Online Learning Update

Emma Goldberg, NY Times

Many students still see employment in tech as a ticket to prosperity, but for job seekers who can afford to be choosy, there is a growing sentiment that Silicon Valley’s most lucrative positions aren’t worth the ethical quandaries. Claire Stapleton worked at Google and YouTube for 12 years. “There was this ambient glow of being part of a company that was changing the world,” she said. “Working at Google or Facebook seemed like the coolest thing ever my freshman year, because you’d get paid a ton of money but it was socially responsible,” said Chand Rajendra-Nicolucci, 21, a senior at the University of Michigan. “It was like a utopian workplace.” Now, he said, “there’s more hesitation about the moral qualities of these jobs. It’s like how people look at Wall Street.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/11/style/college-tech-recruiting.html

Nick Douglas, LifeHacker

When you want to learn a new skill, don’t use just one book, or app, or YouTube tutorial. Try a lot of them, stick with a couple of them, and occasionally consult others. No teacher or tutorial can encompass all the valid ways of learning a thing. A guide to precise classical piano cannot teach you jazz piano. Strunk & White cannot teach you to write a florid fantasy novel. Bob Ross cannot get you into the Guggenheim. If you want to get serious about a skill, you have to have more than one influence. You have to be ready for new challenges, you have to find your own voice, you have to adapt to added difficulties that your main teacher may not anticipate.

https://lifehacker.com/a-good-learner-consults-many-teachers-1840729127

Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
DIY has become pervasive in our culture. In part it is fueled by the internet, most particularly by YouTube. In part it is energized by time and money savings. It is further driven by the possibility of personalization and customization to meet individual needs just in time and just in place. More than 50 percent of the DIY-ers are between 24 and 44 years of age, and the numbers are growing. This trend is immutable now; it is continuing to grow in numbers and expand into new fields every year. Perhaps we have not been losing learners in the U.S. at all. In fact, there may be millions more postsecondary learners in the U.S. than ever before; they are simply not enrolling directly in colleges and universities, but instead choosing to DIY via MOOCs and other online, nondegree modes.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/rise-do-it-yourself-education

Felicity Parsisson, Open Access Government

With 66% of millennials and 59% of Gen Z surveyed by Pearson agreeing that ‘technology will transform how college students learn in the future’, it seems clear that the use of technology in teaching and learning contexts is not just predicted: it is expected. Coupled with the majority of Gen Z stating a preference for learning through YouTube videos (59%), as opposed to printed books (47%) and the explosion of MOOCs documented by Class Central (an estimated 101 million learners as of their 2018 research), and it becomes apparent that EdTech is already an important part of the learning landscape. With that in mind, this article considers three key functions of EdTech for this century’s learners.

https://www.openaccessgovernment.org/edtech-will-benefit/76118/

BY STEVEN M. BAULE, eSchool News
There are four major areas educators can check to ensure digital materials include accessible content for all students. Today, most learning management systems (LMS) and software programs offer some level of accessibility compliance checking. However, they are not always thorough or error-free. ent is accessible for all students.  For instance, some PowerPoint templates show less-than-ideal contrast between text and background colors. Many YouTube videos include closed captioning, but the automatic captioning often leaves something to be desired. Taking the time to review accessibility of materials makes sense to ensure all students can experience success instead of frustration.

https://www.eschoolnews.com/2019/06/24/ensuring-accessible-content-for-all-students/

YouTube

Dr. Michio Kaku — theoretical physicist, bestselling author, acclaimed public speaker, renowned futurist, and co-founder of String Field Theory, joined Dr. Tracey Wilen, a researcher and speaker on the impact of technology on society, work, and careers for a recent edition of his YouTube series. A former visiting scholar at Stanford University Wilen has held leadership positions at Apple, HP, Cisco Systems and the Apollo Group. In this half-hour program, they address Jobs of the Future for college students.

