Preparing for the Digital University: A review of the history & current state of distance, blended, & online learning - Siemens, Gasevic, Dawson

 

 Excerpt:

It is our intent that these reports will serve to introduce academics, administrators, and students to the rich history of technology in education with a particular emphasis of the importance of the human factors: social interaction, well-designed learning experiences, participatory pedagogy, supportive teaching presence, and effective techniques for using technology to support learning.

The world is digitizing and higher education is not immune to this transition. The trend is well underway and seems to be accelerating as top universities create departments and senior leadership positions to explore processes of innovation within the academy. It is our somewhat axiomatic assessment that in order to understand how we should design and develop learning for the future, we need to first take a look at what we already know. Any scientific enterprise that runs forward on only new technology, ignoring the landscape of existing knowledge, will be sub-optimal and likely fail. To build a strong future of digital learning in the academy, we must first take stock of what we know and what has been well researched.

During the process of completing this report, it became clear to us that a society or academic organization is required to facilitate the advancement and adoption of digital learning research. Important areas in need of exploration include faculty development, organizational change, innovative practices and new institutional models, effectiveness of teaching and learning activities, the student experience, increasing success for all students, and state and provincial policies, strategies, and funding models. To address this need, we invite interested academics, administrators, government and industry to contact us to discuss the formation of an organization to advocate for a collaborative and research informed approach to digital learning.

February 2015
George Siemens
Dragan Gasevic
Shane Dawson

 

From DSC:
First of all, I saw the following article:

Globe Theatre launch new augmented reality app — from standard.co.uk by Anna Davis
Take a look at Shakespeare’s theatre wherever you are

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

A new “augmented reality” app will allow children from across the world to stand inside Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in Southwark.

The free app, released to mark the Bard’s 451st birthday, lets users create a 3D version of the theatre in the palm of their hands and explore inside.

It is one of the first uses of the latest augmented reality technology for schools and the first app of its kind created by a theatre.

 

GlobeTheatre-AR-App-April2015

 

From DSC:
The article got me to thinking…it made me wonder about taking things a step further with the application of augmented reality (AR) as it pertains to the theatre. 

Pretend that you are at a play or an opera. You could turn your mobile device towards the stage and zoom in on various objects, people, places.  Image/object/facial recognition software could allow you to get more information about who is on stage at any given time (I’m not a fan of facial recognition, but this might be an exception for me). 

Perhaps such an app could even provide language translation for you. Listening to an aria in Italian but want to know what the words are?  Who is that villain over there in the corner of the stage and what’s his role in this story? What village or town is this act in? What’s the year?

Or perhaps one could find “Easter Eggs” within the app that might unlock further meaning for the story.

Hmm….very interesting indeed.

 

 

 

 

5 keys to flipped learning success — from campustechnology.com by Dennis Pierce
Flipping the classroom isn’t easy, but many instructors have found it to be well worth the effort. Here’s some advice for making flipped learning work.

Excerpt:

Talbert teaches Calculus I and a full-year course on discrete mathematics for computer science majors. For calculus, he is using a free, open source textbook written by one of his colleagues with flipped learning in mind, and his department has created a YouTube channel with instructional videos that faculty have recorded using simple screencasting software. For his discrete mathematics course, Talbert is finding and curating online videos that students can watch before coming to class.

In both courses, students are given a structured, pre-class activity that gets them familiar with the lesson’s basic concepts, so when they arrive in his class, “they’re ready to work at a higher level,” he said. That’s the essence of the flipped class model: Students learn the basics on their own, outside of class, so class time can be devoted to a deeper exploration of the content.

 

From DSC:
What applications and implications might this type of setup mean for libraries? For classrooms?


 

PressPad Lounge: new digital press corner that utilizes iBeacon technology — from talkingnewmedia.com by D.B. Hebbard

Excerpt:

The idea behind PressPad Lounge is that the service allows a business to turn a space into a reading zone, allowing those with mobile devices to access digital publications for free.

 

PPLounge-1

 

Also see:
PressPad-April2015

Excerpt:

With PressPad Lounge, people visiting your venue are able to install the magazine app of their choice, and read every issue for free while remaining PHYSICALLY within your venue.

Whether it’s a hotel lobby, a shopping mall, restaurant or a booth, PressPad Lounge enables a slick marriage of digital publishing with location marketing. People located within the range of the reading zone will be able to read magazines on their mobile devices, for free.

