Survey highlights student-faculty divide on classroom tech

by Shalina Chatlani, Education Dive

Students and faculty have somewhat differing views when it comes to technology use in the classroom, according to an Educause Center for Analysis and Research survey with responses from 11,141 faculty members and 35,760 students across the nation, reports Campus Technology.  When it comes to learning management systems, the survey found most faculty are satisfied with it, but students become more frustrated with it as the tasks become more difficult and complicated. And while many students report their teachers have adequate technology skills, they say that few faculty use this technology for more sophisticated purposes. While at least 80% of students said they found student success systems moderately helpful, the survey found most faculty don’t use them. And, when survey authors reported to Campus Technology on how CIOs could support faculty members, they stressed explaining student demands would not sway faculty. Rather, explaining research on effectiveness and learning outcomes to faculty on technology use would be more effective.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/survey-highlights-student-faculty-divide-on-classroom-tech/510201/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=33565

Higher ed is becoming more entrenched in tech — what does this mean for CIOs?

by Education Dive

Higher education campuses are hotbeds for cybersecurity threats — college and university servers house countless pieces of data on current and past faculty, students and other stakeholders. But as institutions become more and more technologically entrenched — and customers demand that the college experience be more modern, while still guaranteeing safety — securing this data and ensuring that members of the institution’s community do not inappropriately handle ed tech becomes more of a daunting task for administrators, in particular CIOs.

https://www.educationdive.com/news/higher-ed-is-becoming-more-entrenched-in-tech-what-does-this-mean-for-cio/507825/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=33555

Democratizing education with technology

by EMMANUEL BRUCE , Graphic Online

Technology is now presenting educators and students with a new, low cost tool for teaching and learning through the Internet. It is for this reason that the Springboard, Your Virtual University, a radio programme on Joy FM, used last Sunday’s edition to look at how to explore technology and learning to transition one’s career. The show, which is hosted by Rev. Albert Ocran, had the Chief Executive Officer of TECHAIDE, Mr Kafui Prebbie, the Human Resource Business Partner at Ecobank, Mr Nii Koi Kotey, and Mr Derrydean Dadzie, who took listeners through how they could develop themselves through personal learning and some of the opportunities that existed in it. Rev. Ocran, in his introductory remarks, said personal development and informal learning gave people the power to learn whatever they liked, as it puts the power in the hands of the individual. “In personal learning, nobody gives you what you learn, you choose what you want and learn it. There are no limitations,” he said.

https://www.graphic.com.gh/business/business-news/democratizing-education-with-technology.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=33535

New website offers alternatives to class schedule stress

by Alexander Holcomb, UT Daily Beacon

A new, free website is making it easier for University of Tennessee students to plan and enroll in the classes they need. The website, coursicle.com, notifies its users when a previously filled class has an open seat and creates potential schedules for the next semester. Tara Aida, the co-founder of the site, helped build coursicle.com during her freshman year at Harvard. “We offer two main services,” Aida said. “The first is an online course search engine and planner, and it allows students to browse classes easily, save them to a weekly calendar, save multiple schedules and also see what classes their friends are considering taking — their Facebook friends. And the second service is a notification system which allows students to sign up to receive a text message as soon as a class has an available seat.”

http://www.utdailybeacon.com/news/new-website-offers-alternatives-to-class-schedule-stress/article_b96bf0a8-a12b-11e6-80cd-07c8096167ad.html

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=20226

Buy new technology? You must also invest your time in learning it

By Darth Vaughn and Casey Flaherty, Legal Rebels

Anyone can take classes at Harvard. Few people get into Harvard. But HarvardX, the school’s iteration of Massive Open Online Courses, is open to everyone. There are similar offerings from MIT, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, Cornell, et al. The internet has taken the democratization of knowledge to unprecedented heights. And our selective institutions of higher education should be commended for their contribution to the global learning community. Most people still don’t learn. Like libraries, MOOCs are open to all but only used by some.

http://www.abajournal.com/legalrebels/article/lawyers_too_busy_to_learn

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=20218

Five facts parents should know about online learning

BY ANDY REID, Rapid Growth

Online learning, while firmly established in colleges, isn’t always an option considered by parents of high school students. But with more and more options available through schools and other brick-and-mortar institutions, online courses have found their place in traditional settings.  Here are five facts that explore what online learning offers young students and teachers throughout Michigan.

http://www.rapidgrowthmedia.com/features/fivefactsonline110216.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=20206

Program helps adults go back to class

By Nathan Thompson, Examiner-Enterprise

Madison Million is your typical 17-year-old dealing with an atypical situation. Million dropped out of Tulsa Public Schools because of the family issues. She said she attempted to take online classes. The adult education program in Bartlesville uses a blended curriculum format. “This is a better environment for me to learn than where I was at,” Million said. “This has been an amazing experience because I didn’t know what to expect. I thought this was going to be just like high school where there were a whole bunch of people in a class and there was no room for anyone else and not being able to get any one-on-one help. That is not the case here. The staff and teachers are great and they take the time to get me the help I need to pass the tests.” After starting the program last year, Million has taken three of the four required tests to get her GED. Her next test over math is scheduled for next week. To get to that point, she attends GED classes four times a week at Will Rogers.

http://examiner-enterprise.com/news/local-news/program-helps-adults-go-back-class

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14273

Do Online Students Cheat More on Tests?

By: Maryellen Weimer, Faculty Focus

“Based on the results in this study, students in online courses, with unmonitored testing, are no more likely to cheat on an examination than students in hybrid and F2F courses using monitored testing, nor are students with low GPAs more likely to enroll in online courses.” (p. 72) Some had suggested that because students who had not taken an online course reported that they thought it would be easier to cheat in online courses, students with lower GPAs might be motivated to take online courses. There were only 19 students in the online course in this study, but across these three sections, GPA did not differ significantly. Using this interesting model to predict cheating, there was no evidence that it occurred to a greater degree in the unmonitored tests given in the online course. That’s the good news. The bad news: “There is ample opportunity for cheating across all types of course delivery modes, which has been demonstrated through decades of research.” (p. 73) In other words, we still have a problem, it just isn’t more serious in online courses, based on these results.

http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/do-online-students-cheat-more-on-tests/

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14271

Online Research Repository Adds Finer Access Control

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology

An online digital repository for academic researchers is being updated. The newest version of Figshare from Digital Science puts an emphasis on controls for more granular management of data. This repository allows users to make their research available in a citable, shareable and discoverable manner. People can upload any file format — figures, datasets, media, papers, posters, presentations and filesets — to be made viewable in a browser. According to the company, increasingly, researchers must develop a data management plan as a requirement of their funding or must address data sharing in interdisciplinary or cross-institutional projects. To address these changes and other areas of usage, the new release focuses on three areas: control, discoverability and usability.

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/05/online-research-repository-adds-finer-access-control.aspx

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from Educational Technology http://people.uis.edu/rschr1/et/?p=14268

6 STEM and research grant opportunities

By Laura Devaney, eSchool News

School funding challenges show no sign of abating, and budgets remain stretched to the limit. Many educators and administrators rely on school grants to fund important projects and opportunities for students. Each month, eSchool News compiles a list of the most current education grants expiring soon. This month’s grants are all relevant to research and STEM teaching and learning.

http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/11/07/stem-research-grant-039/

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Harvard’s ‘active’ system helping other universities improve outcomes

By Ron Bethke, eCampus News

Learning Catalytics, an active learning system developed at Harvard, has led to big improvements for students at the University of North Carolina. Some students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill have been improving their test scores by more than 3 percentage points on average in the past year, and it’s largely the result of a Harvard-created software that emphasizes active learning. The software, which is called Learning Catalytics, was implemented by Professor Kelly Hogan, the Director of Instructional Innovation for the College of Arts and Sciences and the Senior Lecturer in the Biology Department, in her non-majors Biology class in the fall of 2013.

http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/active-learning-harvard-693/

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The growing appeal of a three-year degree

by Bruce Kennedy, Moneywatch

In a trend that began during the depths of the Great Recession, some students who needed get a four-degree without a four-year degree’s cost started trying to complete their courses in three years. But even as the U.S. economy is leaving that devastating slump slowly behind it, that trend is apparently hanging on — and perhaps gaining some momentum. About two dozen private U.S. colleges now offer three-year degree programs. The financial advantages of a three-year program seem obvious. College costs continue to rise, with the median cost of a year’s tuition and fees for undergraduate study at both public and private, nonprofit, four-year institutions currently stands at just over $11,000, according to the College Board.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-growing-appeal-of-a-three-year-college-degree/

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Teachers use technology to instruct outside of school

by Mark DiOrio, Observer-Dispatch

In a traditional classroom, the teacher gives a lecture and assigns homework. Now reverse it. Students watch the lesson at home, or on the bus using their smartphone, computer or tablet. The homework? It’s done in class. The idea of the flipped classroom is becoming more and more common, said Patrice Hallock, Utica College Education Department chairwoman. “The students are actively engaged in the classroom under the supervision of the teacher, so they are doing activities that apply the content in the classroom,” Hallock said. “Whenever there is higher student engagement, there’s more learning that occurs.”

http://www.uticaod.com/news/x1783713601/Teachers-use-technology-to-instruct-outside-of-school

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Libraries in the Time of MOOCs

by Curtis Kendrick and Irene Gashurov, EDUCAUSE Review

MOOCs give librarians new opportunities to help shape the conversation about changes in higher education and to guide administrators, faculty, and students through these changes. To assume this role, librarians must understand the MOOCs landscape. Numerous stakeholders will have an interest in the massive intellectual property that ultimately resides in libraries’ owned and licensed digital repositories. Studying and adopting technologies to manage and monitor MOOC usage of library resources will be essential to controlling access and tightening Internet safeguards.

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/libraries-time-moocs

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A Compendium of MOOC Perspectives, Research, and Resources

by Judith A. Pirani, EDUCAUSE Review

Debates about MOOCs and their attendant controversies continue to proliferate. What administrators and IT leaders in higher education need, however, is an overview of MOOCs and information resources to help fathom what they mean for institutions. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) remain higher education’s hot and sexy topic, influencing discussion and media, and creating conjecture and controversy. Nearly every publication and pundit has offered a view on the subject, resulting in an avalanche of information for busy IT leaders and others who want to discern what all this means for their institutions. This compendium attempts to lend a helping hand, recounting perspectives, research, and resources gleaned from a search of EDUCAUSE and other published sources. It is by no means absolute, but rather aims to provide a starting point of discovery for interested parties.

http://www.educause.edu/ero/article/compendium-mooc-perspectives-research-and-resources

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