Trends Shaping Education in 2022 — from gettingsmart.com by Tom Vander Ark
Key Points:
NCDA | Career Convergence – The NCDA’s monthly web magazine for career practitioners
From DSC:
I like the continuum that I see here:
We ask students in college, for example, to pay an enormous amount of money at a time when they don’t know what’s all out there. Many don’t know themselves yet (I surely didn’t) and they also don’t know what discipline/area/jobs might be a good fit (again, I surely didn’t). We need more seamless transitions from one chapter/phase to another (and sometimes back again). We need more resources for students to find out what’s out there.
This is why I like services like LinkedIn Learning (which was Lynda.com), MasterClass, MOOCs and the like. A person can spend an hour or two (or even less) to see if that class, topic, etc. is of interest to them.
Methods and tools to develop future-ready skills — from blog.neolms.com by Rachelle Dene Poth
Excerpt:
Because of the changes that we experienced in the past year, I believe that it is important to have various options, whether teaching in-person, hybrid, or virtually. Choosing methods like Genius hour or project-based learning, activities such as scavenger hunts or learning stations, or selecting digital tools that promote more interaction with and between students will help foster the development of essential future-ready and SEL skills.
There are many methods and tools to explore, but it’s important to focus on the why behind the choices we make for our students. The use of digital tools promotes collaboration, communication, creativity and many more essential skills while also promoting the power of choice for students to share what they have learned.
Also see:
Escape rooms have become very popular as a place teams can go to work out how to get free from the room in which they are “trapped.” It’s like a real-world version of a computer game that makes you work together to solve puzzles to escape from somewhere.
Breakout EDU helps to bring that experience to educators so as to better engage students and help them learn while having fun.
Skillsoft to acquire CodeAcademy, a leading platform for learning high-demand technical skills, creating a worldwide community of more than 85 million learners — from skillsoft.com with thanks to Ray Schroeder for this resource out on LinkedIn
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Boston – December 22, 2021 – Skillsoft (NYSE: SKIL), a global leader in corporate digital learning, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Codecademy, a leading online learning platform for technical skills, for approximately $525 million in cash and stock.
…
With the addition of Codecademy’s innovative capabilities, we will create an even more immersive online learning experience. When we combine Skillsoft’s enterprise customer base of more than 12,000 corporate customers and over 46 million learners with Codecademy’s 40 million learners, sophisticated digital marketing capability and influential brand, we expect to unlock significant revenue synergies.”
Expands Immersive Platform with New Ways of Learning. Skillsoft has already assembled an expansive set of learning options, including virtual instructor-led training, coaching, micro videos, audio, books, bootcamps, live events, assessments and badges. Together with Codecademy’s interactive, self-paced courses and hands-on learning, Skillsoft will be able to deliver even more immersive experiences through its AI-driven platform, Percipio.
DC: Yup.
“Navigate the lifelong learner journey with Pocket.
A portable, secure and verified digital wallet for learning, work and life.”https://t.co/ncqa6e6aF4#digitalcredentials #lifelonglearning #credentials #skills #learningfromthelivingclassroom— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) January 10, 2022
Resource via @ernperez
at this article/page.
From DSC:
14 Predictions for Higher Education in 2022 — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
Excerpt:
Ask people working in higher education what they expect will happen in the new year, and the outlook is filled with visions that build on what we’ve been experiencing on college and university campuses for the last two years: a major focus on learning formats; continued exploitation of new technology; and the use of new digital models that move users “beyond Zoom.” Here we present the collective predictions of 14 IT leaders, instructional folks and a student about what they anticipate seeing in 2022. As one put it, “Let’s go, 2022! We have work to do!”
From DSC:
I’d like to thank Dian Schaffhauser, Rhea Kelly, and Mary Grush for letting me contribute some thoughts to the various conversations that Campus Technology Magazine hosts and/or initiates. I inserted some reflections into the above article and I hope that you’ll take a moment to read my and others’ thoughts out there.
2022: Year Of The Great Convergence — Volume IV, #1 by Ryan Craig
Excerpts:
Three sets of would-be pathway providers are converging on this massive opportunity. It’s going to get crowded very fast. Here’s the current landscape and prospects for each at the outset of the Great Convergence:
While one of these three sectors is likely to win the Great Convergence, there are two other possible outcomes.
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.
3 major trends affecting ed tech companies — from highereddive.com by Natalie Schwartz
We reviewed what executives said during their latest earnings calls to better understand patterns in the growing sector.
Excerpts:
Earlier on the call, he said Coursera’s entry-level certificates — which are developed by the likes of Facebook, Google, IBM, Intuit and Salesforce — attracted more than 2 million student enrollments since 2018.
“New entrants to the sector, such as corporations and online education companies, will offer genuine competition to traditional colleges, especially as pricing becomes more of a focus,” analysts wrote in the report.
Several ed tech companies are seeing returns from efforts to work with companies to train their employees.
Officials at Udemy, a major MOOC platform that went public in October, said during a call with analysts in early December that their work with companies now accounts for 39% of their revenue – up from 23% a year ago.
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):
…
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 Humanities May Be Declining at Universities — But They’re Thriving on Zoom — from edsurge.com by Rebecca Koenig
Excerpt:
Throughout the pandemic, versions of this close-reading conversation have taken place week after week. Organized through new nonprofits and small startups including the Catherine Project, Night School Bar and Premise, they bring together adults who want to spend their free time talking to strangers about literature and philosophy.
It sounds at first like an ambitious book club—except for the fact that many of these seminars are organized and led by college professors, some so eager to participate that they do it for free.
“Mostly it’s a way for them to do a kind of teaching they can’t do at their regular jobs,” explains Zena Hitz, founder of the Catherine Project and a tutor (faculty member) at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.
From DSC:
I’ve often thought that online-based learning may be the thing that saves the liberal arts (i.e., available throughout one’s lifetime and would be far less expensive). It would be ironic though, as many liberal arts institutions have not been proponents of online-based learning.
What motivates students to learn? — from edte.ch by Tom Barrett
In this article, we explore the key factors that influence and predict student academic motivation.
Excerpt:
Here are the top three ranked, according to this meta-analysis, from l’Université Laval, Monash University and Curtin University.
1 — Competence (I can do this!)
2 — Autonomy (I get to choose)
3 — Belonging (I am not alone)
From DSC:
I’m once again reminded of the following graphic:
Tom’s posting also reminds me of the power of storytelling, as Tom makes a solid point:
A notable missing piece of the student motivation paper is the role of emotion in learning. When I search the document for reference to ‘emotion’, the only returns I get are from citations and other works.
Along these lines, see/listen to:
