community colleges

The Global Landscape of Online Program Companies [Lederman]

On 09/14/2019, in Asia, Australia, Canada, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, Europe, higher education, India, IT in HE, Law Schools, leadership, learning ecosystem, online learning, quality, strategy, teaching online, UK, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

The Global Landscape of Online Program Companies — from by Doug Lederman
New trove of data suggests a bigger, more complex, more varied ecosystem of companies that work with colleges to take their academic programs online.

Excerpt:

A new dataset promises to give college leaders, company officials and others involved in the online learning landscape much more information about who offers what programs, how they manage them and where the money is flowing, among other factors.

And the company behind the new data, Holon IQ, published a report today that gives a new name to the large and diversifying category of providers that are working with colleges to take their programs online: OPX, instead of OPM, for online program management companies. (More on that later.)

Also see:

Multi-Faculty Collaboration to Design Online General Studies Courses — from facultyfocus.com by B. Jean Mandernach
Excerpt:
While this type of autonomy in course design makes sense for the face-to-face classroom, it may be less practical–and less effective–in the context of online education. Simply put, development of a high-quality online course takes considerable time and advanced knowledge of online pedagogy. If multiple faculty members are teaching the same course online (as is often the case with general studies or other high-demand courses), it is not an efficient use of departmental time, resources, or budget to have multiple faculty developing their own online classroom for different sections of the same course.

Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: Applications, Promise and Perils, and Ethical Questions — from er.educause.edu by Elana Zeide
What are the benefits and challenges of using artificial intelligence to promote student success, improve retention, streamline enrollment, and better manage resources in higher education?

Excerpt:

The promise of AI applications lies partly in their efficiency and partly in their efficacy. AI systems can capture a much wider array of data, at more granularity, than can humans. And these systems can do so in real time. They can also analyze many, many students—whether those students are in a classroom or in a student body or in a pool of applicants. In addition, AI systems offer excellent observations and inferences very quickly and at minimal cost. These efficiencies will lead, we hope, to increased efficacy—to more effective teaching, learning, institutional decisions, and guidance. So this is one promise of AI: that it will show us things we can’t assess or even envision given the limitations of human cognition and the difficulty of dealing with many different variables and a wide array of students.
…
A second peril in the use of artificial intelligence in higher education consists of the various legal considerations, mostly involving different bodies of privacy and data-protection law. Federal student-privacy legislation is focused on ensuring that institutions (1) get consent to disclose personally identifiable information and (2) give students the ability to access their information and challenge what they think is incorrect.7 The first is not much of an issue if institutions are not sharing the information with outside parties or if they are sharing through the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), which means an institution does not have to get explicit consent from students. The second requirement—providing students with access to the information that is being used about them—is going to be an increasingly interesting issue.8 I believe that as the decisions being made by artificial intelligence become much more significant and as students become more aware of what is happening, colleges and universities will be pressured to show students this information. People are starting to want to know how algorithmic and AI decisions are impacting their lives.

My short advice about legal considerations? Talk to your lawyers. The circumstances vary considerably from institution to institution.

Is virtual reality the future of online learning?

On 09/13/2019, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communications, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, digital storytelling, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, immersion, innovation, internet, IT in HE, K-12 related, Law Schools, learning, learning ecosystem, learning from the living [class] room, learning hubs, learning spaces, online learning, platforms, universities, vendors, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, virtual reality / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision, web-based collaboration, XR - extended reality, by Daniel Christian

Is virtual reality the future of online learning? — from builtin.com by Stephen Gossett; with thanks to Dane Lancaster for his tweet on this (see below)
Education is driving the future of VR more than any other industry outside of gaming. Here’s why virtual reality gets such high marks for tutoring, STEM development, field trips and distance education.

Education is driving the future of VR more than any other industry outside of gaming. Here’s why virtual reality gets such high marks for tutoring, STEM development, field trips and distance education. @xrmarin @cinjo @virtualgirlny @mrmadsen1 https://t.co/6BvRxV9ea5

— dane lancaster (@danelancaster) September 13, 2019

Screen Mirroring, Screencasting and Screen Sharing in Higher Education [Rice]

On 09/12/2019, in A/V -- audio/visual, active learning, adjunct faculty, blended learning, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital video, education technology, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, face-to-face, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, IT in HE, Law Schools, learning, learning ecosystem, learning hubs, learning spaces, mirroring and/or multiple devices, Mobile learning, Mobile technologies, more choice more control, multimedia, participation, personalized/customized learning, platforms, podcasting, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, second screen apps, smart classrooms, Smart/Connected TV, storytelling, streams of content, student-related, tablets, teachers, teaching & learning, Technologies for your home, television, tools, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Screen Mirroring, Screencasting and Screen Sharing in Higher Education — from edtechmagazine.com by Derek Rice
Digital learning platforms let students and professors interact through shared videos and documents.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Active learning, collaboration, personalization, flexibility and two-way communication are the main factors driving today’s modern classroom design.

Among the technologies being brought to bear in academic settings are those that enable screen mirroring, screencasting and screen sharing, often collectively referred to as wireless presentation solutions.

These technologies are often supported by a device and app that allow users, both students and professors, to easily share content on a larger screen in a classroom.

“The next best thing to a one-to-one conversation is to be able to share what the students create, as part of the homework or class activity, or communicate using media to provide video evidence of class activities and enhance and build out reading, writing, speaking, listening, language and other skills,” says Michael Volpe, marketing manager for IOGEAR.

‘The Dangers of Fluent Lectures’ — from insidehighered.com by Colleen Flaherty
A study says smooth-talking professors can lull students into thinking they’ve learned more than they actually have — potentially at the expense of active learning.

Excerpt:

The paper also provides important insight into why active learning hasn’t taken deeper root in academe, despite the many studies that have previously identified its effectiveness as compared to more passive approaches (namely the lecture). In a word: students. That is, while professors are often seen as the biggest impediments to innovative teaching, the study describes an “inherent student bias against active learning that can limit its effectiveness and may hinder the wide adoption of these methods.”

Compared with students in traditional lectures, students in active classes perceived that they learned less, while in reality they learned more. Students also rated the quality of instruction in passive lectures more highly, and expressed a preference to have “all of their physics classes taught this way,” despite their lower test scores.
…
In some ways, he said, “the study confirms what we have suspected anecdotally for a long time — that students feel more comfortable in a lecture environment and believe that they are learning more because of the expectations they have for a college learning environment.” But, in fact, he said, they’re “actually learning more in the environments where they are actively engaged in building knowledge about key concepts.”

From DSC:
The part about the students feeling more comfortable in a lecture environment and believing that they are learning more reminded me of this research/paper (which the graphics below reference and link to as well), where they mention the practices of highlighting and re-reading some text. Students feel like they are really learning the content more thoroughly when they are doing these things (and this is what I did in college as well). But the evidence shows that the utility of these methods is low. Instead, practice testing — which involves retrieval practice, as well as distributed practice and interleaved practice produce stronger results.

So what students feel and what’s actually occurring can be different…as Colleen’s article from insidehighered.com points out.

That said — and as the article asserted as well — is that some lecturing is fine to do:

At the same time, Eyler stressed that existing literature shows that some limited lecturing is “definitely OK,” as “students need to know content in order to engage in higher order thinking.”

Addendum on 9/14/19:

Just because students perceive you to be a better teacher doesn't mean they are necessarily learning more.

"Meta-analysis of faculty's teaching effectiveness: Student evaluation of teaching ratings & student learning are not related" https://t.co/GKblnrddqu
#higherEd

— Dr. Alec Couros (@courosa) September 14, 2019

Lessons in learning — from news.harvard.edu by Peter Reuell; with thanks to Jason Findley for this resource out on Twitter
Study shows students in ‘active learning’ classrooms learn more than they think

Excerpts:

The question of whether students’ perceptions of their learning matches with how well they’re actually learning is particularly important, Deslauriers said, because while students eventually see the value of active learning, initially it can feel frustrating.

