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• New Provider Offers Low-Cost Online Courses. But Will the Credit Transfer? - Rebecca Koenig, EdSurge
  Aaron Rasmussen, co-founder of MasterClass, this week announced the launch of Outlier, an online provider of university-level courses.  Although the Outlier topics are decidedly more staid, they may serve a higher purpose. That’s because Rasmussen thinks he can help students reduce the cost of earning degrees. Outlier joins the ranks of several other online course providers […]
• How does Ethereum work, anyway? - Preethi Kasireddy, Medium
  Odds are you’ve heard about the Ethereum blockchain, whether or not you know what it is. It’s been in the news a lot lately, including the cover of some major magazines, but reading those articles can be like gibberish if you don’t have a foundation for what exactly Ethereum is. So what is it? In […]
• Engaging Faculty with New Tech - Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology
  We talked with Julin Sharp, assistant vice president for information technology at Marist College, about her institution's efforts to engage faculty with innovative tools and pedagogies. Marist's Digital Education group, is a centralized team that works with faculty across the college to support technology-enabled teaching and learning. The department's stated mission is "Digital Education is committed […]
• Google Adds Data to College Search - By Sara Friedman, THE Journal
  Google is making improvements to its college search feature to provide students with more detailed information on their college options. The tool now offers data on two-year colleges and certificate- and associate-level programs at four-year institutions. In June 2018, Google added the ability to allow users to search for data on four-year institutions and get information […]
• Using the Power and Promise of Edtech to Empower Adult Learners - Matthew Lynch, Tech Edvocate
  Adult learners have specific needs that education technology may find challenging to meet. Adult learners are not a homogeneous group. Some study to complete their high school education, some want to prepare for college, others want to get a promotion or just get a job. And their levels of reading, writing and math differ widely. […]
• What's worse than student loan debt? Owing money and earning no college degree. - Des Moines Register Editorial
  The National Student Clearinghouse, which follows the status of undergraduates at institutions eligible for federal aid, gathers information about the so-called college “persistence" rate. This is the percentage of students who return to college at any institution for their second year.  According to the organization's most recent report, of the 3.5 million students who enrolled […]
• Affective Artificial Intelligence: Better Understanding and Responding to Students - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed
  AI in many fields now applies affective communication algorithms that help to respond to humans. Customer service chat bots can sense when a client is angry or upset, advertising research can use AI to measure emotional responses of viewers and a mental health app can measure nuances of voice to identify anxiety and mood changes […]
• Purdue's TLT Partners with Faculty to Accelerate Grading in Large Enrollment Courses - A Q&A with Debora Steffen and Edward Berger, Campus Technology
  A partnership at Purdue between the university's Teaching and Learning Technologies organization and faculty exploring Gradescope has grown into a campus-wide initiative that includes an enterprise license of the tool and TLT support. The use of Gradescope accelerates the grading process — especially in large enrollment courses — and the related strategies that faculty share […]
• More students turning to online courses for post-high school education - Chloe Bradford, CBS19
  More students turning to online courses for post-high school education“It’s that ability to do class to do work at 3 o'clock in the morning in your pajamas because that’s the only time you’ve got," TJC Director of Distant Education Ken Craver said. "“Mainly, you can explain it in one word: It’s flexibility. People that really […]
• Moody Report: 'Hypercompetitive' higher ed market will limit revenue growth - Hallie Busta, Education Dive
  A "hypercompetitive" market for higher education along with a continued focus on affordability will constrain tuition revenue in the coming year even as state funding stabilizes, Moody's analysts wrote in a report released this week. Low-to-negative net tuition revenue growth is likely for many regional public and private colleges, which will spur continued cost containment that […]
• Has Online Education Jumped The Shark? - John Byrne, Forbes
  “When we started 2U, the market was in its infancy,” explained 2U CEO Christopher Paucet who co-founded the company in 2008. “The core thesis of the company was that online programs could drive a similar quality to campus programs and that the company’s scale and unique platform characteristics would build a competitive moat around the […]
• 5 Reasons Why BU's $24K MBA Is A Big Deal - Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed
  The newly announced $24K BU MBA, created in partnership with edX, is a big deal. The Boston University Questrom School of Business is ranked in the top 50 global business schools by US News, in the top 70 by the Economist. Questrom is a brand name business school in a market where the value of the […]
• Uneven Standards Hamper Online Education the World Over - Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology
  A new report has provided SWOT analyses of seven regions around the world related to digital and distance education. The bottom line: While online learning is on the rise everywhere, programs and courses show great unevenness because of a lack of standards. The project, led by the International Council for Open and Distance Education, was kicked […]
• The university challenge – are academic institutions a national security weak link? - Louise Fellows, IT Pro Portal
  As seats of learning, higher education institutions they are uniquely placed to support early-stage, government-backed research exploring the cutting edge of innovation in a variety of fields. This is vital, not only to further national interests, but for the institutions to be able to differentiate themselves and generate revenue in an increasingly crowded marketplace. According to […]
• Learning About Online Learning at Small Private Colleges - Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed
   The Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction is one of the largest-scale experiments (at least if you measure scale by the number of institutions involved, rather than enrollments) in online postsecondary learning. Over the course of several years, 42 member institutions of the Council of Independent Colleges built a set of upper-level online and hybrid humanities […]
• 7 Things You Should Know About Digital Badges - EDUCAUSE
  Digital badges are validated indicators of skills or competencies, often representing the completion of a microcredential. Badges typically represent competencies not shown on a transcript, including learning from internships, volunteer work, and other co-curricular activities. Increasingly, badges conform to the Open Badges standard, and many are stackable, meaning that they can be credited toward an […]
• 6 Social Learning Techniques for Online Educators -BY LAURA LYNCH, eLearning Learning
  Humans are social creatures. Even the most introverted among us benefit from learning relationships, whether with our instructors, our peers, our mentors, or our mentees. In online education, where learners tend to feel more isolated, this kind of social learning especially important. However, there are several social learning techniques you can use in your course to […]
• Is Online Learning the Electric Car of Higher Ed? - Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed
  Few of us doubt that, at some point, we will all be driving battery-powered vehicles. Will teaching and learning in higher education move from mostly a face-to-face activity, to one that is mainly done online? This shift from residential to online learning is occurring rapidly at the graduate education level. Of the approximately 3 million graduate students studying at US […]
• The rise of interest in Artificial Intelligence - BY SUBBARAO KAMBHAMPATI, the Hill
  Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short, has become quite the public buzzword. Companies and investors are pouring money into the field. Universities — even high schools — are rushing to start new degree programs or colleges dedicated to AI. Civil society organizations are scrambling to understand the impact of AI technology on humanity, and governments are […]
• How Four Technologies Created The 'Perfect Storm' For Online Learning [at Scale] - Anant Agarwal, Forbes
  When MOOCs first burst onto the scene in 2012 — the year The New York Times dubbed ‘the year of the MOOC’ — their success was enabled largely by the convergence of four key technologies: cloud computing, video distribution at scale, gamification and social networking. Without these technologies, we would not have the high quality […]