Online Learning Update

By Toni Fuhrman, Campus Technology

Recent Educause research indicates that faculty are not adopting mobile as fast as students are demanding it. Higher ed IT executives and faculty are still struggling with the ongoing job of catching up and keeping up with student expectations regarding mobile devices and mobile infrastructure. “Faculty is not adopting mobile as fast as students are demanding it,” commented diFilipo in a recent interview. “We’re dealing with 17- and 18-year-olds that live, breath and literally sleep with their mobile devices. This is a whole ecosystem. The mobile device is their power base. It is, in effect, their ‘car’ — a source of freedom, mobility, and identity in an age when kids are not as free to roam about as they once were.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/03/08/faculty-alert-you-cant-put-the-mobile-genie-back-in-the-bottle.aspx

by Ingrid Lunden, Tech Crunch

Back in 2013, Amazon acquired (and continued to operate) online math instruction company TenMarks to gain a foothold in the online education space. Now it looks like Amazon is taking those learnings to the next level. The e-commerce giant plans to launch a free platform for schools and other educators to upload, manage and share educational materials. Signs indicate that the platform will be based around open educational resources (OER) and will come with a ratings system and interface that will resemble the commercial Amazon.com many of us already know and use. Earlier this month, Amazon Education quietly opened an “Amazon Education Wait List,” where educators could sign up to get an alert for when a new, free platform opens for business.

http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/11/amazon-eyes-up-education-plans-a-free-platform-for-learning-materials/

By Jordan Friedman, US News

Some online programs use projects to give students constant feedback and help them master specific skills.​ ​For online students looking to develop a specific set of skills, or competencies, project-based learning might be the way to go. Some online programs and classes offered through colleges and universities, as well as companies like Udacity, allow students to demonstrate their knowledge of a subject through the creation of ​large products​ instead of taking exams in some cases. Programs and courses vary on how and to what extent they incorporate project-based learning and assessment into curriculums​, experts say. But often​, this form of education involves constant feedback from an instructor and may allow for multiple attempts if a student initially falls short of meeting certain criteria.

http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2016-03-11/explore-project-based-learning-in-online-education

BY EMELY KRANSVIK, the Concordian

Concordia has put in extra effort this year to boost interest in summer school by offering brand-new classes, flexible online options and a large selection of courses. This summer, Concordia will offer over 100 classes, the largest number of summer classes the college has ever offered. Dr. Cynthia Carver, chair of Division of Professional Programs at Concordia, said that the number of online classes, accelerated classes and summer-only classes, have doubled from last year. She said she has noticed that students actively discuss summer school, and is excited to see the enrollment numbers after registration is complete. Also, according to Carver, a lot of students want to take online classes because they understand that employers want to see students who have done some learning in an online environment, because much of the training and development in companies happens online.

http://theconcordian.org/2016/03/10/concordia-adds-new-summer-school-courses-online-options

by UConn Daily Campus

Every year the University of Connecticut adds 35 to 40 new online courses offered over the summer, according to associate director of UConn eCampus Desmond McCaffrey. The online courses are workshopped for five to six months by eCampus in order to transform the curriculum to become more technology-friendly rather than simply posting the syllabus online. Instructional designers work with the faculty to facilitate this process to streamline the curriculum for the shorter summer terms. While there is certainly something to say about the pitfalls of online classes compared to traditional face time with a professor, there are appreciable benefits to online classes, particularly during intersessions.

http://dailycampus.com/stories/2016/3/9/editorial

the Daily Bruin

Improving the quality of these run-down classrooms is valuable, but expanding lecture halls to fit more seats is a step in the wrong direction. Instead, the university should focus on expediting the expansion of online and hybrid courses to accommodate the growing class size. Having so many students in one room is not conducive to learning. Large lecture halls hinder active discussions and prevent students from fully understanding the lecture content due to poor visual and auditory conditions. Though online classes have faced some controversy, when properly implemented they actually have numerous advantages that help mediate the issues caused by overcrowded classrooms. For instance, online classes allow students to replay lectures and see what the professor is writing on the board. Online classes also provide a host of other benefits, such as added flexibility. Online classes help students avoid class conflicts, so they can take more of the classes they desire or participate in extracurricular activities.

http://dailybruin.com/2016/03/10/editorial-ucla-should-add-online-classes-to-accommodate-higher-enrollment/

