Social Sites Serve as Academic Media, Too

Even though most higher education institutions have learning management systems that are intended to provide each class with a platform for communication and content sharing, some students and faculty members are tapping into social media for those purposes.

In the January 2018 Student Panel Survey fielded by NACS OnCampus Research, 69% of the student respondents said they had personally used social media for some type of academic purpose (such as sharing notes or asking questions) and 38% indicated at least one of their professors had incorporated social media into a course (creating a community or posting content, for example).

When asked which social media sites they had accessed for academic reasons, 53% of students named Facebook, followed by YouTube (30%), Snapchat (23%), LinkedIn and Instagram (12% each), Twitter (11%), Pinterest (6%), and “other” (5%), which were mainly document-sharing and messenging platforms.

Facebook probably received the most use because more students have accounts there (89%) compared to YouTube (75%), Instagram (74%), or Snapchat (72%), but it’s not the most popular site with college students. Asked to pick their favorite social media (up to three), more students chose Instagram (51%) and Snapchat (50%) over Facebook (42%), despite fewer students having an account with Instagram or Snapchat.

Facebook could lose more ground with collegians. OnCampus Research data show student accounts with Facebook have remained relatively static since 2015, while other sites have enjoyed substantial growth. For example, just 49% of students had Snapchat accounts in 2015.

Study Finds Benefits in Microlearning

Tools such as flash cards have been helping students learn for generations. Now, the idea of providing short bursts of information lasting no longer than 15 minutes—known as microlearning—is taking on a new focus in the digital age.

After short lessons, students at Northeastern University, Burlington, MA, use Twitter and Snapchat to create posts of hyperfocused content for others to consume. Research there also found that using social media for microlearning increased student engagement, created learning communities, and provided opportunities for information retention.

“We focus on microlearning where students sometime consume, but often create, content,” said Lindsey Sudbury, academic instructional technologist at Northeastern. “It’s usually created quickly after a lot of thought and integrating what they already know.”

The Northeastern work on microlearning found that breaking education into small pieces allows students to access content more easily and learn at their own pace. The study also reported that it helped reduce student burnout syndrome, which is a concern for medical students.

“With microlearning, you’re constantly getting this information over and over again, so it’s allowing for you to really synthesize information and connect those dots more frequently,” said Clair Waterbury, who works with Sudbury as an academic instructional technologist at Northeastern.

Arizona Creates New Learning Environment

A college classroom with the lecturer in front addressing students seated at rows of desks may no longer be the best way to deliver a quality education. In fact, research done at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point found the lecture model is outdated for the digital natives now on campus.

To address the issue, the University of Arizona, Tucson, began investigating evidence-based learning and launched a pilot that used objective data to design courses featuring shorter lectures and class activities. The next step was a collaborative learning space (CLS), a large room with portable furniture and tabletop whiteboards that allow students to interact easily with each other.

“Faculty across campus began seeking out opportunities to teach in our CLS,” Jane Hunter, director of academic resources and special projects, wrote in a column for eCampus News. “They tried new strategies they had never been able to successfully implement. They found new joy in teaching which, in turn, ignited students with a passion for learning.”

From that first CLS, the University of Arizona now has 20, ranging in size to accommodate from 24 to 264 students. The new rooms serve 210 faculty members from 60 departments.

“I am trying new ideas in the collaborative learning space that I have never tried in my 10 years of teaching. It has been fun for me,” said Richard Harper, who teaches in the School of Government and Public Policy at Arizona. “The classroom has become a ‘partner’ in the learning process.”

Penn State Pilots Robots in the Classroom

For the last year and a half, the Teaching and Learning with Technology (TLT) office at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, has been piloting a program to explore ways to use robots in education. The BeamPro Smart Presence System allows students to attend class without actually being there.

The BeamPro technology is being used for a wide variety of projects, including bringing artists to campus virtually, providing tours, connecting  students with their academic advisers, and as a summer outreach program in robotics. Another use envisioned for the robot is allowing students to attend class while off campus because of an illness or family emergency.

“There’s never been a technology that affords you this kind of freedom, and I think it changes the way that we will eventually collaborate or communicate over distances,” Chris Stubbs, manager of emerging technology and media for TLT, said in an article for Penn State News.

