Techno-News Blog

by Abhijeet Katte, Analytics India Magazine

There is not enough research and knowledge around how interactions happen online between communities and users, especially in the space of conflicts. A team from the Computer Science and Linguistics department of Stanford University wanted to change just that. What they did: research conflict events by searching for cases where one community posted a hyperlink to another community. What they found: conflicts tend to be initiated by a handful of communities—less than 1% of communities start 74% of conflicts. In the long term, conflicts have adverse effects and reduce the overall activity of users in targeted communities. The researchers also came up with a way to predict conflicts on the web communities.

Deep Learning Models That Predict Conflicts In Online Communities

by Joseph Bednar, Business West

This year marks the 15th consecutive year of growth in what’s known as online, or distance, learning at U.S. colleges and universities. But a newer trend is seeing students fresh out of high school — not just the working adults that have dominated the online-learning world — logging on as well. At a time of changing demographics in higher education, area schools that have embraced the distance model simply say they’re meeting students where they want to be.

Why Is Online Learning Seeing a Surge in Popularity?

By Amy Ahearn, EdSurge

Many online learning platforms, such as LinkedIn Learning and MasterClass, are indeed pivoting towards business models that look a lot like subscription-based streaming services Pandora, Spotify or Netflix. Customers can now pay a monthly fee to get access to a library of content. However, just as the iTunes business model is deeply disadvantageous to artists, online learning platforms are now granting online instructors smaller and smaller shares of the revenue as they steer business models in the streaming direction. Data journalist David McCandless calculated it would take over one million plays on Spotify for a solo artist to earn the U.S. monthly minimum wage. We could be pushing online teachers in a similar direction.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-03-why-an-itunes-model-for-online-learning-is-bad-for-educators

BY TOM KRAZIT, GeekWire
A new ten-course seminar for engineers looking to add machine-learning skills to their resumes is now available through the Microsoft Professional Program. The Microsoft Professional Program for AI will be available four times a year and it should take at least a few weeks to complete the training. Developers will be given an introduction to machine-learning principles and taught how to create learning models and data sets, modeled on an internal Microsoft training program. They will be awarded a “a digitally sharable, résumé-worthy credential” after completing a deep learning project at the end of the course, Microsoft said.

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/microsoft-launches-new-online-training-courses-aspiring-ai-engineers/

by Stephanie Kim,  Georgetown University
With their distinctive campuses, emphasis on research and scholarship, and singular form of governance, universities are sometime seen as academic sanctuaries, separate from the rest of society. While there is some truth to this notion, colleges, like other institutions, are also products of the society that shaped them—and they exert their own unique influence on society as well. In 2018, with the nation and world more fast-moving and interconnected than ever, the very pressing concerns of society will be the concerns of higher education as well; and those universities that are most able to confront these challenges—by expanding their missions, reaching out to “nontraditional” students, and partnering with other institutions here and abroad—will be the most successful.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/universities-must-expand-reach-to-stay-competitive/519010/

by Dhawal Shah, Class Central

We received nearly 2,500 responses to the survey. Overall, we found that Class Central users tend to be highly educated. You are interested in MOOCs for both personal and professional reasons, and many of you have experienced career benefit from MOOCs. On the whole, you aren’t keen to pay for MOOCs, and you are divided over the value of the social and interactive elements of MOOCs.

More detailed results from the survey are linked below.

Class Central Learner Survey (2017): MOOC Users Highly Educated, Have Experienced Career Benefits

by Emily Tate, EdScoop
Teachers expressed dismay after the Amazon Education company announced plans to “wind down” its personalized math and writing solutions. The news came as a surprise to K-12 educators who use the program for online, personalized instruction. Teachers responded on Twitter with pleas for Amazon to reverse course, with disappointment about the news and with suggestions for salvaging parts of TenMarks resources. With TenMarks on its way out, Amazon’s education offerings have dwindled materially. However, Amazon Inspire, a free library for open educational resources, and AWS Educate, an initiative to teach students cloud literacy and skills, remain among the company’s signature efforts to reach students and teachers.

