Group items tagged

"A curious disconnect has been emerging in my thinking, one that has been made clear with the hype-oriented buzzwords of today's ed tech companies. I no longer want to be affiliated with the tool-fetish of edtech. It's time to say adios to technosolutionism that recreates people as agents within a programmed infrastructure."

"On most four-year college campuses, full-time students don't pay by the credit hour (think by channel on your cable bill). Rather they pay a flat fee for the semester (a programming package on your cable bill) and are typically allowed to take as many courses up to a certain limit."

"What Zorbas and Sparks call their "Classroom Without Walls" program has allowed their Kenai Peninsula students to connect with students in Afghanistan, Israel, Yemen and several U.S. states. But the videoconferencing exploration grew gradually, from the two teachers team-teaching in the same school, to team-teaching from different schools in the same district, to student-to-student collaborative group work."

"In an interview about the satellite hack with French news program 13 Heures, TV5Monde reporter David Delos unwittingly revealed at least one password for the station's social media presence. That's because he was filmed in front of a staffer's desk-which was smothered in sticky notes and taped index cards that were covered in account usernames and passwords."

"The Federal Government currently invests billions of taxpayer dollars each year in programs that include the creation of educational, training, and instructional materials through grants, contracts, and other cooperative agreements. This investment produces educational resources ranging from innovative curricular resources to workforce training materials to English language learning tools. While these materials are created for the public good, they are generally not open to the members of the public who paid for them. At a time when educational opportunity, workforce development and access to knowledge are critical to America's future, these valuable publicly-funded resources should be openly available to students, teachers, businesses, workers and the public to use in new and innovative ways."

"The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) and its Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) provide the most official data on colleges and universities in the United States. At long last they have started to include data fields for online education (technically distance education, the vast majority of which is online) starting with the preliminary data released through Fall 2012 term. Despite all of the talk about data and measuring online programs, we can only now start to get official information from a central source rather than relying on surveys or institutional data."

"In two different tests, the NTM was asked to 1) learn to copy blocks of binary data and 2) learn to remember and sort lists of data. The results were compared with a more basic neural network, and it was found that the computer learned faster and produced longer blocks of data with fewer errors. Additionally, the computer's methods were found to be very similar to the code a human programmer would've written to make the computer complete such a task."

The House education committee, led by Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., released its reauthorization proposal over the summer in four smaller bills that respectively focus on simplifying the financial aid application process; increasing transparency by creating a centralized "College Dashboard" containing information on student outcomes; increasing financial awareness by providing counseling options for students and families; and promoting innovation through competency-based education pilot programs. All but the first bill have been passed in the chamber, but Democrats have criticized the House package for not doing enough to curb the high cost of college.

"Righting the ship will require borrowing a page from the community-college playbook, by adding employment-ready programs like nursing (as Holy Family has done) and computing to entice disaffected degree-seekers. Developing online and hybrid teaching methods might also raise revenue from adult learners. Mostly, self-preservation will require both professors and administrators to accept cost-cutting, which will hardly be easy. Even though St. Joe's ended the year with a $7 million surplus by embracing some of these measures, its administration became cannon fodder for faculty. But if more schools don't follow suit, it could spell closures. "For those college presidents unwilling to reboot," Hartman warns. "I've got one word for them: Detroit.""

instead of two years, it would last 10 months-long enough to make friends, participate in experiential parts of the program, and become members of the club. They would pay a fee for the immersion, but not the balance of their tuition. After that, students would graduate into the work force, but they would stay enrolled at Wharton on a subscription basis. One day, a Wharton subscriber working in investment banking might get put on a team that oversees mergers and acquisitions. Instead of aching to recall the lessons she learned back in business school (and later forgot), she takes an online "minicourse" from Wharton. "The new pattern becomes learn-certify-deploy, learn-certify-deploy," the professors write in their paper.

"Next time you're surfing around looking at eLearning courses, ask yourself what the designer's attitude toward his or her audience might be. In what ways does it show? Does it help or harm? What programs do you like and find most engaging? I bet they don't make you feel like a stupid untrustworthy cheater. What would you do differently if it were up to you?"

"Competency-based learning turns higher education on its head - starting not with the curriculum, but rather the competencies one should exhibit upon completion (according to, say, employers). From there, course developers design assessments that test for these competencies. Then - and only then - do we turn to the task of developing the curricula that prepares students to demonstrate mastery on the assessments. In a competency-based program, failure becomes an anachronism; students continue until they demonstrate competency."

"supporting teaching with technology is becoming less about offering training sessions for professors about how to use clickers and course-management systems, and more about coordinating bigger-impact projects like redesigning large introductory courses or leading the creation of a new online-degree program. "

"Using a mix of skills in data engineering, analysis, and business intelligence, the Office focuses on analytics subject areas such as executive and academic program dashboards, marketing, enrollment management, retention, financials, and service centers. A service catalog includes predictive analytics, metrics dashboards, forecast modeling, Ad Hoc reporting, operational reporting, and variance analysis."

"The average college student working full time at minimum wage earns $15,080 annually before taxes, the report estimates. "Working might eventually cover tuition at a two-year program," said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown center and the report's lead author. "But the earnings aren't sufficient to even get close to covering a private, four-year school." "

"The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is among 45 schools worldwide whose students are developing programs to battle extremism, but not with fighter jets or ground troops. It's a war of ideas in which participants use the same social media and other marketing tactics that have been harnessed aggressively as recruitment armaments for the Islamic State."

"As the Embedded For-Profit industry develops, he predicts it will further curtail professors' autonomy, already somewhat weakened by colleges' use of outside companies to host learning-management systems - and more recently to help manage and produce online-education programs."

"Universities that thrive in this new era will embrace their role as curator and translator. They will integrate best-in-class programs that are responsive to the workforce needs of the time. They will develop digital, clickable credentials that more clearly convey the unique skills and competencies that make up a degree."

"The new university/company AI partnership model will resemble the current online program management model, in which the AI company de-risks the AI investment with up-front capital and resources, and is paid by a revenue share."

"According to the OSU Web Accessibility Policy (PDF), all content interfaces to be used by Ohio State University faculty/staff, program participants, or other university constituencies are required to be compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), as amended. This page provides elaboration and guidelines to help OSU developers and purchasing agents meet the Web Accessibility Policy."