The robot has two wide-angle cameras, microphones set up to eliminate echo and reduce background noise, a 17-in. LCD screen, and built-in speakers. Students use a computer application to remotely steer the BeamPro robot to class and can even command the robot to take an elevator or go to other buildings around campus, according to a report in Campus Technology. The device can reach speeds of 2 mph and connects to the Internet through dual-band radios or an optional 4G card.

“Lion Ambassadors could conduct tours, career services could use it for mock interviews with companies located anywhere, and foreign-language classes could invite native-language speakers located internationally to engage in the classroom. That’s just the beginning,” said Kate Morgan, director of virtual education at Penn State Lehigh Valley.  “The future of interaction involves technology like the BeamPro and to have the opportunity to expose our students to it as undergraduates is one more way to prepare them for the millennial workplace.”

Technology Is No Substitute for a Teacher

A quality education is more about the relationship between an instructor and motivated students than the technology used in the classroom. That, according to a post from Insider Higher Ed tech blogger Joshua Kim, is why technology will never really lower the costs of education.

Technology can complement the relationship-based method of learning by providing tools the instructor can use to help students achieve their goals. What technology can’t do is become a substitute for the teacher.

“The idea that technology can lower the cost of education while improving quality—or improve quality while keeping costs steady, or lower costs while keeping quality steady—is anchored in a basic misconception about how technology behaves,” Kim wrote. “This misconception is that new technologies substitute for existing actions or for existing technologies. The reality is that new technologies most often end up complementing existing practices and technologies. New and old technologies exist side by side.”

Tool Makes Flipped-Classroom Model Better

The flipped-classroom model, which has students do their classwork at home, works best when students come prepared. Eric Mazur, a Harvard university physics professor, has created a social tool to help that happen.

Perusall is a social learning platform that allows students to interact with others working on an assignment, pose questions, and receive email notifications when their question is answered so they can come to class ready to talk about the subject.

The platform also includes an assessment tool for instructors based on the quality of the responses posted, how often students comment, and whether those comments are posted before the next class. To keep extra work for teachers to a minimum, the app uses an automated assessment engine to analyze the postings.

In classroom tests of Perusall, Mazur found that 70% of his students read every assignment during the semester and 95% missed no more than a chapter or two. He is also working with publishers to make textbooks available through the platform, which can be integrated with most learning management systems.

“Education is not just about transferring information,” Mazur said in an article for eSchool News. “It’s not about getting students to learn what we know. I want my students to stand on my shoulders to solve the problems I cannot solve. To do that, active participation and social interaction are a must.”

Making Tech Work in the Classroom

Technology in the classroom can be a distraction or it can be used to enhance students’ classroom experience. Stephanie Cole, an associate professor of history at the University of Texas, Arlington, has chosen the latter.

“Using technology changes not so much student behavior as my behavior,” Cole said in an article for Campus Technology. “It makes me craft lectures so that I can apply information and create questions and quizzes. You’ll be amazed at how it makes you rethink how to get information across.”

Cole uses an active learning platform that combines lecture-capture with student engagement, learner analytics, and content-management tools. The system allows her to lead discussions and field questions in real time, and also makes it possible for students to use their mobile devices to ask questions.

The mobile nature of the platform gives student the option to skip her class and watch lecture videos later, so Cole uses it to take attendance and rewards students for their engagement in the classroom. However, the 24/7 access to the course materials and lectures has led to higher grades.

“Great access to lecture material—that is, being able to hear a lecture that you missed or to listen to all or part of a lecture a second time—offers good students an advantage, especially if English isn’t your first language,” she said. “For those students, or where this course is their first exposure to U.S. and American history, keeping up with the class is easier because they can review the lectures at any time. I see more A’s and B’s from these hard-working students.”

LMS Engagement Predicts Retention Rates

Colleges and universities often rely on metrics such as grade-point averages (GPA) and academic standing to predict student success. Logging onto the institution’s learning management system (LMS) may be a more accurate indicator.

Data gathered by the education tech firm Civitas Learning suggested the number of times students log into the LMS is one of the best ways to determine if they will stay with the class or drop out, according to a report for Inside Higher Education. Civitas Learning, co-founded by Mark Milliron, a keynote speaker at the 2016 Textbook Affordability Conference, uses predictive analytics to provide colleges and universities with insights into ways to help students succeed.

The for-profit Strayer University uses Civitas data to review its LMS engagement numbers from the beginning of the semester and has experimented with faculty members reaching out directly to those students who don’t log on often. The intervention resulted in a 5% increase in class attendance and an 8% decrease in course dropout rate.

