Horizon Report Offers Tech Outlook

A greater emphasis on measuring educational outcomes, coupled with new efforts to modernize college classrooms, is likely to drive technology adoption on campuses in the next couple of years, according to the NMC Horizon Report, 2018 Higher Education Edition.

The report was recently released by Educause, which has taken over the project from the now-defunct New Media Consortium. The report looks at key trends, challenges, and developments facing technology adoption in higher ed.

The types of technologies most likely to be adopted include analytics that can help institutions track at-risk students and customize the learning experience. Makerspaces for activities such as 3-D printing and virtual reality are also on the rise, as these functions become more mainstream in the work world.

Adaptive learning technologies and artificial intelligence may require another two to three years before they have much impact on colleges and universities. Technologies such as robotics and mixed reality (a blend of digital and physical objects) are at least four years out, according to the report.

While there has been considerable public debate on the role of higher education in preparing students for work, the Horizon Report analysis shows that aligning college campuses with workplace practices will be a “difficult” challenge, as institutions will need to “adopt more flexible, team-based matrix-like structures to remain innovative and responsive.”

Integrating Access to Content

Seamless integration of academic content and tools with a school’s learning management systems (LMS) really shouldn’t be an issue. However, institutions regularly face challenges in integrating digital learning materials with all the different campus systems.

“When solutions integrate well, the students and professors shouldn’t notice any differences between our platforms and the external content,” said Steve Kessinger, director of information services and technology at Bluefield College, Bluefield, VA. “Integrations should enhance the educational experience, not be a barrier.”

Integration should make access to digital content possible from the institution’s LMS interface and not in a new window from a new interface. Students shouldn’t have to log into the LMS a second time to access the material. Seamless integration can also make it possible for students to immediately access content as soon as they register for a class through their LMS accounts.

A well-integrated system allows students’ quiz and homework grades to go directly to the LMS gradebook for review by the instructor. It should also be easy for instructors to edit and share content with students, while administrators should be able to see analytics and student performance measurements.

To make it all happen, colleges and universities, along with instructors, need to be working with LMS providers on universal standards.

“When vendors adhere to sets of standards as opposed to proprietary approaches, it becomes far easier for institutions to adopt their solutions,” Kessinger said. “Our application development resources are extremely limited. Developing custom integrations can be very time-consuming and costly.”

Limitations to Predictive Analytics

Colleges and universities are using predictive analytics, such as grades, test scores, and attendance, as a tool to help students succeed. Austin Peay State University, Nashville, TN, was a pioneer in predictive analytics, developing a system called Degree Compass to guide students to courses they should take to satisfy degree requirements.

After initial success, the university discovered limits to what the technology could provide.

“It is simply a tool that’s available for anyone to use,” said Loretta Griffy, math professor and associate provost for student success at Austin Peay, who currently oversees the Degree Compass program. “We have a decentralized faculty advising model, which means we have 385 academic advisors. They each have their own individual styles and how they interact with students and we have a variety of advising tools that they can use. This is just one of them.”

In 2013, Degree Compass was acquired by the software firm Desire2Learn, which stopped allowing students to see grade projections to avoid discouragement. The firm also found that institutions weren’t enamored with the student-directed degree-planning tool and that it was a challenge to integrate Degree Compass with a school’s course catalog and the student information system.

“Sometimes we really hit the mark and nail it early, and get it to the point where something is cultured in our organization by the time the market is ready for it,” said Kenneth Chapman, vice president of market research and strategy at D2L. “I wouldn’t call Degree Compass one of the applications that we saw as hitting the mark.”

Degree Compass is something of a Catch-22, according to Griffy. The algorithms the tool uses need a student’s prior grade history to accurately recommend courses and majors, but students can’t gain much from the information until they have attended classes for a semester or two. By that time, they may have already decided their academic path. Besides, paper degree-planning charts can be just as useful.

“But it’s not fancy,” Griffy said. “You print it and walk around with it. It’s very simple.”

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.”

App Helps Students Pick a School

Now there’s an app to help students find the perfect college match. The “school matcher” feature added to the Prep4SAT and Prep4GMAT adaptive standardized test-prep apps uses algorithms that identify institutions that align with users’ interests.

A short survey helps determine a student’s preference on school size, tuition range, and location. The app, developed by the Boston-based firm LTG Exam Platform, then shows which strengths and weaknesses the students needs to focus on to gain admission to the college of their choice.

Teachers can use the app to track the progress of their students and develop customized lesson plans that address student weaknesses.

“Apps that are a 24/7 companion and make the best recommendations at all times will be the most useful in the future,” Elad Shoushan, founder and CEO of LTG Exam, said in an article for eCampus News. “That’s what we’re building at LTG: a 24/7 companion that effectively learns about the user in their process of learning and then aids them in the process of admissions. Why pay for an expensive course and books when a student can try a better, more personalized service for free on their phone?”

Prep4Stat is a free download in both the App and Google Play stores. It adds about 40,000 new users each month, making it the top SAT app in the Google Play store and No. 3 in the iOS store.

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.

Alliance Working for Student Success

The University Innovation Alliance is made up of 11 universities across the United States focused on making higher education more accessible to all students. The collaboration is designed to increase degree production and student diversity, and cut costs by more effective use of funds.

The group is working on adaptive learning, new ways to distribute financial aid, and precollege student outreach, according to a report in Inside Higher Education. It’s also tracking student progress at Georgia State University, Atlanta, which has seen a 5% increase in retention rates and students graduating a semester quicker through the use of predictive analytics and proactive advising.

The information gathered from Georgia State helped the coalition create a “college playbook” to help first-generation and underrepresented students make it to graduation. The playbook shares with students and faculty the secrets to success, according to Becky Warner, senior vice provost for academic affairs of Oregon State University, Corvallis, one of the universities in the Alliance.

“We’re going to put the competition aside, and as a group we’ve set group goals for graduating students from diverse backgrounds,” Warner said in a report on the CBS affiliate station in Eugene. “What Georgia State found was that they could actually reduce the time to graduation by half a semester, if they could just get the right data to the right people.”

Progress Made in Online Retention Rates

Retention rates for online courses continue to be a concern for academic leaders. However, a New America Foundation study showed some progress has been made on that front. The research focused on six public research universities that have been able to use online learning to increase enrollment without sacrificing retention.

For instance, the University of Central Florida is using online technologies to grow demand for courses using a mix of online and face-to-face instruction during the semester. Meanwhile, student retention at Northern Arizona University has increased through competency-based courses that allow students to master concepts at a more personalized pace.

“The self-paced nature of competency-based programs allows students to take the time they need to truly learn a concept,” Fred Hurst, senior vice president for extended campuses at NAU, told eCampus News. “If it is a difficult one, they can spend more time on it until the concept is mastered, something that may not happen in a traditional classroom where the faculty member may move ahead quickly, not realizing that the student is falling behind.”

Purdue University is tracking its students through Signals, an online program that uses an algorithm to spot struggling students. The university found in two courses using Signals that students graduated at a 21.5% higher rate than students taking courses that didn’t use the data analytics program.

“Academic analytics can help shape the future of higher education, just as evolving technology will enable new approaches to teaching and learning,” Kimberly Arnold, educational assessment specialist for Purdue’s Teaching and Learning Technology group, said in the eCampus News article.

Colleges May Be Inflating Online Numbers

The Department of Education allows colleges and universities to self-report the number of online courses they make available to students. New research from ApprovedColleges found that those numbers are not really adding up.

The report showed that the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) lists 3,311 schools offering online programs. After ApprovedColleges went through the websites of 90% of the colleges and universities listed by IPEDS and cataloged their online programs for more than 18 months, it found just 1,243 actually being offered.

The authors of the report concluded that the main reason for the discrepancy was that the database included every location a school might have listed as a separate entity and that the term “online” is ambiguous and broad. The study found five for-profit colleges that listed more than 280 campuses with each reporting online courses, while other colleges had placed noncredit online courses on the list.

The WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies also did a study based on IPEDS data on students taking distance education course in fall 2012 and came to a similar conclusion. It found that public institutions had 71% of students enrolled that semester, with just 13% of the students enrolled in only distance education classes.

Knewton, Microsoft announce Partnership

Knewton is trying to create the world’s most valuable repository on how people learn, according to founder and CEO Jose Ferreira. A partnership with Microsoft that allows the technology giant to incorporate Knewton software into its products is another step toward that goal.

The Knewton application programming interface (API) gives schools, publishers, and content developers a way to build personalized educational content for any student with real-time analysis of the student’s performance.

Knewton is already working with a number of publishers, as well as hardware developers, course-delivery platforms, and learning management systems. The latest partnership allows Microsoft to enhance its products, such as Office and Windows tools, while Knewton gains a much wider distribution channel, including governmental education agencies worldwide.

“Knewton is trying to create some kind of standard around adaptive learning and be the brains behind adaptive content,” Rob Wrubel, executive vice president at Apollo Education Group, told VentureBeat. “And Microsoft will now be able to offer more personalized content to students.”

Google Wants to Watch You

Google would love to know how readers on its site react to content. The company has even gone so far as to apply for a patent on ways to collect information captured by a device’s video camera.

Many online companies collect customer information, but Google proposes to gauge readers’ reaction to content through video and audio analysis, eye-tracking, head position, body inclination, and physical expression, according to a report in InformationWeek. There’s no mention of advertising in the application, but understanding user interest would certainly be useful.

“Providers of the media content find great value in determining the user’s attentiveness to the displayed media content, as knowing the user’s interest in media content can help media providers tailor future content or recommendations more closely to the user’s interest,” Google wrote in the patent application. “Accordingly, in some implementations, a user’s interest in displayed media is determined by analyzing visual data of the users (such as visual data from photographs or video) for physical indicia of user interest.”

Predictive Analytics Help Students Succeed

The most well-known application of predictive analytics software is credit scoring, providing financial institutions with a ranking of the likelihood a customer will make future credit payments on time. The technology is also finding its way onto college campuses as a tool to help students improve grades and stay in school.

Four schools in Tennessee found that students using Degree Compass software created by Desire2Learn to select courses had a much higher rate of success than peers who chose courses on their own. The average number of credit hours passed by students using the technology for 12 credit hours was 10.66, compared to just two credit hours passed for students who didn’t use Degree Compass at one school.

The software compares information from a student’s transcript with data from thousands of other students to generate individualized course suggestions ranked on a five-star scale.

“I am very excited about the latest data that shows more and more clearly how students of all abilities succeed when they follow the recommendations from Degree Compass,” Tristan Denley, vice chancellor for academic affairs at the Tennessee Board of Regents, said in a report in eCampus News.

Data-Mining of MOOCs Has Begun

Experts can debate the effectiveness of massive open online courses (MOOCs), but there’s no question about the amount of student information provided to register for the class. Now, colleges and universities are starting to work with technology vendors on ways to capture that data to use for marketing and recruitment.

“Showcasing the institution to capture prospective students is a rising reason [for offering MOOCs],” Katie Blot, president of the education services division at Blackboard, told University Business magazine. “There are more people talking about doing it than actually doing it.”

Institutions see MOOCs as a way to interact with students and spotlight the quality of their online classes. That leads to the question of whether to offer the courses for credit, with many only giving credit when the participant enrolls in a paid program, according to Blot. Administrators are also looking at the MOOC data to find out what assignments and discussions students participate in, when students stop participating, and why they stop.

