To Stem Attrition, College Cuts Tuition

The rising cost of higher education always seems to be in the news. Grace College is trying to change that narrative on its campus.

The evangelical Christian school in Winona Lake, IN, has launched “A Measure of Grace,” an initiative that lowers the cost of tuition for incoming freshmen by 9%. The program also provides upperclassmen with a decrease in tuition of about $500 a year, plus many textbooks are now free and students can earn most degrees offered by the school in three years.

“We’ve looked hard at how we’ve spent our money and we have looked hard at keeping costs down,” Grace President Bill Katip told WBST 22, a CBS affiliate station in Mishawaka, IN. “And we believe you can have excellence and also keep it affordable.”

College officials launched the initiative after watching the number of incoming freshmen decline after the economic recession of 2008. They made cost-cutting a priority and are now passing the savings on to students.

“My tuition is the highest it is ever going to be this year and it will go down a little each year—actually go down instead of go up like any other college in the world,” said Grace student Lydia Bronner.

Students Taking MOOCs Do Indeed Learn

A new study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported students who complete massive open online courses (MOOCs) are learning something, regardless of how prepared they are coming into the course. Researchers found that all students who took an MIT physics course offered on the edX platform in the summer of 2013 showed signs of learning the subject, as long as they spent time doing the work.

“There was no evidence that cohorts with low initial ability learned less than the other cohorts,” the researchers wrote in the paper, which was published by The International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning.

Researchers also found that students taking the MOOC learned at a similar rate to MIT students taking the on-campus version of the class. Less-prepared students did earn significantly lower scores than their better-prepared counterparts, but their learning progress was the same, according to David E. Pritchard, a researcher on the study.

“If they stuck it out, they learned,” Pritchard told The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Students See Tablets in Their Future

A new Harris poll found that college students see tablet computers as the wave of the future. The survey of 1,228 U.S. college students reported that 81% agreed that tablets will transform the way they learn and 74% said the device made learning more fun.

The 2014 Student Mobile Device Survey also found that 82% of the respondents thought using the device would encourage them to purchase digital textbooks instead of print. However, 89% reported using their laptops on a regular basis and 83% said they used their smartphone regularly, while just 45% said they regularly used a tablet.

A majority (54%) of the students said they used a single mobile device during a schoolday, with most using a laptop (89%) or their smartphone (56%) each week when doing schoolwork compared to 33% who said a tablet. Nearly all also reported having access to the Internet.

“The market for tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices has grown dramatically over the past few years,” the authors of the report wrote. “These mobile devices have the potential to transform learning and to impact the delivery of course materials.”

Google Starts Chromebook Lending Library

Google already considers its Chromebook a low-cost laptop alternative for the classroom. Now, the company is taking that a step further, creating a notebook Lending Library that will provide students free access to a device whenever they happen to need it.

The online giant is placing a café-style kiosk at 12 U.S. colleges and universities for three days in the initial phase of the Lending Library project, which will run through October. Devices are available at the kiosk on a first-come, first-served basis and can be kept for the duration of its stay on the campus. Students will be charged for the devices if they are not returned on time.

“The Lending Library is a bit like your traditional library, but instead of books, we’re letting students borrow Chromebooks [no library cards needed],” Lindsay Rumer of the Chrome marketing team told Digital Trends. “Students can use a Chromebook during the week for life on campus—whether it’s in class, during an all-nighter, or browsing the Internet in their dorm.”

The operating system is cloud-based, allowing students to switch back and forth between devices with a Google account, username, and password. It also is a way for students to become more familiar using the Google operating system and devices and possibly become more dedicated Google customers, according to the Digital Trends report.

Educational Challenge of Wearable Tech

With Apple joining the wearable technology fray, educators have to understand that the devices will inevitably become a part of the classroom. There will be challenges, but also opportunities, according to Teresa Fishman, director of the International Institute for Academic Integrity at Clemson University.

“I hope that what is going to happen in response to something like this is not more emphasis on surveillance, but instead something related to changing what’s going on in the classroom,” she told The Chronicle of Higher Education.

To counter some of the challenges, Fishman suggested educators provide assignments that take advantage of the fact that students are going to use the Internet and work with their friends. She also said she believes it will take a greater emphasis on ethics and probably some old-fashioned methods to combat the potential of using a smartwatch to cheat.

“Rather than getting higher tech, the solution is often the lowest-tech one of all: an oral exam with a student in which you can talk through a problem,” she said. “It’s time-consuming, and time-consuming means expensive, but there’s almost nothing that beats a conversation.”

Using wearable technology to cheat may be a minor issue compared to the distractions it causes. At the same time, there is the potential for new applications to be created that will make learning even better.

“It’s first going to be a distraction and detriment, and it’s going to be a learning curve for how to make this a clear benefit for learning and social skills,” said B.J. Fogg, consulting professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Persuasive Tech Lab, who wrote about an app called Study Buddy that could prompt students to study in his 2002 book Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do. 

CMU Studies MOOC Completion Rates

The high drop-out rates of massive open online courses (MOOCs) have been widely reported and roundly criticized. Carnegie Mellon University has received a $600,000 grant from Google to look for solutions to reverse that trend.

One big problem for MOOCs is the lack of social interaction, CMU researchers said in a National Public Radio report from the affiliate station in Pittsburgh, PA. Taking a MOOC means students learn in isolation, but dealing with other students is important for effective learning.

“Learning in the MOOC context is not correlated with watching the filmstrips of the professor,” said Justine Cassell, associate vice provost of technology strategy and impact at CMU. “It’s correlated with the time you spend in an online discussion group and I love that. Of course, it’s not surprising: It’s the same thing for a real classroom.”

An even bigger issue for MOOCs is that when they are free with no credit attached, students are often just browsing with no intention of becoming active participants.

“I don’t think it’s going to be the vision that was kind of hyped up in the media, but there will be something new that’s coming,” CMU Associate Professor Carolyn Rosé said about her work in the study on MOOCs. “And so, I think it’s worth working towards that. I think it offers something and we have to find out what that new thing is that we’re ready as a community to offer.”

Digital Reading Often Superficial

College students keep telling anyone who’ll listen that it’s easier to study from a print textbook than a digital one. There’s a growing body of scientific evidence to back that up, according to an article in The New Yorker magazine.

Many researchers are considering the impact of digital reading, including Maryanne Wolf, who has spent years studying the development of brain comprehension as reading media have changed over the centuries.

Since the recent rise of digital materials, Wolf has seen a rapid decline in “deep reading”—the kind students need to fully understand and retain subject matter. She’s gotten letters from college and university professors concerned that their students couldn’t master the course topic because they were simply skimming the reading on-screen.

Several studies determined people read more quickly on an electronic screen, and therefore tend to think less about the topic as they go. That, in turn, means they don’t retain as much. Links embedded in digital materials, which are intended to provide a richer reading experience by connecting directly to additional information, actually ended up interrupting the flow of reading and sidetracked the reader’s mental processes.

However, a new study with fifth-graders showed that annotation tools, which are included with most reading apps and mobile devices, can help improve digital reading considerably, provided that students are taught how to use the tools. Students who highlighted, added notes, and bookmarked pages were able to engage more deeply with the content and remember what they’d read.

Students See Tablets in Their Futre

A new Harris poll found that college students see tablet computers as the wave of the future. The survey of 1,228 U.S. college students reported that 81% agreed that tablets will transform the way they learn and 74% said the device made learning more fun.

The 2014 Student Mobile Device Survey also found that 82% of the respondents thought using the device would encourage them to purchase digital textbooks instead of print. However, 89% reported using their laptops on a regular basis and 83% said they used their smartphone regularly, while just 45% said they regularly used a tablet.

A majority (54%) of the students said they used a single mobile device during a schoolday, with most using a laptop (89%) or their smartphone (56%) each week when doing schoolwork compared to 33% who said a tablet. Nearly all also reported having access to the Internet.

“The market for tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices has grown dramatically over the past few years,” the authors of the report wrote. “These mobile devices have the potential to transform learning and to impact the delivery of course materials.”

MOST Initiative Off to a Good Start

The University System of Maryland Open-Source Textbook (MOST) initiative was successful enough during the spring that it’s being expanded this fall. Eleven instructors from seven Maryland universities participated in the voluntary program, assigning open-source online course materials for at least one course during the spring 2014 semester.

Data collected after the spring pilot was complete indicated that most students and faculty were pleased with the experience that saved $130,000 in textbook costs, according to a report for the local CBS affiliate in Baltimore. The total amount of savings was based on the prices of new textbooks that would have been assigned for the courses.

Lumen Learning LLC, a provider of open-source course materials, helped finance the MOST pilot through a grant from Next Generation Learning Challenges. Lumen helped faculty find and collect online course material ranging from complete course packages to individual articles, graphics, and video.

While the pilot showed initial promise, there were complaints. Professors had to spend additional hours in preparation and students had issues with the limitations of the open course materials. However, university officials said they believe the issues can be addressed and that more participation and feedback will allow them to identify the course materials that work the best.

Coursera Is Quick to Fix Possible Breach

While preparing to teach Stanford Law’s first Coursera class, the instructor stumbled across a potential breach that could have knocked Apple’s issues with a hack of iCloud security and compromising photos of entertainers out of the headlines. Jonathan Mayer, a computer scientist and lawyer, while setting up his massive open online course, was able to gain access to nine million Coursera names and email addresses.

In a blog post, Mayer wrote that: 

• Any teacher can dump the entire user database, including over nine million names and email addresses.
• Once logged into your Coursera account, any website that you visit can list your course enrollments.
• Coursera’s privacy-protecting user IDs don’t protect much. 

Mayer alerted Coursera, which addressed the issues immediately and sent an apology to its users. Once the patches were completed, Mayer found plenty of improvements, but problems still exist.

“The bad news is that anyone with teacher access can still look up any individual student’s contact information, so long as he or she either knows the student’s internal ID (it’s embedded in many pages) or can guess a distinctive part of the student’s email address (maybe try first initial last name?),” he said. “That’s a questionable security model, and it’s potentially inconsistent with Coursera’s privacy policy.”

Skills May Be More Valued Than Degrees

Most college grads and employers agree a degree helps employees advance in their jobs, but a recent Harris poll found that learning a specific skill may be worth even more, with 72% of the respondents reporting that specialized training is more valuable than a degree.

The survey, conducted in June, showed that 63% of the respondents with jobs said learning a new skill or receiving specialized training helped them advance or earn a bigger paycheck. Just 45% said having a college or graduate degree was a factor, followed by moving to a new company (38%) and networking with professionals (34%).

The report also found that 74% of employees believe their bosses value work experience and related skills more than an education when comparing job candidates. In addition, 48% of employed college graduates think their degree is not very relevant to their job and 80% report that they have never been asked about their grade-point average in an interview.

“While education is still valued as one piece of the puzzle for a successful career, we’re seeing a shift in the workplace in which most employees feel gaining the latest skills relevant to their job and industry is more valuable to help advance their careers, and they’re feeling it’s what employers are truly seeking to really help move business forward,” Rusty Rueff of Glassdoor said in an article for eCampus News.

Study Shows Online Can Cost More

Many view online courses as the answer to lowering the cost of higher education. A Dallas Morning News report concluded that’s always not the case, at least in Texas.

The News analyzed 18 universities in Texas and found that only the University of North Texas, Denton, and the University of Texas, Austin, offered online courses at a lower cost to students than traditional classes on campus after extra fees and additional costs per credit hour were included. The newspaper reported that a semester of online courses at UT-Arlington was $4,439 for on-campus students, compared to $4,415-$4,490 for online students.

“There’s sort of a snake-oil quality to some of the facile answers that people periodically throw out there,” Barmak Nassirian, director of federal regulations and policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, told the News. “Online education can be a tremendously valuable component for actual academic delivery, but if you were to do it right, it would not only not save money, it would cost money.”

YouTube Ads Bag the Sale

If a picture’s worth 1,000 words, then a video’s apparently worth 15 million clicks to buy.

Compared to other prominent social media, YouTube is the most effective at getting consumers interested in products as well as persuading them to make the purchase, according to a VentureBeat report.

The study, performed by AOL Platforms, analyzed the interaction of some 500 million clicks on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, Tumblr, and YouTube. All that clicking resulted in 15 million purchases. The study looked at three stages of shopper interaction (introduction to products, re-exposure to products on other social media platforms, and searching out a product with intent to buy) as well as instances where consumers bought something right away via social media without encountering further marketing.

As it turns out, YouTube was tops at both calling consumers’ attention to products and at closing the sale at the third stage. YouTube also got more shoppers to purchase immediately. At the other end of the spectrum, Twitter didn’t have much impact at all in those areas but did have the most influence in the middle stage of shopping, by reinforcing advertising messages that consumers had already seen on other social media.

Overall, paid messaging on all social media platforms got more people to buy than “organic” messages shared by users, except for posts relating to food, beverages, apparel, and accessories. For those products, what users had to say influenced purchasers more than marketing.

E-Textbooks Are Coming, Eventually

A 2012 study from the computer networking consortium Internet2 reported students found e-textbooks to be lacking in usability, visual presentation, and navigation. Students participating in e-text pilots said the material was hard to read, complained of eyestrain, and found the content was not always compatible with mobile devices.

Yet, two years is an eternity in the world of technology.

In that time, the price of tablets and the digital course materials have become more affordable while the functionality of e-textbooks has improved, according to a column from Meris Stansbury in eCampus News. In addition, a survey from the Pearson Foundation found that 63% of college students and 69% of high school students believe traditional textbooks will no longer be used within five years and more than half of the college students said they now preferred reading digital textbooks.

Stansbury wrote that the shift is coming, but there are factors that will move the transition along. For instance, she noted the need for more faculty training with the technology, that self-publishing can be an attractive option for instructors, and that there’s a place for the college store partnering with educational publishers to facilitate the bulk purchasing that can lower prices for students.

“Saying that e-books will never take off is like saying, ‘Long live the tape cassette,” Stansbury wrote. “But one fact is clear: printed texts are video rental stores and one day (it may take some decades) those doors will shutter.”

How Educational Technology Is Being Used

A 2014 Student Watch poll from OnCampus Research reported that 91% of all college students own a laptop and 81% own a smartphone. What they are doing with those devices in the classroom may come as a surprise.

To get a sense of how devices are being used in the classroom, this graphic from information gathered from the Pew Research Center, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and other studies illustrates the technology and the issues students and faculty have with it. For instance, 75% of the students said they are bringing their laptops into the classroom more often, but not necessarily to do things related to classwork.

While 83% of the students said they used their laptops to take class notes and 81% said they send emails during class, more than 40% said they used their laptops to surf the Internet and 25% played games. They also reported spending just six minutes each day on school-based emails and complained about professors sending emails.

The faculty reported that the benefits of having electronic devices in the classroom include gaming, online simulations, blogging and forums, and online learning. However, among the negatives are the distractions they cause, cheating, and lower grades. 

Georgia Tech Online Program Shows Promise

Low completion rates have been a stumbling block for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Studies have shown that just 5% of the thousands of students enrolled in the first MOOCs from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology finished the courses, while another found the number of students now enrolling online is at its lowest rate in a decade.

However, good news may be on the horizon.

The online master’s degree program in computer science offered by Georgia Institute of Technology has gotten off to pretty solid start with 375 students enrolled in the first semester of the program. The average age of the students is 35, most are employed, and all are paying a fee.

Working students who pay a fee, which was estimated at less than $7,000 to complete the three-year program, could be the key to success for the program. Georgia Tech faculty and officials believe those two elements keep students more engaged in the class than traditional students on campus.

Of course, the program isn't “massive” with just 375 students, nor is it “open” because of the fee, according to Michael Feldstein, partner at the education consulting firm MindWires. But that doesn’t mean it can’t work.

“To be able to offer an online degree at the level of quality consistent with Georgia Tech at a lower cost would be an important innovation,” Feldstein told The Hechinger Report.

'Modularization' Is Next for Higher Ed

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology task force forecast that “modularization” will be the next big thing for higher education. The group’s final report said using the approach of Apple iTunes, which allows users to purchase music in bits and pieces, will play an important part in improving web-based learning and massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The report said breaking courses into units that are in sequence but can be studied separately can make the work more accessible and affordable for students. It would also add “malleability” and “fluidity” to online learning, which could help address the issue of low completion rates for MOOCs.

The task force advised that modularization would require an online place where students could find and download the necessary materials for the course. It should use tags and filters to make it easier for faculty and students to work with the repository.

“The way in which students are accessing material points to the need for the modularization on online classes whenever possible,” the task force wrote in its final report. “This in many ways mirrors the preferences of students on campus. The unbundling of classes also reflects a larger trend in society—a number of other media offerings have become available in modules, whether it is a song from an album, an article in a newspaper, or a chapter from a textbook. Modularity also enables ‘just-in-time’ delivery of instruction, further enabling project-based learning on campus and for students worldwide.”

Google Goes All-In on Education

Google is trying to create what it calls the “paperless classroom,” offering its low-cost Chromebook laptop and Google Apps for Education as part of the effort. Now, it has launched Google Classroom, free productivity tools for teachers and students that integrate with the rest of the Google Apps, such as Gmail, Drive, and Docs.

Classroom allows teachers to create assignments, make copies of Google documents, and create Drive folders for each assignment. Students are able to track homework and get real-time feedback and grades in the app.

While it all sounds fine, some are still leery. One problem is making sure each student has access to the Internet so they can use the app. Other issues include student privacy and Google’s ability to advertise itself to students with the app.

“The thing about Google is they’re a technology company, not really a solution company,” said Phil Hill, an educational technology consultant and market analyst, in a National Public Radio report. “Rather than understand the needs and build a holistic solution, Google has the ability to throw stuff out and see what happens.”

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Students Enjoy No-Cellphone Experience

Louise Katz, professor of psychology, Columbia State Community College, Columbia, TN, offered extra credit for students who turned off their cellphones before class and put them on the front desk. After nearly all the students accepted the offer, Katz decided to take her experiment to all of her classes for an entire semester.

She found more students paying attention, taking notes, and participating in class discussions. Then she upped the ante, offering five points of extra credit to students who completed a questionnaire and wrote an essay about their class experience.

Eighty-two of the 90 students in her classes took advantage of the opportunity, with 94% saying they either loved or at least liked turning off their phone during class. In addition, 67% said they could concentrate better in class with their phone off and 71% said the classroom atmosphere was more respectful.

“In addition to learning about psychology, the students also learned something else—a little bit about what life was like before the dawn of cellphones,” Katz wrote in a guest column for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “And perhaps, just perhaps, they may have begun to look forward to their brief visits to that different way of life.”

Women Still Aren't Taking STEM MOOCs

A 2013 study by Western International University found that as many as 90% of the students taking massive open online courses (MOOCs) were males. Yet, the same study found that 75% of women who responded view online degrees as more attainable for them than traditional programs.

The prevalence of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses is one reason often given for the enrollment discrepancy. In fact, Coursera researchers took a look at the company’s MOOC enrollment figures and found that to be a valid explanation.

The MOOC provider found less than 20% female enrollment in engineering, computer science, and software engineering. Physics, economics, and finance also saw a significantly lower percentage of female students, according to an eCampus News report. At the same time, 60% of the enrollment for food and nutrition courses was female, followed by professional development courses for teachers, and medicine, arts, and health courses.

Studies show women perform better in MOOCs with more women in the class. Overall female enrollment has increased, rising from 20% in May 2012 to nearly 40% last May.

Students Earn Credit With DIY Project

The Missouri University of Science & Technology, Rolla, is rethinking how lab classes are taught. One part of the effort this fall will make it possible for students to earn extra credit for using their smartphone to build their own microscope.

Students in one section of General Biology will be able to build the microscope from a collection of carriage bolts, nuts, wing nuts, plywood, Plexiglas, laser-pointer lenses, and LED click lights from keychain flashlights. The course instructor plans to compile all the components into a kit, which will be sold at the university bookstore.

Once completed, the do-it-yourself microscope will be able to magnify samples up to 175 times with a single laser-pointer lens, according to Daniel Miller, who created the prototype that was used in a lab last spring. Extra credit was offered to the 50 students in that class, with 15 building the microscope.

“They loved it,” Miller said. “They get to take it home and can use it to look at specimens whenever they want.”

The university hopes to create a how-to manual for teaching lab courses from its Transforming Instructional Labs project. Other labs involved in the project are cell biology, general chemistry, introductory physics, microbiology, the mechanics and materials laboratory, and various labs in nuclear engineering, with instructors planning to develop learning kits for each.

“We’re working with different lab courses on campus that use blended or online learning and plan to come up with an instruction model that could be reproduced anywhere,” said Angela Hammons, manager of instruction technology services at Missouri S&T.

New University Redefines 'Library'

A few universities have converted their campus libraries into computing centers or study halls with Wi-Fi, but Florida Polytechnic University might be the first institution of higher education to be built with a bookless library from the start.

The newly constructed campus in Lakeland just opened for its first classes as part of the Florida State University system. The library services area housed in the Innovation, Science, and Technology Building does provide access to 135,000 titles, according to the Los Angeles Times, but they’re all digital. There are no print books at all in the library.

The library does have printers available. It’s also possible for Polytechnic students to arrange to borrow a hardcover book from another Florida State campus through interlibrary loans. However, students will be discouraged from doing either.

“Instead, the staff hopes students will organize their research online with tools that are part of the library service,” the article said.

On the school’s home page, the link labeled “Library” takes students to a page inviting them to “create your personal Florida Poly library.”

Report: Digital Is the Only Way to Go

Developing interactive digital course materials is the best recourse for textbook publishers to regain sales lost to rentals and used books, said a recent report from research firm McKinsey & Co.

McKinsey’s three-year study of the college textbook market showed a steady rise in the number of copies rented by students, accompanied by a slide in the volume of used textbooks bought. Sales of new textbooks also took a hit during that time, but were partly bolstered by purchases to stock rental programs.

By 2018, McKinsey predicted, rentals and used books will each account for 30% of college textbooks, while new books will slip to 26%. Plain-Jane e-books will get 5% and “no buy” options such as sharing with a friend, borrowing from a library, or pirating content will make up the remaining 9%.

Although McKinsey acknowledged that custom textbooks have helped some publishers hang onto sales, “the custom-publishing market is already quite mature, which means that growth opportunities are limited,” the report said.

“The larger opportunity for publishers lies in the creation of dynamic digital-learning resources,” the report noted, adding, “Time is not on the side of textbook publishers. They face a near-term competitive threat from the rental market, even as they serve a customer base that is increasingly dominated by digital natives.”

Students Buy Computers in a Vacuum

It’s a given that college and university students need some type of computer for their school work. However, students and their parents apparently pay little heed to the requirements of the campus and/or specific classes when they buy the devices.

For the first time, the National Retail Federation’s annual back-to-college shopping survey asked respondents how much of their electronics spending for fall 2014 was influenced by course and school requirements. Not much, as it turns out.

Only 18.2% said they were 100% influenced by requirements, while 12.2% replied that they took no account whatsoever of requirements in making their purchases this year. The largest group (19.4%) admitted they were swayed 26% to 50% by requirements in deciding what electronics to buy.

Women were almost three times as likely to take school requirements into account in picking out electronic devices, and nearly half of parents over age 65 used requirements to guide their purchases.

Not considering class requirements before buying computers and other devices for use on campus could be a problem for students. NACS member stores report students often need to purchase additional electronics and/or software later in the school year in order to fulfill the requirements of their courses.

Barriers Put Skids on Retail Apps

For a time, the retail industry was gung-ho for mobile apps. Every merchant had to develop an app for shoppers to download so that the store and customer could remain in constant touch.

Some retailers may be cooling on that idea, which is possibly good news for campus stores that didn’t have the budget to build a custom app anyway. According to Mobile Commerce Daily, many attendees at the eTail East 2014 conference in early August thought developing mobile websites made more sense.

While apps are able to provide greater functionality and are easier for customers to use once downloaded, they typically cost more to create, partly because each platform (iOS, iPhone, Android, Windows) calls for its own app. Retailers also have to constantly market the availability of the app and worry whether customers are using it successfully.

“Research has shown that approximately 70% of users lose faith in a brand if an app frustrates them, and one in five apps is only ever used one time,” Joel Evans, vice president of mobile enablement at Mobiquity, told Mobile Commerce Daily.

On the other hand, responsive design allows mobile websites to shapeshift to accommodate most devices. The investment to develop such sites is much lower, and a big bonus is that mobile sites will pop up in search results. Some retailers are opting to put their money into responsive design, at least until it’s easier and cheaper to create apps.

'Fair' Fight over Copyright in Canada

Content owners and content users have been battling over whose rights take precedence almost since the first stone tablet was carved. The latest tussle, according to Publishers Weekly, is in Canada, where publishers are growing concerned about the amount of content used by educational institutions without permission or payment.

In 2012, Canadian legislators updated the copyright law, extending the uses allowed under “fair dealing” (known as fair use in the U.S.) to include education as well as satire and parody. Already permitted were news reporting, research, personal study, and criticism. Although the law in Canada, as in the U.S., doesn’t provide a specific limit, in general it has been acknowledged that “fair” means permitted users can copy no more than 10% of a work.

Some schools may be stretching that 10% interpretation. In comments to Publishers Weekly, the executive director of the nonprofit Access Copyright licensing organization said educational institutions seem to “believe it is fair to copy a chapter, put it on a course management website, and share it with a class of 10 students or a class of 150 students…. It would be fair to take chapters from multiple publications, journal articles, and 10% of a book, compile it all into a coursepack, and use that as the readings for a given class, without paying any of the rightsholders.”

Publishers have seen a drop in textbook sales since the copyright law was amended and Access Copyright reported fewer universities are renewing their collective licensing agreements. Other educational organizations claimed those declines are due to other factors.

The revised law is up for legislative review in 2017 and a court case involving fair-dealing guidelines is set to be heard in May 2016. 

Class Mass Offers Economy of Scale

Size matters when it comes to developing enhancements for college and university courses, in the view of an Inside Higher Education contributor who has taken multiple massive open online courses, better known as MOOCs.

In educational researcher Jonathan Haber’s opinion, the “massive” aspect of MOOCs allows schools to spread the cost of high-tech wizardry across many more students. One of his MOOCs, for example, included videos of a number of professors discussing Chinese art and history on location in various museums and sites around the world.

“Try getting the budget to do that for a 50-person live class,” he wrote.

A MOOC’s inherent hugeness also means a large number of the enrollees already possess a degree, raising the quality of discourse about the class subject. In a Shakespeare MOOC, Haber had a question about Greek mythology relating to Troilus and Cressida, and got a prompt response from another MOOC-taker.

“Try finding that level of expertise in a class full of 18-19-year-olds,” he said.

Haber took a variety of MOOCs in an effort to show that it was possible to accumulate the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in the space of 12 months.

E-Books Via Phones Raise Literacy

Most college and university students would rather not use their cellphones for course readings, but phones are becoming an increasingly important tool in boosting literacy in underdeveloped nations.

The nonprofit Worldreader organization, based in San Francisco, CA, has created an app for feature phones and Android devices that gives youngsters from these countries a means to access thousands of digital books stored in a cloud platform. They pay nothing; the venture is supported by donations from organizations such as Microsoft and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

While printed books and desktop computers are often scarce in rural areas across Africa, Asia, the Mideast, Indonesia, and other territories, many people there do have cellphones with Internet service. Worldreader is also working to make more e-books available in native languages, as children learn to read faster when the books are in their first language.

Worldreader’s latest effort is a partnership with Cambridge University Press to provide 390 titles in African languages. In all, Worldreader reaches kids in 37 countries and 23 languages.

Paying Profs to Find Free Course Materials

Indiana State University is dangling an incentive in front of its faculty to get them to switch from traditional course materials—which students must buy on their own—to open materials that are completely free to students.

Any professor who moves their classes to no-charge reading lists will receive a $3,000 stipend from the school, according to the Indianapolis Star. The stipend is intended to compensate the instructor for the time and effort spent finding, organizing, and/or creating the free materials.

The program is part of a pilot intended to help students save money on course materials. With “more than a dozen” instructors participating in the first year, the university estimated about 700 students saved approximately $90,000 in textbook expenses.

“The ultimate goal, of course, is to make college more affordable for students and also, hopefully, in doing that make them more successful in their college career,” said Heather Rayl, an emerging technology librarian at Indiana State.

More colleges and universities are encouraging faculty to seek out free or cheaper course materials. Some campuses have signed on with nonprofit repositories to help provide faculty with vetted sources for materials.

OpenStax Working on Personalized Textbooks

OpenStax was founded to lower the cost of course materials through peer-reviewed open textbooks made available in print and digital formats. Now, it is trying to craft individualize textbooks for each student.

The nonprofit organization based at Rice University has received a $9 million grant to develop personalized, interactive textbooks for advance-placement Biology and high school physics. The new textbooks will be housed in the cloud and employ the same sort of algorithms Google and Amazon use to provide course materials that match the learning pace of individual students.

“Imagine a digital textbook where because I’m a different person and learn differently, my book is different than your book,” said OpenStax founder Richard Baraniuk. “Because I understand things in a different way from you, the book itself should change.”

Baraniuk envisions textbooks that will provide students with quizzes that pop up while they work through a topic to gauge their comprehension. Additional study material would also be available, depending on how the student does, and teachers could receive automatic email messages to track students’ progress.

“You know which page a student is on. You also know as they’re scrolling around where they might be within the page,” Baraniuk said. “You know when they’ve clicked on different simulations, practice problems, videos, etc. You have a sense of whether they’re playing those videos through to the end, going back to review material.”

OpenStax will spend the next two years working on these new textbooks, which will be viewable from a variety of digital devices and will go through the same sort of vetting process traditional textbooks go through to ensure quality.

Is 3-D Printing Really Educational?

As 3-D printing is becoming more affordable, many in public and higher education are racing to get on the bandwagon. The question for Trevor Shaw, director of technology at the Dwight-Englewood School in New York, is: What are kids learning?

While doing research for a summer class on 3-D printing, Shaw found there wasn’t much to teach after turning on the machine. He also determined that the focus of current 3-D printing is more often on the product rather than the design process needed to make it.

“Schools have been teaching 3-D design for a long time. How could a single piece of equipment, whose job seems to be all about the output of learning products rather than the design of them, have a meaningful impact on instruction?” he asked in a column for eSchool News.

Shaw decided there were 3-D printing lessons to be taught, starting with the understanding that precision is valuable but has constraints and costs. Students could also be shown that design tools have a limited number of variables; that persistence and adaption can lead to success; that collaboration is difficult but powerful; and that it’s possible to create something that was once just the figment of someone’s imagination.

“Sure, students should learn the tips and tricks of removing stuck objects from the build plate and knowing when it’s important to use rafts and supports, but these are probably not anyone’s real objectives,” he wrote. “Quick access to the tangible products of their imagination makes learning opportunities possible, where students can begin to uncover enduring understandings that make them fundamentally better designers and problem-solvers.”

MIT Researchers Study MOOC Content

With all the talk about completion rates in massive open online courses (MOOCs), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology decided to conduct a study on how students interact with MOOC content. That led researchers from the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) to develop LectureScape, which they call a YouTube for MOOCs.

The study used data supplied by edX, the online learning platform run by MIT and Harvard University, on the second-by-second viewing habits of more than 100,000 learners watching more than 6.9 million video sessions. Researchers found that six minutes is about as long as students will watch. They also get more from watching instructors casually seated at a desk rather than standing behind a podium. In addition, lively visuals work better than PowerPoint slides, while the most engaging professors spoke at 254 words per minute and provided more time during the presentation to allow students to understand diagrams.

LectureScape gives instructors tools to identify the most frequently watched parts of a video and to create an interactive transcript that allows users to enter keywords to find segments of interest. The tool also compiles summaries of individual sections and the entire presentation, and presents popular slides automatically so students can refer back to them.

“Our findings reflect the fact that, to maximize student engagement, instructors must plan their lessons specifically for an online video format,” the authors of the study wrote. “Presentation styles that have worked well for centuries in traditional in-person lectures do not necessarily make for effective online educational videos.”

Is Apple Getting into E-Book Subscriptions?

The e-book subscription-service bandwagon is starting to get pretty crowded. Oyster and Scribd keep growing and Amazon recently launched its Kindle Unlimited program, which provides assess to around 600,000 e-titles for $9.95 a month.

Now, Apple may be angling to get into the game, according to Andrew Rhomberg, founder of the start-up Jellybooks, which is focused on sampling and sharing e-books. Rhomberg predicted in a Digital Book World article that Apple’s purchase of the e-book recommendation service BookLamp earlier this year could have the company launching a subscription service before the end of the year.

Subscription services must find ways to keep customers paying the monthly fee, and recommendations put interesting things to listen, watch, or read in front of subscribers. It’s sometimes less about the bestsellers and more about providing subscribers with the titles in which they are most likely interested, which is where the algorithms used by the recommendation services come into play.

“Serving up relevant recommendations (and sometimes that means genre fiction rather than literary fiction) is critical to keeping subscribers engaged,” Rhomberg wrote. “Thus the acquisition of BookLamp by Apple could possibly herald Apple’s entry into e-book subscription services.”

NDUS Makes Free Online Textbook Pitch

Students in the North Dakota University System (NDUS) pay an average of $1,100 each year for course materials. A new plan presented to the state legislature may bring that amount down.

The proposal would provide funds to train faculty members in the system to learn about using free online textbooks in place of traditional textbooks. The North Dakota Board of Higher Education approved a budget of $500,000, which includes incentives to attract faculty members to participate in open-textbook training.

“I’m giving them training and the opportunity to learn about it and faculty who are not interested at all in doing open textbooks don’t have to, so it’s purely self-selective,” said Tanya Spilovoy, NDUS director of distance education and state authorization, who proposed the open-textbook plan to the state legislature.

A partnership with the University of Minnesota , which created its own free online textbook library in 2012, will allow NDUS instructors to get accustomed to educational videos and interactive online tools that have already gone through a vetting process at Minnesota. Becoming comfortable with digital course material is an important part of the process, according to David Ernst, chief information officer at the Minnesota College of Education and Human Development.

“In higher education, faculty’s academic freedom is probably the most important thing they have,” Ernst said. “Their right to choose their course material, basically anything academic, is their call and all we can do and all that’s appropriate to do is educate them about open education resources, specifically open textbooks. You answer questions and help remove barriers.”

Small Data Can Accomplish Big Changes

There’s plenty of talk about big data and how it is changing everything, including education. However, colleges and university officials should be thinking about “small data,” according to Stephen Laster, former chief information officer of the Harvard Business School and current chief digital officer of McGraw-Hill Education.

“I love the idea of bringing data together to look for patterns and insights, but not in education,” he said during his keynote address at the Campus Technology 2014 conference in Boston.

A lot of students start school, but not enough finish, a fact that Laster considers “almost a crime.” A program that helped summer students at the University of Texas El Paso prepare for college math through the use of knowledge maps and artificial intelligence engines is just one example of the kind of small-data initiative Laster recommends.

“Small data is not going to be the sole driver, but it can be one small piece,” he said. “We cannot unilaterally drive the change, but we can drive a lot of it. Let’s start small.”

Mobile Payments May Ramp Up Sooner

Of all the new technologies that higher education administrators need to monitor, mobile payment is probably fairly far down the list. However, Business News Daily identified five trends indicating mobile-payment systems are heading into the mainstream.

Although some forms of mobile payment have been somewhat slower to take root—near field communication (NFC), for instance—there has been much more rampant growth in others, such as smartphones. Any organizations that must deal with consumer transactions, including colleges and universities, will have to keep an eye on how smartphone payments play out.

Even NFC is expected to become more common, once consumers get over their worries about privacy, because it is fundamentally easier to use. Payment apps will move to the cloud, allowing for greater customization of services, while stronger security and data protection will be put in place, an aspect of mobile payments of particular concern to campuses.

“As such, security will continue to improve and integrate both technology and personal validation measures,” the article says.

Although Amazon is rumored to be launching a mobile-payment reader soon, Business News Daily doesn’t think the retail behemoth will be able to gain a toehold in that space, given the more-established competitors and the mixed reaction to Amazon’s new phone.

Drive for Diploma May Leave Books Behind

Under pressure from state and federal legislators to graduate more students in a shorter period of time, colleges and universities are searching for ways to remove barriers to student success. Some of their efforts might have an impact on course materials.

Coordinated by the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Transformational Planning Grant project gave money to seven urban universities for new initiatives to bump up grad rates. The University of Akron in Ohio is using its grant to explore how to award credits to students for their personal experience or knowledge, possibly by testing out of course content. In Oregon, part of Portland State University’s project also involves giving credit for previous learning.

“These different approaches to credentialing knowledge could theoretically speed up students’ time to graduation and knock off semesters of tuition,” noted Government Technology magazine. With fewer courses to take, students could also knock off a number of textbooks.

Georgia State University is looking to build off its successful mathematics program, which uses online adaptive-learning software to engage students and help them complete the course. Using only traditional textbooks, as many as 40% of enrollees failed or dropped out of introductory math. The school wants to try using adaptive-learning software with accounting and introductory chemistry classes, which also have high withdrawal rates.

More Ed Tech Needed, But Not in the Classroom

While technology plays a big role in the classroom experience, the last thing an instructor needs is more of it, according to Jordan Shapiro, educational technology writer and professor at Temple University.

Shapiro, who teaches humanities and is the digital learning coordinator in his department, has flipped his classroom and provides his students every type of content he can find that can be accessed from any type of digital device. However, he still reserves classroom time for working with students on a more personal basis.

“My job is to know where the treasures are, that all paths lead to jewels of critical thinking,” he wrote in a column for Forbes. “This happens through nuanced conversation, through discussion, through debate and interaction.”

Shapiro said that education technology is a tool to get content to students and allow instructors to teach.

“Online, I certainly can’t teach students to verbally articulate complex arguments,” he wrote. “Nor can I teach them through conversational debate. But I can teach them to think critically about online tests and to express themselves articulately in writing.”

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.”