higher education

Why the Science of Teaching Is Often Ignored — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie
There’s a whole literature on what works. But it’s not making its way into the classroom.

Excerpts:

Yet, teaching reformers argue, the dangers of ignoring the expanding body of knowledge about teaching and learning are ever more apparent. Traditional teaching may have sufficed when college campuses were more ivory tower than lifeboat, educating future generations of scholars and other elites rather than trying to lift up a diverse group of students and prepare them for an increasingly complex world.

Studies have also shown that faculty members are more likely to try evidence-based teaching practices if they feel they have supportive colleagues and departments. Faculty learning communities can be particularly helpful, teaching experts say, because instructors meet regularly over a series of months to tackle complex challenges, often by exploring the research and experimenting with small changes to their teaching.

Reforming teaching evaluations so that they reflect the hard work of reading and reflecting on teaching scholarship is also a critical lever for change.

From DSC:
Below are some items that offer potential future scenarios, predictions, trends, forecasts. and upcoming lawsuits for 2022. These resources provide some interesting fodder for reflection.

10 Forecasts For The Near Future Of Tech & Life As We Know It — from digest.scottbelsky.com by Scott Belsky

The next generation of top talent will have “Polygamous Careers,” transforming the corporate world as we know it. The traditional job market, tax forms, college, and healthcare are all geared for an old world that fails to engage our modern brains…
…
The rise of immersive experiences will mainstream 3D creation. All this metaverse hype will fall completely flat unless such experiences are filled with rich, engaging, 3D, interactive, and personalized content. 3D content creation will become 100x more accessible.

Here’s our cheat sheet for 2022’s tech lawsuits — from protocol.com by Ben Brody
Your guide to a bunch of the Google antitrust cases, where the FTC is with Facebook, what could happen next with Sec. 230 and more.

How fifth graders see the world in 20 years — from hechingerreport.org by Lillian Mongeau, Christina Samuels, Kathryn Palmer, and Chelsea Sheasley
Flying cars, houses on Mars — and hopefully no more Covid or racism

7 higher education trends to watch in 2022 — from highereddive.com by Jeremy Bauer-Wolf
Politics bleeding into college operations, new regulatory action, continued expansion of online ed and more are stories we’ll be following in 2022.

Can ed tech providers build on their momentum?
The last two years have been a massive boon to MOOC platforms. The number of people registered on Coursera, one of the most well-known MOOC providers, swelled to around 92 million in September, up from 77 million in 2020 and 46 million the prior year. Likewise, demand for competitor Udemy surged during the pandemic.

6 Essential educational trends to look out for in 2022 — from blog.neolms.com by Andreea Mihaly

5 gaming trends to watch in 2022 — from protocol.com

What comes next for enterprise tech in 2022 — from protocol.com

After a period of great disruption and rapid modernization, 2022 will be a year during which enterprise companies take a breath and a closer look at the software and cloud services they snapped up like holiday season COVID-19 tests over the last two years. The products and trends that survive that scrutiny will set the priorities for the rest of the decade.

The tech IPOs to watch in 2022 — from protocol.com by Biz Carson and Michelle Ma
Some have filed. Some have hired the right people. And some are just on investors’ wishlists.

The bigger-picture view of the industry is that gaming is on the precipice of major shake-ups to its core business and distribution models, as well as shifts many years in the making around game monetization and developer work culture.

