All of Pearson’s 1,500 higher education textbooks in the U.S. will now be “digital first.” The company announced its big shift away from print today, calling the new approach a “product as a service model and a generational business shift to be much more like apps, professional software or the gaming industry.”
The digital format will allow Pearson to update textbooks on an ongoing basis, taking into account new developments in the field of study, new technologies, data analytics and efficacy research, the company said in a news announcement. The switch to digital will also lower the cost for students: The average e-book price will be $40, or $79 for a “full suite of digital learning tools.”
“Interesting new trends such as #AR , location-based technology, and micro-assessments have invaded the mobile learning space too. Here’s an infographic that gives you information on the latest trends in mobile learning.”https://t.co/M9FEM4PCkh
In the early days of virtual personal assistants, the goal was to create a multipurpose digital buddy—always there, ready to take on any task. Now, tech companies are realizing that doing it all is too much, and instead doubling down on what they know best.
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Since the company has a deep understanding of how organizations work, Microsoft is focusing on managing your workday with voice, rearranging meetings and turning the dials on the behemoth of bureaucracy in concert with your phone.
Voice is the next major platform, and being first to it is an opportunity to make the category as popular as Apple made touchscreens. To dominate even one aspect of voice technology is to tap into the next iteration of how humans use computers.
From DSC: What affordances might these developments provide for our future learning spaces?
Will faculty members’ voices be recognized to:
Sign onto the LMS?
Dim the lights?
Turn on the projector(s) and/or display(s)?
Other?
Will students be able to send the contents of their mobile devices to particular displays via their voices?
Will voice be mixed in with augmented reality (i.e., the students and their devices can “see” which device to send their content to)?
9 amazing uses for VR and AR in college classrooms — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser Immersive technologies can help students understand theoretical concepts more easily, prepare them for careers through simulated experiences and keep them engaged in learning.
Excerpt:
Immersive reality is bumping us into the deep end, virtually speaking. Colleges and universities large and small are launching new labs and centers dedicated to research on the topics of augmented reality, virtual reality and 360-degree imaging. The first academic conference held completely in virtual reality recently returned for its second year, hosted on Twitch by Lethbridge College in Alberta and Centennial College in Toronto. Majors in VR and AR have begun popping up in higher education across the United States, including programs at the Savannah School of Design (GA), Shenandoah University (VA) and Drexel University Westphal (PA). Educause experts have most recently positioned the timing for broad adoption of these technologies in education at the two-year to three-year horizon. And Gartner has predicted that by the year 2021, 60 percent of higher education institutions in the United States will “intentionally” be using VR to create simulations and put students into immersive environments.
If you haven’t already acquired your own headset or applied for a grant from your institution to test out AR or VR for instruction, it’s time. We’ve done a scan of some of the most interesting projects currently taking place in American classrooms to help you imagine the virtual possibilities.
From a fairly recent e-newsletter from edsurge.com — though I don’t recall the exact date (emphasis DSC):
New England is home to some of the most famous universities in the world. But the region has also become ground zero for the demographic shifts that promise to disrupt higher education.
This week saw two developments that fit the narrative. On Monday, Southern Vermont College announced that it would shut its doors, becoming the latest small rural private college to do so. Later that same day, the University of Massachusetts said it would start a new online college aimed at a national audience, noting that it expects campus enrollments to erode as the number of traditional college-age students declines in the coming years.
“Make no mistake—this is an existential threat to entire sectors of higher education,”said UMass president Marty Meehan in announcing the online effort.
The approach seems to parallel the U.S. retail sector, where, as a New York Times piece outlines this week, stores like Target and WalMart have thrived by building online strategies aimed at competing with Amazon, while stores like Gap and Payless, which did little to move online, are closing stores. Of course, college is not like any other product or service, and plenty of campuses are touting the richness of the experience that students get by actually coming to a campus. And it’s not clear how many colleges can grow online to a scale that makes their investments pay off.
“It’s predicted that over the next several years, four to five major national players with strong regional footholds will be established. We intend to be one of them.”