“Deep learning is hard work. The effort involved in active learning can be misinterpreted as a sign of poor learning,” he said. “On the other hand, a superstar lecturer can explain things in such a way as to make students feel like they are learning more than they actually are.”
…
When the results were tallied, the authors found that students felt as if they learned more from the lectures, but in fact scored higher on tests following the active learning sessions. “Actual learning and feeling of learning were strongly anticorrelated,” Deslauriers said, “as shown through the robust statistical analysis by co-author Kelly Miller, who is an expert in educational statistics and active learning.”

A Financial Crisis — Student Loan Debt — from freedomdebtrelief.com by Micahel Micheletti; with thanks to Aimée Bennett (APR, Principal, Fagan Business Communications, Inc.) for this resource

Key findings

1) Impact of student loan debt on stress, day-to-day life (college attendees/grads)

67% of respondents said the cost of their college education has caused them to feel overwhelmed.
47% said their college education cost has contributed to mental or emotional health issues (e.g., anxiety, depression).
38% said the cost has caused them to lose sleep at night.
49% said the cost of their college education has impacted their choice of where to live.
42% said it impacted their choice of careers or jobs.

2) Impact of student loan debt on finances (college attendees/grads)

59% respondents said they can’t save any money because of the cost of their college education.
45% said they can’t go on vacation because of college costs.
32% said they are carrying credit card debt because of college costs.
48% said they have been unable to pay off (or down), or have delayed paying off (or down), other types of debt because of the cost of college.
47% have been unable to, or have delayed contributing to, saving for emergencies.
43% believe their college education cost has impacted their retirement age.

3) Willing to make sacrifices to eliminate student loan debt (college attendees/grads)

52% of respondents said they would take a job with a salary less than what they expected if the company paid off their student debt.
27% said they would be willing to commit a maximum of five years to a company if they paid off their student loans; 28% said they would be willing to commit more than five years.

4) Impact of child’s student loan debt on parents

20% of parents said their child’s college education cost has contributed to mental or emotional health issues (e.g., anxiety, depression) of their own.
20% of parents said their child’s college education cost has caused them to lose sleep at night.
40% of parents believe their child’s college education cost has impacted their retirement age; 41% said the cost has impacted their overall retirement plan.
42% said they had given up saving for retirement; 42% gave up going on vacation.

Additional survey findings

1) Student loan debt reforms

54% of students said they feel that student loan debt should be forgiven by the federal government.
63% of students, and 52% of parents, said they would support expanding student loan forgiveness for those in public service (e.g., teachers, government employees, first responders, military service).
54% of students, and 42% of parents, said they would support free or subsidized tuition for low-income households.
53% of students, and 50% of parents, said they would support tax breaks for companies that offer student-loan repayment programs.

2) Expected length of time to pay off student loan debt

3) Lack of knowledge of loan terms, types – among both college attendees/grads and parents

A quick tip from RetrievalPractice.org’s e-newsletter today:

#1: Remember your lesson plan with a 1-minute reflection
Can’t remember how a lesson from last semester or last year went? On the bottom or back of a lesson plan, include two questions:

What went well? What should I do differently next time?

As soon as you’re done with the lesson, take just one minute to write down a note to your future self. Stuff all your lesson plans/reflections into a folder. The next time you teach the lesson, future-you will be glad that past-you retrieved!

Google brings AI to studying with Socratic — from zdnet.com by Stephanie Condon
Ahead of the new school year, Google is re-launching a mobile learning app it acquired last year.

Excerpt:

Google this week started rolling out a revamped version of a mobile learning app, called Socratic, that the tech giant acquired last year. The updated app, with new machine learning-powered features, coincides with the start of the school year, as well as other Google for Education initiatives.