Bitcoin could reach $100,000—and other predictions for 2022 — from fortune.com by Joanna Ossinger

“The race is on to be the app store for crypto,” said Philip Gradwell, chief economist at Chainalysis, in an email. “A major lesson of Web 2.0 was that consumers love platforms, and I don’t think that is going to change for Web 3.0. Currently there is no crypto platform that owns the customer relationship and aggregates suppliers. I predict that in 2022, many companies will race to build this platform…”

AWS will buy a SaaS company, and other 2022 enterprise predictions — from techcrunch.com by Ron Miller

______________

Addendum on 1/7/22:

Top Ten HR Trends For The 2022 Workplace — from forbes.com by Jeanne Meister

Two items involving the “Start/Stop/Continue” type of approach

On 12/31/2021, in adjunct faculty, faculty/staff, higher education, ideas, law schools, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, pedagogy, remote teaching and learning, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, universities, by Daniel Christian

Reflecting and Planning With Four Lists — from byrdseed.com by Ian Byrd

(Parenthetically, be sure to see
Ian’s list of items he put into Byrdseed TV in the year 2021.)

A Case for ‘Radical Simplification’ in Higher Education — from edsurge.com by Robert Talbert
This article is part of the guide Survival Mode: Educators Reflect on a Tough 2021 and Brace for the Future.

Excerpt:

The practice is a common retrospective technique known as Start/Stop/Continue, and it poses three questions:

• What are we not doing, that we should start doing?

• What are we doing, that we should stop doing?

• What are we doing, that we should keep doing?

Sitting in my home office running through this mental exercise, here’s what I came up with…

From DSC:
I haven’t tried this Chrome extension, but it looks interesting.

lunanotes.io — website — Chrome extension page

LunaNotes helps you take notes within YouTube, while still watching the video(s). You can customize your notes with their easy-to-use editor, take screenshots of the video and write, draw or add shapes over the screenshot with their screenshot editor.

7 Hard Truths and a Few Lies [Snodgrass]

On 12/31/2021, in adjunct faculty, career development, colleges, community colleges, higher education, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

7 Hard Truths and a Few Lies — from insidehighered.com by Jennifer Snodgrass

Excerpt:

Would I do it all over again? Am I glad I became an academic? Absolutely. I love my job as a mentor, scholar, administrator and teacher. The moments in my classroom and lab continually make me think, and I am forever learning. Yet I also know that I could have saved myself years of anxiety, disappointment, self-doubt and frustration if I had gone into academe knowing more about what I might encounter. I was taught so much about research deadlines, how to create a syllabus and appropriate scholarship, but not about how to live a successful life as an academic. So now, I am keeping it real for those new scholars coming along.

At the same time, I also plan to keep working to change some of these uncomfortable truths. As full professors, we must look out for our graduate students and junior faculty. We must listen to their concerns and share the realities. We must also recognize that we do hold some power on our campuses. And it is up to us if we choose to use that power and status to be part of the solution, not the problem.

28 Website Accessibility Terms to Know in 2022 [Juviler]

On 12/29/2021, in accessibility / UDL, assistive technologies, business, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate universities / corporate training, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, higher education, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, legislatures / government / legal, Metaverse, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, multimedia, neurodivergent/special needs, online learning, online media, online tutoring, society, student-related, teaching & learning, United States, universities, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, web design and production, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

28 Website Accessibility Terms to Know in 2022 — from blog.hubspot.com by Jamie Juviler

Excerpt:

No matter the type of website you run or the industry that you’re in, prioritizing web accessibility is key to your success.
…
To ensure your website meets today’s standards for web accessibility, you’ll first need to understand the terminology. Accessibility is a big, dense area with a lot of jargon, acronyms, and codes — enough to steer a new website owner away from the topic altogether.

That’s why we’ve put together this glossary of 28 essential web accessibility terms any website owners should be aware of. By knowing the language, you’ll find it much easier to adopt accessibility principles on your own site and better serve visitors with disabilities.

Addendum on 12/31/21:

Accessibility awareness is on the rise, but is it turning into action? — from techcrunch.com by Joe Devon

Excerpts:

A Harris Poll reveals that more than half of American adults increased their online activities because of the pandemic. That number grows to 60% for people with disabilities.

