online learning

For College Finances, There’s No ‘Return to Normal’ [LeClair]

On 06/16/2021, in business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, faculty/staff, future of higher education, higher education, leadership, new business models, online learning, pace of change, strategy, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

For College Finances, There’s No ‘Return to Normal’ — from chronicle.com by Mark S. LeClair
The critical problems facing higher education won’t end with the pandemic.

Excerpt:

Higher ed is in trouble. It faces a demographic crunch in 2026, when smaller high-school graduating classes will mean greater competition for students. That will lead to tuition discounting and underenrolled classes for many colleges. And yet that demographic crisis is only one of many significant challenges the sector faces. As noted by Forbes in its annual review of college and university financials, approximately 20 percent of all institutions now warrant a “D” ranking (its lowest). Many are under serious financial strain and may not survive.

The Forbes financial analyses have been warning of a worsening situation for years. The added stresses from the Covid-19 pandemic will further aggravate the untenable circumstances facing hundreds of institutions. There is now a very short window within which we must carry out significant reforms.

2021 CHLOE 6 Report
CHLOE 6: Online Learning Leaders Adapt for a Post-Pandemic World — from qualitymatters.org

Excerpt:

The 2021 report, authored by Quality Matters and Eduventures® Research, tracks how institutions are reassessing their priorities related to online learning and shifting focus to ed tech enhancements, faculty professional development and online quality. The report was compiled from responses from 422 chief online officers (COO) representing 2- and 4-year colleges and universities.

More than half of the survey respondents (57%) across all sectors of higher education, including predominantly in-person institutions, indicated that, going forward, the pandemic experience is leading to a positive reassessment of institutional priorities related to online learning. Key survey findings from the 69-page report include:

An elevated commitment to online learning quality assurance goals, including having courses meet quality standards, supported by a commitment to faculty professional development.
An average 10-15% increase across institutions in online professional development and student orientation to online study to serve formerly in-person faculty and students.
The largest yearly increases ever in ed tech investment in 2020 and 2021 across all sectors of higher ed.

It’s like Netflix for education: UND considers subscription tuition model — from grandforksherald.com by Sydney Mook; with thanks to Ray Schroeder for this resource out on LinkedIn
Think of it as Netflix or Hulu – popular television subscription services – but for a UND education. Students could pay a flat rate and take as many (or as few) online courses as preferred, so long as they aren’t considered a full-time, degree-seeking student.

Excerpts:

UND wants to add a flat-rate subscription option to its tuition model.

Think of it as Netflix or Hulu – popular television subscription services – but for a UND education. Students could pay a flat rate and take as many (or as few) online courses as preferred, so long as they aren’t considered a full-time, degree-seeking student.

“You enroll, you have a subscription and during that subscription, you can binge watch,” said Jeff Holm, vice provost for online education and strategic planning at UND.

UND says it wants to “provide competency-based, online education that provides ‘micro-pathways’ or smaller targeted units of learning to individuals as a way to enhance their skill set and knowledge for advancing in the labor market or reskilling for a new employment opportunity.”

6 Emerging Technology Trends in Higher Education [Pang]

On 06/07/2021, in analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, blended learning, business side of he, colleges, community colleges, credentialing, data related items, higher education, hybrid learning, online learning, open courseware and systems, quality, trends, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

6 Emerging Technology Trends in Higher Education — from edtechmagazine.com by Amelia Pang
From artificial intelligence to microcredentials, here’s a look at the future.

Excerpts:

1. The Growth of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Ed
2. Actualizing the Potential of Data Analytics to Improve Education
3. A Permanent Place for Blended and Hybrid Course Models
4. The Expansion of Open Educational Resources
5. Microcredentials Provide Business Opportunities for Higher Ed
6. More Investments in Quality Online Learning

Planning for a blended future: A research-driven guide for educators — from everylearnereverywhere.org by Every Learner Everywhere in partnership with Online Learning Consortium (OLC) & National Research Center for Distance Education and Technological Advancements (DETA)

Excerpt:

The purpose of this guide
This resource is a collaboration among the National Research Center for Distance Education and Technological Advances (DETA), the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), and the Every Learner Everywhere Network. It is designed to serve as a resource for educators — faculty, instructors, instructional staff, instructional improvement staff, instructional designers, learning experience designers and developers, technological support staff, and other stakeholders — to guide strategic planning for blended learning courses and programs.

Therefore, blended learning is instruction that blends technological, temporal, spatial, and pedagogical dimensions to create actualized learning. Students feel they are successful when they actually learn and that does not always equate to grade and course completion.

KEY IDEAS

Designing courses to meaningfully integrate the different environments and temporal cadence (online and onsite, live and overtime) while incorporating an active learning approach can improve student outcomes in blended and hybrid courses.
Faculty must become guides for students and their engagement by intentionally and strategically using a variety of modalities to scaffold learning.
By designing and scaffolding blended courses effectively, faculty can avoid the common pitfall of course and-a-half-syndrome, which occurs when the online portion of a course is tacked on, creating busywork for students.

Growth Mindset Leadership & The Pygmalion Effect — from by Trevor Ragan and the Learning Lab; featuring Robert Rosenthal, Christine Rubie-Davies, and Michael Merznich. With thanks to Chris Church, Tenured Professor and prior Associate Dean of Academic Programs at the WMU-Cooley Law School
Our mindsets impact others more than we realize. As leaders, we can use this to improve the learning environment.

Excerpt:

We know that our individual mindsets (growth mindset & fixed mindset) can impact our capacity to grow. But how do our mindsets impact others?

Renowned researcher, Robert Rosenthal outlines his work and shows how our expectations can have a huge impact on the performance and development of the people around us.

Christine Rubie-Davies from the University of Auckland shows us how teacher expectations play a role in student development.

From DSC:
I highly recommend that all professors, teachers and student teachers, trainers — and even those supervising others — check this piece out! Nice work Trevor & Company! Below are some snapshots from this presentation.

Wow! Some significant statements coming from this highly-regarded physics professor!

On 05/31/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, active learning, CMS/LMS, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, digital learning, education technology, elearning, experimentation, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, mathematics, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, online learning, online media, online tutoring, pedagogy, physics, platforms, society, teaching & learning, teaching online, United States, universities, user experience (UX), web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

Teaching: Why an Active-Learning Evangelist Is Sold on Online Teaching — from chronicle.com by Beth McMurtrie

Excerpts:

Now, says Mazur, the results are in and he’s convinced: online teaching is better. Not in all circumstances, to be sure. But in his applied-physics courses, students showed larger learning gains and felt more supported than students had in in-person classes. In fact, they appear to have learned so much more effectively in this new format that he wonders if it’s “almost unethical,” to return to the classroom this fall.

“I have never been able to offer a course of the quality that I’m offering now,” he says. “I am convinced that there is no way I could do anything close to what I’m doing in person. Online teaching is better than in person.”

One benefit of this setup, says Mazur, is that students go at their own pace. He has thought a lot about how classroom-based work, even when it is student-led, is hostage to the clock and the instructor. Not every group works at the same pace, yet everyone has to wait until others are ready, or rush ahead when they fall behind. When groups set their own pace, it gives them the space to work through problems or get help as needed. The value of self-paced learning is also evident outside of class, says Mazur, who built more asynchronous work into his online course.

“I have never seen students work this hard for my course,” he says. “Never. And so consistently.”

Also see:

But he’s so convinced of how valuable this model is that he asked Harvard to allow him to keep teaching online this fall.

Also relevant/see:

Online Learning Increases College Access for Underserved Native American Students — from edtechmagazine.com by Adam Stone
The California Indian Nations College saw a 22 percent increase in enrollment last year. Here’s a look at how they did it.
A Simple Guide to Four Popular Online Learning Formats — from blog.commlabindia.com by Nameera Sallum
With the pandemic making in-person training a remote possibility, organizations relying on classroom training are now looking to online learning. This post discusses various aspects of four popular online learning formats – eLearning, microlearning, virtual classrooms, and social learning.

