eLearning, EdTech, Talent Development: Recent Episodes
eLearningInside
Teachers today have access to technology and instructional tools that were mostly absent from classrooms just a few years ago. While well-versed in pedagogy and learning modalities, many may not be so familiar with some media that has recently begun to revolutionize digital learning. Third party instructional designers have long helped to deliver lesson plans and assessments to teachers, and recently, some of the same companies have begun to connect the dots between older styles of teaching, rigorously tested pedagogy, and emerging technology.
In the competitive coding bootcamp market, Trilogy has emerged as one private academy that seems likely to persist over time, even as many competitors stumble. In May 2018, Trilogy announced that it had secured $50 million in a Series B funding round to fuel expansion of its platform and global impact. Buy-in came from Highland Capital Partners, Macquarie Capital, and Exceed Capital with participation from several other existing investors, including Rethink Impact, City Light Capital, and Triumph Capital LLC. Six months later, Trilogy, which now markets itself as a “ Workforce Accelerator,” is following through on its expansion promise with two new acquisitions.
Despite growing concerns about the performance of online charter schools, this week, a New Mexico state judge granted one troubled online school the green light to keep operating. The trouble started earlier this year when the New Mexico Public Education Department ordered New Mexico Connections Academy, a Santa Fe-based online charter school, to close. This week, Judicial District Judge Francis Mathew issued a ruling that concluded the school did not need to shut down. According to Judge Mathew, the Public Education Department’s actions had violated state law and on this basis, he ordered the department to renew the virtual school’s charter.
On October 4, Purdue University’s local chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which is the association that represents Purdue University’s faculty, issued a strongly stated resolution calling on Purdue Global to address multiple labor violations. So far, Purdue University has not officially responded to the AAUP resolution, but this is also not entirely surprising. Since Purdue University purchased Kaplan in 2017, the AAUP has been at odds with Purdue University’s senior administrators and all signs indicate that the fight over the new online university known as Purdue Global has just begun.
For years, student grades have been formed exclusively through how learners perform on certain assignments and criteria. In some subjects, like math, a student’s abilities may be very apparent. They will either be able to answer a given problem correctly or they will not. But in other areas, it’s foggier and much more subjective. Inconsistencies across grades and classes are inevitable. In a best case scenario, these inconsistencies are informed by human error or individual connections. In a worst case scenario, societal biases creep in and reinforce existing stereotypes among younger generations. Two researchers from Utrecht University in the Netherlands think they have a solution: expert elicitation.
Almost fortnightly, it seems, a report or article emerges about the increase in tuition at American institutions of higher education. Some describe what caused the hikes, and what policies can be adopted to reverse the trend. Many of these reports tend to land on the same conclusion: state disinvestment in higher education that began during the Great Recession has driven the hikes in tuition we see today. In the past month, discussion at The Century Foundation’s Higher Ed 2020 conference fell into this category, as did a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Last year, eLearning Inside connected with Social Hackers Academy, an NGO based in Athens, Greece that provides a coding bootcamp for migrants, asylum-seekers, and out-of-work individuals to train for jobs in the tech industry. Since we last spoke, the group has trained 22 junior developers and has expanded classes to include instruction in WordPress along with basic digital skills. Having successfully placed graduates in longterm jobs, Social Hackers Academy has launched a crowdfunding campaign with the hopes of generating another 12 months of runway.
As a freshman, arriving on a large university campus is always intimidating. While a few U.S. high schools have over 4,000 students (for example, Brooklyn Tech in New York City), according to the National Center for Educational Statistics, most U.S. high schools have under 1,000 students. This is not the case at the postsecondary level. Once students move on to higher education, they generally find themselves on campuses with several thousands of students, and the transition can be difficult. This is a challenge that Princeton University is now attempting to address with an innovative adoption of Portfolium.
Throughout the past year, Chinese tech startups have received encouragement via policy and financial support from their government in the development and use of artificial intelligence (AI) across sectors. Numerous Chinese edtech companies have recently announced successful development and further funding of their AI-powered education products. Meanwhile in the U.S. and elsewhere, AI education solutions have been determined ineffective by some tech leaders and remain highly unpopular with parents and other privacy advocates.
