Educational Technology

University of Missouri-Columbia, Science Daily
Aptitude test can steer women, underrepresented groups toward high-demand STEM careers. When Patrick Rottinghaus began college, he had no idea what he wanted to do with his career. He started out as an “Open” major while he explored possibilities. Today, he is helping young people eager to find their place in the world by identifying their strengths and connecting them with careers that match their skill-set, interests and personality. As the father of three children, including a daughter soon to enter high school, he wants to ensure they are equipped with the knowledge and skills to succeed as they prepare to enter the modern workforce.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210226135534.htm

Batya Swift Yasgur, Medscape

A new survey that assessed the mental health impact of COVID-19 across the globe shows high rates of trauma and clinical mood disorders related to the pandemic. The survey, carried out by Sapien Labs, was conducted in eight English-speaking countries and included 49,000 adults. It showed that 57% of respondents experienced some COVID-19-related adversity or trauma. Those who reported the poorest mental health were young adults and individuals who experienced financial adversity or were unable to receive care for other medical conditions. Nonbinary gender and not getting enough sleep, exercise, or face-to-face socialization also increased the risk for poorer mental well-being.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/947458

Jill Duffy, PC Mag

Part of what makes Zoom one of the best video conferencing services is its resiliency at keeping calls going, despite wavering Wi-Fi and faltering 4G. Zoom elegantly figures out what to adjust on the backend to keep your call as smooth as possible, despite the occasional freeze. Aside from its technical prowess, Zoom also has great features for making video calls better and more fun. You can smooth out your skin, drop in a virtual background, and automatically suppress loud noises. And yes, you can turn yourself into a cat, but—more importantly—do you know how to check that those settings are off before your next call?

https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/top-zoom-tips-for-better-videoconferencing-in-a-locked-down-world

Skidmore News

Skidmore often forgets about students with disabilities. We have no official clubs, organizations, or events that allow the community to make noise.  The average student has felt the pandemic’s weight and, in turn, online learning as schools around the world remain partially or fully online. As we turn on Zoom to attend many of our classes at Skidmore, the campus vibe has not returned to pre-pandemic standards. The consensus is that Zoom learning is much more difficult, and many students are receiving more work than they were pre-COVID. A group that Skidmore seldom hears from that has been affected by the transition to online learning is students with learning disabilities.

http://skidmorenews.com/new-blog/2021/2/25/tips-on-dealing-with-the-struggles-of-disabled-learning

Nancy Gleason, University Business

While some bemoan the loss of in-person classes, the remote learning forced by COVID-19 offers us an opportunity to expand access, confront opportunity gaps, and prepare for future growth of higher education. The ongoing pandemic means that many students will continue to attend classes online for the foreseeable future. For starters, e-learning works. While some college administrators still balk at the idea that high-caliber education can be attained outside brick-and-mortar settings, the evidence suggests the opposite. Distance learning empowers educational outcomes, enables more teaching flexibility, opens doors to disadvantaged students, and is, for many college students and faculty, as effective at conveying knowledge as in-person learning. This has been particularly true during the pandemic.

https://universitybusiness.com/in-defense-of-online-learning/

Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
Google announced a pallet full of changes to its education offerings, including a renaming of its education bundle of productivity applications and a limit to free storage for schools and colleges. Security and engagement updates are also being added to the education version of Google Meet, and Google Classroom will see enhancements later this year. The announcements came during a 90-minute virtual session on “learning with Google.” Replays of the event will be available for viewing by registered users after Feb. 19, 2021.  G Suite for Education has been renamed. Starting today, it’s known as Google Workspace for Education.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/02/17/google-renames-g-suite-for-ed-adds-pile-of-new-features.aspx

Jon Porter, the Verge

Zoom plans to roll out support for automatic closed captioning to free accounts this fall as part of its efforts to make the service more accessible, the company has announced. If you’re a free account holder who needs access to the feature before then, Zoom is allowing users to manually request access to the Live Transcription feature via a Google Form linked to in its announcement. Automatic transcriptions aren’t an entirely new Zoom feature. The service has previously offered AI-powered live transcription for all its paid accounts.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/25/22300740/zoom-live-transcription-closed-captions-accessibility-free-accounts

