education technology

The Post-Pandemic Outlook for Edtech — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig

Excerpts:

For the edtech industry, the pandemic poses a paradox. Never before have schools and colleges so urgently needed digital tools and services to facilitate remote learning—and been less able to afford them.
…
Consumer edtech, then, may be where the market is hottest moving forward. And experts say a new key audience has emerged in the sector: parents. Many have been thrust—begrudgingly—into the role of homeschool teacher, and they’re looking for ways to keep kids on track academically that don’t require them to spend hours brushing up on fractions.

“The new audience for edtech companies, whether they sell directly to consumers or not, is the parent. That’s a major and permanent change,” he explains. “Whether it’s needed all the time or not, it needs to be built in.”

— Frank Catalano

Online Tutoring Services
It’s been a hot few years for companies that connect students with tutors who teach online. Between 2016 and 2019, online tutoring services raised more than $1.2 billion in venture capital.

19 Remarkable Higher Education Statistics [Curated in 2020; Dojchinovska]

On 06/11/2020, in 21st century, Asia, Canada, colleges, community colleges, digital learning, education, education technology, Europe, global / globalization, higher education, India, learning ecosystem, learning preferences, multimedia, online learning, platforms, trends, UK, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

19 Remarkable Higher Education Statistics [Curated in 2020] — from markinstyle.co.uk by Anastasija Dojchinovska; with thanks to Karthik Reddy for this resource

Excerpts:

Also see:

15+ Exciting Elearning Statistics [Lessons for 2020] — from markinstyle.co.uk by Anastasija Dojchinovska; with thanks to Karthik Reddy for this resource

Excerpts:

33 Great Ways to Teach English with Technology [englishpost.org]

On 06/09/2020, in Canvas - and other Instructure-related items, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, communications, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, engagement / engaging students, K-12 related, languages and translation, reading, vendors, writing, by Daniel Christian

33 Great Ways to Teach English with Technology –from englishpost.org

Excerpt:

How to Teach English with Technology is about language and second language teaching using the best educational technology resources for the ESL Classroom.

When technology integration in the classroom is seamless and thoughtful, students not only become more engaged, they begin to take more control over their own learning, too.

XR for Learning – June 3, 2020 — from twist.learningguild.net

Excerpt:

Augmented, Virtual, and other mixed reality technologies are rapidly emerging and advancing, creating new and exciting opportunities for training and education. XR for Learning collects some of the best XR content that learning professionals can learn from.

Here’s this week’s recommended content.

ECAR Study of the Technology Needs of Students with Disabilities, 2020 — from er.educause.edu by Dana Gierdowski and Joseph Galanek
Technology in higher education can be both an aid and a challenge for students with disabilities. Institutions and instructors can take steps to ensure that these students have equitable access, and those same measures can help all students, particularly during the era of emergency remote teaching.

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

We asked students, “What is ONE thing you would like your instructors to do with technology to enhance your academic success?” In our analysis of their responses, we identified two overarching themes, as well as prominent patterns within those themes:

Online Access to Materials and Resources
- Class notes and slides
- Assignments, tests, and quizzes
- Recorded lectures
- The LMS and the user experience
Teaching with Technology
- Mobile devices in the classroom
- Training students and faculty in using technology
- Multiple methods of presenting course materials
- Engagement through the use of technology

Read full report: PDF | HTML

Access other materials: Executive Summary | Infographic

Also see:

From DSC:
After reading the following item from Jeremy Caplan’s most recent e-newsletter entitled, “Tiny Stuff I Love“…

Alfred = Saves me time on copying and pasting
If you copy and paste stuff frequently, get a clipboard manager. I use Alfred throughout every workday. It keeps the last 100+ things I’ve copied in a neat list so I can paste anything I’ve used recently into a browser, document, or wherever else.

This is super-handy when I’m copying and pasting things repeatedly from one place to another. Sometimes I’m moving a bunch of stuff from a document into an email. Or putting several links or notes into a Zoom chat window.

Lots of tools do something similar. I also like the Copied App, $8 on the Mac App store. It has a companion iPhone app.

…I instantly thought of how useful this type of tool would be for teachers, professors, and perhaps trainers as well — especially when grading!

From this page (emphasis DSC):

What Does a Clipboard Manager Do?
The default clipboard in Windows works well, but it’s quite basic. The biggest limitation is that it can only hold one item at a time. If you copy a piece of text, forget to use it, then copy an image later, the text will be gone. Another hassle is that you can’t view what you’ve copied without pasting it.

For anyone who copies and pastes all the time, these are big problems. Thankfully, this is where clipboard managers come in. They greatly expand the functionality of your clipboard by remembering dozens of entries, allowing you to pin frequently used snippets for easy access, and much more.

Readers of this blog might also be interested in some of the other tools that Jeremy mentions, including:

Toby = Save and share my browser tabs

Coursera Makes Certificate Programs Free to College Students During Pandemic — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpt:

Online learning provider Coursera has opened up its certificate programs to current undergraduate, graduate or recently graduated college and university students. Students with a verified school e-mail address can sign up for free access to more than 3,800 courses, 150 guided projects, 400 specializations and 11 professional certificates on the platform. They must enroll before July 31, and have until Sept. 30, 2020 to complete the programs.

Surviving the Third Wave of COVID and Beyond [Feldstein]

On 06/02/2020, in 21st century, colleges, community colleges, education, education technology, future, future of higher education, higher education, IT in HE, liberal arts, society, technology (general), United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Surviving the Third Wave of COVID and Beyond — from eliterate.us by Michael Feldstein

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

If such an idyll ever existed, its heyday coincided with an age when universities were bastions of race-, gender-, and class-based privilege, with a minute fraction of the population enrolled in higher education. — Gabriel Paquette

Rather, I am suggesting—and I believe Paquette is suggesting—that we take a good hard look at how much our standards may be influenced by hidden assumptions of privilege. Why should a “quality education” for the 21st-Century masses look identical to the “quality education” of the 19th-Century elites? Where do these ideas of quality come from? Whose goals do they serve? And what trade-offs do they entail?

Just as literacy is about more than employing the technology of the printed word, e-literacy is about more than EdTech. It’s about culture. It’s about understanding how we change ourselves—consciously or not—when we choose to depend on certain tools in certain ways. And it’s about making mindful choices. — Michael Feldstein

Six items re: the future of higher education

On 05/31/2020, in Amazon, business, business side of he, change, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, Google, higher education, ideas, innovation, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, Microsoft, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, new business models, online learning, online media, open courseware and systems, pace of change, platforms, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, traditional / tradition, trends, UK, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
I saw the piece below from Graham Brown-Martin’s solid, thought-provoking posting entitled, “University as a Service (UaaS)” out at medium.com. My question is: “What happens if Professor Scott Galloway is right?!”

Excerpt:

Prof Scott Galloway predicts lucrative future partnerships between the FAANG mega-corporations and major higher education brands emerging as a result of current disruptions. Galloway wonders what a partnership between MIT and Apple would look like?

The education conveyor belt of the last century that went school to university to work and a job for life just doesn’t work in an era of rapid transformation. Suppose we truly embrace the notion of continuous or lifelong learning and apply that to the university model. It wouldn’t just stop in your twenties would it?

University as a Service (UaaS), where higher education course and degree modules are unbundled and accessed via a monthly subscription, could be a landing spot for the future of higher education and lifelong learners.

Below are some other items
regarding the future of higher education.

Also relevant/see:

Updating the Higher Education Playbook to Stay Relevant in 2020 — from info.destinysolutions.com (Note: You have to complete the form to get access to the whitepaper.)

Also relevant/see:

Shaping the Future of Post-Secondary Education — from Cherry Tree & Associates
A Time of Transformation in Post-Secondary Education and the American Workforce.

Also relevant/see:

Fast Forward: Looking to the Future Workforce and Online Learning — from evolllution.com by Joann Kozyrev (VP Design and Development, Western Governors University) and Amrit Ahluwalia
Excerpt:
With employers and students looking to close the gap in workforce skills, it’s critical for them to know what skills are in need the most. Postsecondary institutions need to be the resource to provide learners with the education the workforce needs and to make both parties understand the value of the students’ education. With the remote and online shift, it’s a new territory for institutions handle. In this interview, Joann Kozyrev discusses the impact remote learning has on an online institution, concerns about the future of online learning and how to get people back into the workforce fast and efficiently.

Pandemic may (finally) push online education into teacher prep programs — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig

Excerpt:

But there’s another factor that’s impeding remote learning. Most teachers simply don’t know how to teach online. No one ever taught them how—or asked them to learn.

“To teach remotely is not something we usually teach,” McGhee says. “We are very much focused on classroom teaching.”

That’s not unique to Auburn. Few teacher preparation programs in the U.S. train future educators to teach online, experts say.

From DSC:
I, for one, am glad that we made the investments in the telecommunications and networking infrastructures, in the PCs, Macs, laptops, tablets, other items in the #edtech realm, as well as investing in a variety of technologies through the years. Given the need to move online due to the Coronavirus, I’d say such investments offered many a solid ROI throughout K-12, higher education, as well as in the corporate world. But I realize that not everyone has access to these things…which is something we must work on as a nation.

But had we not made those investments, where we would be now?

Also see:

Teaching during COVID-19: Why We’re Fortunate — from er.educause.edu by Gardner Campbell

Not in the Future—Now — from er.educause.edu by John O’Brien

Excerpts:

…technology can no longer be seen as a utility working quietly in the background. Now more than ever, technology is a strategic asset that is vital to the success of every higher education institution.
…
Digital transformation (Dx) can no longer be considered an aspirational concept. It must be understood as an imperative. And that well-worn, precious notion of campus technology professionals doing work that is noticed only when there is an outage? This too is a thing of the past.
…
[Technology] is not just a lifeline that got us through a tricky situation. It is and must increasingly be understood as an integral, strategic part of the successful college or university. Not in the future. Now.

