Online Learning Update

By Richard Williamson Paul Burton Shelly Sigo, Bond Buyer

With fewer high-school graduates and foreign students coming to class, the nation’s universities and colleges are turning to increasingly sophisticated and more affordable online courses to help fill the gap. The development of online education raises the question of whether it will evolve from a supplement to traditional in-person learning to something that supplants it. One expert on technological disruption even predicts that half of the nation’s 5,300 bricks-and-mortar colleges and universities could be closed in 10 to 15 years as a result. “The traditional college and university is imperiled,” said Subhash Kak, an Oklahoma State University professor of computer science and electrical engineering. The credit implications have not fully been baked in with rating agencies and analysts mixed on the future of the higher education sector — but they are talking about potential disruptions.

https://www.bondbuyer.com/news/online-learning-technology-will-challenge-higher-education-sector

Katya Schwenk, EdScoop

Research by the online course provider edX reported on Tuesday that 39 percent of U.S. consumers they surveyed across industries feel they lack proficiency in data skills — though respondents also said they are reluctant to ask their employers for additional training. The survey, conducted by a 3rd-party data vendor, polled 1,000 adults, 917 of whom were or had previously been employed. Another 37 percent of the respondents said they lacked proficiency in soft skills like project management. And a quarter said they had been forced to seek outside help with technology they used at the workplace.

https://edscoop.com/a-third-of-u-s-workers-say-they-lack-data-skills/

Edward J. Maloney and Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed

Who owns the content that is created for online and blended courses? The faculty? The institution? Both? Do you know the answer to this question for your school? Would your answer agree with the provost or general counsel? Another way to ask this question is to inquire if the intellectual property policies at your institution have kept up with the digital learning revolution. Back in the days before teaching and learning were digital affairs, the rules governing intellectual property were fairly simple. At most institutions, faculty members owned their IP. If a professor wrote a book or an article, she owned the IP for the book. (Unless she signed away the rights to a publisher or journal, but that’s a different story.) Professors also owned the IP for the lectures that they gave.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/technology-and-learning/intellectual-property-and-digital-learning

BY CONOR MCMAHON, Fora
DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY is rolling out a suite of online courses on topics such as blockchain and artificial intelligence as part of a strategic partnership with digital education provider FutureLearn. Jointly owned by the UK-based Open University and employment industry group SEEK, FutureLearn provides a range of online courses designed by universities and other institutions from around the world. Students and working professionals will be able to enroll in short-term and accredited DCU courses on a range of subjects like artificial intelligence, fintech, conflict resolution, blockchain and data analytics. The full range of courses will be available from the start of next year.

https://fora.ie/dcu-online-courses-professionals-4676983-Jun2019/

JISC

It highlights the crucial role of technology in raising the quality of technical education, while also acknowledging the sector’s limited understanding of these emerging fields. The review therefore recommends that the Department for Education (DfE) funds ‘test beds’ to help FE providers gain a greater appreciation of the potential value and benefits of AIEd and online learning. Jisc’s futurist, Martin Hamilton, comments: “As the report notes, we are in the midst of a fourth industrial revolution driven by emerging technologies like artificial intelligence. It’s clear that the world is changing, and the jobs of the future need an education system to match – an Education 4.0 that complements Industry 4.0.”

https://www.fenews.co.uk/press-releases/30634-online-learning-and-artificial-intelligence-report-welcomed

By Mary Grush, Campus Technology
Learning analytics, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and other new and emerging technologies seem poised to change the business of higher education — yet, we often hear comments like “We’re just not there yet…” or “This is a technology that is just too slow to adoption…” or other observations that make it clear that many people — including those with a high level of expertise in education technology — are thinking that the promise is not yet fulfilled. Here, CT talks with veteran education technology leader Ellen Wagner, to ask for her perspectives on the adoption of impactful technologies — in particular the factors in our leadership and development communities that have the power to influence change.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/06/10/impactful-technologies-are-we-there-yet.aspx

Bob Ubell, Inside Higher Ed

In a recent rush, more than half a dozen adaptive learning companies have been scooped up like M&Ms at a candy counter. One of the most notable is Knewton, whose assets were acquired by Wiley just weeks ago. Last year, Carnegie Learning, Acrobatiq, Knowre and Fishtree were also swallowed in acquisition fever. Meanwhile, ACT, the nonprofit college admission test company, earlier this year invested $7.5 million in Smart Sparrow. Ed-tech guru Phil Hill, the MindWires partner who is widely followed on his Phil on Ed Tech blog, told me in a telephone interview that most sales were made not from strength, but “from positions of weakness and need.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/views/2019/06/12/explaining-shakeout-adaptive-learning-market-opinion

Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed

Many critics weighed in earlier this month when tech giant Apple announced it was dismantling its iconic iTunes music platform and replacing it with separate apps for music, podcasts and video. In numerous articles reflecting on the legacy of iTunes, they remarked on how the software became bloated and suffered from poor user design. But they also acknowledged the pivotal role iTunes played in shaping the music industry by changing the way consumers bought and listened to music. Largely absent from the discussions, however, was the central role iTunes played in opening up higher education to the public.

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2019/06/12/apple-winds-down-itunes-u

By Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Ed

Trump administration seeks overhaul of federal standards for college accreditors, arguing current rules stifle innovation. But critics say proposed changes water down oversight. Betsy DeVos issued a proposal Tuesday to loosen federal standards for college accreditors, arguing that the changes would spur innovation. The education secretary wants to allow colleges to expedite plans to outsource programs and to add new degree offerings or branch campuses without getting an accreditor’s approval. The changes also would make it easier for accreditors who don’t fully meet federal standards to retain their approval.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/06/12/trump-administration-issues-proposal-loosen-standards-college-accreditors

by Lesley Farmer, EDUCAUSE

One model that captures the idea of expertise needed by academic librarians is TPACK: Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. This model shows the kinds of knowledge needed for instruction in the Digital Age (see figure 1). Although one might think that the course instructor should possess all these knowledge bases, that isn’t always the case. If TPACK is applied to instruction within a course, theoretically several people could be contributing this knowledge to the course. A good exercise is for librarians to map their knowledge onto TPACK.

https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2019/5/the-role-of-librarians-in-supporting-ict-literacy

BY TOM HAYMES, eCampus News
Instead of forcing visual thinkers into textual thinking, we need to see the world differently and develop critical thinking skills.  We need to start seeing the world in different ways if we hope to make effective use of the tools of the digital age. However, our educational institutions are still locked into profoundly text-based paradigms that have limited our capacity to use and teach visual and multidimensional problem-solving skills. I see the effects of this in my students and in my colleagues. Our industrial education model is designed to teach visual thinkers to think textually. It is baked deeply into the system and starts from an early age. It profoundly limits the way we perceive the world to artificially linear tracks.

https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/06/05/moving-from-textual-thinking-to-visual-thinking/

By Sara Friedman, Campus Technology

In 2017, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Central New Mexico Community College became the first institutions in the United States to experiment with offering students the option to receive a digital diploma through a blockchain-based app. Both institutions use the Blockcerts open standard that was developed at the MIT Media Lab and by Learning Machine as an alternative to the burdensome process used by most colleges and universities through the National Student Clearinghouse. With Blockcerts, the process for verifying a diploma is simplified into two steps rather than waiting on the Clearinghouse to certify the credentials. Now, other institutions like Southern New Hampshire University and East Coast Polytechnic Institute University are following the lead of MIT and CNM and using Blockcerts to explore how digital diplomas can be used to make the verification process easier for their students.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/06/04/going-beyond-the-digital-diploma.aspx

This is a more personal posting – my UPCEA curated reading list has just passed one million reads.  Since 2011, the blog has steadily grown in readership; more than 1,000 leaders in our field subscribe via email to get the daily updates of news, research, and trends that are most important to those leading professional, continuing and online education.  I invite you to visit the site and subscribe via email (free, no advertising, no spam) using the subscribe box in the upper right hand corner.  Know that you can search the 10,000 postings via keyword.

https://continuingedupdate.blogspot.com/

Michelle Wright, Training Zone

The quality of eLearning has improved enormously but it’s important to engage the learners before, during and after the courses. Otherwise you risk your best learning material being undiscovered, uncompleted and even obsolete.  Arts Fundraising & Philanthropy has created the world’s biggest portfolio of courses for fundraising professionals in arts organisations.  We’re keen that this portfolio doesn’t become a dusty library of content that no one enters.  Here’s what we’ve learned about engaging with the learners:

https://www.trainingzone.co.uk/community/blogs/michelle-wright/engaging-your-virtual-learners