https://edscoop.com/tenmarks-to-shut-down-operations-after-2018-2019-school-year

by Matthew Lynch, TechEdvocate

With over six million students currently enrolled in online learning programs, there is no future in higher education except in online education. As universities adapt to better serve a growing population of digital learners, there will no doubt continue to be monumental progress made in educating all students, everywhere. Online learning is the future of education–at all levels, but especially in higher education. As the concept of distance learning evolves from cassette tape and telephone learning to high-speed, interactive Internet lessons, more doors are opened for students for whom traditional classroom learning simply does not work. The following trends will likely take hold in the next five years, allowing more students access to high-quality education from any location.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/future-online-learning-higher-education/

by WCCF Tech

Apart from the hardware and apps which Apple has announced recently, Apple Teacher is an immensely productive tool for teachers. Apple Teacher is basically an online professional learning program for teachers. Teachers will have the ability to improve their teaching through various means.  All in all, with the program, teachers will be able to build and learn new skills, show their progress and will be inspired to do great work. Apple will reward teachers with badges which will be offered in different styles, denoting different aspects of the system.

https://wccftech.com/apple-introduces-apple-teacher-an-online-professional-learning-program-for-teachers/

by Riia O’Donnell, Education Dive
Following the hire of a Stanford University leader in learning science, Candace Thille, speculation rose that e-tail giant Amazon was moving into the e-learning space. A new report by CNBC suggests the company is looking at its cloud to build a corporate training service. Although the company denies any move into the online education space, job postings from Amazon since April 2017 have advertised for people who could help build a “learning platform.” As recently as December, an ad for a solution architect cited an opportunity to “enable hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries around the world to transform and scale their learning initiatives.” Representatives for the company told HR Dive recently, “[Thille] is serving as the Director of Learning Science and Engineering within our Global Learning and Development team. Her remit is to help scale and innovate workplace learning at Amazon.”

https://www.hrdive.com/news/amid-speculation-amazon-continues-to-inch-its-way-into-e-learning/519891/

by Distance Educator.com

For many, discussions of rural America can summon images of rolling farmland, two-lane roads stretching on for miles, community picnics, and baseball. This nostalgia runs in stark contrast to the contemporary phenomenon of “rural America as political football” playing out on television screens each night—unemployment,
addiction, hopelessness. Whether you subscribe to the Mayberry or the Beattyville concept of rural life, there is a common trait shared between them—that a high-quality education can open a world of opportunities to their children. Just as Canada responded to the educational needs of remote students throughout its Provinces— rst through correspondence courses, today through online courses—the United States, too, has begun to level the playing eld of quality curricula and educational opportunities for students across the country via digital learning.

http://distance-educator.com/download-report-digital-learning-strategies-for-rural-america-a-scan-of-policy-and-practice-in-k-12-education/

by Mark Austin, Digital Trends
Not satisfied with merely ferrying cargo to and from the International Space Station (and putting a red Tesla into orbit around Mars), SpaceX now wants to provide high-speed internet to everyone in the world. SpaceX CEO and flamethrower enthusiast Elon Musk envisions Starlink as a network of thousands of satellites in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) that will provide broadband internet access to the entire planet. That plan took a big step forward this week when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved the company’s request to provide broadband satellite services.

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/spacex-starlink-gets-fcc-approval/

by Meghan Bogardus Cortez, EdTech
University students are coming to class with more than just a college-ruled notebook. Modern classes look nothing like what they did just 10 years ago, thanks to an increase of technology in higher education classrooms. As digital tools have reshaped the world around us, Susan Smith Nash, a blogger, educator and early ed tech adopter, isn’t surprised that technology has become a major part of the higher ed classroom. “The classroom should be a laboratory for life,” she says.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2018/03/5-technology-tools-higher-education-classroom-perfcon

by Jarrett Carter, Education Dive
Carnegie Mellon, Brown, Connecticut and Iowa State universities, among others, have invested millions of dollars in creating campus innovations centers. Their goal is to attract nontraditional business students to campus for entrepreneurial development, and to create a pipeline of corporate partnership to the campuses, according to a recent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education.  Between 2008 and 2016, Carnegie Mellon helped to launch 250 companies mostly comprised of faculty members and staff from the college of engineering and schools of business and computer science. This representation, some say, is a limitation for centers as they largely attract white males from STEM disciplines.  Matthew Mayhew, a professor of educational administration at Ohio State University, said in the article that universities should encourage students who become involved with innovation centers to also align with other campus activities, which helps diversify skill sets necessary for entrepreneurial success. “The central idea is still the same,” he said. “Students can actually learn the steps in how to take an idea and roll it out to execution. And those steps aren’t necessarily just about developing a strategic business plan.”

