Group items tagged

"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."

"When the National Academies issued its first expanded "How People Learn" report, the contents struck a nerve, providing a readable explanation of the various research findings on the science of learning along with guidance on how to turn those insights into instructional practice in the classroom. A new version of that report offers an updated view on the topic and pushes beyond K-12."

"Key findings from the report include: When publishers bundle a textbook with an access code, it eliminates most opportunities for students to cut costs with the used book market. Of the access code bundles in our sample, forty-five percent-nearly half-were unavailable from any other source we could find except the campus bookstore. This eliminated student's ability to shop around and meant that they were forced to pay full price for these materials. For the classes using bundles, students would likely be stuck paying full price, whereas for the classes using a textbook only, students could cut costs up to fifty-eight percent by buying used online. Schools that have invested in open educational resources (OER) generated significant savings for their students. OER are educational materials that can be downloaded or accessed for free online while carrying many other benefits for students and professors. For example, in Massachusetts, Greenfield Community College's use of OER in three of the six courses in our study meant that students there could spend as little as $31 per course on materials, compared to a national average of $153 per course. Switching the ten introductory classes in our study to OER nationwide would save students $1.5 billion per year in course materials costs."

"Students who use OER find them to be accessible, relevant, and engaging. Over 60 percent of students reported that the overall quality of their learning experience in an OER course was higher in comparison to a typical, non- OER course. Though creating OER courses and degrees is time consuming, instructors in several colleges said they had made changes in instruction as a result of working with OER materials. Though few instructors made changes to their pedagogical practices specific to OER, use of these materials allowed them to align materials better with their learning goals. Instructors already using student-centered and hands-on learning strategies said that the OER materials helped what they were already doing. Several instructors also reported that students were more engaged with OER materials compared to textbooks, because they are better tailored to good pedagogy, reading materials are more relevant and interesting, and students can be more involved in the construction of the learning experience."

"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 profiles six key trends, six significant challenges, and six important developments in educational technology as ranked by an expert panel of leaders from across the higher education landscape."

"On average, faculty participants reported working 61 hours per week - more than 50 percent over the traditional 40-hour work week. They worked 10 hours per day Monday to Friday and about that much on Saturday and Sunday combined. Perhaps surprisingly, full professors reported working slightly longer hours both during the week and on weekends than associate and assistant professors, as well as chairs."

"During the webinar, one of the participants shared a link for a report from Duke University on their first MOOC, Bioelectricity: A Quantitative Approach, delivered through Coursera in fall 2012. And what a find that was - this is the most thorough description I have yet seen from a university about their experience selecting, development, delivering and analyzing a MOOC. Kudos to Yvonne Belanger and Jessica Thornton, the authors."

Overwhelmingly, students are open to adopting digital alternatives to traditional resources because they provide value on price, content, and portability. These are all areas where traditional textbook publishers have stopped innovating and fallen flat. Our findings suggest that students have already adapted to cost and access barriers with behaviors not supported by the traditional textbook market. We are at a new precipice in education, one where digital innovation will define the way our students work, learn, and interact - all in a post-textbook world.

This report is the result of a National Science Foundation-Sponsored Computing Research Association Workshop held at MIT on January 9-11, 2013. This workshop developed a framework for understanding current disruptive change in higher education learning delivery models and outlined steps towards a research agenda for realizing possible benefits while avoiding future pitfalls.

school productivity has not become part of the reform conversation, and with this project, our hope is to shine a light on how productivity differs across districts, as well as to identify key areas of reform. Moreover, for the first time, we conducted a special analysis of educational fiscal practices, diving deep into state budgeting approaches. We believe that if our education system had a more robust way of tracking expenditures, it could do more to increase productivity. Together with this report, we have also released analysis by CAP Senior Policy Analyst Robert Hanna on twin districts. Hanna's analysis looks more closely at the programs and practices of more effective districts.

"The chart is part of a summary of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded studies by the Education Advisory Board, a business that produces research for colleges. The board looked at seven colleges, mostly regional public universities whose names have not been revealed, and tried to figure out what it costs to teach students. Analysts combed through 250 million rows of data to draw up reports that spelled out the costs of each student credit hour in each section in each department of each college."

"With the report, Educause has launched the Next Generation Digital Learning Environments Initiative, a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-supported effort to examine why colleges and universities are using "antiquated" technology -- and how to replace it. The average institution's learning management system, according to Educause's data, is eight years old."

"Based on the research synthesized in the 2012 NRC report Discipline-Based Education Research, Reaching Students strives to answer these questions and presents the best thinking to date on teaching and learning undergraduate science and engineering. Focusing on the disciplines of astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, geosciences, and physics, this book is an introduction to strategies to try in undergraduate classrooms. Concrete examples and case studies illustrate how experienced instructors and leaders have applied evidence-based approaches to address student needs, encouraged the use of effective techniques within a department or an institution, and addressed the challenges that arose along the way."

"CEW explores the links between education, career preparation, and workplace demands. Our research focuses on jobs, skills, and equity with the goal of better aligning education and training with workforce and labor market demand."

"Special Issue: Outcomes of Openness: Empirical Reports on the Implementation of OER"

"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."

"It's as if many Americans are still thinking of higher ed in a mid-20th-century sense, as a public good we support, and haven't quite caught on with the reality of privatization"

"Big data is everywhere-even in education. Researchers and developers of online learning, intelligent tutoring systems, virtual labs, simulations, and learning management systems are exploring ways to better understand and use learning analytics to improve teaching and learning."

We face a critical need to prepare children and adolescents to thrive in the 21st century-an era of rapidly evolving technology, demanding and collaborative STEM knowledge work, changing workforce needs, economic volatility, and unacceptable achievement gaps. This report takes a close look at a core set of noncognitive factors-grit, tenacity, and perseverance-that are essential to an individual's capacity to strive for and succeed at important goals, and to persist in the face of an array of challenges encountered throughout schooling and life.