Mose Niccky, Thrive Global

Those teachers who underestimate the role of tech innovations should read this post to find out how they and their students can benefit from using some. Both education and technologies have a high impact on our wealth today. They contribute to the knowledge of humanity. In many ways, education looks much the same as it was centuries ago. The difference is while the professor is lecturing from a podium in front of the audience, they are also using various tech devices and tools to help students understand the topic better. Some of the students have tablets in front of them instead of heavy, lengthy textbooks. Some of them scroll down the newsfeed to offer fresh ideas for discussion while others search actively on the web to find an answer to another tricky question of their tutor. Only a cynic would claim that technologies have nothing to do with academics.

https://thriveglobal.com/stories/7-things-that-prove-the-efficiency-of-tech-advancements-in-education/

David Hutchins, EdTech Magazine

Consider that over the next six years, the number of people 35 and older who enroll in college will grow 20 percent, compared to 13 percent for the traditional 18- to 24-year-old set, according to a National Center for Education Statistics report. And today, across all age groups, roughly one-third of students are taking at least one distance education course, according to NCES data. This break with tradition is breaking IT. A prime example is legacy student information systems that were never designed to accommodate noncredit courses, distance learning, boot camps, self-paced study that doesn’t neatly fit into academic calendars and the increasingly diverse mix of private, public and institutional financial aid sources.

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2019/06/higher-education-evolves-nontraditional-students-require-nontraditional-it-1

Michael V. Miller and A. S. CohenMiller, Online Journal
Key features of open video repositories (OVRs) are outlined, followed by brief descriptions of specific websites relevant to the social sciences. Although most were created by instructors over the past 10 years to facilitate teaching and learning, significant variation in kind, quality, and number per discipline were discovered. Economics and psychology have the most extensive sets of repositories, while political science has the least development. Among original-content  websites, economics has the strongest collection in terms of production values, given substantial support from wealthy donors to advance political and economic agendas. Economics also provides virtually all edited-content OVRs. Sociology stands out in having the most developed website in which found video is applied to teaching and learning. Numerous multidisciplinary sites of quality have also emerged in recent years.

https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/article/view/1492/827

By Hallie Busta, Education Dive
Walmart announced Tuesday that it is adding more degrees, college partners and a path for high school students to its one-year-old program offering full- and part-time U.S. employees access to a college degree for $1 a day. Southern New Hampshire University, Purdue University Global and Wilmington University will join the program, which adds 14 associate degrees, bachelor’s and certificate options in technical fields such as cybersecurity and computer science. Courses are offered through online degree marketplace Guild Education.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/walmart-expands-1-a-day-degree-program/556120/

By Amy Ahearn, EdSurge

At Acumen, where I design online courses, we’ve also been offering selective cohort-based programs for the past year that achieve completion rates of 85 percent. That’s a far cry from five years ago, when only 5 percent of the students were finishing the MOOCs I was designing. How have instructional designers collectively moved the needle so dramatically on completion rates? Unsurprisingly, some of the biggest drivers of these improved metrics include making people pay for online programs, increasing the selectivity of courses, and adding program managers and teaching assistants to follow up with learners. However, there are other meaningful interventions that help more students stick with online educational experiences. Here are seven practices for moving completion rates for online courses from 5 to 85 percent:

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-06-06-moving-from-5-to-85-completion-rates-for-online-courses

Henry Kronk, eLearning Inside
Education Dive has been tracking college closures since 2016. Due largely to regulatory pressure, college closures have far and away been led by the for-profit sector. The publication reports that over 100 for-profits closed between 2016 and 2018, while 30 non-profits have shut their doors. In December, however, Fitch Ratings projected these closures to increase in 2019.

https://news.elearninginside.com/public-universities-bank-on-distance-learning-and-emerging-markets-to-offset-enrollment-declines/

James Paterson, Education Dive
More than half (53%) of college students enrolled online are doing so to change careers, while 18% are preparing for their first professional job, according to an annual survey from online program manager Learning House and Aslanian Market Research. The large majority (84%) of current and past students said their online programs were worth the cost, and 81% of online students said they felt confident they would graduate with the knowledge and skills needed in the job market. Nearly half (47%) of current students said they’d like to return to their alma mater to take additional courses. From 2014 to 2019, the share of undergraduates indicating their online courses were “better” than in-person classes fell from 50% to 39%, while the percentage who indicated they were “about the same” rose from 41% to 50%. More graduate students (52%) ranked online courses as better than in-person classes in 2019 than did in 2014 (43%).

https://www.educationdive.com/news/more-than-half-of-online-learners-want-to-change-careers/556307/