Online Able to Provide High Quality

Some advocates argue that online learning can lead to better outcomes for students, lower costs for institutions, and more access to minorities. A new report concludes all are possible, if colleges and universities do it the right way.

Making Digital Learning Work, a study of digital-learning initiatives at three four-year institutions and three community colleges, found a generally higher retention rate for online students and improved outcomes for Pell-eligible and minority students. It also noted enrollment increases as a result of digital-learning initiatives.

At the same time, the report concluded that online courses do cost less to produce because higher student-to-teacher ratios and less need for classroom space offset the financial investments in course quality. It also suggested that some of the key practices in launching a digital-learning effort include a strategy to meet the needs of different students, support for remote accessibility, and treating faculty members as partners in the process.

“It is clearly important for colleges and universities to adopt a more entrepreneurial approach to digital learning, making innovation a part of their institutional culture and embracing evidence-driven decision-making,” the authors of the report wrote.

Study Tracks When Students Zone Out

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have developed a way to detect when students using personalized learning software start to daydream. By using machine-learning algorithms on recordings of student eye movement, the researchers were able to figure out which eye patterns were associated with the mind wandering.

The study found that when students’ eyes matched “zoning out” patterns, they were less focused on the work than those students who showed “not zoning out” patterns. It also noted that when students were paying attention, their eyes bounced around the screen more.

“When you’re zoning out, you’re just fixating,” explained Sidney D’Mello, leader of the University of Colorado research team. “You’re not moving on.”

The study could lead to instructional software that monitors mind wandering in real time. That troubles Jill Barshay, a contributing editor for The Hechinger Report who writes about education research and data.

“Do we really want to curb mind wandering?” she asked. “It’s associated with creativity, and perhaps a bit of mind wandering is needed to come up with big thoughts.”

Barshay suggested the result might be used better to point out the places where the computerized learning bores students, instead of creating prompts to keep them on track.

“But what I find fascinating about this research is how data scientists have come to a conclusion that contradicts human intuition,” she wrote. “You often hear teachers say that they don’t need data to tell them what their students know. Well, this research points out that it’s hard for teachers to know when students are really absorbing something just by looking at their faces.”

Questions to Ponder for Online Courses

A recent article from the digital news outlet Quartz detailed efforts by a pair of Texas A&M economics professors to update their mandatory introductory microeconomics class. The class has been moved online, a first for the university.

Students taking the class no longer have to sit through lectures because the professors have already created prerecorded lessons, an interactive video platform, and prepared all the homework and reading material. The lecturer uses a transparent whiteboard to explain concepts and discussion boards to engage students.

“Do I think [this new course] is better than 30 students and the Socratic Method, Dead Poets Society-style? Probably not,” Jon Meers, one of the professors of the course, told Quartz. “It’s still vastly superior to delivering a lecture to 300 students at 8 a.m. on a Friday morning.”

The article claimed the course will increase the quality of learning by allowing professors to interact directly with students, while also saving money for the university. However, Joshua Kim, director of digital learning initiatives at the Dartmouth Center for Advancement of Learning and technology blogger for Inside Higher Education, questions that conclusion.

He pointed out that creating high-quality digital materials and video lectures is hard work, requiring time and plenty of collaboration between the professor and instructional designers and media educators. He added that while the Texas A&M approach may be more effective than traditional lectures, it’s also a lot more expensive.

“Everything that I know about flipped courses tells me that they are more expensive, not less, to develop and run than traditional lecture courses,” Kim wrote.

National U. Rethinking Personalized Learning

National University, a California-based nonprofit that primarily enrolls adults students, has launched a $20 million, four-year project to create a personalized learning platform that combines adaptive learning, competency-based education learning (CBE), and predictive analytics. The goal is to use the new platform in 20 general-education courses by next year.

The three elements would combine in courseware that would adjust to each student’s abilities and progress, while providing data to track that progress for faculty, advisors, and the students. Incorporating CBE will make it possible to drop conventional grading and divide the course and its credits into skills the students have mastered.

As part of the project, National has also established a research-and-development department to support faculty members and will make its research available to the public.

“How do we create a university that truly tries to adapt to the needs of its students?” asked National’s president, David Andrews. “We have to have a better model for serving adults.”

Fitting all the pieces into one cohesive platform won’t be easy. Getting the CBE portion right could be the biggest challenge because it requires approval from accreditors. Providing financial aid may also prove troublesome, in the view of some industry observers.

“There’s a huge risk that you don’t understand the problem. Will they truly learn and adjust as they go along?” said Phil Hill, co-publisher of the e-Literate blog, about designing academic programs around adult learners. But he also added, “It’s definitely interesting. It’s a relatively large university that appears to be going all in on personalized learning.”

Higher Ed Needs to Keep Up with Tech

Higher education needs to develop new educational and training programs to keep pace with the technological changes that are reshaping the job market. Online learning and artificial intelligence (AI) will be part of those changes, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.

The poll of industry experts and higher-education thought leaders noted that online learning is a flexible format that can play an important role in training workers, but added that requires more “on-demand” training focused on lifelong learners.

“Most of what we now call online learning is little more than glorified textbooks, but the future is very promising,” said David Karger, a computer science professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in an article for EdTech. “Online teaching will increase the reach of top universities, which will put pressure on lesser universities to demonstrate value.”

Nearly 30% of respondents to the survey said that AI and machine learning will be disruptive forces, killing more jobs through automation than they create. While automation eliminates many jobs, online learning could be the format to provide training for more sophisticated job skills.

“People will create the jobs of the future, not simply train for them, and technology is already central,” Jonathan Grudin, principal researcher at Microsoft, said in the Pew report. “It will undoubtedly play a greater role in the years ahead.”

10 Years of Change: What Publishers Think

What surprises higher education publishers about the past decade of rapidly changing course materials and academic technologies?

That was among the questions posed to panelists in the Thought Leader presentation Course Materials Today and Tomorrow: Views from Publishing Executives held March 4 at CAMEX 2017 (Campus Market Expo) in Salt Lake City, UT. Here are some of their responses:

Tim Stookesberry, senior vice president education, Wiley: “Being in product development for a long time, I did think about what digital was going to mean. I’m surprised most by how digital has changed the distribution network and we’ve had to change accordingly. Students have a lot of choices: the way people buy materials, what they’re looking for. It’s very dynamic.”

Scott Smith, president, Elsevier Education: “Technology simultaneously changes the way the market actually works and how people acquire materials. It’s a completely different environment in which we have to work. There are more links in the chain.”

Kevin Stone, chief sales and marketing officer, Cengage Learning: “In this day and age to be sending cardboard printed access cards with numbers students have to put in is crazy. We need to fix this. I think we can fix it. It’s about access … all about getting materials on day one.”

Peter Cohen, executive vice president, McGraw-Hill Education: “There’s serious empirical data that using adaptive technology improves student achievement, literally hundreds of data. What surprises me is students love print books. There’s a resounding cry to continue to have print resources.”

Tom Malek, vice president and head of channel partnerships, Pearson Education: “Why does it take so long to change? Uber has come and gone in terms of figuring it out. We all serve the industry of higher education. That tends to go quite slowly … tends to put things in the conceptual rather than the real.”

Research on Adaptive Learning in MOOCs

According to a research paper, students taking a HarvardX massive open online course learned more using adaptive assessments than their classmates who didn't have that opportunity. The study focused on the course Super-Earths and Life, which ran in in the current academic year.

The adaptive-learning group was provided interactive content and assistance crafted to suit their individual learning level through TutorGen’s Student Centered Adaptive Learning Engine (SCALE). Assessments were added for both the experimental and control groups to gauge the effect of the adaptive experience on students’ mastery of the material.

The knowledge gain of the students in the experimental group was 19% higher than their peers in the control group. They also moved through the class material more quickly and demonstrated greater persistence in assessments. Despite this, the study found “no statistically significant differences” between the two groups’ course-completion or certification rates.

Time to Rethink the Lecture

The lecture remains a basic element of many college courses, but research continues to show it’s time for a change. Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, recently found that students taking traditional lecture classes displayed little or no improvement in their problem-solving skills after the first semester of their freshman year.

The results were similar to a 2011 UBC study which showed that student engagement and learning doubled when interactive teaching methods were utilized. Researchers from the University of Washington also released a report in 2014 that found students in lecture classes were 1.5 times more likely to fail than students who took classes with more stimulating instruction.

“There is strong evidence that different methods of teaching can heavily influence the development of problem-solving skills,” Andis Klegeris, associate professor of biology at UBC, told eCampus News. “It does not appear that the traditional, lecture-style of information delivery is well suited to helping students build those skills.”