Student Experiences Learning with Technology in the Pandemic — from educause.edu

Excerpts:

However, as most institutions pivoted to remote learning as a result of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2020, we also pivoted to conduct a special fall 2020 study to gain insights on the student experience during what has been an exceptional time of disruption. In this report, we share results from the study related to student experiences with technology in the for-credit courses they were taking in fall 2020 in which they felt they were learning the most. Specifically, we asked students to think about their best course—the one in which they learned the most—and tell us about the learning environments and modalities of those courses, as well as instructors’ uses of technology in, the organizational and design features of, and the most and least effective uses of technology they experienced in those courses.1

Steps You Can Take
Institutional leaders should consider the following steps as they continue to respond to the most immediate needs of students and plan for a post-pandemic future.

Invest in the design, development, and implementation of hybrid course models and the people who support them.
Connect faculty with instructional designers and instructional technologists.
Put students at the center of your teaching.

The best student experiences were the ones that were focused on student learning experiences and did so from a position of empathy, care, and flexibility. If we learn one thing from higher education’s pandemic year it’s that higher education needs to invest in promoting caring, student-centered, and adaptive pedagogies.

As school districts move from “reopening” to “recovery,” what will they be recovering from? [Hill & DeArmond]

On 05/26/2021, in 21st century, change, education, education reform, funding / grants, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, online learning, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, teaching online, by Daniel Christian

As school districts move from “reopening” to “recovery,” what will they be recovering from? — from crpe.org by Paul Hill & Michael DeArmond

Excerpts:

Coming out of the pandemic, these leaders thought it was time to try something fundamentally different. “We have to rethink school, period,” one told us.

They thought schools needed to “recover” from traditional conceptualizations of schooling that had never provided all students with high-quality learning opportunities. As these leaders talked about rethinking public education, they put lots of ideas on the table, some of which they piloted during the pandemic:

Hybrid or blended instructional models that combine in-person and online learning
Fully remote options
Learning pods where students work independently or receive one-on-one support
Mixed-age classes based on proficiency level
Grade band progression as opposed to grade levels
Self-paced individualized instruction
Co-teaching
Weekend and intersession camps and instructional programming
Evening learning opportunities (e.g., time in CTE shops, art studios, etc.)
Enhanced summer programming
“Do-over years” (where students aren’t identified as having been “retained”)

Also see:

From DSC:
When I see the word acceleration mentioned here…it (at least initially) raises a red flag for me. Speeding up the trains will leave many further behind. And if that’s not what’s happening here, I’d say that another word or phrase be identified and used here…as many others will have the same initial reaction to this word. A PR problem.

K-12 education in America is a like a quickly moving train that stops for no one.

20 Best Websites to Help Kids Learn From Home in 2021 [Olech]

On 05/24/2021, in 24x7x365 access, art, creativity, digital learning, digital storytelling, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, homeschooling/homeschoolers, K-12 related, languages and translation, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning preferences, love of learning, mathematics, media/film, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, online learning, online media, productivity / tips and tricks, reading, science, STEAM-related, streams of content, student-related, technologies for your home, tools, ubiquitous learning, vendors, virtual field trips, virtual tutoring, web-based collaboration, writing, youth, by Daniel Christian

20 Best Websites to Help Kids Learn From Home in 2021 — from wizcase.com by Julia Olech

Excerpt:

That’s why I rounded up a list of the 20 best free websites that provide engaging and fun learning experiences for you and your children. I made sure each website caters to a wide range of ages with games and interactive lessons that won’t bore even the most fidgety kids. The best part is that you can use them all at no cost!

One wonders what this type of tech will do for online-based learning, &/or hybrid/blended learning, &/or hyflex-based learning in the future [Christian]

On 05/24/2021, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, attention, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital video, disruption, distance education, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global, Google, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), hybrid learning, ideas, innovation, K-12 related, law schools, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, more voice more choice more control, online learning, online media, platforms, remote teaching and learning, smart classrooms, social learning / networks, society, student-related, telecommunications, telelegal, telemedicine / telehealth / virtual health, telepresence, television, tools, training / L&D, TVs, United States, universities, usability, user experience (UX), vendors, videoconferencing, Virtual courts and law firms, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, visualizing information, vocational / trades, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
It will be interesting to see — post Covid19 — how vendors and their platforms continue to develop to allow for even greater degrees of web-based collaboration. I recently saw this item re: what Google is doing with their Project Starline. Very interesting indeed. Google is trying to make it so that the other person feels like they are in the same space with you.