By Alison van Diggelen, Huffington Post

“Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s biggest problems,” wrote Tom Friedman in 2013. But of course, his and Thrun’s rosy predictions couldn’t happen overnight. The online learning business had some serious teething problems with high drop out rates, and dismal failure rates. But today, the future of online education is looking brighter. There are now hundreds of online education companies around the globe. In the U.S. the big three are: Coursera (a Stanford startup) which now boasts 15 million students; EdX (affiliated with MIT and Harvard) with over 5 million users; and Udacity, 4 million. Since Udacity’s high profile failure at San Jose State, the company has refocused its online courses and recently partnered with Google, AT&T and Amazon to design “nanodegrees” tailored to the needs of tech companies. Thrun is so bullish about the market value of these 4-12 month nanodegrees, which offer project based learning, that he’s offering a money-back job guarantee.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alison-van-diggelen/sebastian-thrun-ai-pionee_b_9423134.html

by Vanna Emia, Yibada

Learning through online channels is growing in China, with over 1,000 online education startups established since 2014, according to an article by China Daily. Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists come together in this popular field, where there is no geographical restrictions, a high degree of standardization, and maximum use of content. Massive Online Open Courses (MOOC) is just one of the online education startups where users can register to gain access to hundreds of online courses by different universities for free.

http://en.yibada.com/articles/108819/20160310/online-education-platforms-increasingly-popular-china.htm

by Tim Dodd, AFR

Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is launching four free courses on big data with the UK-based massive open online course (MOOC) provider FutureLearn. The four short courses, each requiring only four hours study over two weeks, are from the university’s Centre of Excellence for Mathematical and Statistical Frontiers. The first course, From Data to Decisions, starting on April 4 explores case studies of using the power of big data to reach decisions, and introduces the tools to store and manage large data sets.

http://www.afr.com/technology/apps/education/mooc-watch-new-free-online-course-explains-big-data-20160310-gnfxbx

by Connie Johnson, EDUCAUSE Review

Because of the advantages of personalized learning content, Colorado Technical University began piloting courses with adaptive learning in the beginning of 2012, launching the adaptive learning platform intellipath. University-wide training of students, staff, and faculty has resulted in 800 faculty members — about 82 percent — trained on intellipath, with most of those training sessions in years two and three of the rollout. In addition to improved student success markers such as grades, engagement, and retention, CTU has won several awards for its adaptive learning platform.

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/3/adaptive-learning-platforms-creating-a-path-for-success

by John O’Brien, EDUCAUSE Review

The transformation under way at the point where teaching, learning, and technology intersect is so promising and so complicated that it is no wonder those of us involved in talking and writing about these developments are looking for the perfect turn of phrase to bring it all together. It’s our nature to seek out words to attach to the issues that matter, an inclination clearly at work within the universe of activities collected under the term personalized learning. The desire to name important trends in the technology landscape is hardly new: EDUCAUSE has made important contributions to the effort, capturing the imagination of the higher ed IT community by furthering both the idea of technology as a “game-changer” and the concept of “connected learning.”

http://er.educause.edu/articles/2016/3/personalized-learning-people-practices-and-products

by eCampus News

College for America at Southern New Hampshire University partners with USA Funds to open the door to community colleges who want to learn more about CBE programs and implementation. College for America at Southern New Hampshire University is partnering with USA Funds to create a competency-based education (CBE) consortium for community colleges. The consortium will provide an opportunity for community colleges to learn from College for America and to engage employers in addressing workforce challenges through competency-based education. Participating community colleges will learn about best practices from their peers and initiate conversations about CBE with employer partners in their communities.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/news/community-colleges-cbe-454/

By Bill Steele, Cornell Chronicle

The “Cornell brand” is expanding its visibility in the digital world, as the university offers more courses online. In part, this trend grows from the work of a small group of people who were interested in advancing online learning and formed the Cornell Online Learning Community (COLC) a year ago. At a follow-up event March 1, the group – along with several newcomers – received encouragement from high places: “We are on the ground thinking about e-learning and academic technologies,” Provost Michael Kotlikoff told the audience of more than 100 faculty and staff members gathered in G-10 Biotech. “Our students expect it.”

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2016/03/online-learning-offers-any-study-any-time-anywhere

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

The University of Michigan, a founding partner of MOOC company Coursera, has followed through on a fall 2015 commitment to deliver massive open, online courses on edX as well. The university’s Office of Digital Education & Innovation will launch the first of four programs on the edX platform starting in April. The courses to be launched this spring and summer on “MichiganX” are: Finance for Everyone: Smart Tools for Decision-Making, which begins on April 5; Data Science Ethics, which starts May 1; and Social Work: Meeting the Challenges of a New Era and Practical Learning Analytics, both of which launch in July.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/03/08/u-michigan-expands-to-edx-with-4-courses.aspx

by Pat Wadors, Harvard Business Review

This past year, I have spoken with a number of career centers in universities. The most common question I get from them is, “How do we best prepare our students for the ‘real world’?” That’s a great question (and one that many fine minds are trying to figure out), but for those of us running large organizations in today’s digital economy, it’s the wrong one. It’s not about learning a set of skills and then being “prepared” for life. It’s about learning to continuously learn over the course of your whole career. As AT&T CEO and Chair Randall Stephenson, recently told the New York Times, “There is a need to retool yourself, and you should not expect to stop….People who do not spend five to 10 hours a week in online learning will obsolete themselves with the technology.”

https://hbr.org/2016/03/to-stay-relevant-your-company-and-employees-must-keep-learning

By Toni Fuhrman, Campus Technology

Way back in 2013, in a research report on the bring-your-own-everything (BYOE) era of higher education, Educause Chief Research Officer Eden Dahlstrom and co-author/CIO Stephen diFilipo cautioned: “Device proliferation is manic, and unmanaged growth could result in a ‘tragedy of the commons’ situation, where too many devices find their way to campus networks too fast and institutions find more opportunities lost than taken.” Fast-forward to today, and higher ed IT executives and faculty are still struggling with the ongoing job of catching up and keeping up with student expectations regarding mobile devices and mobile infrastructure. “Faculty is not adopting mobile as fast as students are demanding it,” commented diFilipo in a recent interview. “We’re dealing with 17- and 18-year-olds that live, breath and literally sleep with their mobile devices. This is a whole ecosystem. The mobile device is their power base. It is, in effect, their ‘car’ — a source of freedom, mobility, and identity in an age when kids are not as free to roam about as they once were.”

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/03/08/faculty-alert-you-cant-put-the-mobile-genie-back-in-the-bottle.aspx

by A. Sasha Thackaberry, Evolllution

This is the conclusion of A. Sasha Thackaberry’s two-part series providing an overview of the competency-based education (CBE) space. In the first installment, Thackaberry looked back at the recent history of CBE, outlining the major players who helped to bring CBE into the higher education commonsense. In this installment, she provides a taste of the institutions making a splash today. In the past couple of years there has been a surge of interest in CBE. Where does this new momentum come from? Calls for reform of higher education in general, combined with suspicion about the practical value of many degrees, the financial support of CBE programs by influential funding agencies, and the increased ability of technology to effectively support the model have all contributed to a growing interest in, and support of, CBE. In 2005, the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act allowed “Direct Assessment” programs. In 2013, Southern New Hampshire University became the first college approved with this option.

http://evolllution.com/programming/applied-and-experiential-learning/a-cbe-overview-a-taste-of-cbe-today/

By Brendan V. Duke, Center for American Progress

By all rights, Millennials—people born between 1981 and 19971—should be the highest-paid generation in American history. They are, after all, the most likely to hold a college degree and are working in a period of unsurpassed productivity. Unfortunately, more education and a more productive economy have not paid off for working Millennials. Median compensation—wages plus the value of benefits from employers such as health care premiums and 401(k) contributions—for a 30-year-old in 2014 was below that of a 30-year-old 10 years earlier. Indeed, 30-year-olds today make around the same amount of money as 30-year-olds in 1984, despite the facts that they are 50 percent more likely to have finished college and that they work in an economy that is 70 percent more productive.2

https://cdn.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/02125021/MillennialWages-brief1.pdf

By MARY MOGAN EDWARDS, THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

The Ohio inspector general is investigating a troubled joint project by Ohio State University and the state Board of Higher Education to create a clearinghouse of online learning materials. State lawmakers mandated the project during the administration of former Gov. Ted Strickland. An Ohio State spokesman confirmed that the university is “aware of the investigation” and is cooperating. State Department of Higher Education spokesman Jeff Robinson would say only, “If there is something that the IG finds troubling in regard to the clearinghouse that was established under the previous administration, we would certainly support their review.”

http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/ohio-online-learning-434/

by Jonathan Moules, Financial Times

Business schools were braced for disaster less than five years ago, with the arrival of massive open online courses, or Moocs, and the platforms that hosted them. Not quite. Early indications suggest that, far from cannibalising existing revenue streams such as income from executive education courses, the availability of online content is broadening the reach of institutions. Today, schools work in partnerships with Mooc platforms such as Coursera, so that interactive content and broadcast lectures complement study tours and time spent by students on campuses.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/1c23f588-cb35-11e5-a8ef-ea66e967dd44.html#axzz42EvEAodQ

by Jon Marcus, The Hechinger Report

The for-profit universities are busily devising strategies to rebuild enrollment that has crashed by 26% collectively since its peak in 2009—more than twice that at the University of Phoenix. They are also seeking out new sources of revenue, rather than continuing to rely almost entirely on federally subsidized student financial aid and inviting relentless scrutiny. And, while they’re at it, to overcome public mistrust, says University of Phoenix President Tim Slottow, who works upstairs in that office building on I-10. “I’m not naïve enough to tell you we’re over the hardest part,” says Slottow, a former chief financial officer at the University of Michigan. University of Phoenix parent Apollo Education Group announced in January that it had agreed to be acquired by a group of investors for $1.1 billion—slightly more than a tenth of what it was once worth—and go private. The deal will be finalized by August, if approved by regulators and shareholders.

http://time.com/money/4246709/can-the-university-of-phoenix-rise-from-the-ashes/