“As long as MOOC courses are still dabbling in the credit process, accrediting bodies don’t feel the need to get into the mix,” said Rick Tomlinson, manager of academic solutions for Jenzabar, a provider of software and services for higher ed. “But I think that will change significantly once this whole process becomes more disruptive and we get into that credit-bearing mode.”

Columbia Basin to Mine Social Media Data

Colleges and universities have many ways to gather information on their students, from course selection to analyzing social media usage. Columbia Basin College (CBC), Pasco, WA, is working on a plan to put such information to use.

The college is proposing to track its students by classes and grades, archived records, and information generated by students on social networks, particularly Facebook since students use it to list preferences on a whole range of issues, according to a report in eCampus News. It’s hoped the information will give the school a clearer understanding about best teaching methods, subjects students are interested in, and the services they need.

CBC’s timing is practically flawless. The University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research recently released a survey of 456 four-year colleges and universities in the 2010-11 academic year that showed Twitter use has expanded 84% since 2008-09 and 98% of responding schools reported using Facebook.

The problem for CBC is its computer system is outdated and the data it wants to use are scattered across servers, networks, and storage locations that aren’t connected. The college is meeting with a data-management firm about its plans but understands the project will likely take more than a year to complete.

Data Mining of E-Textbooks Set to Begin

An advantage to digital course materials that is just beginning to be understood is their ability to track a student’s progress and study habits through learning management systems. Course materials can be integrated through the management system, which records the amount of time a student spends reading, how many pages are viewed, and how many notes or highlights they make.

Now, CourseSmart has launched a new service that helps faculty members measure that engagement. Rasmussen College, Texas A&M University at San Antonio, and Villanova University are already part of a beta program for CourseSmart Analytics, which is expected to be available for all schools next year.

“The higher education community is hungry for actionable data that links student engagement to their learning content,” said Ellen Wagner, executive director for WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technology, in a statement at Educause 2012 in Denver. “With the CourseSmart dashboard, professors will be better able to fine-tune lesson plans, critique student performances, and even tailor suggestions for specific students on how to study more effectively to help them stay on track and stay in school.”

The CourseSmart product will track student behavior with the course materials as well as provide information to assess whether an electronic textbook is being used effectively. The analytics can also help identify at-risk students and is accessible through a number of learning management systems.

“There is a screaming demand in the marketplace for knowledge around what impact course materials have on learning,” said Sean Devine, chief executive of CourseSmart, in an interview at the conference.

At the same time, some groups have questioned the effect on a reader’s right to privacy. The American Library Association has already stated its concern over lending e-books on Kindles, which can be monitored by Amazon. Students will be able to opt out of the CourseSmart program if they don’t want their information shared, according to Devine.

“We do understand the Big Brother aspects of it,” he said.

Free e-book on analytics in retail

IBM has made available a free e-book version of the limited edition book Business Analytics in Retail for Dummies.

The use of analytics in retail is not new, but it is a fairly new practice for many in the campus retail environment. Various POS providers are adding analytics modules, and other industry suppliers, such as Verba, also provide some analytics capability. Improved data-driven decision making is critical for retail businesses today (large or small), and will be even more so in the future.

As with many books in the "Dummies" series, this book provides a good introduction and some practical action items for individuals or businesses that lack experience with business analytics. From its description:

Business analytics isn't a new concept, but new technologies are emerging that make it possible for average business users to analyze and understand the data. This book offers principles and tools you can use to discover how your customers behave – and how to put that knowledge into action to drive more sales. In this book, you'll learn how to: Understand the basic concepts of business analytics; Dispel business intelligence myths; Set up scorecards and dashboards; and, Measure consumer sentiment through social media.

Industry icon Rich McDaniel might refer to the concepts here as "measuring what matters." The book is a good one to help retailers start thinking more about how they use data in decision making. Some of the chapters include topics like: using analytics to meet the demands of smarter consumers, measuring the impact of decisions, and ten ways to improve shopping experiences. If you are looking for some summer reading and have yet to start using analytics, this might be the [digital] book for you!