Online Learning Update

Payton Kammerer, Daily Bruin

The pandemic has been a nightmare, but that doesn’t mean UCLA should leave behind the innovations it came with.  Offering online instruction has benefits outside of stemming the tide of COVID-19. Rather than seeing the structures of remote teaching as a vestige of an unpleasant time, administrators must instead imagine it as a tool that will remain useful. UCLA shouldn’t return to the old way of doing things, but use this moment as an opportunity to usher in a better normal that utilizes online learning to the benefit of students and faculty. Now is the ideal time to implement a permanent program of hybrid learning.

https://dailybruin.com/2021/05/31/opinion-ucla-should-consider-socioeconomic-benefits-of-hybrid-learning-going-forward

Nora-Ide McAuliffe, Irish Times

Gaining new IT skills and becoming more digitally literate is one of the positives that MU postgraduate Nicole Carr (21), a first year professional masters of education (post-primary) student has found in the shift to online learning. Engaging with students throughout the pandemic has been key to making online learning work, says Carey. Keeping in touch with student reps to take temperature checks and gathering feedback on what works and what doesn’t has allowed her team to adapt to students’ needs. This has resulted in the MBA programme making some changes such as shorter class times, more pre-recorded material and providing additional virtual office hours.

https://www.irishtimes.com/how-online-learning-impacted-mba-and-postgrad-programmes-1.4564067

Daphne Kis, World Economic Forum

COVID-19 led to the largest boost in online learning participation. As nearly 100% of new graduates entering the job market this year completed their degree at least partially online, traditional candidate evaluation criteria must be revisited. Online learning can offer better preparation for the new work-life normal, including “soft” skills and “cross-functional” skills.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/covid-19-is-ending-the-stigma-of-online-learning-higher-education-workplace-candidate-evaluation-future-of-work/

Tom Wheeler, Brookings Institution
In the coal country of eastern Kentucky, the 800-person town of McKee is the hub of a one-thousand-mile fiber-to-the-home network covering two of the nation’s poorest and most remote counties. The fiber link was built almost entirely with dollars from the federal government. It is a powerful example of the infrastructure of the 21st century and the importance of extending those connections to all Americans.  If the infrastructure plan is adopted, the story of McKee, Kentucky could be the story of every remote, rural, high-cost area in the United States. Fiber networks are not just a technology—they can change peoples’ lives. The story of McKee, Kentucky—where a fiber optic connection has changed lives, created jobs, and recruited residents—is a story that should be available everywhere.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2021/05/19/changing-lives-by-connecting-all-americans-to-broadband-internet/

Brien Posey, Redmond Magazine

Backups are the only guaranteed way to save your data after a ransomware attack. Here’s how to make sure your backup strategy has ransomware mitigation built right in. The advice I always give is that your backups are your most important defense against ransomware. At the same time, backups should be regarded as the last line of defense — not the first. After all, it’s better to prevent a ransomware infection from happening in the first place than to have to restore your backups in response to an infection that has already occurred. Unfortunately, there is no magical silver bullet that can prevent all ransomware attacks. As such, it is important to practice defense-in-depth.

https://redmondmag.com/articles/2019/10/22/how-to-ransomware-proof-your-backups.aspx

Khari Johnson, Wired
Microsoft reveals plans to bring GPT-3, best known for generating text, to programming. “The code writes itself,” CEO Satya Nadella says. Microsoft VP Charles Lamanna says GPT-3 can help empower people with little coding experience. Researchers have used artificial intelligence to improve translation between programming languages or automatically fix problems. The AI system DrRepair, for example, has been shown to solve most issues that spawn error messages. But some researchers dream of the day when AI can write programs based on simple descriptions from non-experts. On Tuesday, Microsoft and OpenAI shared plans to bring GPT-3, one of the world’s most advanced models for generating text, to programming based on natural language descriptions. This is the first commercial application of GPT-3 undertaken since Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI last year and gained exclusive licensing rights to GPT-3.

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-write-code-ordinary-language/

Derek Newton, Forbes
With this change, remote online students will pay $34,717 a year to take online classes, out-of-state students who study on campus at Ohio State will pay nearly the same – $35,019.  In reality, there are legitimate costs pressures on online courses that don’t exist on campus, making it very difficult to design and deliver good online programs inexpensively. Maybe the costs of the programs isn’t why Ohio State moved on their online prices. Maybe they’re just looking for ways to get a few more dollars into their balance sheets, or something else. Whatever the reason, when a school of Ohio State’s size moves their remote, online classes in line with their in-person ones, that’s big news. Or at least is will be.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2021/05/31/ohio-state-raising-fees-for-online-courses-is-a-big-deal/

Devika Desai, National Post

Sarah Eaton, a professor at the University of Calgary, said she has seen increases in cheating from about 40 per cent to over 200 per cent, based on reports published by schools across the country. But, online learning isn’t to blame, she said, having long researched academic misconduct in Canadian post-secondary institutions. “There was about 20 years of research before the pandemic that showed that there was less academic misconduct in online courses compared to face-to-face learning.” Rather, she said, it’s the fact that students were “forced into online learning when they didn’t want to be,” coupled with teachers who are inexperienced and “not well trained in how to deliver their classes in online learning.”

https://nationalpost.com/news/the-real-devil-behind-rise-in-academic-cheating-during-pandemic-isnt-online-learning-expert

Chris Burt, University Business
Over the past year, prospective students seeking online education turned primarily to college websites and reviews from fellow students to find suitable programs. The Trends in Online Student Demographics Report, done of 1,300 of those students and 366 administrators, highlighted the effects of changing course delivery, the impacts of COVID-19, enrollment and campus trends, and concerns among learners. One big shift from 2019-20 to 2020-21 in the online experience was to more live instruction for those operating virtually. Nearly 90% of those polled (BestColleges.com did not include pandemic-driven remote learners in the study) said they had some sort of synchronous instruction, up 31% from 2019-20.

https://universitybusiness.com/online-learning-key-trends-shape-student-experience/

María Elena Hurtado, University World News
The mission of universities in the years to 2050 is to take active responsibility in the development of the potential of all humans; promoting well-being and sustainability oriented towards justice, solidarity and human rights, respecting culture and diversity, creating space for dialogue and forging collaborations between local and global communities and with other levels of education, other social institutions and the economy. These are the key messages of a report by the UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC), Thinking Higher and Beyond: Perspectives on the futures of higher education to 2050, published on 25 May 2021. The report is based on the views of 25 global higher education experts who were invited to participate in IESALC’s ‘Future of Higher Education´ initiative.

https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20210527120235918

Natalie Schwartz, HigheredDive
ProctorU, a company that offers remote test proctoring services, will no longer offer exam monitoring that only uses artificial intelligence to flag potential rules violations and send them to instructors for review, it announced Monday. The company will now only offer proctoring services in which a trained proctor either monitors students remotely while they take their exams or reviews the recordings after their tests. ProctorU says it is making the change because faculty members are reviewing few of the exams the software flagged and AI isn’t capable of assessing human intent. Remote proctoring companies have also been accused of offering services with racially biased AI and invasive software.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/proctoru-scraps-fully-automated-remote-proctoring/600708/

IBL News

“The new normal will be blended education in 2025,” said Anant Agarwal, Founder and CEO at edX during the annual Open edX Conference, which took place in a virtual format yesterday. “50% will be online and 50% in person,” he explained. During the conference’s opening keynote, Mr. Agarwal predicted that the shift will also impact the corporate world. “Remote work and learning are here to stay, and all businesses will go into some kind of blended work model.”

https://iblnews.org/the-new-normal-will-be-blended-education-says-agarwal-at-the-annual-open-edx-conference/

Emily Bamforth, EDSCOOP
Budget concerns are the most-cited roadblock in the way of universities adopting new technologies, a survey of more than 600 higher education leaders found. A Chronicle of Higher Education survey questioned 665 higher education leaders in March about technology decisions they made during the pandemic. While respondents said they were most interested in exploring open educational resources, predictive analytics, AI and chatbots, about 75% said they believed budget concerns were a top challenge in using new technologies.

https://edscoop.com/budget-concerns-stand-in-way-of-higher-eds-tech-adoption-survey-finds/

Quality Matters

The 2021 report, authored by Quality Matters and Eduventures® Research, tracks how institutions are reassessing their priorities related to online learning and shifting focus to ed tech enhancements, faculty professional development and online quality. The report was compiled from responses from 422 chief online officers (COO) representing 2- and 4-year colleges and universities. More than half of the survey respondents (57%) across all sectors of higher education, including predominantly in-person institutions, indicated that, going forward, the pandemic experience is leading to a positive reassessment of institutional priorities related to online learning.

https://www.qualitymatters.org/qa-resources/resource-center/articles-resources/CHLOE-6-report-2021