“It’s a key early signal that they can use with students,” Laura Malcolm, vice president of product management at Civitas, said of the data gathered by the firm. “The more you focus on behavior, the more predictive it becomes.”

Harvard Making Online Lectures Better

Tests of the commercial lecture-capture solutions used by Harvard University showed that they worked well enough for on-campus students, but could be of higher quality and faster speeds for distance learners. That led the Harvard Division of Continuing Education (HDCE) to build a customized cloud-based version of the open-source software known as Opencast.

“Other Harvard units use lecture capture as a review tool for students who don’t come to class, are sick, or need a study tool, but our distance-education group actually sells access to these lectures,” Gabriel Russell, a video, software, and systems engineer at Harvard, told eCampus News. “Lecture capture is a primary learning tool for our students, so we need to make sure the product meets their needs.”

Developers created a system that included a high-definition video stream of the lecturer on one side of the screen and a presentation window that shows the feed from the classroom’s projection system on the other. Students are then able to choose a side-by-side view, a view with one window larger than the other, or a picture-in-picture setup.

HDCE selected a third-party video firm to capture video from more than 25 units in classrooms on the campus. The group also moved its version of Opencast to the cloud through the institution’s existing relationship with Amazon Web Services.

“Opencast is free and you can get it up and running if you have a couple of knowledgeable staff members, although it helps if you have a developer that can dig into the configuration,” Russell said. “Ultimately, our plan is to commit all these improvements into the main Opencast product, so these features will be to other institutions for free.”

Use of E-Portfolios Growing in Higher Ed

There was a time when portfolios were primarily used by faculty as a way to gather information on student progress. Times have clearly changed because the California State University system rolled out an e-portfolio initiative in November that is available for use by more than three million students and alumni.

An e-portfolio provides students with a place to collect evidence of lifelong learning and skills. The electronic repository provides employers information that help match students with jobs. Colleges and universities are also using e-portfolios to identify tools and training needed to help students become more attractive job candidates.

“Tuition costs are up, perceived value is down,” Ryan Craig wrote in a report for TechCrunch. “Reports suggest that half of recent graduates are unemployed or underemployed. Colleges and universities need to provide students and graduates with additional training and tools to improve immediate employability.”

More than 30 states now require students as early as middle school to create e-portfolios and individualized learning plans. Students will be able to provide colleges and universities with examples of their best work, helping to make it easier identify the abilities and potential of prospective applicants.

“Once a sideshow, e-portfolios are beginning to play a more central role in higher education, connecting both forward (graduates to jobs) and backwards (high school students to admissions),” Craig wrote. “Like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the days of viewing e-portfolios as peripheral rather than central are dead.”

Student Assessment Tool Being Developed

The U.S. Department of Education awarded Excelsior College a $1.9 million grant to develop a solution colleges and universities can use to evaluate students’ readiness  for college-level work. The Diagnostic Assessment and Achievement of College Skills (DAACS) will be an open-source tool that allows institutions to identify at-risk students and provide them the resources necessary to succeed.

The program is designed to offer students feedback on their weaknesses and provide information for relearning content, according to a report in eCampus News. DAACS will include academic and nonacademic (i.e., academic self-regulation and test anxiety) evaluations so college and universities will have a better understanding of students and develop learning strategies based on their needs.

“Because of its focus on generating actionable feedback and its direct link to effective support services and resources, DAACS has the potential to empower and enable students to become more purposeful and strategic learners,” said Timothy Cleary, associate professor, Rutgers Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology. “This project is particularly exciting because it can positively influence the ways in which students—as well as faculty—respond to the inevitable challenges and struggles that so many students experience during college.”

Rutgers University and the University at Albany, Albany, NY, are partners with Excelsior on the DAACS project. Once the tool is finished, Excelsior and Western Governors University will conduct pilot studies on its usefulness.

Tool Puts Store into Content Discussion

There’s a new tool that can help college stores be part of course-materials discussions. SIPX Campus makes it possible for campus entities, such as the college store, to set up course readings on behalf of instructors.

The tool is one of three created by ProQuest SIPX, a provider of digital course material solutions. SIPX Central allows instructors to select course readings through a self-service, cloud-based interface. SIPX for MOOCs enables course readings for massive open online courses to be organized for an institution by the company’s service team and simplifies copyright permissions, according to a report for Campus Technology.

The tools also provide free access to course-relevant content to students, tools for sharing nonsubscribed copyrighted materials, and analytics to monitor student engagement with assignments. 

Search Tool Makes Access Easier

A team of computer science and software development experts from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) are working on a tool to help students and faculty categorize and access multimedia resources. Ultimate Course Search (UCS) is in the beta stage, but the Google-style search engine is able to sort through course-generated multimedia using specific keywords.

NJIT ran tests of the software in the fall 2014 semester and the following spring at Montclair State University. Students were given a link to UCS and had to present identification to gain access before they could choose their institution and course. Students type a keyword into the course page and then select the “Slides/Video” or “Textbook” tab to narrow the search.

Both searches take students to a list of hyperlinked locations where the keyword is mentioned. They can view the scanned online page of any book where the reference was made, while the video tab lists slides and videos with the keyword in order of relevancy.

“The future of search, just like learning overall, is headed toward personalization,” Vincent Oria, associate professor of computer science and chair of the online program at NJIT, said in an article for eCampus News. “By this, I envision a student posing a question into the search system and the system giving a personalized answer. The answer will be personalized not just based on relevancy of material, but on the system recognizing the student’s unique learning preferences and tailoring the search results to that individual student; in other words, presenting the information to the specific student in the modality and format that works best for him or her.”

The result of the first test was very promising. Only two or three students using UCS dropped the test class, compared to a 50% dropout rate for a class that didn’t have access to the tool. The spring data results were skewed because students using the tool were sharing the login with the control group.

A New Way to Provide Proactive Learning

A study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reported that students learn better when they use active forms of learning.

The group found students with no access to active learning methods, such as peer discussions and group work, are 1.5 times more likely to fail. In addition, students taught with active learning outperformed those taught by lectures by six percentage points on exams.

To provide more avenues for active learning, a tech firm has launched a video classroom that allows students to create and control live video study rooms. The tool, created by Newrow, allows students to form their own online study groups and instructors to create on-the-spot, in-class group video discussions.

Students will be able to use the tools to start learning conversations on their own that can last throughout the semester. The videoconferencing will be similar to face-to-face study groups with text chat functions and real-time resource sharing.

The tool also allows instructors to generate breakout groups of up to 10 students during online lectures. The sessions can be recorded and stored in an online learning library for future reference or group project management.

“Our goal is to remove learning barriers for students by giving them a seamless way to facilitate the discussions they want and need to have with peers,” said Rony Zarom, founder and CEO in an article in eCampus News.

Twitter's Place in the Classroom

Educators are searching for ways to put social media to work in the classroom. Twitter might fit the bill the best.

Students are already using the social networking platform to follow experts in their field and to stay informed on breaking news. It is also used as a personal learning network, linking students with peers and resources, according to Debra Beck, public relations coordinator at the University of Wyoming, in an article in the online newspaper The Evolllution, which focuses on lifelong learning.

Using a common hashtag, students can search topics and share discoveries with peers. Twitter promotes live discussions and interaction with a global audience, allows students and instructors to share class information and reminders, and gives students a way to directly connect with their professor.

However, to make Twitter work best, Beck said policies need to be established for interacting with classmates, respecting privacy, and protecting it from becoming a distraction in the classroom.

“Those risks are real. They also are part of online life in a space where, if students are not already engaged, they will be—or should be—as working professionals,” Beck wrote. “Modeling appropriate online behavior and jointly engaging in critical assessment of information can be an important additional contribution to their learning experience.”

Breakthrough Tech Has Hi-Ed Implications

MIT’s Technology Review has released its annual 10 Breakthrough Technologies list, with at least three having the potential to impact higher education.

One technology, microscale 3-D printing, has already received a great deal of attention in the news media. It might ultimately be used in a variety of design courses, but may show up first in campus retail stores to create custom products.

The concept of mobile collaboration, another technology cited on the list, isn’t really new. However, the Technology Review noted the rise of new apps that enable people to work more effectively on group projects through their smartphones and tablets. More college and university courses require students to work together, yet students are more comfortable with text-messaging than word-processing.

“By incorporating streams of messages about the work being created, these apps reflect the fact that many communications are now brief, informal, and rapid,” the article said.

The third technology, Oculus Rift, sounds like a character from a science-fiction tale. It’s actually a new type of virtual-reality headset for ultra-immersive video games. According to the Technology Review, the Rift not only provides a much more realistic experience, the Oculus company plans to price it within the means of the average consumer.

“While video games are where this improved virtual-reality technology is likely to take off first, it could also have applications in telepresence, architecture, computer-aided design, emergency response training, and phobia therapy,” according to the article. Older versions of this technology are already used in simulations for medical surgery and industrial design.

The seven other breakthroughs on the list are agricultural drones, ultraprivate smartphones, brain mapping, neuromorphic chips, genome editing, agile robots, and smart wind and solar power.

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.”

Colleges, K-12s Need More Collaboration

Administrators on both the college and K-12 level agree they need to collaborate more. The problem is few actually do.

A recent telephone survey of 104 public school superintendents and 101 leaders of public and private two- and four-year colleges and universities found that most superintendents (90%) and college system leaders (80%) say they believe their collaboration is extremely or very important. At the same time, just 33% of superintendents and 34% of postsecondary leaders say they do collaborate extremely or very effectively.

“K-12 is much more top-down than higher ed and decisions can be made more quickly,” Jacqueline King, director of higher education collaboration for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, told Education Week. “This can be frustrating to K-12 to have higher-ed people want to talk [issues] to death.” On the other hand, college administrators often believe K-12 leaders don’t understand they just “can’t snap fingers and make things happen,” she added.

The research, The Collaborative Imperative, also showed both groups tend to have different priorities and question whether their counterparts view collaboration as that important. Superintendents want to see an improvement in the development of teachers and in ways to align instruction with higher ed, while postsecondary leaders are focused on improving students’ transition into college and reducing the need for remedial courses. College administrators tend to blame budget constraints as a barrier to collaboration with their public school counterparts, who say they are just too busy to make time for collaboration.

“Although not insurmountable, these barriers especially require fresh and innovative thinking about how resources can be marshaled or pooled if we are serious about functioning as a coherent educational system, rather than separate sectors,” the report said. “We especially recognize the promise of regional collaboration, organized among schools and colleges who share students and teachers in common and who, therefore, have clear connections to shared outcomes and compelling overlapping interests.”

Students Learn By Creating Content

Students becoming content creators rather than merely content consumers is a trend identified in the New Media Consortium Horizon Report: 2014 Higher Education Edition (page 14). The trend started with “makerspaces,” a communal place where a group of people join forces to purchase a range of tools that are then shared among the group.

Colleges and universities are developing the concept on campus, providing students with spaces where learning and content creation is integrated as part of their instruction. The spaces provide traditional tools, along with electronic equipment and 3-D printers, to allow students to work on class and self-directed projects.

“A shift is taking place in the focus of pedagogical practice on university campuses all over the world as students across a wide variety of disciplines are learning by making and creating rather than from the simple consumption of content,” the authors of the report wrote. “Creativity, as illustrated by the growth of user-generated videos, maker communities, and crowdfunded projects in the past couple years, is increasingly the means for active, hands-on learning.”

The report highlights the work at Indiana University, Bloomington, which uses its Make-to-Learn Initiative to examine how a do-it-yourself culture can advance learning. Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, has created its Student as Producer program that creates semester-long opportunities for student-centered activities, such as creating podcasts and multimedia entries on course blogs.

Campus libraries have become the location of choice for makerspaces because they also provide students with video equipment loans and studios, digitizing facilities, and publication services. The report predicts the trend will reach its full impact on campus in three to five years.

New App for Teams to Create Online Courses

Teams of educators now have a way to create online courses. The open-publishing platform Versal is beta-testing its Versal for Teams application that provides instructors with a platform to build courses that include text, video, quizzes, and customizable interactive simulations that can be published and shared with learners through a web site or blog.

The tool is set up for nonprogrammers, allowing them to drag and drop items into the course. The team edition provides a dashboard for managing author activity, course progress, and learner success tracking.

“We instantly started hearing feedback from companies and universities that they loved the ability to create and publish courses, but needed tools to manage everything internally. This is only our first step in building out a platform that is flexible for anyone—individual instructors and organizations alike,” Versal founders and CEO Gregor Freund told Campus Technology.

The base program is free and includes one gigabyte of storage for the development of three courses that can be accessed by up to 100 people. Prices range from $250 to $5,000 per month for teams needing the bandwidth to create more courses.