universities

The Benefits of an Innovative Culture at Smaller Colleges — from evolllution.com with Shane Garrison | Vice President of Enrollment, Campbellsville University
Smaller institutions are under more pressure than ever to innovate or collapse—weathering the storm is simply no longer an option for most institutions. This requires leaders and staff across the institution to have a creative mindset, and be willing to experiment and evolve.

Excerpt:

There is the reality that if you don’t diversify, if you fail to be creative, if you fail to try new things, you’re on the verge of folding. In Kentucky, two faith-based colleges folded within a span of about three years, and I think that created an urgency to avoid that fate. We have to be willing to try, create and experiment to survive, and that means doing things that we’ve never done before.

…

Evo: How can an innovative and experiment-focused culture help smaller institutions overcome some of those obstacles?

SG: I think you have to be willing to experiment for short periods of time with strategies that do not fit inside the traditional bubble. For example, for us, our online presence has been fairly strong for about 12 years. However, we had to experiment with placing a good number of full four-year bachelor’s degree programs online, something our university had never done. We had associate programs, we had graduate programs but we had to add bachelor programs online. We did it for three or four years in the experimental phase and noticed these were actually strong and it was building a beautiful pathway between our associate two-year programs and the four-year programs and continuing into graduate programs.

We are experimenting now with an international recruiting partnership and giving it two to three years to see what happens. It has been very successful thus far. This model has created a culture where we can experiment.

Lessons From Flipped Classrooms and Flipped Failures — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young, with Robert Talbert

Excerpt:

So a few years ago Talbert, a math professor at Grand Valley State University, tried a new approach, known as flipped learning—a method catching on these days in college classrooms. He describes it as a new philosophy of teaching. Unlike the lecture model, in which students first encountering new material in the classroom, in the flipped model the students’ first encounter with the material happens outside of class, usually in the form of video lectures. And class time is used for more interactive activities that encourage students to apply what they’re learning while the professor is there to step in and help if necessary.

It isn’t foolproof though, and in a new book Talbert gives a frank look into his classroom experiences, and his tips on how to avoid flipped failure. It’s called “Flipped Learning: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty.” Talbert has long shared the ups and downs of his teaching experiments with his colleagues through his blog.

What I often tell faculty is, if you’re interested in using flipped learning, you’ve got to give yourself a lot of time to ease into it. I try to suggest a one-year plan between the moment you become interested in flipped learning and the moment you actually use it in the classroom. Take a solid year to plan, to develop materials, to test things out and so forth. Don’t try to jump straight into it.

Instructional Design Firm Launches Digital Marketplace; Enables Innovative U’s to Offer Unbundled Alternative Credentials

On 08/12/2017, in CMS/LMS, Content aggregration, content development, content repositories, credentialing, higher education, innovation, instructional design, marketplaces, MBA, teaching & learning, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Instructional Design Firm Launches Digital Marketplace; Enables Innovative Universities to Offer Unbundled Alternative Credentials — from prnewswire.com
iDesign Course Market will help colleges deliver course content, accept payment, and issue digital credentials and certificates online

Excerpt:

DALLAS, Aug. 10, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — Instructional design firm, iDesign, [on 8/10/17] announced Course Market, a digital marketplace that universities can use to offer standalone courses and digital credentials in high demand fields. Course Market integrates LMS technology from Instructure and Credly’s pioneering credential platform to deliver engaging learner experiences with real value in the job market. Institutions that utilize Course Market can seamlessly enroll students in continuing education programs, accept payment, deliver content, and issue digital badges or certificates, which can be instantly uploaded and shared through social networks like LinkedIn or Facebook.

“Alternative credentials are unquestionably gaining traction among working adults looking for accelerated pathways to new schools and executive education. We view Course Market as a great tool for universities that want to expand access to learners who may otherwise be unable to take advantage of traditional degree programs,” said William Valenta, Assistant Dean of MBA and Executive Programs at University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business. “By applying Course Market’s technology and infrastructure to our existing educational offerings, the Katz school successfully enhanced access, affordability, and career relevance.”

Codify Academy Taps IBM Cloud with Watson to Design Cognitive Chatbot — from finance.yahoo.com
Chatbot “Bobbot” has driven thousands of potential leads, 10 percent increase in converting visitors to students

Excerpt:

ARMONK, N.Y., Aug. 4, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Codify Academy, a San Francisco-based developer education startup, tapped into IBM Cloud’s cognitive services to create an interactive cognitive chatbot, Bobbot, that is improving student experiences and increasing enrollment.