John O’Brien, EDUCAUSE

Between pandemic and post-pandemic, IT leaders need to take some deliberate steps to make “strategic IT” an irreversible feature on the higher education landscape.  IT leaders and IT staff are running on fumes—but still running, and running hard. In the meantime, however, IT leaders are presented with a unique opportunity to build on all that they accomplished in the mad rush to create “online everything.” As proposed by the EDUCAUSE Top IT Issues analysis for 2021,Footnote1 we could simply restore things to the way they were in February 2020. Or we could evolve and adapt to the next normal. But for many, the chance to do so much more—to transform our institutions—is most compelling. Between pandemic and post-pandemic, IT leaders need to take some deliberate steps to make “strategic IT” an irreversible feature on the higher education landscape.

https://er.educause.edu/articles/2021/5/strategic-it-leaders-between-pandemic-and-post-pandemic

Eric Griffith, PC Magazine

When the Sidewalk Bridges(s) in your house are active, wireless signals that reach outside your home to the sidewalk and beyond will allow any passing Sidewalk-enabled device (called a Sidewalk Endpoint) to instantly connect. Sidewalk will also help set up new Amazon products on your home Wi-Fi. You’re not going to use Amazon Sidewalk to sidle up to the neighbor’s house, access their Wi-Fi on your laptop, and use their ISP bandwidth to watch Netflix. But your Echo devices and your neighbors can co-mingle, forming a low-energy, long-range mesh network over the whole area. That means if you have a network outage at your location alone, a smart device in your house (say your Ring doorbell) may still function—but not enough to send a video stream. It doesn’t have the bandwidth for that.

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/what-is-amazon-sidewalk-and-how-do-you-disable-it

Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report

But focusing only on the effects of Covid on enrollment obscures that a demographic downturn has already been squeezing colleges and universities for a decade during which the number of students has declined by an unprecedented 2.6 million, or 13 percent. Because of a falloff in the number of births during the last recession, another drop of from 11 to 15 percent is projected beginning in the mid-2020s in the number of prospective college students graduating from high schools.

https://hechingerreport.org/colleges-face-reckoning-as-plummeting-birthrate-worsens-enrollment-declines/

Richard J. Novak, Editor Unbound

In this issue, we have two very different articles around the topic of remote instruction and online learning.  In this issue we look at the technical challenges of online learning and we also address the thoughts and strategies of academic leaders concerning this shift in instruction. The pairing of these articles is intentional – the shift to a virtual environment was not just a technical problem to be solved, as significant as that was. Rather, there were fundamental questions about teaching and learning that had to be answered. In other words, our paradigm shifted dramatically and it wasn’t just the technology. In this issue, we consider what the implications may be for the future of teaching and learning.

https://unbound.upcea.edu/

DAVID MEYER, CEO Daily

People from “Generation Z” (those born after 1995) have very high expectations of their employers’ values—a fact that’s made clear in new research conducted by marketing agency Lewis for the HeForShe gender-equality movement. Most eye-catchingly, the study shows a paltry 19% of Gen Z workers would join a company that they don’t feel shares their values. And two-thirds of the survey’s 2,600 respondents from around the world said company values were more important than the firm’s leadership. Which values? Gender and racial diversity top the list. Just over two-fifths of the respondents said they would join a company that lacks the requisite diversity, but only if it had a strong diversity, equity and inclusion program in place, to try to improve. The same proportion said CEOs should be judged by their commitment to solving social issues.

https://fortune.com/2021/05/26/what-gen-z-workers-want-ceo-daily/

Kevin Mills, ATD

Innovation and disruptive technologies are changing the skills that workers need to thrive. Although some occupations will become obsolete, most will undergo transformation based on the increasing reliance on technology to perform even the most routine tasks. While partnering with an online training provider can help your workforce adapt to the future of work, there are several platform options available. Below are some key considerations for governments when selecting the best partner to meet skills development goals.

https://www.td.org/atd-blog/top-5-considerations-for-governments-selecting-an-online-training-provider

Soulaymane Kachani, Amanda Irvin and Catherine Ross – EdSurge

Inclusive teaching is a foundational element for us at the Columbia University Center for Teaching and Learning, and as we worked with thousands of instructors to prepare for online or hybrid courses over the last year, we centered inclusion, diversity, equity, and belonging in all of our programs and resources.While the conversation was not explicitly about inclusive teaching, their reflections kept returning to inclusive pedagogy themes. We have included some of these student responses below to help illuminate three enduring practices we hope instructors and students will carry forward into the future of teaching and learning: helping students address digital inequities; building an inclusive community among learners; and designing course elements for accessibility.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-05-24-what-college-students-wish-professors-knew-about-inclusive-online-teaching