 

Micro-learning as a workplace learning strategy — from learnnovators.com by Sahana Chattopadhyay

Excerpt:

In todays’ time-crunched, attention-deficit and multitasking world, micro-learning seems to have cropped up as a possible solution to corporate learning and personal development. However, what exactly is micro-learning remains a bit of an elusive concept with different people defining it in different ways.

The diagram below captures some of the forms of micro-learning:

 

Microlearning Forms

 

 

From DSC:
This reminds me of an earlier posting:

 

Leeds College of Music educates students with Junaio — from blog.metaio.com

Excerpt:

If you’ve ever seen a mixing console before, then you already know what I’m talking about. Those consoles can be a headache to prospective sound engineers in the industry, and to the laymen, it’s nearly impossible to figure out how to maneuver all the knobs and buttons. It’s no wonder that Ruth Clark and Craig Golding of Leeds College of Music set out to come up with a better solution to make audio equipment approachable for their undergraduate students.

First of all, using an e-learning software package called Articulate Storyline, they provided the students with an interactive manual that taught them how to use audio mixing equipment. But this application alone didn’t satisfy Clark and Golding. They also reached out to Matt Ramirez, Senior Augmented Reality Developer at Jisc, the charity offering digital services and solutions to UK education and research, to create something that was far beyond the original scope of the project. The manual was enhanced with Augmented Reality – deployed in Junaio – giving students an easy and innovative way to visualize the various panels and buttons on the mixer console with color-coded overlays: by tapping on the colored parts, students were then able to get additional information for each panel in real time.

 

 

 

 

Assignment #1:
Review the opinion/posting out at marketwatch.com entitled,
Opinion: How the stock market destroyed the middle class” by Rex Nutting and make a listing of the items you believe he is right on the mark on and another listing of items you believe he is mistaken about. Then answer the following questions:

  • What data or other types of support can you find to backup your lists and perspectives? 
  • What data or other types of support does he bring to the table?
  • What are the potential ramifications of this topic (on career development/livelihoods, policy, business practices, business ethics, families, society, innovation, other)?
  • If companies aren’t investing in their employees as much, what advice would you give to existing employees within the corporate world?  To your peers in your colleges and universities or to your peers within your MBA programs?
  • Has the middle class decreased in size since the early 1980’s? What are some of the other factors involved here? Is this situation currently impacting families across the nation and if so, how?

Excerpt:

“The ‘buyback corporation’ is in large part responsible for a national economy characterized by income inequality, employment instability, and diminished innovative capacity,” wrote William Lazonick, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell in a new paper published by the Brookings Institution.

Lazonick argues that corporations — which once retained a sizable share of profits to reinvest (including investing in their workforce by paying them enough to get them to stay) — have adopted a “downsize-and-distribute” model.

It’s not just lefty academics and pundits who think buybacks are ruining America. Last week, the CEOs of America’s 500 biggest companies received a letter from Lawrence Fink, CEO of BlackRock BLK, +0.46% the largest asset manager in the world, saying exactly the same thing.

“The effects of the short-termist phenomenon are troubling both to those seeking to save for long-term goals such as retirement and for our broader economy,” Fink wrote, adding that favoring shareholders comes at the expense of investing in “innovation, skilled work forces or essential capital expenditures necessary to sustain long-term growth.”

 

Also see:

————–

Assignment #2:
Review the current information out at usdebtclock.org and answer the following questions:

  • What does the $18.2+ trillion (as of 4/24/15) U.S. National Debt affect?
  • What level of debt is acceptable for a nation?
  • What does that level of debt depend upon?
  • Which of the pieces of information below have the most impact on future interest rates?  Do we even know that or is that crystal balling it?
  • Do the C-Suites at major companies look at this information? If so, what pieces of this information do they focus in on?
  • Are there potential implications for inflation or items related to the financial stability of the banking systems throughout the globe?
  • Are there any other ramifications of this information that you can think of?
  • What might you focus in on if you were addressing the masses (i.e., all U.S. citizens)?
  • Should politicians be aware of these #’s? If so, what might their concerns be for their constituents? For their local economies?

 

USDebtClockDotOrg-April242015

 

————–

 

Extra Credit Questions:
Now let’s bring it closer to home. Do you have some student loans that are contributing to the Student Loan Debt figure of $1.3+trillion (as of 4/24/15)?  Do you see such loans impacting you in the future? If so, how?