https://youtu.be/YCwYAHIPAHs

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
In a pilot program at Berkeley College, members of a Virtual Reality Faculty Interest Group tested the use of virtual reality to immerse students in a variety of learning experiences. During winter 2018, seven different instructors in nearly as many disciplines used inexpensive Google Cardboard headsets along with apps on smartphones to virtually place students in North Korea, a taxicab and other environments as part of their classwork. Participants used free mobile applications such as Within, the New York Times VR, Discovery VR, Jaunt VR and YouTube VR. Their courses included critical writing, international business, business essentials, medical terminology, international banking, public speaking and crisis management.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/09/05/berkeley-college-faculty-test-vr-for-learning.aspx

by Kaytie Zimmerman, Forbes

One way that millennials are finding success is by expanding their skill set via online learning. I don’t mean Youtube, though that can be a starting point to learn the basics of plenty of topics. By online learning, I mean formal learning platforms like Skillshare.  “Online learning has really taken off over the past few years,” said Michael Karnjanaprakorn, Founder and Executive Chairman of Skillshare, an online learning community. “One of the factors contributing to this growth is the changing work environment. The rapid pace of technological advancement requires workers to continually learn new skills to keep pace.” Online learning has really become a viable, convenient, and affordable way to expand skills necessary for their job or career.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kaytiezimmerman/2018/02/18/3-reasons-millennials-might-choose-online-learning-over-a-traditional-degree/#1eb16974545b

By Brittany Hawes, Uloop

Students already have limited time so sometimes, the best way to learn new skills will be through online courses. So, which online courses are really going to give you the skills to give you a leg up in the job hunt? Read on to find out! (Note: You won’t have to pay thousands of dollars or search through dozens of YouTube tutorial videos to learn these skills!)

https://www.uloop.com/news/view.php/255752/5-Online-Courses-That-Will-Give-You-a-Leg-Up-in-the-Job-Hunt

By Ben Henderson, eLearning Inside

Measuring CPD has always been tricky calculation.  A two hour session on ‘teamwork’ for example, could easily be less effective than a sub-10 minute YouTube video viewed on the train to the office. One of these activities will potentially be recorded as CPD, and the other barely mentioned.  As a professional, you have ownership of your development on an intrinsic level. You are the only one who knows if a given piece of training or advice has provided value and support to your career development, and that is something which is difficult to measure in an objective sense.  If you would like to track your own CPD, then take a look at Experience API which is a new specification for online learning that makes it easier to collect information about the wide range of professional development experiences an individual has both online and offline.

https://news.elearninginside.com/ad-hoc-informal-learning-opportunities-continuing-professional-development/

Posted by Gisela Valencia, FIU

You visit a panda bear conservation base in China. You explore a historic cave on South Jeju Island. And you get lost in Tokyo’s streets. It sounds like a study abroad trip. But you can visit all these and more from the comfort of home thanks to a new online class centered on virtual reality. “Study and Travel East Asia through Virtual Reality (VR),” offered through the Asian Studies Program – part of the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, is the first course of its kind at FIU. Using materials like VR glasses, smartphones and Youtube videos, students get to experience East Asia like never before. Students who may not be able to afford study abroad trips now have an opportunity to explore the region without breaking the bank and possibly prepare for a future trip to Asia.

https://news.fiu.edu/2017/08/drop-in-series-new-virtual-reality-course-brings-asia-to-students/114020

by Carl Straumsheim, Inside Higher Ed

The University of California, Berkeley, will cut off public access to tens of thousands of video lectures and podcasts in response to a U.S. Justice Department order that it make the educational content accessible to people with disabilities. Today, the content is available to the public on YouTube, iTunes U and the university’s site. On March 15, the university will begin removing the more than 20,000 audio and video files from those platforms and require users sign in with University of California credentials to view or listen to them. Cathy Koshland, vice chancellor for undergraduate education, says “This move will also partially address recent findings by the Department of Justice, which suggests that the YouTube and iTunes U content meet higher accessibility standards as a condition of remaining publicly available.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/u-california-berkeley-delete-publicly-available-educational-content

