MUHC uses artificial intelligence to train neurosurgery students — from montreal.ctvnews.ca by Rob Lurie

Excerpt:

“I think above all it just provides an opportunity for junior learners to get some hands-on exposure,” said medical student Ali Fazlollahi.

“Basically, it was inspired by the idea of how do we prevent error in the operating room,” said Neurosurgeon Dr. Rolando De Maestro. Maestro says virtual reality has been a game-changer when it comes to teaching.

 

Web Accessibility on a Budget: How to Get Started for Free or Little Cost — from boia.org

Excerpt:

How to improve web accessibility for little to no cost:

  • Get a free accessibility assessment.
  • Learn what accessibility updates you can make yourself.
  • Use free assistive technology and accessibility tools.
  • Read content and continue learning from the accessibility community.
  • Publish an accessibility statement.
  • Create a long-term plan to full accessibility compliance.

Also related/see:  The #accessibilityChecker hashtag on Twitter.


 

The best lighting for video conferencing, according to experts— from blog.webex.com

A home office lighting setup for video conferencing.

Contents:

  • What is the best lighting for video conferencing?
  • Where should the light be for a video call?
  • What kind of lighting is best for video meetings?
  • What are the best lighting products for a video conference?
  • What is the best lighting for video conferencing on-the-go?
  • Good lighting means good communication:
 

Accelerated Digital Skills and the ‘Bootcamp Boom’. — from holoniq.com
The market for accelerated digital skills is stepping up to a whole new level. Bootcamps, among others, are evolving rapidly to meet the opportunity.

Excerpt:

Tech Bootcamps re-skilled and up-skilled over 100,000 professionals globally in 2021, up from less than 20,000 in 2015. We expect this number to reach over 380,000 by 2025 representing over $3B of expenditure with significant upside as tech up-skilling models and modes overlap and converge. Governments, employers, universities and colleges everywhere are embracing rapid, high ROI training to build capacity in software, marketing, cyber and tech sales to drive their economies and growth.

Also from holoniq.com, see:

Also relevant/see:

 

Right Now, Your Best Employees Are Eyeing the Exits– from chronicle.com by Marci K. Walton
To stay, they need better pay, reasonable hours, and an end to mission-based gaslighting.

Excerpt:

Right now, your best midlevel manager is updating her résumé. Your hardest-working director is controlling his excitement after learning the salary range for a private-sector opening. Your most trustworthy entry-level professional is writing a resignation letter because her new corporate position doubles her pay and doesn’t require nights or weekends.

Two years of pandemic life have left campus staff members beyond burned out. They are done. And they are leaving or thinking about it in droves. I know because I was one of them. After nearly 13 years working in residence life — a field to which I was deeply committed — I left higher education last March for the private sector. The move increased my salary by 50 percent and cut my workload in half.

This tweet was mentioned/linked to in the above article:

 

Triumphs and Troubles in Online Learning Abroad — from edsurge.com by Robert Ubell

Excerpt:

In Canada, for example, about two-thirds of colleges offer online degrees—and many have for years. While here in the U.S., a far smaller number grant degrees online.

I thought it would be good to do some digging to explore a more nuanced appreciation of the status of virtual instruction outside the U.S.

From DSC:
I would also like to mention that there’s a lot happening in Australia and in India along these lines, and likely in many other countries as well. But I think that one can only cover so much in one posting.   🙂

 

Why some teams boost motivation while others totally sap it — from psyche.co by Ann-Kathrin Torka, Jens Mazei, Joachim Hüffmeieris, and edited by Matt Huston. With thanks to Mr. Tom Barrett for this resource via his weekly newsletter.

Excerpts:

In contrast, when people perceive their contribution to the team’s outcome as indispensable, they tend to show greater effort than they would when working alone. These ‘effort gains’ can be due to team members aiming to be prosocial: they care about others and want to make a difference to the team. By helping their team succeed, members also feel better about themselves – they can see themselves as helpful and competent human beings.

Managers, instructors, coaches, and other leaders can use this knowledge to design teamwork that boosts team members’ efforts. Remember the student from the introduction: maybe she felt that she could not contribute much to the academic team because the project did not include a specific (sub-)taskfor her to work on and to feel responsible for. If the instructor or a teammate had broken down the project into subtasks for each member, she might have felt that her efforts were indispensable.

 

 

The doctor is in—the video call — from mckinsey.com

Excerpt:

More patients than ever were willing to try virtual health services after COVID-19 emerged. Last year, the use of telehealth care was 38 times higher than prepandemic levels, as appointments such as follow-ups could easily be delivered remotely. A recent McKinsey survey shows that up to $265 billion in Medicare spending could shift to patients’ homes by 2025, with greater physician participation in the transition from telehealth to at-home care.

From facility to home: How healthcare could shift by 2025 — from mckinsey.com by Oleg Bestsennyy, Michelle Chmielewski, Anne Koffel, and Amit Shah

Also see the other charts via their daily chart feature:

A daily chart from McKinsey Dot Com that helps explain a changing world—during the pandemic and beyond.

 

Using Telehealth to Expand Student Access to Care — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Renee Kotsopoulo, director of health services for the Garland ISD in Texas, helped bring telehealth to her students and believes technology can help keep kids healthy and in school.

Can Teletherapy Companies Ease the Campus Mental-Health Crisis? — from chronicle.com by Kate Hidalgo Bellows

From DSC:
Telehealth has been booming during the pandemic. I think telelegal will ride on the coattails of telehealth.