Using the IBM Watson Conversation Service, Bobbot fields questions from prospective and current students in natural language via the company’s website. Since implementing the chatbot, Codify Academy has engaged thousands of potential leads through live conversation between the bot and site visitors, leading to a 10 percent increase in converting these visitors into students.

Bobbot can answer more than 200 common questions about enrollment, course and program details, tuition, and prerequisites, in turn enabling Codify Academy staff to focus on deeper, more meaningful exchanges.

Also see:

Chatbots — The Beginners Guide — from chatbotsmagazine.com

Excerpt:

If you search for chatbots on Google, you’ll probably come across hundreds of pages starting from what is a chatbot to how to build one. This is because we’re in 2017, the year of the chatbots revolution.

I’ve been introduced to many people who are new to this space, and who are very interested and motivated in entering it, rather they’re software developers, entrepreneurs, or just tech hobbyists. Entering this space for the first time, has become overwhelming in just a few months, particularly after Facebook announced the release of the messenger API at F8 developer conference. Due to this matter, I’ve decided to simplify the basic steps of entering this fascinating world.

Reflections on “Digital Ivy: Harvard Business School’s Next Online Program” [Corcoran]

On 08/08/2017, in Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning, colleges, community colleges, cross-disciplinary assigments, Daniel S. Christian, higher education, innovation, leadership, MBA, online learning, platforms, strategy, United States, universities, vendors, vision, by Daniel Christian

Digital Ivy: Harvard Business School’s Next Online Program — from edsurge.com by Betsy Corcoran

Excerpts:

A triad of Harvard institutions—its business School, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), and the department of statistics—are teaming up with Maryland-based digital education company, 2U, to offer an online executive education certificate in business analytics.
…
Orchestrating a cross-disciplinary program is no small feat, particularly at Harvard. “This was really hard [for Harvard] to pull off,” Paucek says. “It’s an intense, cross-disciplinary new offering from a school founded in 1636. The field is new, the offering of a complex blended certificate is new, and it’s being done with HBS, SEAS and the faculty, all blessed by the central administration. And it’s powered by an outside company that’s only 10 years old.”

The bottom line: HBS, Harvard SEAS and FAS faculty all want to put their imprint on the topic that is mesmerizing nearly every type of organization.

Also see:

Andrew Ng spreads the gospel of AI with a new online school — from wired.com by Tom Simonite

Excerpt:

Andrew Ng a soft-spoken AI researcher whose online postings talk loudly.

A March blog post in which the Stanford professor announced he was leaving Chinese search engine Baidu temporarily wiped more than a billion dollars off the company’s value. A June tweet about a new Ng website, Deeplearning.ai, triggered a wave of industry and media speculation about his next project.

Today that speculation is over. Deeplearning.ai is home to a series of online courses Ng says will help spread the benefits of recent advances in machine learning far beyond big tech companies such as Google and Baidu. The courses offers coders without an AI background training in how to use deep learning, the technique behind the current frenzy of investment in AI.

From DSC:
For those of you who shun online learning and think such programs will dilute your face-to-face based brands — whether individual colleges, universities, faculty members, provosts, deans, IT-based personnel, administrators, members of the board of trustees, and/or other leaders and strategists within higher education — you might want to intentionally consider what kind of future you have without a strong, solid online presence. Because if one of the top — arguably thee top — universities in the United States is moving forward forcefully with online learning, what’s your story/excuse?

And if one of the top thinkers in artificial intelligence backs online learning, again…what’s your story/excuse?

If Amazon.com dominates and Sears (and related retail stores who were powerhouses just years ago) are now closing…you are likely heading for major trouble as the world continues down the digital/virtual tracks — and you aren’t sending any (or very few) cars down those tracks. You won’t have any credibility in the future — at least not in the digital/virtual/online-based realms. Oh, and by the way, you might want to set some more funding aside for the mental and physical health of your admissions/enrollment teams in such situations…as their jobs are going to be increasingly stressful and difficult in order to meet their target numbers.

Also see:

Could Georgia Tech Use Online to Shave Time Off Bachelor’s Degrees? — from insidehighered.com by Mark Lieberman
University uses model from closely observed master’s in computer science on undergraduates for first time, finds notable success and sees path to shaving a year or more off in-person instruction.

4 items involving bootcamps

On 08/04/2017, in 21st century, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, higher education, ideas, innovation, new business models, programming, student-related, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

The Future of Coding Bootcamps — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young

Excerpt:

EdSurge set out to answer some of those questions with a series of articles about the future of coding bootcamps. We’ll be adding to the series over the next few weeks, and let us know if you have particular questions you want us to pursue.

Coding Boot Camps Won’t Save Us All — from edsurge.com by Jeff Young

Excerpt:

That doesn’t mean the rest of the boot camps are doomed. In fact, there are at least 95 other coding boot camp companies in the U.S., and some say they are still growing. But it should bring a dose of realism to what had been a narrative of unending growth and the idea that somehow boot camps were a silver bullet for what ails higher education.

More bootcamps are quietly coming to a university near you — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

Excerpt:

In the last two years, a surge of nonprofit, four-year institutions have hopped on the bootcamp bandwagon. These programs, often on skills such as software development or data analytics, have arrived in a number of ways—from universities partnering with local for-profit bootcamps, or colleges creating their own intensive training programs completely in-house.But while bootcamps are often associated with tech skills, it seems that traditional universities trying out the model are interested in more than just coding. An increasing number of traditional higher-ed institutions are now applying bootcamp trainings to other fields, such as healthcare, accounting and even civics and political science.

Online learning startup Codecademy launches paid Pro courses — from techcrunch.com by Ryan Lawler

Excerpt:

Codecademy has spent the last several years building a large community of learners with free lessons aimed at teaching its users the basics of how to code. But now it’s betting that many of them will be willing to pay for more intensive courses.

When Codecademy founder and CEO Zach Sims founded the company in 2011, he did so with the hope of allowing more people interested in programming to gain access to educational content they’d need to get started.

Penn State World Campus implements 360-degree videos in online courses [Dawson]

On 08/03/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, emerging technologies, experimentation, higher education, innovation, online learning, special needs, tools, United States, universities, user experience (UX), virtual reality / worlds / learning, visualizing information, by Daniel Christian

Penn State World Campus implements 360-degree videos in online courses — from news.psu.edu by Mike Dawson
Videos give students virtual-reality experiences; leaders hopeful for quick expansion

Excerpt:

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State World Campus is using 360-degree videos and virtual reality for the first time with the goal of improving the educational experience for online learners.

The technology has been implemented in the curriculum of a graduate-level special education course in Penn State’s summer semester. Students can use a VR headset to watch 360-degree videos on a device such as a smartphone.

The course, Special Education 801, focuses on how teachers can respond to challenging behaviors, and the 360-degree videos place students in a classroom where they see an instructor explaining strategies for arranging the classroom in ways best-suited for the learning activity. The videos were produced using a 360-degree video camera and uploaded into the course in just a few a days.

The Rose-Colored Glasses Come Off: a Survey of Business Officers — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman & Rick Seltzer

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

The reality of higher education’s financial challenges is sinking in among college and university business officers.

Now the question is what they’re doing about it — and whether they’re willing to do enough.

Chief business officers increasingly agree that higher education is in the midst of a financial crisis, according to the 2017 Inside Higher Ed Survey of College and University Business Officers. Some are also starting to lose faith in the idea that they can overcome revenue shortfalls using the often-cited strategy of increasing enrollment.

Many respondents were open or supportive of the idea of consolidating programs or academic operations with other institutions. Yet survey results reflected a greater skepticism about their likelihood of actually merging with other colleges or universities in the near future. Business officers were also generally leery of addressing their budget issues in ways that would require them to ask faculty members to change. So although business officers are increasingly recognizing the financial threats they face, experts wondered whether they are being realistic about the kind of strategies they will have to pursue to chart a course forward.

Also see:

Business Officers and Learning Innovators — from insidehighered.com by Joshua Kim
Why maybe we should talk less about learning, and more about money.

I’d like to make a modest proposal.

What if for 2018 all of us involved in postsecondary learning innovation – edtech and CTL and library folks – spent the entire calendar year learning about the business of higher education?

— Per Joshua Kim

2017 Ed Tech Trends: The Halfway Point [Aldridge, Christian, Kelly, Powell, & Ventimiglia]

On 07/31/2017, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning / Deep Learning, augmented reality, bots, change, Daniel S. Christian, data mining, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, learning from the living [class] room, maker movement, robotics, society, student-related, tools, trends, universities, vendors, virtual reality / worlds / learning, vision, by Daniel Christian

2017 Ed Tech Trends: The Halfway Point — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
Four higher ed IT leaders weigh in on the current state of education technology and what’s ahead.

This article includes some perspectives shared from the following 4 IT leaders:

Susan Aldridge, Senior Vice President for Online Learning, Drexel University (PA); President, Drexel University Online
Daniel Christian, Adjunct Faculty Member, Calvin College
Marci Powell, CEO/President, Marci Powell & Associates; Chair Emerita and Past President, United States Distance Learning Association
Phil Ventimiglia, Chief Innovation Officer, Georgia State University

Also see:

Higher ed forges ahead on immersive tech integration – from educationdive.com by Pat Donachie

Major Coding Bootcamps Going Out of Business — from campustechnology.com by Sri Ravipati

Excerpt:

In a surprising turn of events, two major coding bootcamps, within the span of about a week, have announced they are shutting down all operations.

Most recently, after a four-year run, South Carolina-based The Iron Yard (TIY) revealed last Friday it would close its 15 campuses, including locations like Atlanta, Austin, Houston and Charleston where other coding bootcamps are flourishing.
…
Similarly, Dev Bootcamp (DBC) on July 12 announced via Facebook that it would shutdown operations at all six locations — Austin, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and New York — by the end of the summer.

From DSC:
I can almost hear the snickering from a variety of people within higher education about this situation. If gloating had an audible sound associated with it, I’d likely have to go find some earplugs. But I have a message for those who are snickering and gloating right now — saying something along the lines of, “Ha! So much for these alternatives to traditional higher education! They’re nothing, and they’ll come to nothing!”

That may be so. Such relatively new alternatives to traditional institutions of higher education may come to nothing. But you know what? At least those organizations are trying to be much more responsive than many institutions of traditional higher education are being! They’ve recognized that there are unmet needs — gaps, if you will — arising from our current systems. Gaps in either the content that we’re providing and/or the manner in which we’re providing it. Gaps that thousands of students have signed up for in a relatively short time. Those gaps should be cause for action within traditional institutions of higher education. They should be cause for realizing that we aren’t responding nearly fast enough to today’s new pace of change.

The pace of change has changed. It is lightning fast these days. Don’t believe me? Go check out some of the descriptions for the hot jobs out there these days. Seriously. Go do it. Go find out which skills you need to get your foot in the door to acquire those types of positions. It’ll blow your mind!

And there are ramifications to this.

If our accreditation systems need to change, than so be it. Let’s identify those necessary changes and make ’em happen!

Because:

WE have some serious responsibility for the educations that we are providing to this next generation!!!
WE need to prepare them for what they’ll need to be marketable in the future — so that they can put bread and butter on their tables throughout their careers.
WE need to act!
WE need to be responsive!

This is not a time for gloating. Rather, this is a time for some serious action.

Addendums on 8/2/17 and 8/3/17:

Jobs Report: 97 Percent of Flatiron School Graduates Land Jobs — from by Sri Ravipati

Excerpt:

While two major coding bootcamps shut down earlier this week, another released its latest jobs report and says it had the strongest student outcomes to date.

The Flatiron School based in New York, NY has released an independently verified jobs report every year since 2014 — “pioneering the concept of outcomes reporting and setting a standard of transparency in educational outcomes,” the latest report reads. It’s the company’s commitment to accessibility and transparency that have allowed its programs to stay open for five years now, says Adam Enbar, co-founder of the Flatiron School.

More bootcamps are quietly coming to a university near you — from edsurge.com by Sydney Johnson

Excerpt:

In the last two years, a surge of nonprofit, four-year institutions have hopped on the bootcamp bandwagon. These programs, often on skills such as software development or data analytics, have arrived in a number of ways—from universities partnering with local for-profit bootcamps, or colleges creating their own intensive training programs completely in-house.But while bootcamps are often associated with tech skills, it seems that traditional universities trying out the model are interested in more than just coding. An increasing number of traditional higher-ed institutions are now applying bootcamp trainings to other fields, such as healthcare, accounting and even civics and political science.

Learning Ecosystems

Instructional Design Firm Launches Digital Marketplace; Enables Innovative U’s to Offer Unbundled Alternative Credentials

Reflections on “Digital Ivy: Harvard Business School’s Next Online Program” [Corcoran]

Penn State World Campus implements 360-degree videos in online courses [Dawson]

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