ACE American Council on Education
​​The American Rescue Plan Act ​provides almost $40 billion in relief funds that will go directly to colleges and universities to support the overwhelming costs that institutions and students face in dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.​​​ These sortable, searchable databases below are a simulation of how ED might distribute the emergency funds for public and private nonprofit and proprietary institutions. Click here for the methodology on how we compiled the numbers. (Note: It is not known if ED will use this methodology, but previous simulations on CARES Act and Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act have been very accurate.)

https://www.acenet.edu/Policy-Advocacy/Pages/HEA-ED/ARP-Higher-Education-Relief-Fund.aspx

Catalin Cimpanu, ZD Net

Cybersecurity reports often talk about threat actors and their malware/hacking operations as self-standing events, but, in reality, the cybercrime ecosystem is much smaller and far more interconnected than the layperson might realize. Cybercrime groups often have complex supply chains, like real software companies, and they regularly develop relationships within the rest of the e-crime ecosystem to acquire access to essential technology that enables their operations or maximizes their profits. According to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, these third-party technologies can be classified into three categories: services, distribution, and monetization.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/this-chart-shows-the-connections-between-cybercrime-groups/

Natasha Mascarenhas, Tech Crunch

In today’s survey, thirteen top edtech investors shared their thoughts on how growth of lifelong learning is reshaping the industry. Given the sudden extinction of snow days and yeast shortages brought on by student bakers in the early days of the pandemic, it’s easy to see how remote education extends beyond traditional school hours. As learners become more multi-layered and nuanced, so have the edtech companies that back them. This was a recurring theme in today’s survey, signaling a shift in how investors approach hybrid learning.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/28/12-investors-say-lifelong-learning-is-taking-edtech-mainstream/

Natasha Mascarenhas, Tech Crunch

In today’s survey, thirteen top edtech investors shared their thoughts on how growth of lifelong learning is reshaping the industry. Given the sudden extinction of snow days and yeast shortages brought on by student bakers in the early days of the pandemic, it’s easy to see how remote education extends beyond traditional school hours. As learners become more multi-layered and nuanced, so have the edtech companies that back them. This was a recurring theme in today’s survey, signaling a shift in how investors approach hybrid learning.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/28/12-investors-say-lifelong-learning-is-taking-edtech-mainstream/

Natasha Mascarenhas, Tech Crunch

The business, which helps students and employees learn how to code in an interactive environment, is currently bringing in $50 million in annual recurring revenue. That figure is on track with Codecademy’s normal growth trajectory, which has been doubling since 2018. The startup has still seen some areas of growth. It took Codecademy four years to reach their first 100,000 users; however, they added 50,000 more paying users in their fifth year alone.

https://techcrunch.com/2021/02/23/codecademy-series-d/

Samantha Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive
Ransomware is the top security threat at higher education institutions, according to a new report from cybersecurity services firm BlueVoyant. The research was based on open-source data, including an automated analysis of threat searches across thousands of colleges worldwide. Ransomware attacks on colleges doubled from 2019 to 2020, costing an institution $447,000 on average. Clop, Ryuk, NetWalker and DoppelPaymer were the primary ransomware families targeting education institutions. Data breaches accounted for half of the security incidents colleges dealt with in 2019, according to the report. Nation-state activity leading to data theft impacted more than 200 institutions over the last two years, it found.

https://www.highereddive.com/news/bluevoyant-college-cyberthreats-ciso-ransomware-data-breach/595602/

Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higer Ed

Women make up just 24 percent of research universities’ top earners, according to a new report urging action on pay parity in academe. Women of color are just 2 percent. Women are 60 percent of all professionals in higher education and have been earning the majority of master’s and doctoral degrees for decades. Yet women represent just 24 percent of the highest-paid faculty members and administrators at 130 leading research universities, according to a new study from Eos Foundation’s Women’s Power Gap Initiative, the American Association of University Women and the WAGE project. Women of color are even more grossly underrepresented, at just 2 percent of top core academic earners.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/02/24/women-make-just-24-percent-research-universities-top-earners

Melissa Frick, M-Live
“The Center for Virtual Learning represents our commitment to providing students and faculty with state-of-the-art facilities for teaching and learning,” President David Eisler said in a prepared statement. “The development and creation of this signature building will change the landscape of Ferris State University and support our students and faculty engaged in these high demand career fields.”

https://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapids/2021/02/ferris-state-university-to-break-ground-on-295m-center-for-virtual-learning-this-spring.html

Meghan Groff, Halifax Today
Dr. Robert Summerby-Murray believes the future of post-secondary schools will be a hybrid-model with both in-class online components.  Summerby-Murray believes the future of post-secondary schools will be a hybrid-model with both in-class and online components. Earlier this week, SMU announced a $9.3 million investment over five years in its integrated learning environment.”It will bring together all aspects of virtual and in-person learning into a seamless whole, including the management of learning, data records, academic and financial services, credentialing, and learner support,” said a news release from the school.

https://www.halifaxtoday.ca/coronavirus-covid-19-local-news/smu-president-believes-virtual-learning-could-be-a-long-lasting-legacy-of-covid-19-3451299

Science Daily

New research from George DuPaul, professor of school psychology and associate dean for research in Lehigh University’s College of Education, and colleagues confirms students with ADHD face consequential challenges in succeeding and completing college and predicts ways academic success can be improved. The paper, “Academic Trajectories of College Students with and without ADHD: Predictors of Four-Year Outcomes,” by DuPaul and colleagues from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, University of Rhode Island, and University of Nebraska-Lincoln, was published in the Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210223110358.htm

Liam Geraghty, Big Issue

The Covid-19 pandemic has given women the opportunity to become more ambitious about their careers with online learning allowing them to target male-dominated industries, according to training provider FutureLearn. A YouGov survey carried out on behalf of the firm found 40 per cent of British women say they are more likely to take an online course over the next five years to boost their career, compared to 35 per cent of men. The pandemic has had an impact on attitudes to learning over a computer, tablet or phone – 27 per cent of women told the researchers they were more interested in taking an online course as a result of Covid-19 while 23 per cent of men said the same.

https://www.bigissue.com/latest/employment/training-women-more-likely-to-take-up-online-learning-during-covid-19/

Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
The longer the pandemic lasts, the more students question the value of a college education. A December survey by New America and Third Way found that nearly three in five college students (57 percent) agreed with the sentiment that higher education was no longer “worth the cost,” a bump up from 49 percent in a previous survey in August. Among high school seniors, however, that sentiment was on the decline: While August’s survey found that seven in 10 students questioned college’s importance, by December, that had dropped to 57 percent.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/02/05/report-students-see-college-as-a-bad-deal-during-pandemic.aspx

Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

A recent student survey on the use of open educational resources at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County garnered positive responses from the majority of respondents, who reported engaging with the low- or zero-cost digital course materials and homework tools. Nearly 90 percent of respondents said the quality of the OER materials used in their courses was equivalent to or higher than traditional textbooks. Fifty-three percent of respondents said they would recommend an OER course to others, and 45 percent said they would be likely to enroll in another OER course themselves.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/02/22/majority-of-umbc-students-respond-positively-to-oer.aspx

Holly Jenvey, DePaulia

Some classes at DePaul are zooming past normal standards of virtual learning. A Discover Chicago class used virtual reality to acquaint freshmen with the city and their peers. Bree McEwan, a professor in DePaul’s College of Communication, taught her honors Augmented Chicago class with virtual reality headsets this past fall quarter. McEwan and her colleague Paul Booth used a grant they received prior to the pandemic to launch the Virtual and Augmented Reality in Communication Lab. As McEwan’s class is location specific, it was a perfect opportunity for students to experience Chicago for themselves without being in-person.

https://depauliaonline.com/52601/news/depaul-classes-adapt-to-online-learning-using-new-technologies/