The increase in online activities does not mean that everyone is able to achieve their goals. So, what kind of impact is the crisis having on accessibility? Are organizations finally getting the message on the importance of accessibility?
…

With that, here are the key results from the Alexa top 100 website testing:

- Out of the websites tested, 62% were accessible to screen readers, up from 40% in 2020.
- Every single page passed for having the valid document “lang” attribute.
- Only 11% of websites tested had errors in input field labels.
- The most common error was the use of ARIA (Accessible Rich Internet Applications specification)
- The second most common error was color contrast.

From DSC:
That last article linked to:

The 2021 State of Accessibility Report (SOAR) report

How can anyone claim that MOOCs have been a failure!!!? Are you serious!?!?! [Christian]

On 12/29/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Africa, Alternatives, Amazon, Australia, Canada, career development, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, credentialing, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, distance education, Europe, Facebook / Meta Platforms, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, global / globalization, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, India, innovation, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, lifelong learning, love of learning, Microsoft, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, online learning, online media, platforms, teaching online, training / L&D, trends, UK, United States, universities, vendors, vocational / trades, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
As the article below clearly relays, MOOCs did NOT fail! In the last decade, they have reached 220 million learners worldwide!

I don’t know the total number of graduates from the Ivy League — throughout all of the relevant institutions’ histories — but I would bet you that MOOCs have reached far more learners. And MOOCs did so in less than a decade.

And you’re going to tell me MOOCs have been a failure?!!!! Are you being serious!?!?! You can talk about completion rates all that you want to (and that misses the point, as some people sign up for MOOCs without ever intending to finish the entire course). As with other things, people get out of something what they put into that thing.

A Decade of MOOCs: A Review of Stats and Trends for Large-Scale Online Courses in 2021 — from edsurge.com by Dhawal Shah

Excerpts:

Now, a decade later, MOOCs have reached 220 million learners, excluding China where we don’t have as reliable data, . In 2021, providers launched over 3,100 courses and 500 microcredentials.
…
Originally, MOOC providers relied on universities to create courses. But that dependence is declining as more and more of the courses are created by companies every year. These corporate partners in course creation include tech giants Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.

…the majority of the new courses launched on Coursera in 2021 are not from universities anymore.
…
These mass online courses were born without a business model. Yet within a decade, MOOCs went from no revenue to bringing in well over a half a billion dollars annually.

Repurposed real estate emerges as unconventional source of savings, revenue for colleges and universities [highereddive.com]

On 12/27/2021, in business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, higher education, law schools, learning spaces, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

Repurposed real estate emerges as unconventional source of savings, revenue for colleges and universities — from highereddive.com

Excerpt:

As market conditions evolve, higher ed leaders are striving to build a profitable future amidst chronic funding obstacles. Between roadblocks like disruptive online competition, evolving demographics, crippling student debt and dwindling enrollment, traditional operating models cannot produce enough gains to satisfy market demands, argues KPMG.

It’s one reason why many institutions are exploring inventive ways to free up and generate funds without hampering student and staff experiences. As higher ed leaders look to diversify funding sources, repurposed real estate is emerging as a significant bottom-line booster.

AWS Expands Access to Free Cloud Skills Training on its Mission to Educate 29 Million People by 2025 [businesswire.com]

On 12/17/2021, in Alternatives, Amazon, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), professional development, training / L&D, by Daniel Christian

AWS Expands Access to Free Cloud Skills Training on its Mission to Educate 29 Million People by 2025 — from businesswire.com; with thanks to Ryan Craig for the resource
New AWS digital learning experience, technical courses on Amazon.com, expanded access to AWS re/Start, and Amazon’s first dedicated in-person cloud learning center will put cloud skills training into the hands of millions of people

New AWS Global Digital Skills Study finds the need for digital skills training is greater than ever, with 85% of workers feeling they need more technical knowledge than they did pre-pandemic

Excerpt:

SEATTLE–(BUSINESS WIRE)–[On 11/28/21], Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com, Inc. company (NASDAQ: AMZN), announced four initiatives to empower learners and make it even easier for anyone with a desire to learn to access free cloud computing skills training and unlock new career possibilities in the cloud. The initiatives announced today include the launch of AWS Skill Builder—a new digital learning experience, the addition of AWS courses to the Amazon.com website, the expansion of the AWS re/Start global reskilling program, and the opening of the AWS Skills Center—Amazon’s first dedicated, in-person cloud learning space.