https://www.educationdive.com/news/are-campus-innovation-centers-serving-all-students/520353/

by Autumn A. Arnett, Education Dive
In a speech, President Donald Trump expressed a desire to return to the days of vocational schools — both in name and function — saying he doesn’t know what a community college is, other than knowing it’s a two-year school. Touting the need for expanded financial aid to support “short-term training programs that equip Americans to succeed in construction and the skilled trades” during remarks on his infrastructure plan, the president said he knows what vocational “and technical perhaps” mean, but suggested the term “community college” is too nebulous. He again lauded the importance of apprenticeship programs as the key to workforce development, equating them more closely with technical and vocational training.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/trump-says-he-doesnt-know-what-a-community-college-means/520367/

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

When instructional designers are involved in online course design, student-to-student interaction goes up, according to a new survey of online education leaders from Quality Matters and Eduventures Research. The survey compared reported student interaction levels at institutions where instructional design support is required for online course development vs. those where such support is absent or optional. Perhaps not surprisingly, respondents perceived interactivity to be significantly higher for the former.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/04/02/report-instructional-design-support-helps-increase-student-to-student-interaction-in-online-courses.aspx

By Joey Morona, cleveland.com
The University of Akron will unveil more details about its new esports program at a forum next month. The purpose of the event is “to discuss how the esports varsity teams and club will function, and how the program will contribute to the greater Akron area through community involvement,” a university spokesperson said in a release. Akron’s esports — or competitive video gaming — program is scheduled to launch this fall with both varsity and club teams. The varsity team will field between 50 to 55 players competing against other universities in games such as League of Legends, Overwatch, CS:GO, Hearthstone and Rocket League. Like other student-athletes, varsity esports players will be eligible for scholarships.

http://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2018/03/university_of_akron_esports.html

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Many educators and teachers loudly espouse the innumerable benefits of edtech to solve today’s most prevalent classroom issues. Technology certainly does play a major role in the development of students and academics, but it doesn’t solve everything. In fact, there are a few major issues that still exist in today’s education system that edtech may be unable to solve.

Are you wondering why some of these issues still exist? Check out some of these reasons why edtech falls short in solving some of education’s most significant issues.

http://www.thetechedvocate.org/why-edtech-hasnt-solved-educations-problems/

By PRISCELLA VEGA, Los Angeles Times

The robot is self-balancing, with six- to eight-hour battery life. It sells for about $3,000. Members of UCI’s class of 2016 used their senior class gift to buy four telepresence robots for the university. Law and political science professor Rick Hasen described the experience with the Double 2 as unusual, but said it helped instill camaraderie in his class. In past years, Hasen said, classes would be recorded and students would watch later and email him with questions. “It wasn’t bad, but this was much better,” Hasen said.

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-uci-robot-20180330-story.html

By Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

Asynchronous discussions and group projects are the most important techniques currently used for online learning, according to a new survey of online education leaders from Quality Matters and Eduventures Research. When asked which online learning methods were most important at their institutions, respondents pointed to those two activities first, followed by problem-based learning, quizzes and research projects.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/03/30/asynchronous-discussions-group-projects-still-dominate-in-online-courses.aspx

by Joe Barnhart, Campus Technology

Humor is a tough nut to crack. In the face-to-face classroom, it works great to keep the troops awake and actively breathing. Effective techniques include goofy activities, oddball writing assignments and witty comments. Prodding students into a laugh proved to be a viable strategy and I was very successful at it. What really helped was reading the class’s body language: those subtle shifts in attitude where I could deliver one of my dry zingers, producing the desired jovial results. Those experiences proved to me that humor was a dominating factor when creating an interactive classroom. So, moving to the online format was a little disconcerting. Could humor achieve the same responses online as in real life? Well, I’ve come to find out the answer is, “Absolutely!”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2018/03/28/working-the-online-crowd-humor-and-teaching-with-tech.aspx