Learning channels of the future will offer us more choice. More control. [Christian]

On 05/27/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business side of he, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, flipping -- inverted learning, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, internet, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, lifelong learning, microlearning, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, online learning, online media, online tutoring, pace of change, participation, personalized/customized learning, platforms, play, simulations, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, society, streams of content, student-related, technologies for your home, telepresence, television, tools, training / L&D, TVs, universities, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
And this phenomenon of learning from the living [class] room will likely pick up steam; some learning-related services are already heading that way.

Also see:

Preparing Students for a Lifelong Disruptive Future: The 60-Year Curriculum — from evolllution.com by Chris Dede | Professor of Learning Technologies in the Graduate School of Education, Harvard University and John Richards | Professor in the Graduate School of Education, Harvard University

Although written before the pandemic, a just-published book, The 60-Year Curriculum: New Models for Lifelong Learning in the Digital Economy (Dede and Richards, 2020), describes the looming challenge/opportunity of a coming, epic half-century whose intensity of disruption will rival the historic period civilization faced from 1910-1960: two world wars, a global pandemic, a long-lasting economic depression and unceasing conflicts between capitalism and communism.
…
In our tactical responses to moving teaching online because of the pandemic, we have the strategic opportunity to develop a new model that blends higher and continuing education and realizes the potential of next-generation methods of instruction and assessment (National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, 2018) to focus on lifelong learning.

Homework gap a growing focus for nonprofits, lawmakers as closures persist [De La Rosa]

On 05/22/2020, in education, education reform, education technology, internet, K-12 related, legislatures / government / legal, policy, society, sociology, student-related, United States, by Daniel Christian

Homework gap a growing focus for nonprofits, lawmakers as closures persist — from educationdive.com by Shawna De La Rosa

Excerpt:

Dive Brief:

After declaring success in the goal of connecting most schools to fast, reliable internet, nonprofit EducationSuperHighway is turning its attention to the “homework gap,” according to The Hechinger Report. More than 9 million students still lack internet access at home.
Evan Marwell, CEO and founder of EducationSuperHighway, said school closures triggered a change in attitude about the importance of home internet service for students. Now, some lawmakers indicate they are willing to spend billions of dollars to bridge that gap.
The organization launched digitalbridgeK12.org to provide detailed information on the problem, as well as recommendations for policymakers and school leaders, and advice and best practices on topics like how to collect data on connectivity at the district level or purchase in bulk.

Johns Hopkins trains 22,000 contact tracers on Coursera in the first week — from blog.coursera.org by Jeff Maggioncalda

Excerpt:

We are highly encouraged by the initial response — in just one week, more than 150,000 learners have enrolled in the course. More than 22,000 learners have already completed it, including over 2,500 prospective contact tracers who could be employed by the state of New York. Contact tracing will offer meaningful employment to those impacted by the economic downturn while fulfilling an urgent public health need.

Higher Ed Needs a Long-Term Plan for Virtual Learning [DeVaney, Shimshon, Rascoff, & Maggioncalda]

On 05/20/2020, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, engagement / engaging students, face-to-face, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, IT in HE, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, more voice more choice more control, new business models, online learning, online media, online tutoring, personalized/customized learning, platforms, reinvent, society, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, teaching & learning, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), tools, traditional / tradition, United States, universities, user experience (UX), vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Higher Ed Needs a Long-Term Plan for Virtual Learning — from Harvard Business Review by James DeVaney, Gideon Shimshon, Matthew Rascoff, and Jeff Maggioncalda

Excerpts:

The staggering impact of Covid-19 on education systems around the world is unlike anything we have seen in the post-war era. More than 1.6 billion students have been affected, representing over 91% of all students in the world. Unsurprisingly, demand for online learning has skyrocketed. In the last 30 days, there were 10.3 million enrollments in courses on Coursera, up 644% from the same period last year.
…
As the emergency subsides but normal fails to return, higher ed institutions need to do more. There’s a good likelihood that virtual learning — in some capacity — will need to be a part of education for the foreseeable future. Higher ed institutions need a response framework that looks beyond the immediate actions. They have to prepare for an intermediate period of transition and begin future-proofing their institutions for the long term.

Learning Ecosystems

19 Remarkable Higher Education Statistics [Curated in 2020; Dojchinovska]

XR for Learning – June 3, 2020

Surviving the Third Wave of COVID and Beyond [Feldstein]

Johns Hopkins trains 22,000 contact tracers on Coursera in the first week [Maggioncalda]

Categories

Tags

Below are some other items regarding the future of higher education.

Categories

Tags

Below are some other items
regarding the future of higher education.