The latest UBC research involved a test that measured problem-solving skills throughout an undergrad’s educational career. One test was given at the start of the first semester and another at the end.

“As problem-solving is becoming an increasingly sought-after skill, it is likely postsecondary institutions will need to adapt their teaching styles to ensure students are able to better participate in a skill-based economy,” said Heather Hurren, a UBC researcher and manager of academic development at the UBC Centre for Teaching and Learning. “If they haven’t already, professors will need to move from traditional lectures and expectations of memorization to approaches that see small groups of students actively discover knowledge on their own.”

Pulling Higher Ed Out of the Middle Ages

Higher education has fallen woefully behind in the race to keep up with technological change, according to a former dean for graduate education at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge.

In an effort to close that gap, Dr. Christine Ortiz is planning a new kind of residential research institution to keep up with advances while preparing students for life in the 21st century. The yet-to-be named institution would allow students to design their own learning paths and work with faculty to build an individual curriculum. Ortiz’s team has already developed software for computer-guided intelligent curriculum design that integrates science, technology, and humanistic fields.

By the end of 2016, she hopes to have started several pilot programs and to incorporate as a nonprofit in Massachusetts. The plan calls for her institution to be open to students by 2020.

“Technology is accelerating, and modernization and expansion of the higher-education system is desperately needed,” Ortiz said in an article for TechRepbulic. “Our higher-education system is still stuck in the Middle Ages.”

MicroMasters Advance Careers, Learning

The nonprofit online learning provider edX launched a new category of master’s-level courses aimed at bridging the gap between higher education and the workplace. The new MicroMasters program offers credentials and a pathway to earn college credit.

The aim of the courses is to provide high-quality education from top universities to help students advance their career or work toward earning their master’s degree. Subjects in the program range from artificial intelligence to project management.

Certificates earned in the program represent a quarter to half of the requirements for a traditional master’s degree, according to a report in eCampus News. Textbook publisher Pearson is collaborating with edX on the program, offering MicroMasters courses at its learning centers and providing in-person support.

“As part of our mission to attract the best talent, we understand the importance of providing multiple pathways to degree programs,” said Sanjay Sarma, vice president for open learning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. “MicroMasters broadens our admissions pool and also allows learners to demonstrate their abilities through a series of online courses. All who pass earn a credential valued by the marketplace; those who excel may apply and complete their master’s with an additional semester’s residence.”

Video Playing Bigger Role in Higher Ed

A new study found that the use of video may have reached a tipping point in higher education. The third annual State of Video in Education report noted that 75% of all students now use video in their assignments and the share of institutions using flipped classrooms has increased to 58%.

More than half of administrators, instructors, and students reported that their institution now uses a video solution integrated into its learning management system (LMS). In addition, video feedback on assignments has grown from 26% in the 2015 survey to 32% this year.

The survey also found that 93% of the respondents said they believe video has a positive impact on student satisfaction and 85% said having video as part of their resource toolkit increases teacher satisfaction. Nearly 90% agreed that it boosts student achievement levels, while 76% said they believe it increases student retention rates.

“For the first time, over 50% of higher-education respondents report that their institution has now integrated a video solution into the LMS,” said Ron Yekutiel, chairman and CEO of Kaltura, the video technology provider that conducted the survey. “If proof were needed that video is now mainstream in education, then this is it. Those institutions that do not yet have a comprehensive video strategy in place for the new academic year risk being left behind.”

Penn State Prof Develops VR Classroom

Colleges and universities are looking at how virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) can be used in the classroom. A professor at Pennsylvania State University, State College, is working on ways to use both as the classroom.

Ann Clements, associate professor and graduate program chair for music education at Penn State, has developed an AI virtual classroom that lets teachers practice student-engagement techniques before they begin their student-teaching requirements. The classroom prototype, known as First Class, allows pre-service teachers to use a motion-sensing device employed in video-game consoles to experience what can happen in a classroom setting.

Modules in the AI program allows the teachers to call on individual students by their first name after they raise their hands, while attention meters measure if the class is paying attention. The teacher also receives evaluations based on answers the virtual students give on a basic yes-and-no test.