Securing funding for further education can be exceptionally difficult for learners with poor credit. What loans are available will typically carry a high interest rate. That marks a catch-22 for individuals hoping to advance their socioeconomic status with further education. The company Meritize thinks it has a solution. Based on factors like work history and military service, they offer loans for professional programs on a partial merit basis. On Wednesday, the company closed a Series A funding round to the tune of $13.2 million to help advance their work.
During the past two presidential administrations, internet trolls have manipulated images of George Bush and Barack Obama talking on the phone to make it appear the device was upside-down. These would be some of the lighter instances of what a group at Arizona State University (ASU) calls weaponized narratives, or fake stories created to undermine an opponent. The ASU Weaponized Narrative Initiative focuses on these malicious initiatives of fake news, and on Tuesday, they announced a new partnership with Truepic, an image verifying app and platform, in the run up to the 2018 mid terms.
Despite recent scandals and school closings, Ohio parents continue to choose virtual charters for their kids. Over the weekend, the Dayton Daily News reported that Great River Connections Academy, the first virtual charter to open in the state in five years, began the current school year with an enrollment of 100 students in grades K-12. That figure has since ballooned to 430.
Many professionals take the New Year as an opportunity to resolve to learn something new. January marks the most popular month for numerous online learning sites and platforms. But what to learn? And how can you leverage that education in the marketplace? LinkedIn might be a good place to start. On January 1, LinkedIn provided some guidance with a rundown of the most in-demand professional skills. Their premium LinkedIn Learning courses will also be available for free throughout the month of January.
On Tuesday, the State of the States Report, which tracks school connectivity issues, along with EducationSuperHighway, released their annual report. The bad news is that the digital divide still separates 2.3 million American students from access to broadband internet. The good news is that 1.9 million of these learners live in just 62 districts across the country.
On October 1, the Harvard Extension School (HES) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced a collaboration that will offer learners a chance to pursue a Master of Liberal Arts (ALM) degree at Harvard Extension School after completing a MITx MicroMasters credential. The new program will focus on students currently pursuing MicroMasters credentials in Management, Sustainability, or Development Practice.
The Open University, currently the U.K.’s largest institution of higher education, is making a play to capture a bigger slice of the online distance learning pie. As reported by the Financial Times, the public university has hired IBIS Capital with the goal of raising £40 million (with an additional £10 million committed by OU) to boost its MOOC platform, FutureLearn.
In 2013, a group of educators from around the state of Vermont gathered for a series of workshops and meetings. The work at these gatherings was used to create new guiding legislation for schools in the Green Mountain State centered around personalized learning. Act 77 includes language that many wouldn’t have heard as frequently five years ago. It called for enhanced access to online and blended learning, dual enrollment in other programs, and early college courses. In addition, from grades 7 to 12, it stipulated that schools assess using proficiencies and that every learner establish a personalized learning pathway.
In an age of online education, eLearning, mLearning, and virtual education, most people no longer used the term “distance education.” After all, when most people think about term, what comes to mind is a bulky stack of photocopied articles arriving in the mail. Nevertheless, the Online Learning Consortium (OLC), in collaboration with Pearson and Tyton Partners, continue to measure the prevalence of distance education nationwide, and their 2018 study reveals that, whatever you call it, distance education continues to grow.
On September 28, TechCrunch reported that Udacity has cut 5% of its staff globally since August. The startup, which was once best known for offering MOOCs but is now primarily known for offering its trademarked Nanodegrees, is worth an estimated $1 billion. What remains unclear is why Udacity is trimming staff at this time.
LAIX Inc, the company that developed the English learning app Liulishuo, is hoping to disrupt the English language teaching and tutoring market with AI software intended to replace human instructors. Traders and investors see a good deal of promise in that model. Last Thursday, the company raised $71.9 million with their IPO.
In late September, the United Arab Emirates-based Sharjah’s NAMA Women Advancement Establishment launched a new series of MOOCs with a mandate to empower women and promote life-long learning. The MOOCs will be offered by Badiri E-Academy, NAMA’s education.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Education put out a curious press release. The headline read “National Student Loan Cohort Default Rate Falls.” In other words, graduates who took out federal loans to pay for college are defaulting—as a group—at lower rates than previous years.