University of Massachusetts President Marty Meehan
From DSC: That last quote from UMass President Marty Meehan made me reflect upon the idea of having one or more enormous entities that will provide “higher education” in the future. I wonder if things will turn out to be that we’ll have more lifelong learning providers and platforms in the future — with the idea of a 60-year curriculum being an interesting idea that may come into fruition.
Long have I predicted that such an enormous entity would come to pass. Back in 2008, I named it theForthcoming Walmart of Education. But then as the years went by, I got bumbed out on some things that Walmart was doing, and re-branded it the Forthcoming Amazon.com of Higher Education. We’ll see how long that updated title lasts — but you get the point. In fact, the point aligns very nicely with what futurist Thomas Frey has been predicting for years as well:
“I’ve been predicting that by 2030 the largest company on the internet is going to be an education-based company that we haven’t heard of yet,” Frey, the senior futurist at the DaVinci Institute think tank, tells Business Insider. (source)
I realize that education doesn’t always scale well…but I’m thinking that how people learn in the future may be different than how we did things in the past…communities of practice comes to mind…as does new forms of credentialing…as does cloud-based learner profiles…as does the need for highly efficient, cost-effective, and constant opportunities/means to reinvent oneself.
Amazon remains a looming threat for some of the biggest retailers in the country — like Walmart, Target and Macy’s.
When consumers are ready to buy a specific product, nearly three-quarters of them, or 74 percent, are going straight to Amazon to do it, according to a new study by Feedvisor.
By the end of this year, Amazon is expected to account for 52.4 percent of the e-commerce market in the U.S., up from 48 percent in 2018.
“In New England, there will be between 32,000 and 54,000 fewer college-aged students just seven years from now,” Meehan said. “That means colleges and universities will have too much capacity and not enough demand at a time when the economic model in higher education is already straining under its own weight.” (Marty Meehan at WBUR)
Increasing complexity of technology, architecture, and data
Contributions of IT to institutional operational excellence
Each of these trends is influential at 63% or more of colleges and universities. And, they are enduring—these are the same trends that exerted the most influence on IT strategy in 2018.
4 key tech strategies for the survival of the small liberal arts college — from campustechnology.com by Kellie B. Campbell In a recent study on the use of technology to reduce academic costs in liberal arts colleges, four distinct themes emerged: the strategic role of IT; the importance of data; the potential of alternative education delivery modes; and opportunities for institutional partnerships. Here’s how IT leaders at these small colleges understand the future of their institutions.
Excerpt:
In this study, the flexibility of the semi-constructed interview format resulted in a fascinating level of honesty and bluntness from participants. In particular, participants’ language changed when they were asked to take off their professional hat and consider a new point of view — it was a chance to be vulnerable and honest. What was probably most interesting was that almost everyone signaled that the status quo is not sustainable. Something in the higher education model has to change for institutions to stay open, yet many lack a strategy for effecting change. Even if they do have a strategy in place on the business side, many are hesitant to dive into analysis and change on the academic side of the institution.
Institutions simply cannot continue to nibble at the edges of change. Significant change is needed in order to sustain the financial model of higher education. The ideas for doing so are out there, though the work must be guided by the institutional mission and consider new models for delivering education. CIOs and their departments can play an important role in that work — providing infrastructure, data, access, services and ideas — but institutional leadership at large needs to understand IT’s strategic role and position the organization to make that impact.
When participants were able to think about the “what if” question — what if the institution were forced to drastically cut academic costs — several had detailed, “out there” ideas that might not be traditionally welcomed into higher education cultures. Yet a number of participants were not being asked by their institutions to think about such ideas. The question is, if everyone agrees that the status quo is not sustainable, why aren’t they thinking about it?
Horizon Report Preview 2019 — from library.educause.edu Analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Badges and Credentialing, Blended Learning, Blockchain, Digital Learning, Digital Literacy, Extended Reality (XR), Instructional Design, Instructional Technologies, Learning Analytics, Learning Space, Mobile Learning, Student Learning Support, Teaching and Learning
Abstract The EDUCAUSE Horizon Report Preview provides summaries of each of the upcoming edition’s trends, challenges, and important developments in educational technology, which were ranked most highly by the expert panel. This year’s trends include modularized and disaggregated degrees, the advancing of digital equity, and blockchain.
For more than a decade, EDUCAUSE has partnered with the New Media Consortium (NMC) to publish the annual Horizon Report – Higher Education Edition. In 2018, EDUCAUSE acquired the rights to the NMC Horizon project.
Amazon’s vice president of Alexa, Steve Rabuchin, has confirmed that yes, there really are 10,000 Amazon employees working on Alexa and the Echo.
Those employees are focused on things like machine learning and making Alexa more knowledgeable.
Some employees are working on giving Alexa a personality, too.
From DSC: How might this trend impact learning spaces? For example, I am interested in using voice to intuitively “drive” smart classroom control systems:
“Alexa, turn on the projector”
“Alexa, dim the lights by 50%”
“Alexa, open Canvas and launch my Constitutional Law I class”
A few years ago, in a move toward professional learning, LinkedIn bought Lynda.com for $1.5 billion, adding the well-known library of video-based courses to its professional social network. Today LinkedIn officials announced that they plan to open up their platform to let in educational videos from other providers as well—but with a catch or two.
The plan, announced Friday, is to let companies or colleges who already subscribe to LinkedIn Learning add content from a select group of other providers. The company or college will still have to subscribe to those other services separately, so it’s essentially an integration—but it does mark a change in approach.
For LinkedIn, the goal is to become the front door for employees as they look for micro-courses for professional development.
LinkedIn also announced another service for its LinkedIn Learning platform called Q&A, which will give subscribers the ability to pose a question they have about the video lessons they’re taking. The question will first be sent to bots, but if that doesn’t yield an answer the query will be sent on to other learners, and in some cases the instructor who created the videos.
LinkedIn has become quite a juggernaut in the corporate learning market. Last time I checked the company had more than 17 million users, 14,000 corporate customers, more than 3,000 courses and was growing at high double-digit rates. And all this in only about two years.
And the company just threw down the gauntlet; it’s now announcing it has completely opened up its learning platform to external content partners. This is the company’s formal announcement that LinkedIn Learning is not just an amazing array of content, it is a corporate learning platform. The company wants to become a single place for all organizational learning content.
LinkedIn now offers skills-based learning recommendations to any user through its machine learning algorithms.
Is there demand for staying relevant? For learning new skills? For reinventing oneself?
From DSC: So…look out higher ed and traditional forms of accreditation — your window of opportunity may be starting to close. Alternatives to traditional higher ed continue to appear on the scene and gain momentum. LinkedIn — and/or similar organizations in the future — along with blockchain and big data backed efforts may gain traction in the future and start taking away some major market share. If employers get solid performance from their employees who have gone this route…higher ed better look out.
Microsoft/LinkedIn/Lynda.com are nicely positioned to be a major player who can offer society a next generation learning platform at an incredible price — offering up-to-date, microlearning along with new forms of credentialing. It’s what I’ve been calling the Amazon.com of higher ed(previously the Walmart of Education) for ~10 years. It will take place in a strategy/platform similar to this one.
Meet the 83-Year-Old App Developer Who Says Edtech Should Better Support Seniors — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Now at age 83, Wakamiya beams with excitement when she recounts her journey, which has been featured in news outlets and even at Apple’s developer conference last year. But through learning how to code, she believes that experience offers an even more important lesson to today’s education and technology companies: don’t forget about senior citizens.Today’s education technology products overwhelmingly target young people.And while there’s a growing industry around serving adult learners in higher education, companies largely neglect to consider the needs of the elderly.
Specifically, it will help them prepare for and teach their courses through several phases—ideation, design, assessment, facilitation, reflection and research. The two described a few prototypes they’ve built to show what that might look like.
While it might not get a lot of investor attention, education is actually one of America’s largest markets.
The U.S. has 20 million undergraduates enrolled in colleges and universities right now and another 3 million enrolled in graduate programs. Those undergrads paid an average of $17,237 for tuition, room, and board at public institutions in the 2016-17 school year and $44,551 for private institutions. Graduate education varies widely by area of focus, but the average amount paid for tuition alone was $24,812 last year.
Add all of those up, and America’s students are paying more than half a trillion dollars each year for their education! And that doesn’t even include the interest amassed for student loans, the college-branded merchandise, or all the money spent on beer and coffee.