“Teaching is a complex craft because it involves human engagement,” Clements said in an article for eCampus News. “So we can talk to someone about how to teach and best practices and provide them with curricular content, but they need to engage with students in some way to have the skills to become solid teachers.”

Study Finds Classroom Noise Useful

Some teachers see conversations in the classroom as disruptions that need to stop. A professor at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, is using voice-recognition technology to understand if the noise could help teachers gain a better understanding of what’s going on during class.

“I think one of the things we’re noticing is that even if you are incorporating active learning, it’s very easy to focus on the students at the front of the classroom raising their hands, and this data can let teachers know whether they’ve got an equitable spread of participation across the classroom,” Amy Ogan, assistant professor of human-computer interaction at the CMU School of Computer Science, said in an article for eCampus News.

The technology provides instructors with a dashboard that displays classroom activities in different lights. Sensors analyze sounds in the room, not specific conversations. The colored lights give teachers insight into whether they should change or continue their teaching approach.

The technology suggests classroom literature for teachers on ways to better engage students who aren’t participating by sending messages to their phones between classes. Ogan and her colleagues are also working on ways to use cameras to distinguish patterns in the things students do while they are in the classroom.

“We’re working with a university right now with lots of lecturing,” she said. “When the system detects that students haven’t participated in a while, we flash a big red screen on the instructor’s laptop to notify them to incorporate some student interaction.”

Mixed Results from Adaptive-Learning Study

The largest study to date of adaptive-learning software found that results have been modest at best. Nearly 20,000 college students and 300 instructors using the most popular learning software on the market participated in the research, conducted by SRI International for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2013-15.

Students were no more likely to pass a course using adaptive-learning tools than in a traditional classroom. Researchers also found that the software by itself isn’t enough and that universities didn’t do a good job of making sure the technology being used actually worked.

The study indicated that the tools functioned better when the instructor used the same language utilized in the software during face-to-face instruction and when student usage was monitored closely. Learning results also improved when the course was redesigned around the software.

“I wouldn’t characterize our report as cynical, just cautious,” Barbara Means, director of the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International, said in an article in The Hechinger Report.  Means was also quick to point out that more and better technology has come to market since the study started in 2013. “It shouldn’t be regarded as though this is the last word. It’s just a very early snapshot.”

Silicon Valley Shares Its Expertise

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are morphing the concept of massive open online courses (MOOCs) into 10-minute mini-MOOCs. Known as 10 Minute Insights, the series of mobile-enabled, live-streamed videos are hosted by innovators talking about a variety of topics.

One unusual feature of the videos is viewers are able to ask questions directly of the presenters during the live-streaming event, even on their mobile devices, according to a report in eCampus News. The micro-learning classes are hosted on the social knowledge platform EdCast, with many presenters scheduling their broadcasts in advance to notify those interested in participating.

There are no credits or credentials offered for taking the micro-courses. Instead, the goal is to help entrepreneurs, students, and small-business owners develop baseline business skills.

“There is a huge demand for knowledge and skills in entrepreneurship right now, as often it can be more efficient to create a job than to find one in today’s economy,” said Karl Mehta, founder and CEO of EdCast. “Silicon Valley, specifically, is well-suited for imparting advice on how to scale entrepreneurial skills rapidly.”

Online Ed Report Card Is Out

More students are taking online courses, but fewer academic leaders see virtual classes as critical to their long-term strategies, according to a new report from the Babson Survey Research Group. The study also found that fewer academic leaders rate learning outcomes of online education as equal to or superior to traditional teaching.

According to the 2015 Online Report Card—Tracking Online Education in the United States, online enrollment rose nearly 4% over 2014 figures, with private nonprofit schools showing an 11.3% increase. Private for-profit institutions went the other way, with enrollments shrinking by nearly 3%. Public colleges and universities also had the largest number of students in distance education, with more than 70% of undergraduates and almost 40% of graduate students taking online classes.

However, the number of administrators who said they believe that online learning was critical to their institutions fell from 71% in 2014 to 63% in 2015. Administrators who thought learning outcomes compared favorably with face-to-face instruction also slipped, from 77% in 2014 to 71% last year. In addition, 29% of administrators said their faculty members accept the value of online education, a lower rate than the percentage recorded in 2004.

There was more positive news when it comes to massive open online courses (MOOCs). The percentage of institutions offering MOOCs rose from 2.6% in 2012 to 8% in 2014 to 11% in 2015. However, 59% of schools said they have no plans to offer MOOCs.