While American families remain seriously divided over where they choose to to send their kids to school, their ability to make that choice is a popular issue. That’s the conclusion of a recent poll from the Hornstein Center for Policy, Polling and Analysis at Long Island University. The study details how thorny and complicated the topic of school choice can be.
The Empowered Brain, a suite of apps for Google Glass intended to aid and intervene in educating learners with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), continues to be tested in the classroom. Earlier this month, a team of researchers led by the Empowered Brain founder Ned Sahin published a case study of the technology in use at a public school in Massachusetts.
The University of Pennsylvania has already made it into headlines once this month with the announcement of an online Bachelor’s degree offering. Last week, however, a blog post described a very different eLearning initiative. Penn Medicine runs one of the preeminent medical programs in the U.S. their hospitals are routinely ranked among the top 135010 in the country. One reason might be that their transplant patients get a healthy dose of education before even getting on to a list.
On Wednesday, The Century Foundation convened their event Higher Ed 2020: College Affordability Ideas for the Next Generation and Beyond at New York University. The opening panel brought together a series of experts who easily reached a general consensus on how to solve issues of sky-high college tuition: increase state funding and establish federal-state partnerships. The question of how was less one-sided.
Over the past year, eLearning Inside has interviewed dozens of founders, investors, and researchers in the edtech sector. As we look forward to 2019, we decided to reach out to some of the people we talked to in 2018 along with a few new voices to gather predictions on edtech for the coming year. In this two-part feature, we share five experts’ predictions for edtech in 2019. Today’s post includes perspectives from Ukraine and the United States.
If you’re contemplating your New Year’s resolutions and don’t want to give something up in 2019, consider learning something new instead. If you’re wondering what new skills to acquire, a great place to start is with Jeff Maggioncalda recently published list of skills you’ll need in 2019. Not surprisingly, Maggioncalda, Coursera’s CEO, suggests learning more about artificial intelligence (AI) and data science, but he also highlights a few other key skills for 2019.
For any new technology, an evolutionary process occurs. Like the tadpole that eventually takes to land as a frog, tech is invented, brought to market, and with any luck, scaled. The companies that build these technologies go through similar changes. To discuss new edtech in 2018, therefore, doesn’t involve a quick scan down the list of patents filed. Our rundown of new edtech this year spans technology that has been in development for decades to that which has not yet been widely adopted or even brought to market in a viable way. Many of these products and services have hundreds of millions in venture capital backing them; others have been entirely bootstrapped by their developers.
Digital distraction isn’t just a problem facing the young. Adults in business meetings and even elected officials also have a difficult time avoiding digital distraction. In schools, however, the problem is rampant. One 2017 study carried out at Michigan State University discovered that students in an introductory psychology course spent up to a third of their time surfing nonacademic sites, even though they were well aware of the fact that researchers were tracking their computer use during class time. Now, NetRef wants to provide educators with a solution to the growing problem of digital distraction.
Trilogy Education, the coding school that has made a name for itself by collaborating with universities, is going to Harvard. On December 4, Trilogy and the Harvard Extension School (HES) announced The Coding Boot Camp at Harvard Extension School. The goal is to offer an intensive web development program that will teach both front-end and back-end skills to Boston-area residents.
December 10 marks a big milestone for one of the most widely used educational resources in the world. On this day in 1768, publication began in Edinburgh Scotland of the first version of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. A full 225 years after, (25 years ago today), the encyclopedia first went digital, hopping on the eb.com universal resource location of the World Wide Web.
Since Duolingo launched in 2011, it has been gaining fans as a fun and free way to learn languages such as English, French, Spanish, German, and Mandarin. More recently, however, the platform has started to add languages that are less widely spoken, including two native languages: the Navajo language, Diné, and the Hawaiian language, Ōlelo Hawaiʻi.
Since the online study platform Quizlet launched in 2007, the company attracted users by offering it for free. That open access drew millions to the platform. In October, the site announced they had cleared 50 million active monthly users. On Tuesday, the company debuted a new feature: Quizlet Premium Content.