2021 Resource Recap from Quality Matters

On 12/17/2021, in accessibility / UDL, assessment, higher education, instructional design, interaction design, interactivity, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, multimedia, online learning, quality, United States, universities, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, by Daniel Christian

Quality Matters > Higher Education News > December 2021

Throughout the year, we — along with members of our amazing community — share resources to help all of us deliver on our online promise. Here are some of the most popular items from 2021 for you to use and share:

QM Bridge to Quality Course Design Guide — printable PDF version
Accessibility and Usability Resource Site
QM Self-Review Tool
Video: Redesigning Assessments for Interaction & Engagement
QM-Hosted Research Webinar Recordings
QM Success Stories (members only), including “Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes: The True Impact of Digital Accessibility“
Dr. Steven Crawford’s series on multimedia use in online learning — start with “Designing Multimedia Presentations for Your Course”

Digital Learning Talent In Demand & More 2022 Hiring Trends [teamedforlearning.com]

On 12/17/2021, in 21st century, career development, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, design, digital learning, distance education, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, elearning, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, hybrid learning, instructional design, K-12 related, law schools, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, online learning, remote teaching and learning, skills, training / L&D, universities, using teams, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Digital Learning Talent In Demand & More 2022 Hiring Trends — from teamedforlearning.com
2022 Hiring Trends in digital learning put job seekers in the driver’s seat. Learn how to use these trends to your advantage in education or corporate L&D.

Excerpt:

Now is an amazing time to look for a job in digital learning. The events of the last few years have boosted the demand for digital learning experts in all areas. That includes corporate L&D, higher ed, K-12, edtech, and commercial e-learning. As more organizations embrace a digital learning model, the demand for talent will continue to grow. The 2022 Hiring Trends in Digital Learning are all headed in one direction: up.

Our work connecting talented digital learning professionals with the organizations that need their skills has given us a sneak peek at the 2022 hiring trends in digital learning. And we’re ready to share those insights with you. Here’s what you need to know if you’re a job seeker in the digital learning industry.

UNC’s $97 Million Plan to Reach Adult Online Learners [Smalley]

On 12/17/2021, in adult learning, content development, aggregation, repositories, higher education, lifelong learning, online learning, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

UNC’s $97 Million Plan to Reach Adult Online Learners — from insidehighered.com by Suzanne Smalley
University of North Carolina will create an internal unit to build and manage online programs from the system’s 17 campuses for learners largely ignored by many universities.

Excerpt:

The University of North Carolina system is leveraging $97 million in pandemic recovery funding to launch a nonprofit ed-tech start-up intended to bolster adult online education in a state with a looming need for more skilled workers.

Project Kitty Hawk is named after the North Carolina beach town the Wright brothers returned to repeatedly before achieving their dream of flight, an apt metaphor for an undertaking that UNC leaders herald as a transformative effort to reach the state’s estimated one million working adults who have some college education but no degree.

29 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2022 [LinkedIn News]

On 12/16/2021, in 21st century, higher education, ideas, by Daniel Christian

29 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2022 — from linkedin.com by LinkedIn News

Excerpts:

Students skipped out on college in droves during the pandemic: undergraduate enrollment has fallen 7.8% since the fall of 2019. To get students to return to school — or come at all — colleges will need to make their pandemic-era flexible options permanent and adopt new approaches to education.
…
With a demographic cliff coming in the middle of this decade as the number of high-school graduates falls off, providing something different is the only way all but the biggest brand names in higher education will survive. — Jeff Selingo, author of “Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions”

