Techno-News Blog

by Erika Gimbel, EdTech

Leaders evaluate the best tools, applications and practices as they develop data-driven initiatives.  Anywhere from about 40 percent to 60 percent of colleges and universities have a data analytics program in place, but a survey by Ovum reports that many of those initiatives aren’t fully matured. Only 27 percent of universities consider their data analytics programs to be advanced or complete, and more than half (54 percent) are in the planning or early implementation stages.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2019/01/data-programs-gain-traction-campuses-complexity-remains

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Twitter is an amazing social media platform as it offers many wonderful benefits. However, users must be warned that this widely used technological marvel can also turn out to be huge trouble if it is not used for the right purpose. People often end up wasting their time scrolling through the never-ending threads of conversations on Twitter. Nevertheless, its incredible benefits can be unlocked when it is used the right way. It has already proven itself to be a useful tool in the field of business. In this article we will discuss 12 ways to use Twitter in the classroom.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/12-ways-to-use-twitter-in-the-classroom/

Rooney Columbus, American Enterprise Institute

For decades society has regarded a bachelor’s degree from a traditional higher education institution as one of the surest paths to prosperity.2 But a bachelor’s degree program at a traditional college is not always the best option for everyone, nor is it the only avenue for people to receive training and skills that will pay off in the job market.3 After years of policymakers and advocates advancing a broad “college for all” agenda, many Americans are questioning this sweeping and singular approach to human capital development.4 Even so, it remains unclear what other viable education and training alternatives exist to build necessary skills and secure employment. A broad spectrum of researchers and policy thinkers have argued for expanding alternatives to the traditional postsecondary system.

https://www.aei.org/publication/nondegree-credentials-work-based-learning-and-the-american-working-class/

by WSYR

Law is the chosen field for nearly three dozen people in Syracuse University’s newest law school class that started their program this week. The university is offering a law degree program online– the first ever full interactive law program approved by the American Bar Association. “I live within two miles of five law schools in Chicago, all of which have part-time programs, but I really am comfortable with this type of learning,” said Ray Scannell, an online law student through SU. Educators say the program is just as rigorous as if the students came to Dineen Hall everyday.

https://www.localsyr.com/news/local-news/first-ever-online-law-program-starts-at-syracuse-university/1696438243

by Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate

Are you new to Google Classroom and looking for more efficient ways to use the platform? Don’t worry; we have you covered. In today’s tip, we will discuss 150 smarter ways to use Google Classroom.

https://www.thetechedvocate.org/150-smarter-ways-to-use-google-classroom/

by JONATHAN SHAW, Harvard Magazine

Anant Agarwal agrees that it is much too soon to write off online education on the basis of an evaluation of MOOCs alone. “Edx remains committed to developing a sustainable business model, and making sure that we are able to reimagine education both in quality and scale for everybody, but it is going to take time,” he says. “Seven years in the grand scheme of things is a very short period of time to assess whether the technology has had a big impact” (although 40 million learners reached in every country in the world is a good start). “Once we get sustainable, and the non-profit begins generating a surplus, we can invest in quality and in reaching people we would not otherwise have reached.” Right now, he says, “I think we are just barely scratching the surface.”

https://harvardmagazine.com/2019/01/mooc

David Raths, Campus Technology

When asked about creating virtual teaching assistants like Jill Watson, Behrens said Pearson is working on similar solutions, but he cautioned that it is not easy. Creating a chatbot for a specific course requires a certain set of tools and data, he explained, “but to scale that across disciplines, where each discipline has its own way of talking or thinking and its own professional standards, that takes another level of sophistication in machine learning, but also in understanding the educational and social ecosystem.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/01/10/ais-impact-on-ed-tech.aspx

Ryan Stark, Daily Helmsman
The price of online courses through the University of Memphis have been reduced to become the same price as on-campus courses. Previously, online courses at the UofM required an additional tuition premium that made them more expensive than on-campus courses. The Board of Trustees has approved a proposal to reduce the price of online classes equal to on-campus classes. “What this means for UofM students is that regardless of what modality they elect to take their classes in, be it traditional, on-the-ground courses or online courses, the tuition rate will be the same,” said Raajkumar Kurapati, the Chief Financial Officer at the UofM. “Students can mix and match classes (online or on-ground) to fit their needs and not have to pay an additional tuition premium.”

http://www.dailyhelmsman.com/news/online-classes-cost-reduced-to-same-as-on-campus-classes/article_bece8c08-1461-11e9-85d7-8fa01ad4df95.html

Epic
The European Commission’s Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence has requested comments on draft Guidelines for Trustworthy AI. The EU Guidelines state, “Trustworthy AI has two components: (1) it should respect fundamental rights, applicable regulation and core principles and values, ensuring an ‘ethical purpose’ and (2) it should be technically robust and reliable since, even with good intentions, a lack of technological mastery can cause unintentional harm.” The EU Guidelines reflect several principles from the Universal Guidelines for Artificial Intelligence, which have been endorsed by more than 250 experts and 60 organizations in 40 countries. The Universal Guidelines promote transparency, accuracy, and fairness for AI systems. Comments to the European Commission are due January 18, 2019. The final report will be released in March 2019.

https://epic.org/2019/01/european-commission-seeks-inpu.html

Current

Across North and South America, automation is transforming the nature of work and is set to replace around a third of roles. Yet at the same time, AI is generating new opportunities and job prospects. To ensure long-term economic success, many experts believe nurturing the AI talent pipeline will be essential. But how do the universities across the region fare?

https://www.distrelec.de/current/en/robotics/americas-innovative-universities-ai-robotics/

By Hallie Busta , Education Dive
By the time the ink was dry on Purdue University’s acquisition of for-profit Kaplan University, the higher ed sector was entrenched in two distinct camps: those who thought the deal unfairly let a for-profit college operate under the guise of a nonprofit, and those who argued the move was critical for the public land-grant university to compete in the growing online education realm. For $1, Purdue got Kaplan’s some 30,000 students and 2,500 instructors, forming the basis of its online college, Purdue University Global. The deal’s low price also obligates the university to share revenue from the new entity with Kaplan Higher Education, which handles several of its administrative functions, including admissions support, financial aid, marketing and advertising.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/how-purdue-global-is-expanding-purdue-us-access-to-adult-learners/545554/

by Karen Hao, MIT Technology Review

Americans have mixed support for the continued development of AI and overwhelmingly agree that it should be regulated, according to a new study from the Center for the Governance of AI and Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute. These are important lessons for policymakers and technologists to consider in the discussion on how best to advance and regulate AI, says Allan Dafoe, director of the center and coauthor of the report. “There isn’t currently a consensus in favor of developing advanced AI, or that it’s going to be good for humanity,” he says. “That kind of perception could lead to the development of AI being perceived as illegitimate or cause political backlashes against the development of AI.”

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612734/americans-want-to-regulate-ai-but-dont-trust-anyone-to-do-it/

Dark Reading
Universities must keep pace with rapidly changing technology to help thwart malicious hacking attempts and protect student information.    Retailers, healthcare providers, and social media platforms may be the first organizations that come to mind regarding consumer data security. However, other organizations — including institutions of higher education — are also tasked with the responsibility of protecting their customers’ sensitive and valuable personal information from cybercriminals. Because increasing numbers of students opt for some level of distance learning, today’s institutions of higher education are collecting vast amounts of virtual data. And as in any industry, universities must keep pace with rapidly changing technology to help thwart malicious hacking attempts and protect student information. This is especially important for universities that serve primarily nontraditional students — for example, adults taking online classes.

https://www.darkreading.com/endpoint/privacy/6-best-practices-for-managing-an-online-educational-infrastructure/a/d-id/1333552

James Vincent, the Verge

GPT-2 is part of a new breed of text-generation systems that have impressed experts with their ability to generate coherent text from minimal prompts. The system was trained on eight million text documents scraped from the web and responds to text snippets supplied by users. Feed it a fake headline, for example, and it will write a news story; give it the first line of a poem and it’ll supply a whole verse. It’s tricky to convey exactly how good GPT-2’s output is, but the model frequently produces eerily cogent writing that can often give the appearance of intelligence (though that’s not to say what GPT-2 is doing involves anything we’d recognize as cognition).

https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/7/20953040/openai-text-generation-ai-gpt-2-full-model-release-1-5b-parameters

By Natalie Schwartz, Education Dive
The U.S. Education Department has released the list of industry representatives who are set to participate in the negotiated rulemaking session on college accreditation scheduled to begin later this month. The diverse group of stakeholders represents students, accreditors and various types of higher education institutions, including the University of Alaska, the parent company of for-profits Strayer University and Capella University, Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) and Brigham Young University.  The agency has indicated the sessions will tackle a range of issues, including the definition of the credit hour, accreditor oversight and requirements for teacher-student interaction in online programs. The stakeholders will have until the end of March to come to an agreement about the proposed regulatory overhaul.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/negotiators-for-accreditation-rulemaking-have-strong-stakes-in-online-alte/545545/

By Roberto Rey Agudo, Inside Higher Ed

Can providers of massive open online courses achieve their goal of educating the most possible people when their offerings are overwhelmingly in English? No, Roberto Rey Agudo argues. Much has been made of the global nature of MOOCs, and the fact that these courses are enabling students from many countries to learn together. Coursera has 181 partners in 27 countries; edX has 130 partners worldwide. In spite of their international reach, English is the language of instruction for over 80 percent of their courses. In contrast, English makes up about 50 percent of internet content, and English speakers 30 percent of the total users. Can edX and Coursera be global platforms and be functionally monolingual?

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2019/01/09/moocs-overwhelming-dependence-english-limits-their-impact-opinion

by Mark Lieberman, Inside Higher Ed

Purdue last month established a central administrative office, Purdue Online, to act as an online program manager of sorts for the institution’s three on-ground campuses as well as Purdue Global, which now exists as a public benefit corporation and does not receive state funding.  Representatives of the original Purdue campuses have been meeting regularly with instructors and deans at Purdue Global, sharing ideas and identifying areas of potential academic collaboration while drawing lines between the two entities’ focus areas and target audiences. Purdue administrators have also been paying close attention to high-profile competitors on the online landscape, including Arizona State University, which administrators cite as a model for their ambitions.

http://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/09/purdue-prepares-online-expansion-support-newly-acquired-profit

By Bonni Stachowiak, EdSurge

It can be a delicate balance to try to not overwhelm students by the quantity of educational technology we use in a class, while still keeping things interesting through the element of surprise. The easier a tool is to use, the more likely students will feel comfortable engaging with each other. As an example of the kind of tool that is easy to use, I was recently introduced to a brainstorming tool called Tricider (thank you Michelle Pacansky-Brock, faculty mentor for digital innovation at California Community Colleges). Tricider has us identify what crowdsourced decision we want to make, or what type of brainstorming we’d like to spark, and we are up and running. Students can add ideas, pros and cons, and vote on items. The instructor can decide if you want to let anyone who has the link be able to collaborate, protect your ideas with a password, or require people to set up accounts before they can engage.

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-01-09-how-can-online-instructors-get-students-to-talk-to-each-other

By Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
Bold pronouncements about trends in the fast-moving, and somewhat data-poor, landscape of online learning should be approached with great skepticism — which is why this isn’t one. What it is is a high-level view of some data in an analysis published last month by Public Insight, which collects and makes available public data in accessible formats. The blog post by the company’s CEO, Dan Quigg, carried the provocative title of “Has Distance Education Hit Its Peak?” — a question inspired by federal data showing that the proportion of all academic programs that were offered via distance education declined to 10.5 percent in 2016 from 10.8 percent in 2017. It was the first such decline since the federal government’s main higher education database, the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, began collecting data on online education in 2013.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/01/09/are-we-seeing-early-signs-saturation-online-academic-programs

By Eric Kelderman, Chronicle of Higher Ed

Last Monday the department released its recommendations for major changes in the rules regarding accreditation and how colleges qualify for federal financial aid. Approval by a federally recognized accrediting agency is a key condition for colleges to receive federal student-aid dollars — the lifeblood of most colleges.  Possible rule changes also include lowering requirements for colleges to operate online across multiple states, setting rules for distance learning, amending how religious colleges are treated by accreditors, and shifting the administration of federal grants for students who plan on classroom teaching, called Teach Grants. Negotiated rule-making on all of those recommendations, which will involve representatives of various interested groups, are to begin in the middle of January.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/Cutting-Oversight-of/245429

Andrew Ross Sorkin, NY Times

What if there were a way to eliminate student debt? No, really. Student debt reached a new height last year — a whopping $1.5 trillion. A typical student borrower will have $22,000 in debt by graduation, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Now, Silicon Valley is backing a novel idea that proposes to rewrite the economics of getting an education. The concept is deceptively simple: Instead of charging students tuition — which often requires them to take out thousands of dollars in loans — students go to school for free and are required to pay back a percentage of their income after graduation, but only if they get a job with a good salary. The idea, known as an Income Share Agreement, or I.S.A., has been experimented with and talked about for years. But what’s happening at Lambda School, an online learning start-up founded in 2017 with the backing of Y Combinator, has captivated venture capitalists.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/business/dealbook/education-student-loans-lambda-schools.html