.
Time will tell what occurs in this space...but one does wonder what this type of technology will do for online-based learning, and/or hybrid/blended learning, and/or hyflex-based learning in the future…?

A second demographic cliff adds to urgency for change — from insidehighered.com by Ray Schroeder
The demographic cliff we have been anticipating since the drop in births with the 2008 recession now has a younger sibling — the COVID-19 cliff is coming with another deep drop in recent births.

Excerpts:

In sum, competition is rapidly growing; the pool of “traditional” students is evaporating; employers are dropping degree requirements; and, with student debt now surpassing $1.7 trillion, we all know that families are looking for more cost-effective paths to the knowledge and skills they seek. “The fundamental business model for delivering education is broken,” said Rick Beyer, a senior fellow and practice area lead for mergers and affiliations at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. “The consolidation era started a few years ago. It will continue. We will see more closures.”

What, then, are the bright spots for postsecondary learning?

Online learning tops the list despite some bad press for the hastily put-together remote learning of last year. Adult students, in particular, prefer the flexibility and mobility of online. Enrollment in online programs has continued to increase while overall higher ed enrollments have declined each of the past dozen years.

Counting U.S. Postsecondary and Secondary Credentials — from Credential Engine; with thanks to Will Richardson for this resource
February 2021

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Learners, educators and policymakers understand that high school completion and education beyond high school are critical to thrive in the workforce. However, until recently an inventory of the number or type of secondary and postsecondary credential opportunities in the United States did not exist. This is the third annual report from Credential Engine that attempts to count all these credentials. The report identifies 967,734 unique credentials in the U.S. in 16 detailed credential categories across four types
of credential providers:

Postsecondary educational institutions—359,713 degrees and certificates
Massive open online course (MOOC) providers—9,390 course completion certificates, micro-credentials, and online degrees from foreign universities
Non-academic providers—549,712 badges, course completion certificates, licenses, certifications, and apprenticeships
Secondary schools—48,919 diplomas from public and private secondary schools

Also see:

NLET Releases “Newest Economy” Paper

In The Newest Economy: Welcome to the Credential Currency Revolution, Gordon Freedman, NLET’s president, examines the discontinuity between high schools, community colleges, career and technical education, and workforce development programs and their alignment and linkages to high demand jobs and careers. The paper suggests moving beyond the current array of offerings and labor market tools to a marketplace solution using modern technology and data analytics to link credentials (badges, certifications, degrees) to hiring outcomes.

The paper is a collaboration among NLET, Credential Engine, Southern Regional Economic Board (SREB) and GoEducate, Inc. who together are building a Credential Alliance to further the work described in the report.

Press Release
Executive Summary
Download the Report

Per Flower Darby (via Becky Supiano at The Chronicle): What if every department-meeting agenda blocked off just 10 minutes to talk about teaching? That simple move, Darby thinks, could go a long way toward changing the campus culture around teaching.

— Daniel Christian (he/him/his) (@dchristian5) May 20, 2021

73 percent of students prefer some courses be fully online post-pandemic — from campustechnology.comby Rhea Kelly

“When three-fourths of students and more than half of faculty want to experience at least some courses fully online, the key takeaway is that the pandemic did not threaten but in fact accelerated the long-term growth, acceptance, and desirability of online learning, and those numbers will only improve, as emergency remote offerings are rebuilt as modern online courses and programs.”

Learning Ecosystems

For College Finances, There’s No ‘Return to Normal’ [LeClair]

CHLOE 6: Online Learning Leaders Adapt for a Post-Pandemic World

It’s like Netflix for education: UND considers subscription tuition model [Mook]

Planning for a blended future: A research-driven guide for educators [Joosten & Weber]

Wow! Some significant statements coming from this highly-regarded physics professor!

A second demographic cliff adds to urgency for change [Schroeder]

73 percent of students prefer some courses be fully online post-pandemic [Kelly]

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