New Google Algorithm's Impact Uncertain

If you noticed a sudden drop in visits to your website in the last couple days, it might be the “Mobilegeddon” effect. All in all, though, many site owners remain oblivious to any impact in traffic as the result of Google’s new search algorithm favoring mobile-friendly sites.

On April 21, Google tweaked the algorithm to give more weight in search results rankings to sites with mobile-compatible navigation. Google announced two months ago that it would be making the change and provided developer tools to help site owners determine if alterations were needed.

The date was dubbed Mobilegeddon in the tech press due to the potential hit some sites might take.

According to the Greenlight digital marketing agency, the first link in search rankings usually gets about 20%-30% of all clicks on the page. The second and third links receive 5%-10%, and the rest yield 1% or less. For organizations that rely on search traffic, a lower berth in the rankings might cost them a lot of business. In early April, TechCrunch found 44% of all Fortune 500 company sites failed Google’s mobile test.

The up side for websites is that only searches conducted on smartphones are subject to the new algorithm. Searches via desktop or tablet will produce the same results as before, at least for now. Google clearly thinks web searching is becoming a mobile thing.

To enhance your site’s mobile friendliness, Search Engine Land offers some recommendations.

Environmental Gaming Pilot at ASU

A series of five story-based environmental games is being piloted by Arizona State University, Tempe, on its ASU Online site. Students take leadership roles in the game to help the community in each story face environmental and sustainability issues.

“I’m excited by how these authentic experiences will add a ‘human element’ to the learning process,” Tahnja Wilson, senior manager for EdPlus at ASU, said in an article for eCampus News. “The interactive features will be a great complement to the other course components.”

Students will be able to download information, take notes, and respond to questions using mobile phones or emails in the game’s day-in-the-life tools. The game is designed to get students to think about real-life environmental situations, with students and instructors receiving a performance summary at the end of each module.

New Ed-Tech Guide for Developers Available

The Department of Education released a guide for developers who create solutions in the education space. The Ed Tech Developer’s Guide: A Primer for Developers, Startups, and Entrepreneurs is free and available for download at tech.ed.gov/developers.

The guide focuses on the key needs of the nation’s school systems and pinpoints 10 long-term issues facing education. It highlights issues such as increasing family engagement, professional development for teachers, and accurately measuring what students have learned as potential areas for digital tools.

“Technology makes it possible for us to create a different dynamic between a teacher and a classroom full of students,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said at a conference where the guide was introduced. “We need tools designed to help students discover who they are and what they care about, and tools that create portals to a larger world that, in the past, would have remained out of reach for far too many.”

Education technology must do more than just deliver content to students, according to Duncan,  who added that he hoped paper textbooks would soon be extinct. He also said developers need to keep disadvantaged students in mind when designing new tools.

“If the technology revolution only happens for families that already have money and education, then it’s not really a revolution,” he said.

EdX, DOJ Reach Accessibility Agreement

A compliance review by the U.S. Department of Justice has led to an agreement with edX to make its massive open online courses (MOOCs) more accessible to people with disabilities. EdX agreed to make its website, mobile applications, and learning management system fully accessible within the next 18 months.

As part of the settlement, edX will provide guidance for course creators on best practices in creating accessible online courses, hire a web-accessibility coordinator, and develop a web-accessibility policy. The settlement acknowledges that edX has taken steps to improve access, but needs to do more.

“We were very aware in 2012 or so about the emergence of MOOCs and the importance, or the potential importance, that they offer to students who have distance barriers and cost barriers to getting good educational content,” Eve L. Hill, deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, said in an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. “And they offer a potentially really good avenue for students with disabilities.”

Details of what was wrong with the edX platform were not provided, but Hill told The Chronicle that common website accessibility problems include videos without captions and pop-up windows that can’t recognize screen-reader applications used by the visually impaired. 

Discovery Leads to Fast-Charging Battery

Nearly every smartphone user has a story of how their device died at the most inopportune time. That problem may be eliminated now that researchers at Stanford University discovered a way to charge batteries faster and have them last longer.

Experimenting with graphite as a cathode, researchers found that aluminum-ion prototypes were able to charge a smartphone battery 60 times faster than a lithium-ion battery. The aluminum-ion concept was also able to recharge 7,500 times, is flexible, and can be safely drilled without causing a fire.

“There is a woefully short amount of cycles to go through with lithium-ion batteries,” Kevin Krewell, principal analyst for Tirias Research, said in an article for TechWorldNews. “To extend that would allow phones to last longer. You wouldn’t have to worry about having to have your phone repaired if the battery wears out and you have an iPhone or the latest Samsung handset.”

But the Stanford research is just a beginning. The new technology must also show that it can be produced on a scale to meet the demands of the electronics industry.