Keeping the costs down
Several companies are trying to find ways to make college more affordable and accessible.
But after we launched, we have so many users that nowadays if the system wants to figure out whether it should teach plurals before adjectives or adjectives before plurals, it just runs a test with about 50,000 people. So for the next 50,000 people that sign up, which takes about six hours for 50,000 new users to come to Duolingo, to half of them it teaches plurals before adjectives. To the other half it teaches adjectives before plurals. And then it measures which ones learn better. And so once and for all it can figure out, ah it turns out for this particular language to teach plurals before adjectives for example.
So every week the system is improving. It’s making itself better at teaching by learning from our learners. So it’s doing that just based on huge amounts of data. And this is why it’s become so successful I think at teaching and why we have so many users.
From DSC: I see AI helping learners, instructors, teachers, and trainers. I see AI being a tool to help do some of the heavy lifting, but people still like to learn with other people…with actual human beings. That said, a next generation learning platformcould be far more responsive than what today’s traditional institutions of higher education are delivering.
1) Augmented reality can save lives through showing defibrillators nearby
2) Google Glass might help new mothers struggling with breastfeeding
3) Patients can describe their symptoms better through augmented reality
4) Nurses can find veins easier with augmented reality
5) Motivating runners through zombies
6) Pharma companies can provide more innovative drug information
7) Augmented reality can assist surgeons in the OR
8) Google’s digital contact lens can transform how we look at the world
No doubt about it. Virtual reality isn’t just for gamers and gadget geeks anymore. In fact, as the technology gets better and cheaper, VR is the wave of the future when it comes to creating a truly memorable and effective learning experience – and for good reason.
Multiple Learning Attributes. To begin with, it empowers us to create any number of safely immersive virtual learning environments that feel and respond much as they would in real life, as students engage and explore, interact with and manipulate objects within these worlds. Imagine teleporting your students to re-enact historic battles; explore outer space; or travel the inner workings of the human body. What’s more, using sophisticated controls, they can actually “practice” complex procedures like cardiac surgery, or master difficult concepts, such as the molecular properties of brain cells.
Likewise, VR gives new meaning to the term “field trip,” by enabling students to virtually experience first-hand some of the world’s great museums, natural wonders and notable landmarks. You can also embed 360-degree objects within the virtual classroom to support course content, much as Drexel University Online is doing after assembling its one-of-a-kind VRtifacts+ repository. And you can use it to live-stream events, guest lectures and campus tours, in addition to hosting virtual community spaces where learners can meet and connect in a seemingly “real” environment.
At EduTECH Asia 2018 this week in Singapore, EON Reality spent two full days speaking, promoting, and demonstrating the latest updates to the AVR Platform to the thousands of education and technology professionals in attendance.
With a focus on how the AVR Platform can best be used in the education world, EON Reality’s discussion, ‘Augmented and Virtual Reality in Education: The Shift to Classroom 3.0,’ highlighted Wednesday’s offerings with a full presentation and hands-on demos of the new tools in Creator AVR. Over the course of both days, visitors filled the EON Reality booth to get their own one-on-one experience of Creator AVR, Virtual Trainer, and the ways in which AR Assist can help out in the classroom.
The AVR Platform’s three products are the fundamental tools of EON Reality’s Classroom 3.0 vision for the Immersed Flipped Classrooms of the future. With Creator AVR — a SaaS-based learning and content creation solution — leading the way, the AVR Platform empowers Classroom 3.0 by providing teachers and educators of all types with the tools needed to create Augmented and Virtual Reality learning modules.
Bringing Asian educators from all over the continent together, EON Reality’s presence at EduTECH showed just how significantly Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality can elevate the overall educational experience going forward. After two full days of demonstrations, EON Reality introduced the AVR Platform to approximately 1500 teachers, school administration officials, and other decision-makers in Asia’s education industry.
As the AVR Platform expands to educational markets around the world, EON Reality’s revolutionary spin on traditional learning branches into new cultures and nations. With local Singaporean educational institutions like Temasek Polytechnic already onboard, the EduTECH Asia 2018 conference marked the continued spread of Classroom 3.0 and the AVR Platform on both a regional and global level.