Socratic aims to help both high school and university students in their studies outside of the classroom. If students need help answering a study question, they can now use the Socratic app to ask a question with their voice, or to take a picture of a question in their study materials. The app will then find relevant material from across the web.

Also see:

The School of Tomorrow Will Revolve Around AI — from datafloq.com
Excerpt:
We live in exponential times, and merely having a digital strategy focused on continuous innovation is no longer enough to thrive in a constantly changing world. To transform an organisation and contribute to building a secure and rewarding networked society, collaboration among employees, customers, business units and even things is increasingly becoming key.Especially with the availability of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, organisations now, more than ever before, need to focus on bringing together the different stakeholders to co-create the future. Big data empowers customers and employees, the Internet of Things will create vast amounts of data and connects all devices, while artificial intelligence creates new human-machine interactions. In today’s world, every organisation is a data organisation, and AI is required to make sense of it all.

Addendum on 8/23/19

Google: Gmail’s new AI spelling, grammar checks help you avoid email blunders — from zdnet.com by Liam Tung
Gmail on G Suite gains new AI-assisted spellcheck and grammar features.

Average Student Loan Debt Statistics by School by State 2019 [lendedu.com]

On 08/20/2019, in 21st century, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, higher education, parents, society, student-related, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Average Student Loan Debt Statistics by School by State 2019 — from lendedu.com

Excerpt:

For the fourth consecutive year, LendEDU is pleased to once again publish our annual Student Loan Debt by School by State Report, an in-depth analysis of student loan debt figures at nearly 1,000 four-year private and public higher education institutions across the United States.

While the figures change each year, the narrative certainly does not; student loan debt continues to be a growing issue in the U.S. and at nearly all schools in the country as the cost of college continues to rise.

Nationally, outstanding student loan debt sits at $1.52 trillion, making it the second largest form of consumer debt trailing only mortgages.

On an individual scale, the average borrower from the Class of 2018 received their diploma and left campus with $28,565 in student loan debt, up from $28,288 that was owed by the average Class of 2017 borrower.

Because of these eye-popping numbers that have now elevated the issue of student loan debt to the national scale as evident by the recent 2020 Democratic debates, LendEDU places tremendous value on the annual Student Loan Debt by School by State Report.

Online programs fueling boot camp sector’s growth in 2019 [Busta]

On 08/19/2019, in collaboration, colleges, community colleges, credentialing, heutagogy, higher education, ideas, IT in HE, Law Schools, learning, learning ecosystem, learning hubs, learning spaces, Lifelong learning, online learning, student-related, teaching online, tools, trends, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Online programs fueling boot camp sector’s growth in 2019 — from educationdive.com by Hallie Busta

Dive Brief (emphasis DSC):

Growth in online programs is expected to drive gains in the boot camp sector this year, according to an annual survey from Course Report about the market for non-college boot camps.
More than 23,000 graduates across 110 boot camp providers are expected for 2019, a figure that is up 50% year-over-year. Online programs are expected to grow at more than three times that pace to reach 5,519 graduates in 2019 across 14 providers. Course Report counts only full-time, synchronous programs toward its online tally.
Boot camps are increasingly looking to companies and colleges as partners, with the latter often including credit-bearing options, Liz Eggleston, co-founder of Course Report, told Education Dive in an interview.

A reckoning for 2U, and OPMs? [McKenzie]

On 08/14/2019, in collaboration, colleges, community colleges, distance education, higher education, instructional design, IT in HE, online learning, platforms, teaching online, United States, universities, Using teams, vendors, by Daniel Christian

A reckoning for 2U, and OPMs? — from insidehighered.com by Lindsay McKenzie
After online program management company 2U talked openly about its challenges, the company’s stock plummeted. Analysts say the company, and others like it, are down but not out.

Excerpt:

An hour before Chip Paucek, CEO and co-founder of 2U, held an investor call late Tuesday afternoon [on 7/30/19] , the online program management company’s stock was valued at $36.50. Over the next 24 hours, as investors responded to the news he delivered, its stock plunged to $12.80 — a decrease of almost 65 percent.

In that investor call, Paucek delivered a set of messages that wouldn’t have surprised many who watch the online education space closely. Online program management is a difficult business to be in. Online education is increasingly competitive, student acquisition and marketing costs are going up, and the regulatory landscape is becoming more complex.
…
Offering hybrid or fee-for-service options is something many OPM companies already do, but 2U has long been resistant to this change. It’s a significant shift in strategy, said Daniel Pianko, co-founder and managing director of University Ventures.

There has been long-running disagreement about whether fee for service or revenue sharing is the better option for institutions, said Pianko. “What’s really interesting is that 2U went from being the strongest proponent of the revenue share forever camp to effectively embracing the future of fee for service,” he said. “With the 2U move, we would expect a rapid move toward fee for service across the board.”

Also see:

What the Big Edtech Mergers and Acquisitions of 2019 Signal for the Industry — from edsurge.com by Tony Wan

“How can technology be used at scale to address the massive re-skilling that’s going to be needed in the workforce going forward?”

— Kelly Fuller, a director at BMO Capital Markets who covers the ed tech sector

Some basic HTML tips for when your LMS makes you nuts — from busynessgirl.com by Maria Andersen

Excerpt:

HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language; it is the computer code of web pages.

Many editors in blogs, wikis, online learning systems like Canvas, Brightspace, Moodle, and Blackboard have WYSIWYG editors. WYSIWYG stands for “what you see is what you get.”

Most digital editors have an icon panel at the top with standard formatting tools. The location of the tools varies slightly from platform to platform (a few examples from common Learning Management Systems, or LMS’s, are below).

In most online editors, there is an option to switch back and forth from WYSIWYG to HTML. When you are trying to get a page to look just right and it’s not behaving, you might need to go make a few simple tweaks to the HTML. Just knowing that there is HTML code behind each page, and the basics of how it works will be helpful to figuring out why formatting is not “sticking” properly in the WYSIWYG editor.

You can go to PracticeBoard to practice some of the HTML in this post.

A Snapshot of Instructional Design: Talking Points for a Field in Transition — from er.educause.edu by Whitney Kilgore, Patrice Torcivia and Laura Gogia

Excerpt:

The resurgence of learning engineering as a concept and professional role in higher education has exacerbated tensions within the field of instructional design related to job titles, responsibilities, and position within academic institutions.

“World-class instructional designers can help one institution differentiate itself from others in the online learning market. I think that realization is driving the conversation on instructional design in many institutions.”

…

“Today, we need instructional designers who are equally fluent in learning design, faculty professional development, research methods, and technology,” Bowen elaborated. “They must be able to partner with faculty to create, experiment, and publish innovative approaches to teaching and learning. Unfortunately, this looks a lot different than what we have in many instructional design units right now.”

Kyle Bowen, director of innovation at Penn State

Why teaching is still the best job in the world [Paul Moss]

On 08/09/2019, in 21st century, adjunct faculty, collaboration, colleges, communications, community colleges, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, faculty, higher education, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, pedagogy, society, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technology (general), by Daniel Christian

Why teaching is still the best job in the world — from teachthought.com by Paul Moss

Excerpt:

…introducing students to new technologies and ways of presenting, curating, and collaborating with others with what they know is truly exciting and truly invigorating. Modern teachers are actually pioneering pedagogy, and can and will be able to hold their heads up high in the future when we look back and see how learning in this day and age took a radical but enormously beneficial turn for the better.

Engaging students in greater collaboration, and instilling initiative in curation and the promotion of information leads to truly independent learning, and setting up such learning environments is an opportunity that all teachers now have before them. There are few more gratifying feelings that being needed.

Learning Ecosystems

The Global Landscape of Online Program Companies [Lederman]

AI in Higher Education: Applications, Promise & Perils, & Ethical Questions [Zeide]

A reckoning for 2U, and OPMs? [McKenzie]

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