by BW Online

Students signing up for this course will be required to spend just 3-4 hours a week for only 17 weeks under the supervision of Siraj Raval, who is known for his time competent skills. Focusing on the inception of foundation programs for students, Udacity, a pioneer in disruptive learning technologies has launched a Deep Learning Nanodegree Foundation Program. The online education startup has partnered with YouTube star Siraj Raval for the new deep learning nanodegree foundation program that will be co-taught with Udacity’s Mat Leonard. This is a new focus for us at Udacity, so you can expect us to launch more Nanodegree Foundation programs this year!”, said Shernaz Daver, chief marketing officer for Udacity.

http://bwdisrupt.businessworld.in/article/Udacity-Launches-Its-First-Deep-Learning-Nanodegree-Foundation-Program-/18-01-2017-111676/

by John Mannes, Tech Crunch

Greater compute power and power efficiency has made deep learning algorithms ubiquitous in our world. Deep learning has found its way into self driving cars, convenience stores and hospitals. Yet the fight for top talent in the space remains fierce and is a bottleneck for reaching new industries and solving tough challenges. To complement Udacity’s previous AI courses, the online education startup is partnering with YouTube star Siraj Raval for a new deep learning nanodegree foundation program that will be co-taught with Udacity’s Mat Leonard. Foundation Programs are going to be a major focus for Udacity in the coming year. They fill a niche for students not quite ready for a full nanodegree program. The new course promises a lot in a short 17 weeks. With just 3-4 hours per week of time, the goal is to equip students with enough knowledge to know how to solve any task with deep learning. Raval explains it as a way of thinking.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/13/udacity-launches-deep-learning-nanodegree-foundation-program/

by Matt Zalaznick, University Business

The University of Maryland’s open source textbook initiative, known as “MOST,” has guided faculty through more than 50 OER adoptions. The program helps instructors assemble resources to significantly keep down the cost of course materials. Open educational resources have grown over the last few years from one-off oddities in single courses to the basis of entire degree programs. Cutting out textbook costs for students tops the list of reasons administrators encourage faculty to develop and adopt these free—or very inexpensive—resources, also known as OER. Other enticements include immediate access for students who sometimes wait or refuse to buy course materials, and instructors’ ability to customize and update OER, which range from digital textbooks to interactive tutorials to quizzes to YouTube videos.

https://www.universitybusiness.com/article/oer-revolution-higher-ed

by SHERYL UBELACKER, the Canadian Press

There’s no question medical students have to cram in a lot of information on their way to becoming full-fledged doctors, and a new Canadian teaching website aims to make that journey a little less onerous. Students now have access to a free online platform, called medskl.com, which provides digital-based learning for today’s future physicians, many of whom have grown up on YouTube, says its developer. “The lessons are designed to be short, fun and engaging so the information sticks,” said Dr. Sanjay Sharma, a retina specialist and professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., explaining that the open-access website employs video lectures, whiteboard animations and summary notes to help students diagnose and plan treatment for a broad range of illnesses.

http://www.news1130.com/2016/09/21/free-website-for-medical-students-a-prescription-for-augmented-digital-learning/

by Lucas Shaw, Bloomberg

Google is entering what has quickly become a crowded marketplace, with products from Facebook Inc., Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics Co. and HTC Corp. Whereas Sony’s Morpheus headset is tethered to its PlayStation video-game console, Google is focused on mobile-based VR, whereby consumers snap their phones into a visor or headset. With the headset on, Daydream presents users with an array of apps, from YouTube to HBO Now. “Google’s Daydream will help advance mobile virtual reality,” said Oren Rosenbaum, a digital media agent at United Talent Agency who spearheads its VR effort. “Mobile virtual reality is what’s going to get the most people to strap things on their head.”

3 Ways Virtual Reality Can Enhance Learning

by Emory Craig, Maya Georgieva, EDUCAUSE Review