 

I’m a college president. Teaching a 101-level course reminded me how important compassion is right now. — from highereddive.com by Marvin Krislov
Kindness is key in helping students succeed during the pandemic, Pace University’s president writes. Faculty and staff need compassion, too.

Those of us who choose to work in education know that we need to be kind and empathetic. The experience of teaching last semester drove home to me that kindness isn’t just nice; it’s crucial for enabling our students to succeed.

 

The innovation imperative: Lessons from high-growth companies — from deloitte.com by Khalid Kark, Tim Smith, Lou DiLorenzo Jr, and Mike Bechtel
Successful innovation functions display unique characteristics, one of them being technology’s prominent role in driving these initiatives. How can CIOs and technology leaders seize this opportunity and ensure they play a pivotal role in their company’s growth?

Excerpt:

Many enterprises now have an innovation function, whether it be a team that is dedicated to seeking out new opportunities or an executive tasked with finding new ways of working. But according to the latest Deloitte survey, only half of innovation efforts are achieving their desired value, and companies with successful innovation functions have unique characteristics. The study revealed that most leading companies view innovation as something both new—which can include new applications of existing tools—and improved—which may mean simply a measurable advance over legacy alternatives. This covers everything from incremental gains to moonshots.

Five key differentiators of successful innovation programs

Also see Deloitte’s Ten Types of Innovations.

 

What Workplace Design Can Learn From Higher Education Facilities — from workdesign.com by Sandi Rudy and James Foster

Excerpt:

Our built environments are always changing and evolving, but now more than ever, workplace design is experiencing a major identity crisis. While the concept of “going to the office” is no longer standard practice for many, for some, it will always be the preferred, and for most, having the option is a giant plus. But in the interest of ensuring the evolving nature of knowledge work and knowledge workplaces keeps pace with employee needs, workplace design can find inspiration in education facilities with now proven solutions for improved wellness and increased overall performance. And with this new way of thinking, perhaps workplace design will once again take the grade.

A picture of Treasure Valley Community College with a woman walking past collaborative learning spaces

The adoption of and success with flexible furniture and spaces such as that in many higher ed environments, which accommodates a range of uses and learning or working styles is now influencing today’s office designs. Credit: Bob Pluckebaum

 

Is there a skills gap in learning design? — from neilmosley.com by Neil Mosley

Excerpt:

Another deficiency in higher education has also been the dearth of support there is for learning design. Roles such as Learning Designer or Instructional Designer have been relatively niche in UK higher education, they have tended to exist only in online or distance education settings.

This seems to be changing a little and there’s been more of these roles created over the past two years. Hopefully, as a result of growing recognition of the design and planning work that’s needed in higher education as the teaching and study experience grows in complexity.

Whilst broadly positive, this has thrown up another problem – the inconsistency and variability of skills amongst those that might refer to themselves as a Learning or Instructional Designer.

From DSC:
Though this is from the UK, these perspectives and the issues Neil raises are also very much present here in the United States. Neil raises some important questions, such as:

  • Aare the Learning Designers and/or Instructional Designers getting the training that they need?
  • What’s expected of them?
  • Are they utilized properly?
  • How do you scale their work?
  • How do you get professors and teachers to think of *designing* their learning experiences?

Addendum on 2/19/22:

And if the last two years have taught us anything, it’s that this collective movement toward learning experience design will be essential to help striving students go on better, more productive, and personally meaningful educational journeys. Indeed, we must help spread the word that education is more than a collection of classes. It may include classes, but it is so much more. At its best, it is a carefully and thoughtfully crafted and curated family of experiences that can help striving students change their lives!  


 

Watching A Lecture Twice At Double Speed Can Benefit Learning Better Than Watching It Once At Normal Speed — from digest.bps.org.uk by Emma Young ; with thanks to the Learning Now TV Newsletter – February 2022 for this resource

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

So, a student could just watch videos at 2x speed and halve their time spent on lectures….Or, according to the results of other studies reported in the paper, they could watch a video at 2x normal speed twice, and do better on a test than if they’d watched it once at normal speed. The timing mattered, though: only those who’d watched the 2x video for a second time immediately before a test, rather than right after the first viewing, got this advantage.

 

From DSC:
Hmmm…another interesting item:

Ranking 4,500 Colleges by ROI (2022) — from cew.georgetown.edu

Excerpt:

Using new data from the College Scorecard, we ranked 4,500 colleges and universities by return on investment. The rankings follow the methodology of our 2019 report, A First Try at ROI: Ranking 4,500 Colleges.

The rankings include a new metric that measures the share of students at an institution whose earnings 10 years after enrollment are higher than those of workers with a high school diploma as their highest level of education. An average of 60 percent of college students across institutions earn more than a high school graduate after 10 years. However, at 1,233 postsecondary institutions (30 percent), more than half of their students 10 years after enrollment are earning less than a high school graduate. Our previous research indicates that these low earnings may relate to low graduation rates and disparities in earnings by gender and race and ethnicity.

 

 

What can institutions do to get ahead of a fast-changing higher ed market? — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak

Excerpts:

  • Universities must prepare for a future where students could demand degrees, low-cost options or asynchronous learning. Otherwise, institutions risk becoming obsolete, according to a recent report from consulting firm EY.
  • Four key recommendations to education leaders are highlighted: Be clear about long-term purpose, consider possible future scenarios when making today’s choices, find leadership talent from other sectors that have already had to reinvent themselves, and invest across current and future time horizons.
 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian