requests for verification, students could present employers with digital credentials that would be immediately and securely verified.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/12/12/why-we-are-using-blockchain-for-digital-credentialing.aspx

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Many eLearning courses offered today are not doing very well, mostly because the course designers have not adjusted to the demands of modern learners. Let’s look at some issues that modern learners have with some online courses.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/6-reasons-why-elearning-programs-may-fail-plus-tips-to-avoid-failure/

Jennifer Liu, CNBC

LinkedIn’s 2020 Emerging Jobs Report names artificial intelligence specialist as the job that saw the most growth in the the past five years. For example, hiring growth for AI specialists, which pays a national average of $136,000 per year according to LinkedIn salary data, has grown 74% each year, on average, since 2015. The one fast-growing job on the list that doesn’t fall within tech is No. 9 behavioral health technician, which has likely grown thanks to increased health insurance coverage for mental health and substance abuse treatment in recent years, according to the LinkedIn report.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/11/linkedin-emerging-jobs-report-2020-fastest-growing-us-job-pays-136k.html

Catalin Cimpanu, ZDNet
This year’s most clever phishing tricks include hijacking Google search results and abusing 404 error pages. While phishing attacks increased, the number of ransomware, crypto-mining, and other malware infections went down, the company said at the time. In a blog post published today, the Redmond-based tech giant reviewed three of the more clever phishing attacks it seen this year.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-details-the-most-clever-phishing-techniques-it-saw-in-2019/

Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Getting feedback from learners about your online course is important. Feedback from course goers tells you what you can do to improve the course for future students. Asking for feedback from existing students also makes them feel that you value their input, which means they might enroll with you for another course. Asking for feedback from students on your online course can make you feel somewhat uncomfortable, but it can only help you to improve your courses and gain more students. Let’s look at some of the mistakes to avoid when you’re collecting feedback about your online course.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/5-easy-mistakes-to-make-when-collecting-feedback-for-your-online-course/

Frank Swanzy Essien Jr., Medium

With a little help, nearly 36 million Americans who spent some time at college but never finished could be encouraged to resume their studies and get their degrees. What would it take? For starters, we need to improve recognition for prior learning, or RPL. In other words, we need better, more efficient processes for giving students credit for what they’ve learned outside of a college campus. That includes skills learned at work, in apprenticeships, at training courses, and much more. Receiving credit for what students know and can do could be a powerful motivator to continue school and graduate.

https://medium.com/todays-students-tomorrow-s-talent/college-credit-where-credit-is-due-recognizing-prior-learning-f359a751d043

BY ROSIE MCCALL, Newsweek
An artificially intelligent machine took to the podium at the Cambridge Union in the U.K. to debate the pros and cons of AI with humans—at one point telling the audience “AI can cause a lot of harm.” However, it was the side in favor of AI that came out top, achieving a narrow victory by scoring votes from just over half the audience.  The case for the benefits of AI included the argument that it could generate new jobs and bring greater efficiency to the workplace, while those against included the problem of human biases and AI being incapable of making moral decisions.

https://www.newsweek.com/robot-just-debated-humans-benefits-risks-ai-1474083

BRADLEY FUSTER, eCampus News

The current campus-based, semester-delivery model is unlikely to sustain itself into the next century–efforts to future-proof campuses will pay off. In any ecosystem, if one waits long enough, eventually a cataclysmic disruption occurs. The final years at Blockbuster Video, Kodak Corporation, and Toys “R” Us, all share the consistent systemic failure to respond to disruptive threats: a willful ignorance to reexamine and adjust their product, services, and business model. Higher education is behaving much the same way. Until institutions acknowledge both the impending disruptive threat and the risk of not appropriately responding, higher ed remains a vulnerable enterprise.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/12/11/learn-how-to-future-proof-your-campus/