"In these types of research programs, much of the research is done on very small cell sizes,” said Eric Lind, sales manager for Varta Microbattery. “The results are then extrapolated to a commercial cell. However, generally, the scale-up does not typically correlate linearly with what is found in the lab.”

Competency-Based Online Degree Piloted

Community colleges in the state of Washington will soon offer a competency-based associate degree in business using open educational resources (OER) for every class.

The online, self-paced classes are designed to adapt content and activities based on a student’s prior knowledge of the subject, according to a report in eCampus News. Students will also have access to free online course materials.

The 13 community colleges signed up for the pilot will work with Lumen Learning to design the courses. Lumen Learning is also collecting course material that will include textbooks, videos, and embedded assessments to gauge students’ progress.

“A motivated student could complete a two-year transfer degree in just 18 months,” said Jan Yoshiwara, deputy executive director for education for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. “All this adds up to quicker completion at a lower cost, while achieving the same learning outcomes required for traditional courses and programs.”

Researchers Study MOOC Trends

Researchers from Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology looking at massive open online courses (MOOCs) offered by the two schools found more females and older students were taking the classes. The survey also noted that nearly half of MOOC participants were not interested in pursuing certification and that 39% of the respondents were teachers.

The survey, based on two years of data from online courses launched on the edX platform, reported that certificate rates for computer science and other technology-based offerings were about half the rate of those in the humanities and social sciences. It also showed that 59% of participants who paid for ID-verified certificates went on to earn certification.

The researchers hope to develop a “Top 5” list of MOOCs based on course attributes, demographics, and level of interaction.

“These courses reflected the breadth of our university curricula and we felt the need to highlight their diverse designs, philosophies, audiences, and learning outcomes in our analyses,” Isaac Chuang, associate dean of digital learning at MIT, said in an article in eCampus News. “Which course is right for you? It depends, and these lists might help learners decide what qualities in a given MOOC are most important to them.”

App Enables Location-Based E-Books

Rook Labs, based in London, plans to release an app that allows people to access e-books on their mobile devices at no charge while they’re in a defined location, such as a café, park, hospital, or subway car. When the person starts to move out of range, they’ll be invited to buy and download their own copy of the e-book right from the app.

A beta version of the location-based app, also dubbed Rook, will be unveiled at the London Book Fair this week. The company’s website claims users will be able to read “premium” e-books with the app and The Guardian reported Rook has two independent book publishers lined up to participate. It’s not clear how many titles are currently available.

“The biggest hurdle to overcome will be publisher suspicion about a great e-book giveaway,” The Guardian article commented, noting that readers are unlikely to pay for the book if there are enough Rook hotspots to finish it for free.

The beta version will be rolled out only in London and New York City.

Smartphones Will Make You Lazy

There are those who believe smartphones are making users less smart, but a study from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, found the devices actually tend to make users lazy.

Researchers tracked the smartphone habits of 660 people and found that the more people used their mobile devices to access search engines, the more likely they were to rely on intuitive thinking. Analytical thinkers in the study were much less likely to use smartphones as search engines.

“We don’t really like to do the extra work that comes with analytical thinking,” David Wagner, executive editor of Community & IT Life, wrote in a column for InformationWeek. “We prefer heuristic or intuitive thinking. The problem is that heuristic thinking is more likely to be wrong than a solution reached when we stop and think about stuff for a minute.”

The research also found that offloading information to smartphones led users to rely on it more and learn less.

“The good news is that smartphones probably aren’t a pact with the devil by which we agree to receive all knowledge in the world via the Internet without having the intellect to use it,” Wagner wrote. “Smartphones don’t make us dumb. They make us lazy. They make us cognitive misers. If we’re willing to give up the lazy habits and employ our cognitive skills, we’ll use the smartphone the right way.”

Text Messages Used to Boost Student Success

Most schools use technology to push information to students. A Texas college is using text messaging to get the word out.

A study conducted at Cisco College provided text messages to half of a class of developmental psychology students. The messages included notes on readings and quizzes that would take place during the upcoming week, current events the students should review for the class, student-specific notes on ongoing work, and a message asking students to send questions, comments, or concerns to the instructor.

The students who received the text messages scored higher on quizzes, papers, and exams than the control group, which did not receive the messages. Students also reported they spent more time on assignments because the information was made convenient.

“Digital natives—basically everyone in a K-12 classroom today—are comfortable using handheld devices to interact and communicate,” Scott Hamm, director of online education at Hardin-Simmons University, Abilene, TX, wrote in an article about the research for EdTech Magazine. “Staying connected through one’s smartphone is an ambient part of communication habits today, and texting is the primary communication medium of 14- to 18-year-olds.”

Acceptance Letter Carries Online-Only Caveat

The University of Florida is taking a bold—some say sneaky—approach to expanding its enrollment in online courses. The school recently accepted an additional 3,118 students into its fall 2015 freshman class, but only for online classes they access from home.

The university had already accepted about 12,000 freshman students who will be free to take either online or traditional courses right on the campus. The add-on group will be limited to online classes for at least their first two semesters, although once they accumulate 60 credit hours, they may be eligible to transfer into regular freshman enrollment.

Florida didn’t inform applicants in advance that there might be two different acceptances, and none of the students specifically applied to be an online-only enrollee, according to The Washington Post.

The move “allows us to offer admission to additional qualified applicants with academic potential and demonstrated success,” Steve Orlando, senior director of media relations, told The Post. The school isn’t sure how many will actually enroll in the online program, but estimates about 10% will probably take the offer.

In part, the decision to admit additional freshmen as online students was made to help fill the university’s new online undergraduate program, launched in 2014. The Florida state legislature, which has been promoting online education, provided $15 million in startup funding.

Wearable Tech Ready to Take Off

International Data Corp. (IDC) predicted that wearable technology will grow and the Apple Watch will play a key role. The firm said that 45.7 million wearable devices will ship this year, with that number climbing to 126.1 million in 2019, according to a report in VentureBeat.

Just over four million smart wearables—defined by IDC as wearable devices that run apps—were sold in 2014. The IDC forecast called for that number to reach 25.7 million this year, while “dumb wearables”—devices like fitness trackers than don’t run apps—will grow from sales of 15.4 million units in 2014 to 20 million this year.

“The Apple Watch raises the profile of wearables in general, and there are many vendors and devices that are eager to share the spotlight,” said Ramon Llamas of IDC. “Basic wearables, meanwhile, will not disappear. In fact, we anticipate continued growth here as many segments of the market seek out simple, single-use wearable devices.”

OER, For-Profits Can Work Together

While open educational resources (OER) are sometimes free to the user, there are always costs involved in the production and delivery of the content. To cover those, many OER providers turn to for-profit companies to keep the content available to students.

That opens the door to criticism that nonprofits are selling out. Advocates counter that the for-profit world has a role in keeping OER in front of students.

“Yes, the corporations earn money,” wrote Barbara Illowsky, professor of mathematics and statistics at Foothill-De Anza Community College, Los Altos Hills, CA, District and co-author of a statistics textbook published by OpenStax College, in a column for eCampus News. “But the big ‘yes’ is that students increase their learning. These innovations offer immediate feedback and formative assessment 24/7, link to similar examples, and offer multiple attempts, which lead to increased student participation and success.”

The bottom line for Illowsky, also director of basic skills and OER for the California Community College Online Education Initiative, is student success and choice.

“Students have lifetime free access to open textbooks. Not just one term, not being a log-in site—OER are always available to everyone,” she wrote. “Students have a choice to use the online text only, to download the PDF, or to read the book on their mobile devices. None of these versions cost money. If students want hard copies, they may print parts or all of the text at home, or may purchase a bound low-cost copy from a for-profit company. The cost of printing the text is the student’s choice.”

UMass Amherst Opens 3-D Printing Center

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, partnered with 3-D printer manufacturer MakerBot to open a 3-D printing center in the university library. The MakerBot Innovation Center provides students, faculty, and the surrounding community access to 50 MakerBot Replicator 3-D printers, desktop 3-D scanners, and the filament necessary to create 3-D models.

The printers will be linked together to allow for remote access, print queuing, and mass production of 3-D items. MakerBot is also providing training for university staff.

The center will provide a way to bring together departments on campus to work on projects. A makerspace class using the center is already being planned by faculty from the environmental conservation, building and construction technology, biology, public health, public policy, and engineering departments.

Plans are also in the works for an entrepreneur-in-residence program, mini-courses and workshops, and business-plan competitions, as well as support for start-ups and small businesses.

“The MakerBot Innovation Center ties in firmly with the campus’s personality of being entrepreneurial and community engaged and will allow us to work more closely with the local business community,” said Jay Schafer, director of libraries at UMass Amherst. “Having a large-scale installation of MakerBot 3-D printers makes this a resource more broadly available on campus and puts UMass Amherst at the forefront of technological innovation.”

More Young Adults Own Smartphones

The largest cohort of smartphone owners can be found on a college or university campus.

According to a new report from the Pew Research Center, the 18-29 age group comprises the single biggest block of smartphone-toting adults in the U.S., with 85% of them owning at least one smartphone.

Even the highest-income crowd (adults earning more than $75,000 per year) is only at 84% smartphone ownership.

Overall, 7% of U.S. adults with smartphones rely on those devices as the sole source for Internet access. However, young adults are even more dependent on their smartphones, with 15% saying this is the only means they have for getting online at home. It’s not clear from the survey, though, whether this group can’t afford broadband service or they simply don’t want to mess around with larger devices at home.

As you might expect, young adults use their smartphones for a wide variety of purposes, apart from making calls. About 44% told Pew they have accessed educational content via the phone and 70% engage in online banking through the phone. More than a third have even submitted a job application by using their phone. All of them send and receive text messages.

However, entertainment is often the allure for many young adults. Some 91% said they used their smartphones for social networking, music, and videos. And when older adults complain about the younger folks always being on their phones and ignoring everyone around them—they should know that 47% of young adults said they do it deliberately to avoid contact.

The Potential, Issues of Digital Courseware

A new report on digital courseware adoption found that 54% of responding faculty members used it during the 2013-14 school year and 52% said they saw the potential impact it could have on learning. Time for Class: Lessons for the Future of Digital Courseware in Higher Education, Part 1: Faculty Perspectives on Courseware also reported there were still barriers to be addressed.

“I feel pressured to use online instruction in some way at our institution, but I believe it mostly requires an increase in labor for instructors,” one respondent wrote in the report. “I am not sure of the benefit it actually provides over traditional delivery in my area of teaching.”

The report described digital courseware as “curriculum delivered through purpose-built software to support teaching and learning.” It is seen as a way to deliver personalized instruction on a variety of technology-driven platforms and improve student outcomes, according to an article in eCampus News.

The survey noted that 60% or respondents said they were encouraged to use digital courseware in their class, but just 30% said they were trained to use it effectively. Faculty members also saw costs to students, the overall effectiveness of the programs; lack of alignment with instructional design, reduced control over content, and resistance to the new instruction methods as barriers to widespread adoption of digital courseware.

“Once you decide to use courseware, you are in for a long but interesting ‘slog’ to learn a system, to create materials for class, and to keep growing,” wrote another faculty respondent. “After 12 years and the use of four different packages, I have yet to find a student who thinks it has improved their education in ways other than decreasing the amount of time they have to spend in the library.”

Students Going Mobile to Study

Every college store professional knows students on campus are practically tethered to their mobile devices. Not surprisingly, new research from McGraw-Hill Education found that use of the technology for studying is on the rise as well.

The survey, The Impact of Technology on College Student Study Habits, reported that 81% of students who responded said they used a mobile device to study, a 40% increase over the 2014 findings. In addition, 77% said they believe using the technology can lead to better grades.

Mobile devices are still second to laptops for studying, but 66% of the students reported that it was moderately to extremely important to have them available for study. The technology saved time, according to 48%, while 62% said using mobile technology helped them feel better prepared for class.

“The rise of studying via mobile isn’t simply due to the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets on campus; it’s a case of mobile suiting the way students study now,” said Sharon Loeb, vice president of marketing for McGraw-Hill Education. “The feedback we’ve received from students and instructors suggests that today’s students tend toward shorter, more concentrated bursts of studying anywhere they’re able, rather than waiting for several hours to hunker down in the library.”

Use of Digital K-12 Course Materials Grows

Education Market Research found that digital content may be reaching a tipping point. The company reported that delivery of digital products to the K-12 market grew by 43% in 2013, while nondigital options dropped by 8%.

The survey of 100 publishers found that 82% said they used online or digital to deliver supplemental materials. Print still owned 46% of all course material sales in 2013.

In addition, the supplemental market for print fell by 2.6% from 2013 to 2014, while sales of digital resources increased by about the same amount.

The study also found that schools use digital more often for classes in social studies, math, and science. Digital usage in those subjects averaged about 1.5 full days or class periods each week, according to Education Market Research founder Bob Resnick in a report in The Journal.

New Site Offers Affordable Path to a Degree

Education-Portal.com started as a way for students to find inexpensive study resources for exams. The start-up then began creating online courses to help students pass College-Level Examination Program exams, which provided college credits for about $80 per course.

The firm recently relaunched as Study.com, offering 19 courses accepted for credit by the American Council on Education and another 30 under review. Upon completion of the course and passing proctored exams, students can submit their scores to more than 2,900 accredited colleges for transfer credit and could conceivably earn enough credit to test out of their first two years of college.

The old website had more than 10 million visitors each month. The new Study.com site requires a $50 monthly fee, but that provides access to the site’s full library of more than 1,000 courses and 10,000 individual lessons.

“This system is designed to be extremely accessible and can really help students to afford college in a highly efficient way,” Jessica Bayliss, director of education for the company, told eCampus News.

The classes consist of a series of video lessons that generally last five to 10 minutes. Students then take the multiple-choice quiz for immediate feedback. There is also an “Ask The Instructor” link to each course that allows students to submit questions to an instructor, who will reply to within a day or two.

“We want to become the ultimate study resource,” Bayliss said. “That means providing lessons to teach students everything they would want to learn. So, more specialized courses will be developed. And we want to expand the age range of students we serve.”

Can Games Teach? Big Players Say Yes

For some, “educational games” mean the simple types that teach counting to preschoolers or vocabulary words to fourth-graders. They have a hard time seeing how computerized gamification, currently a flame-hot academic trend, can lend itself to serious learning for older students.

A couple of heavy hitters in the education world are betting on gaming to help high-schoolers build math and science skills. With funding from the Gates Foundation, the MIT Education Arcade collaborated with Filament Games to create the Radix Endeavor, a multiplayer online game that sneaks in lessons about biology, geometry, algebra, probability, and statistics while students explore a mysterious island world and save its people from destruction.

The game has the look and feel of something students might play on their Xbox or PlayStation. Through their on-screen avatars, players must work together to gather and process information and come up with solutions to help the island’s inhabitants.

The Radix Endeavor is still in development, although it recently won a 2015 Cool Tool Award from EdTech Digest in the new product/service category. Currently, the developers are piloting a free version of the game to monitor how students interact with it, what they actually learn from the instruction, and whether gaming can be implemented in a classroom environment. Teachers can set up an account at no charge for their classes to try it out.

Microsoft Offering edX Courses

One of stated the missions of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is to expand educational opportunities and access to information technology. Now, the company Bill Gates founded, Microsoft, has partnered with the online learning initiative edX to offer courses focused on coding, cloud computing, and assessment.

The massive open online courses (MOOCs) taught by Microsoft experts on edX will help students understand front-end web development and programming language. Additional courses are being offered in cloud computing, data platforms, and Office 365.

The courses, offered for free at edx.org, will begin at the end of March. A verified certificate of completion is available for a fee.

Failing Grades For K-8 Math Content

A review of K-8 math instructional material gave most publishers failing grades. EdReports.org found that 17 of 20 math series evaluated failed to align with the Common Core State Standards.

“In general, the results are pretty bad for all publishers,” Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, told Education Week. “I think people will really pay attention to this.”

Publishers have, and they are not happy. They are particularly concerned that the use of thresholds content needed to pass to continue through the EdReports.org review process led to an incomplete review, according to Jay A. Diskey, executive director of the Association of American Publishers’ P-12 learning.

The report used a three-tiered rating system that broke down each criterion into “meets,” “partially meets,” or “does not meet.” The group’s website provides a more detailed report for each textbook rated and documentation on how reviews came up with their scores.

“There can always be methodological quibbles,” Polikoff said. “It would be useful to look at all three gateways for all the books, but this seems to me a perfectly reasonable way to constrain the task.”

Feds to Launch Online Skills Academy

The Second Open Government National Action Plan, released last fall, spells out ways the government plans to improve public services. Part of the plan calls for a commitment to expanding the use of open educational resources (OER), a pledge that was reaffirmed during Open Education Week 2015, according to a report in Campus Technology.

“There’s a growing body of evidence that the use of open education resources improves the quality of teaching and learning, including accelerating student comprehension and by fostering more opportunities for affordable cross-border and cross-cultural educational experiences,” wrote the authors of the plan.

The plan includes an online skills academy that will offer open online courses to create high-quality but free or low-cost ways for students to earn degrees, certificates, or other employer-recognized credentials. The Departments of Labor (DOL) and Education (ED) will provide around $25 million in competitive grants to launch the academy this year.

Courses offered by the skills academy will be free and available on an open learning platform, while credits would be made available at low costs. The academy will also use OER for course materials, including content developed through a DOL community college grant program.

In addition, the State Department plans to conduct overseas pilots using OER to support learning. The results of those pilots will be made available to the public and to interested educators.

UC Irvine Offers Chemistry Curriculum

The University of California Irvine is making its university-level chemistry curriculum and educational resources available through a new partnership with the University of California (UC), California State University (CSU), and the California Community Colleges (CCC) systems. The partnership will make full-captioned lecture videos freely available to students and faculty around the world.

As part of the collaboration, UC Irvine’s Open Chemistry (OpenChem) curriculum will be offered to the CSU and CCC systems. OpenChem consists of 16 quarter-length undergraduate and select graduate lecture classes and is available at no cost.

UC Irvine is also collaborating with other providers of open educational resources, such as the UC Davis ChemWiki textbook.

“This partnership extends UC Irvine’s commitment to open education and its worldwide impact, with a focus on the needs of students in the California public education system,” said Gary W. Matkin, dean of continuing education, distance learning, and summer sessions at UC Irvine. “It advances our goal of a world where high-quality education is available to all for free.”

Old-Fashioned Note-Taking Works

One solution for increasing student success has little to do with interactive content and electronic course materials. It’s as simple as taking better notes.

Carol E. Holstead, associate professor of journalism, University of Kansas, Lawrence, decided she had had enough of students mesmerized by their laptop computer screens instead of listening to her lectures, so she banned the devices from her classroom. She did continue using PowerPoint presentations to outline her lecture and provide examples, but also instructed her students they needed to be more selective in writing down important points.

“It turned out my theory was right and now is supported by research,” Holstead wrote in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “A study published last year in Psychological Science showed that students who write out notes longhand remember conceptual information better than those who take notes on a computer.”

The problem for students who used laptops is they become so intent on capturing every word of a lecture they don’t always listen to what is being said. Students who used paper and pen to take notes were more selective because they couldn’t write fast enough, allowing them to retain more information and understand it better, according to the research.

Holstead ended her first semester without laptops by having students fill out a questionnaire. Nearly 52% of the 95 responding students said they paid more attention without a computer in front of them. More importantly, test scores went up in her classes.

“Their answers reinforced the note-taking study,” Holstead said. “The students who tried to transcribe my lectures, even without a laptop, hated taking notes longhand. The students who figured out how to take selective notes liked it.”

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.

Retailers Pick Mobile Sites over Apps

The cost of developing a mobile app for shoppers is prompting many retailers to opt for a cheaper, albeit less personal, alternative: building a mobile-optimized e-commerce website.

A new study by the National Retail Federation (NRF) and Forrester Research, as reported by CNBC, indicated that 58% of retail companies are placing a high priority on mobile commerce this year but they’re balking at the expense. For a national retail chain, that might top $2 million in development fees, not to mention the costs to market the app to consumers.

A campus bookstore could get a decent app for much less, maybe four figures, but that would still represent a fairly large piece of the budget for such a store.

Retail apps do boost online sales—possibly as much as 30% for some merchants—and help strengthen customer loyalty to the store, according to the NRF/Forrester study, although the bump may not compensate for the yearly maintenance and upgrade costs.

The majority of shoppers are using apps to determine if sellers have certain merchandise on hand. A mobile-friendly website, if designed correctly, can provide the same information to consumers.

Lynn U. Testing App to Track Attendance

Lynn University, Boca Raton, FL, is planning a beta test on a new iPad application that notifies students when they miss a class. The app, Class120, will send students a reminder when they are not in the classroom.

The app could also be used to notify the student’s academic coach and parents, although Lynn is not planning to reach out to Mom and Dad.

“We’re not interested where you are on Friday night,” Christian Boniforti, chief information officer at Lynn, said in an article for The Chronicle of Higher Education. “We’re just interested in whether you’re in the classroom when you’re supposed to be.”

Downloading the app is optional, although the university wants all of its students to use it. Lynn already has a strict attendance policy that includes weekly reporting from instructors.

The app is considered an intervention tool because weekly attendance figures show students who miss 25% or more of their classes have a 68% chance of getting a grade-point average below a C. A Harvard study also showed that class size falls throughout the term unless attendance is measured and graded.

Free Community College Works in Tulsa

The idea of tuition-free community college is not all that new. Tulsa Community College, Tulsa, OK, has been offering students the credits to earn a free associate degree since 2007.

The program, Tulsa Achieves, pays tuition for three years of college for high school grads from Tulsa County. The only stipulations are the students must enroll right out of high school, maintain a 2.0 GPA, and perform 40 hours of community service each year they’re in the program.

The college even covers book costs for several hundred of the students through a textbook trust created through private donations. The school enrolled 1,350 students the first year of the program and has had about 1,500 local students sign up each year since then.

There is a cost, of course. Tulsa CC paid nearly $3 million in additional aid in the program’s first year and $3.7 million last year. However, 44% of the first class transferred to a four-year institution and 22% of those first students have earned since a bachelor’s degree.

“We consider it a strong economic-development tool for Tulsa County,” Lauren Brookey, vice president for external affairs at Tulsa CC, said in a report for Inside Higher Education. “People in Tulsa love this program.”

Why Students Prefer Print

Surveys have shown that readers, particularly college students, still prefer print. A University of Washington study even found that a quarter of its students still bought print versions of e-textbooks that were available for free.

Researchers have found the location of information on a printed page plays a key role in comprehension. The problem for on-screen reading is that users tend to skim and comprehension suffers because of it, according to Naomi S. Baron, a linguist at American University and author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World.

“These are people who aren’t supposed to remember what it’s like to even smell books,” she told The Washington Post. “It’s quite astounding.”

Online distraction is another issue. Baron found that 90% of the students reported they were more likely to multitask while online. Students also seem to have a lazy streak. Many told her they preferred renting textbooks that have important passages already highlighted and have notes in the margins.

Students do prefer digital for science and math classes, especially course materials that include online portals to help them work through problems. They also prefer digital materials that help them locate information quickly and—no surprise here—content that is free, even though Baron found that many would take the printed book if price wasn’t a factor.

Purdue Expanding It's Use of OER

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, recently partnered with Amazon with the intent of saving its students money on everything from soup to textbooks. Now, the institution is working to take textbooks out of the equation altogether, or at least some of them.

The university is hoping to save geometry and calculus students up to $1 million by expanding its use of the Learning Online Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach (LON-CAPA), according to a report in The Lafayette Journal & Courier. Professors can use the open education resources (OER) that make up the LON-CAPA program instead of textbooks or the university’s WebAssign program, which offers online lessons and grades assignments based on content from major publishers and can cost more than $100 per course.

Purdue’s biology department has been using LON-CAPA since it was developed by Michigan State University in 1992; physics, chemistry, and political science are also using similar programs. With 4,500 students enrolled in geometry and calculus, Purdue will be among the first to launch the program on such a large scale.

“It used to be a student could get by maybe without buying a book or buying a used book or sharing a book,” said Frank Dolley, vice provost for teaching and learning. “Now, these courses have access codes. You have to have the code to get into the class because you have to have that system to submit your homework. The students are somewhat trapped.”

Initiative to Provide More Tech Workers

TechHire was launched to provide more U.S. workers in the growing technology field. More than 300 employers and local governments from 21 regions across the country have committed to the initiative, announced by President Obama at the National League of Cities.

The Obama administration pledged $100 million in competitive grants to fund joint initiatives to target workers who may not have access to tech training. The money for the grants will come from fees companies already pay to hire skilled foreign workers under the H-1B visa program.

“We’ve got to keep positioning ourselves for a constantly changing global economy,” Obama said during the announcement of the initiative. “If we’re not producing enough tech workers, over time that’s going to threaten our leadership in global innovation, which is the bread and butter of the 21st-century economy.”

Business leaders are also committed to offer free online training to prepare workers for higher-paying technology positions, such as software development, network administration, and cybersecurity. The communities involved are working on ways to use data-driven assessments of employer workforce demands; recruit and expand accelerated tech-learning programs such as coding bootcamps and online training; and find ways to connect people with the jobs.

“The world’s technology needs are just moving a lot faster than traditional education solutions. That’s the fundamental problem here,” said Greg Fischer, mayor of Louisville, KY. “So that’s why these nonconventional methods are needed right now.”

Students Turning to Paper for PARCC Exams

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) is an effort to provide information on how prepared students are for higher education or work after high school. The exams are based on Common Core standards for reading and math, but technical glitches in the computer-given tests are driving some districts to turn to paper instead.

“Our concern was really that the results of this testing taken online wouldn’t necessarily give clear data on what students know and should be able to do,” a spokeswoman for one school district told The Chicago Tribune.

The Tribune reported that one in four students in Illinois will use paper to take the exams during the spring testing period, costing districts an additional $2.4 million. The percentage of students taking the test online vs. paper is about the same in other states giving the test, according to PARCC officials.

About 11% of the school districts in Illinois plan to use paper and pencil to give the exam and another 34% will use a combination of paper and computer exams. The cost to administer the test to grades 3-8 is about $24 per student, but it rises to $33 each for paper testing.

The Tribune also reported that some students are planning to not take the exams at all, but opting out could be an issue. State officials said that if more than 5% of students statewide opt out, Illinois could fail federal requirements and face sanctions and that the state could then penalize districts for not testing enough students.

Report Promotes Way to Make CBE Work

Many colleges, particularly community colleges, view competency-based education (CBE) programs as a way to improve learning opportunities while lowering costs for students. One problem has been finding ways to use CBE programs in an environment dominated by the use of credit hours to reward student achievement.

The solution may lie in an integrated and transparent competency management framework, according to a report from Tyton Partners. The report, Evidence of Learning: The Case for an Integrated Competency Management System, found that colleges and universities should focus on ways that allow students to reach college and career goals and that knowledge, skills, and experience an individual achieves during their lifetime should be part of the process.

“As the bridge between students and the workforce, postsecondary institutions are uniquely positioned to find and deliver the best tools and resources to capture and communicate evidence of learning,” Adam Newman, co-founder and managing partner at Tyton said in an article for eCampus News. “Colleges and universities must rise to this opportunity or risk erosion of a core value proposition in linking learning and employment and lifelong development.”

The way to begin, according to the report, is for institutions and business to work together to provide students the skills that employers need. Colleges and business must also find ways to award proper credit for accumulated skills and maintain files to record that progress.

There should be ways for students to promote the skills they have already accumulated, along with access to feedback, coaching tools, and services so they can see how they are progressing. Schools need ways to evaluate that progress and employers must be willing to provide feedback to the institutions so they can adequately prepare their students.

“There’s no quick fix to this,” Newman said. “Institutions need to think internally about how connected their own departments are to one another in order to provide an effective learning experience and about whether or not outside experiences are valued. That’s the first wave of this: Institution-centric discussion.”

Online Testing Has Become Big Business

Online testing and assessment is a growing business for software vendors and publishers. The Software and Information Industry Association (SIIA) reported digital assessment products brought in $2.5 billion in revenue in the 2012-13 school year.

The report, The U.S. Education Technology Market: PreK-12, estimated that the amount spent on software and content in the U.S. for preK-12 education was up $480 million to $8.38 billion, according to a report in The Journal. The SIIA researchers noted that 39% of the revenues were used on content, with language arts and math listed as the largest academic areas covered by the content.

The study also found that revenue for online courses grew 320% percent when compared to the 2011-12 school year.

“The rapid growth of testing and assessment will slow but remain an important area of investment in school districts and states,” said John Richards, president of CS4Ed. “Digital assessments and interest in personalized learning contribute to this growing market.”

Chegg Goes All-In on Digital

Chegg rented $213 million worth of textbooks online to students in 2014. The company recently turned that part of its business over to Ingram Content Group so it could focus on digital products.

Students will continue to be able to rent textbooks through the Chegg platform, but Ingram will be managing and shipping the physical inventory. Chegg plans to put more time, money, and effort into improving and enhancing its digital operations, which range from college admissions to internship placement.

“The rental model is where we started; the real product is what you’re seeing today,” Chegg CEO Dan Rosensweig told Fast Company. “Everything we think students want is online.”

The strategy could cost the company in the short term, since Chegg will only receive 20% on the books Ingram rents. Chegg earned $91 million last year, but projects revenues to increase to $133 million-$143 million in the next two years as more colleges and employers pay it for leads and students pay for learning materials and services.

Ingram will start taking over the physical textbook rental business for Chegg by May 1 and be running all warehousing operations by the end of the year, according to a report in Ink, Bits, & Pixels.

Some Questions for Amazon@Purdue

Purdue University went all out for its new Amazon@Purdue bricks-and-mortar location in the Krach Leadership Center on the West Lafayette, IN, campus. The university president was there to cut a ceremonial ribbon and student employees in Amazon gear gave away gift cards and apparel to students in attendance.

But not everyone was impressed.

Tom Frey, owner of the University Book Store, which is technically off-campus but only by a few feet, has given lawyers a list of 57,000 titles Amazon is selling below his costs, according to a report by the public broadcasting station on campus. The University Book Store has been a licensed retailer of Purdue items and has sold textbooks to Purdue students for 75 years.

Bobby Haddix, the Purdue student body president, also questioned giving space in a building designed for students to an outside corporate entity. Amazon even flew Haddix out to Seattle so he could learn more about the company after he made two presentations against the idea to school trustees.

“This is a brand-new building. It was supposed to be specifically dedicated for students,” Haddix told the radio station. “And the decision was made over the summer while there weren’t a lot of students here to share their input to give this conference room away.”

Online Reading Needs to Improve

Students have become very proficient in operating technology, but that doesn’t mean they comprehend what they are reading on-screen. Online learning requires students to use the Internet to read and grasp new information, but a study by the University of Connecticut found a large achievement gap.

The New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension: Rethinking the Reading Achievement Gap studied the reading habits of seventh-graders in two Connecticut school districts. The two groups of students were asked to complete online reading assignments in science and then write reports on their findings, but both did poorly.

“They tend to be strong in social networking, texting, video, and gaming, and incredibly weak with information,” Donald Leu, director of the new Literacies Research Lab at UConn, said in an article for District Administration. “We’ve learned that it’s important to look at those categories of skills very differently and not to assume that students are strong with online information use when they are strong with social networking.”

There was also an income gap between the two districts studied. Students who lived in the district with a median family income of $119,000 got about half of the questions right, while students in the district with a median family income of $59,000 responded correctly on fewer than 25% of the answers.

Leu said the difference may be due to spending more time teaching students to do well on standardized tests rather than to online literacy skills. He suggested students should be doing more online reading and that librarians trained in online research need take a lead role in the instruction.

OER Can Keep Students in Class

Open educational resources (OER) are often presented as a way for college students to save money. The discussion should perhaps focus on how OER can keep students in class.

Many studies report that some students put off buying textbooks because of cost. When that happens, they often fall behind in their assignments, which can lead them to withdraw from the institution. Matt Reed, vice president for academic affairs, Holyoke Community College, Holyoke, MA, said he believes OER should be considered a retention solution, since having course materials at little or no cost would contribute to student success.

Institutions will still have to find affordable ways to put larger electronic devices in the hands of all students, but Reed is optimistic it’s an issue that can resolved.

“I can’t help but think that the device issue is much more solvable than, say, the political opposition to free community college,” Reed wrote in his Inside Higher Ed blog. “And the payoff isn’t merely economic. Students who have class materials from day one are likelier to succeed academically than students who don’t. This is an economic issue, but it’s also a retention issue. And it’s one we can solve without waiting for the political winds to shift.”