 

studentdebt-4-24-15

 

 

 

FutureDigitalLearningDede-Adobe-April2015

 

From DSC:
Chris uses ecoMOBILE and ecoMUVE to highlight the powerful partnerships that can exist between tools and teachers — to the benefits of the students, who can enjoy personalized learning that they can interact with.  Pedagogical approaches such as active learning are discussed and methods of implementing active learning are touched upon.

Chris pointed out the National Research Council’s book from 2012 entitled, “Education for Life and Work: Developing Transferable Knowledge & Skills in the 21st Century” as he spoke about the need for all of us to be engaged in lifelong learning (Chris uses the term “life-wide” learning).

Also, as Chris mentioned, we often teach as we were taught…so we need communities that are able to UNlearn as well as to learn.

 

 

ecomobile-april2015

 

Also see:

 

AdobeCreate-YouTubeChannel

 

 

FinallyAdoptHTML5

 

7 powerful reminders to finally adopt HTML5 in corporate eLearning  — from elearningindustry.com by Alfredo Leone

Excerpt:

Mobility, ubiquity and portability are key requirements for any type of learning as the market fully embraces to the demand of learners to access knowledge when and where is needed. Learners today expect access to relevant and useful information on various types of mobile devices connected via networks of ever cheaper and faster bandwidth.

This trend toward multi-device and multi-access learning is solidifying day after day, making responsive content design one of the most critical components of any production process for online training material. The premise today is for learning to “follow” the person and not the other way around.

In this dynamic online learning scenario, HTML5 is finally going mainstream as the leading technology to structure and present learning content online. Here are some powerful reasons to adopt HTML5 today even when legacy constrains seem to favor a “wait and see” approach:

 

 

———–

 

Also see:

2015 Business eLearning Trends Infographic — from elearninginfographics.com

 

Addendum on 4/28/15:

How soon is now for the mobile web? — from visionmobile.com by Matt Asay

Excerpt:

That’s one primary takeaway from VisionMobile’s “How Can HTML5 Compete With Native?” report. As report author Dimitris Michalakos concludes, “The question is no longer *whether* HTML5 can produce quality apps, but *how* easy it is to create quality web apps.” Given that “HTML5 is like driving a car without a dashboard,” the key is to deliver better dashboards, or tools, to make it easier to build great web apps.

 

 

Automated, creative & dispersed: The future of work in the 21st century — from The Economist

 

FutureOfWork-TheEconomist-April2015

Date Published:
May 20th 2015

 

Excerpt:

The key findings are as follows:

  • In the next decade-and-a-half, digital technology will dissolve the concept of work as we know it.
  • The growing use and sophistication of automation will shift the emphasis of human employment towards creativity and social skills.
  • This new reality of work will require a new, more nurturing approach to management.

Contents

About the research
Executive summary
Introduction
Your workplace is… everywhere
The hospital of the future
Creative and social skills will dominate the automated world
The bank of the future
Well-being and employee development top the management agenda
The university of the future
The government of the future
Conclusion
Appendix: Survey results

 

 

This requires university workers to develop new skills, she says. Ms Shutt predicts that in the future lecturers will be encouraging more of their students to take work placements or even launch their own start-ups, and developing relationships that give industry a greater input
into the direction of research. “We need to develop skills in interaction with business and in preparing students for the work world.”

 

 

 

Certifying skills and knowledge: Four scenarios on the future of credentials — from knowledgeworks.org by Jason Swanson

Excerpts:

Disruptions to the education system and employment sector are changing what it means to acquire knowledge and skills. Fundamental changes in how we educate learners promise to change how we credential learning. In turn, changes to the way we work could alter the value placed on credentials and how individuals earn them.

This paper considers trends in the education and employment sectors to explore four possible scenarios reflecting how credentials might reflect individuals’ knowledge and skills in ten years’ time.

Exploring the Future of Credentials
In order to explore what credentials might look like in ten years, this paper considers four scenarios for the future of credentials:

A baseline future, “All Roads Lead to Rome,” imagines a future in which degrees awarded by the K-12 and post-secondary sectors still serve as the dominant form of credentials, but there are many roads toward gaining those credentials, such as diverse
forms of school and educational assessments.