Use MOOCs to Support Student Success

Many students head off to college still needing preparation for entry-level college courses, particularly at the community college level. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are often seen as a way to offer a flexible and affordable way to improve those skills without paying for remedial classes.

However, MOOCs are also self-directed and self-paced, which can be a problem. Research has shown that community college students in particular struggle with online learning environments, according to Matt Lawson, principal architect at NetApp, who suggested that the solution lies in the support the institution provides its students.

“Of particular significance with MOOCs on community college campuses is identification and support of students at academic risk,” Lawson wrote in a column for eCampus News. “Big data and analytics are a formidable tool that can help identify these at-risk students and thereby enable much-needed proactive intervention to help those students succeed in college.”

While serving as director of enterprise services for community colleges in Virginia, Lawson found that student engagement could be recorded through the number of times they clicked into the online courseware. Using that information allowed the system to determine which students were engaged with the material and which were struggling.

“This sort of targeted intervention can prove critical at the community college level, and could prove to be a boost to student retention and attrition—two top goals of any institution of higher education,” he wrote.

Microsoft Aquires MinecraftEdu

Microsoft participated in a Minecraft coding effort last year as part of the annual Hour of Code campaign from Code.org. Now, the Seattle-based software company has acquired MinecraftEdu, a firm that makes a version of the popular video game modified for the classroom, and is planning the launch of Minecraft Education Edition for the summer.

The MinecraftEdu version includes additions that make the original game more appropriate for a K-12 setting. It features a multiplayer mode for up to 40 students and offers a cloud-based system to host Minecraft classroom servers with a library of lessons and activities.

In addition, the Learning Tools add-on provides teachers special text-formatting options that make reading, writing, and note-taking easier. Other features include reading with audiotext playback and natural-language processing, according to a report in InformationWeek.

Microsoft plans to keep the user price at $5 per year, but will make a free trial version of the software available this summer, according to VentureBeat.

“One of the reasons Minecraft fits so well in the classroom is because it’s a common, creative playground,” said Vu Bui, chief operating officer of Mojang, a game-based development firm that created Minecraft and was acquired by Microsoft in 2014, in a report for eSchool News. “We’ve seen that Minecraft transcends the differences in teaching and learning styles of education systems around the world. It’s an open space where people can come together and build a lesson around nearly anything.”

#GoOpen Has Game Developers Worried

Although gamification and open educational resources (OER) are current buzzwords in education, game developers are concerned about the #GoOpen initiative from the U.S. Department of Education, which directs organizations receiving federal grants to make copyrightable intellectual property part of the public domain when completed.

The fact that more teachers will be turning to digital tools and resources is good news for game developers, according to a column by Lee Banville, editorial director of the Games and Learning Publishing Council. Another positive to the #GoOpen initiative is more open-source tools should also free up more funds for schools to spend on digital content.

However, a world full of free educational tools could also mean fewer educators willing to pay for learning games.

“So the Department of Education’s new push could go either way for learning-game developers,” Banville wrote. “It if goes the way some seem to hope, the far larger budgets connected to textbooks may soon become more available for schools to invest in digital learning tools, including games. The danger is if the perception is most educational content, like OERs, is free, then why pay for digital games?”

Students Want Learning Analytics Tools

Students want the instant feedback available through learning analytics technology. In fact, 87% of the students surveyed for The Impact of Technology on College Student Study Habits said such technology can have a positive impact on their academic performance.

More than 2,600 college students participated in the survey, conducted by McGraw-Hill Education and Hanover Research. The students ranged from freshmen to Ph.D. students in a mix of majors.

“Students today have a desire for immediate and continual feedback,” said Peter Cohen, group president of U.S. Education at McGraw-Hill Education. “By using technology to deliver learning experiences that leverage those motivations, we can capitalize on an enormous opportunity to improve learning outcomes. Adaptive learning technology provides just that kind of actionable, real-time feedback, and does so in a way that’s incredibly personalized.”

Nearly 85% of the responding students said they experienced moderate or major improvements in their grades using adaptive learning technology, while 67% reported the technology made them feel better prepared for class and 57% said it helped improve study efficiency. The study also found that while 84% of students said technology helps instructors to be more effective in class, 86% felt there was still room for improvement in its use.