Group items tagged

"Every time a student interacts with their university - be that going to the library, logging into their virtual learning environment or submitting assessments online - they leave behind a digital footprint. Learning analytics is the process of using this data to improve learning and teaching. Learning analytics refers to the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about the progress of learners and the contexts in which learning takes place. Using the increased availability of big datasets around learner activity and digital footprints left by student activity in learning environments, learning analytics take us further than data currently available can."

"This report is the result of a research partnership between Burning Glass Technologies, BHEF, and IBM, motivated by the need to close the data science and analytics skills gap through data driven insights and increased collaboration between higher education and industry. It defines the data science and analytics (DSA) landscape, presents research findings about the skill gap, adds context to the DSA jobs and skills that are disrupters, and offers recommendations to alleviate the DSA talent shortage."

"The number of distance education students grew by 5.6% from Fall 2015 to Fall 2016 to reach 6,359,121 who are taking at least one distance course, representing 31.6% of all students."

"The secret then, is to find a way to practice real engagement that also boosts your score with Klout's algorithm. And here's how:"

""Having workers take small breaks on their phones throughout the day may positively influence their perceived well-being at the end of the workday," said Sooyeol Kim, one of the study's authors and a doctoral student at Kansas State University."

And in many states, a larger state appropriation is part of a compact that lawmakers are striking with college leaders: We'll give you some extra cash if you agree to freeze tuition. It's a bargain that legislators and higher-education leaders are willing to make in order to stem the rising costs of college.

"Use of in-class concept questions with clickers can transform an instructor-centered "transmissionist" environment to a more learner-centered constructivist classroom. To compare the effectiveness of three different approaches using clickers, pairs of similar questions were used to monitor student understanding in majors' and nonmajors' genetics courses. After answering the first question individually, students participated in peer discussion only, listened to an instructor explanation only, or engaged in peer discussion followed by instructor explanation, before answering a second question individually. Our results show that the combination of peer discussion followed by instructor explanation improved average student performance substantially when compared with either alone. When gains in learning were analyzed for three ability groups of students (weak, medium, and strong, based on overall clicker performance), all groups benefited most from the combination approach, suggesting that peer discussion and instructor explanation are synergistic in helping students. However, this analysis also revealed that, for the nonmajors, the gains of weak performers using the combination approach were only slightly better than their gains using instructor explanation alone. In contrast, the strong performers in both courses were not helped by the instructor-only approach, emphasizing the importance of peer discussion, even among top-performing students."

"FlexCourse, a teaching and learning platform offering self-paced online degree programs, comes from a combination of acclaimed technological assets and programs of UniversityNow, which were acquired by NUS, and enhancements and customization by NUS developers; NUS affiliate John F. Kennedy University is the first to integrate FlexCourse, with classes starting in September"