An alternative future, “The Dam Breaks,” explores a future in which the employment sector accepts new forms of credentials, such as micro-credentials, on a standalone basis, leading to major shifts in both the K-12 and post-secondary sectors and new relationships between the academic and working worlds.

 

TheDamBreaksScenario-SwansonApril2015

 

A second alternative future, “Every Experience a Credential,” considers what credentials might look like if new technologies enabled every experience to be tracked and catalogued as a form of credential for both students and employees.

A wild card scenario, “My Mind Mapped,” imagines a future in which breakthroughs in both the mapping and tracking of brain functions have created a new type of credential reflecting students’ cognitive abilities and social and emotional skills.

Each scenario in this paper reflects different drivers of change and a different set of fundamental assumptions about how changes affecting credentials might play out across the K-12, post-secondary, and employment sectors.

 

 

From DSC:
I appreciate Jason’s futurist approach here and his use of scenarios. Such an approach helps stimulate our thinking about the potential “What if’s” that could occur — and if they did occur, what would our game plan be for addressing each one of these scenarios?

 

————-

 

A related addendum on 4/24/15:

 

Excerpt:

If you were an academic institution, you might feel a little bit threatened. Over 60% of organisations now believe that the crown jewel of traditional educators – certifications and diplomas – is about to be dethroned by a new uprising: Digital Badges. That’s the finding of research by Extreme Networks on the current adoption of Digital Badges and prospects for the future.

 

5 reasons we shouldn’t be so surprised by what kids wish teachers knew — from takepart.com by Liz Dwyer
The stories being shared with #IWishMyTeacherKnew, the viral hashtag started by teacher Kyle Schwartz, are turning the spotlight on the harsh reality of many American kids.

 

Students-want-teachers-to-know-INLINE1

 

Excerpt:

Their thoughts are handwritten on sticky notes, index cards, and plain old pieces of notebook paper—and they’re providing a window into the lives of America’s children. On Friday, the story of #IWishMyTeacherKnew, the effort by Denver elementary school teacher Kyle Schwartz to get students in her classroom to share something about themselves, went viral across the Web.

 

13 new trends in Big Data and Data Science — from bigdatanews.com by Mike Beneth

Excerpt:

  1. The rise of data plumbing, to make big data run smoothly, safely, reliably, and fast through all “data pipes” (Internet, Intranet, in-memory, local servers, cloud, Hadoop clusters etc.), optimizing redundancy, load balance, data caching, data storage, data compression, signal extraction, data summarization and more. We bought the domain name DataPlumbing.com last week.
  2. The rise of the data plumber, system architect, and system analyst (a new breed of engineers and data scientists), a direct result of the rise of data plumbing
  3. Use of data science in unusual fields such as astrophysics, and the other way around (data science integrating techniques from these fields)
  4. The death of the fake data scientist.

 

Top online engineering school responds to industry appetite for data science, energy, and cloud expertise — from prnewswire.com
NYU School of Engineering’s 3-course immersion offerings bridge technology skills gap

Excerpt:

NEW YORK, April 16, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Fortune 500 companies looking to move the talent needle forward are now able to send employees through online certificate courses in data science, power engineering, and data center and cloud technologies. The NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering’s online learning unit has launched certificates of completion in these new three-course immersion programs.

The new Data Science certificate includes three courses in big data analysis, machine learning, and principles of database systems, with substitutions allowed for visualization or cloud computing courses. “Organizations are drowning in data but starving for insights,” said Professor Nasir Memon, chair of the Computer Science and Engineering Department. “The Data Science certificate provides coursework immediately applicable to data scientists working on complex data problems.”

 

 

 

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

For marketers every tech trend hinges on big data and analytics — from forbes.com by Daniel Newman

Excerpt:

But as we talk incessantly about new technologies, we may overlook the fact that it isn’t really technology that’s driving this revolution, but the data and the insights these technologies create. With this data we are able to better understand what interests people and motivates them to engage with a brand and buy their products, and we can also use this data to innovate products that are a perfect fit for our target audience. Let’s discuss how data and analytics underlie the true value of the technology we are so obsessed with.

 

3 big data science trends that will change business software — from diginomica.com by Phil Wainewright
The appliance of big data science to enterprise applications and data is driving rapid innovation in the business software market. Watch these three trends. 

 

From DSC:
Are we developing our students to be able to ride these waves?

 

 

Also see:

 
 
© 2024 | Daniel Christian