If the vision of the “Web3” comes to fruition, how might these developments impact the future of lifelong learning? [Christian]

On 12/13/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Australia, Blockchain, Canada, career development, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, copyright/ownership/NFTs, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, credentialing, cryptocurrencies, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, Europe, experimentation, Facebook / Meta Platforms, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, ideas, India, innovation, instructional design, internet, IT in HE, K-12 related, law schools, learner profiles, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, lifelong learning, Metaverse, Michigan, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, online learning, online media, skills, society, staying relevant, streams of content, surviving, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, tools, training / L&D, UK, United States, vendors, web-based collaboration, Web3, by Daniel Christian

The next age of the internet could suck power away from Big Tech while living on the same backbone as cryptocurrencies. Here’s what to know about Web3. — from businessinsider.com by Katie Canales

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Web3 is the next generation of the internet and will exist on the blockchain.
It will be decentralized, meaning it won’t be controlled entities like Facebook or Google.
Twitter, GameStop, Reddit, and VC firm a16z are all putting resources into building Web3.

…

One aspect of the metaverse is that users will hopefully be able to go virtually from platform to platform with one single account — just like we will in Web3.

And NFTs, one-of-a-kind tokens representing your ownership of a virtual good, could be more easily bought and sold with cryptocurrencies within a space like Web3.

From DSC:
How might “Web3” translate into the future of lifelong learning? Here’s one vision/possibility:

Each person would have a learner profile/account that could seamlessly log into multiple education/training providers’ platforms and services. The results of that learning could be stored in one’s cloud-based learner profile. This type of next-generation learning platform would still need subject matter experts, instructional designers, programmers, and other team members. But the focus would be on building skills — skills that an artificial intelligence-backed interface would demonstrate are currently being requested by the modern workplace. This constantly-being-updated list of skills could then link to the learning-related experiences and resources that people could choose from in order to develop those skills.

The following vision/graphic also comes to my mind:

The four winners of the Blockchain Innovation Challenge were… [American Council on Education]

On 12/13/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, Blockchain, career development, credentialing, education, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, ideas, innovation, learner profiles, learning, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, United States, by Daniel Christian

BLOCKCHAIN INNOVATION CHALLENGE — from the American Council on Education (ACE)
About the Challenge
The challenge sought technology-enabled solutions that reoriented the education and employment ecosystem around the individuals that they aim to serve. It invited teams to articulate a vision and design pilots that addressed an ecosystem-first designed approach driving interoperability, social mobility, and learner control expanding on these essential themes:

Empower all learners:
How can learners exercise agency over their digital identities, including all records of learning, so they can share them in a secure, validated, and machine-readable way?
Unlock lifelong learning:
How can learning be better documented, validated, and shared no matter where it occurs? How can control or ownership of learning records improve the way underserved learners connect and unlock disparate learning opportunities?
Improve economic mobility:
How can blockchain help learners to find in-demand education in employment-relevant skills to advance economic mobility and to fulfill the promise of higher education???

The four winners of the Blockchain Innovation Challenge were…

Learning Ecosystems

Why the Science of Teaching Is Often Ignored [McMurtrie]

Some potential future scenarios, predictions, trends, and forecasts for the year 2022

Two items involving the “Start/Stop/Continue” type of approach

7 Hard Truths and a Few Lies [Snodgrass]

How can anyone claim that MOOCs have been a failure!!!? Are you serious!?!?! [Christian]

Repurposed real estate emerges as unconventional source of savings, revenue for colleges and universities [highereddive.com]

AWS Expands Access to Free Cloud Skills Training on its Mission to Educate 29 Million People by 2025 [businesswire.com]

2021 Resource Recap from Quality Matters

UNC’s $97 Million Plan to Reach Adult Online Learners [Smalley]

29 Big Ideas that will change our world in 2022 [LinkedIn News]

The four winners of the Blockchain Innovation Challenge were… [American Council on Education]

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