Digital Learning - beyond eLearning and Blended Learning

More than 6 million students took at least one online course in 2015, representing more than a quarter (29.7 percent) of all higher education enrollments that year, according to a new report from Digital Learning Compass. Among that 29.7 percent, it's almost evenly split between students who took some but not all courses online (15.4 percent) and those who took every class online (14.3 percent). In contrast, total online enrollments in 2002 came in just under 10 percent.

Google is opening up its Classroom educational service to allow anyone to create and teach a class on its platform.

Abstract

Gamification of education is a developing approach for increasing learners’ motivation and engagement by incorporating game design elements in educational environments. With the growing popularity of gamification and yet mixed success of its application in educational contexts, the current review is aiming to shed a more realistic light on the research in this field by focusing on empirical evidence rather than on potentialities, beliefs or preferences. Accordingly, it critically examines the advancement in gamifying education. The discussion is structured around the used gamification mechanisms, the gamified subjects, the type of gamified learning activities, and the study goals, with an emphasis on the reliability and validity of the reported outcomes. To improve our understanding and offer a more realistic picture of the progress of gamification in education, consistent with the presented evidence, we examine both the outcomes reported in the papers and how they have been obtained. While the gamification in education is still a growing phenomenon, the review reveals that (i) insufficient evidence exists to support the long-term benefits of gamification in educational contexts; (ii) the practice of gamifying learning has outpaced researchers’ understanding of its mechanisms and methods; (iii) the knowledge of how to gamify an activity in accordance with the specifics of the educational context is still limited. The review highlights the need for systematically designed studies and rigorously tested approaches confirming the educational benefits of gamification, if gamified learning is to become a recognized instructional approach.

After we have seen how to use Google Images to search for and locate free-to-use images, here is another handy visual to help you make the best of your Google search experience. The content of this visual is based on insights provided by Google Search Help. The 12 tips below will help you refine your Google searches and get precise search results using a wide variety of search operators. For instance, you will learn how to search for content published in social media or through hashtags, how to search for a specific site or related sites, how to search for an exact match and many more.
This visual is also available in PDF format from this page.

The Teaching Online Preparation Toolkit (TOPkit) website is a comprehensive resource that provides the postsecondary community with the essential elements required to ensure a very high quality online faculty development program, including a sample course that may be imported into any learning management system and then customized. The links below walk you through a three-step process for planning, developing, and evaluating your program along with supporting resources.

While this initiative is Florida funded and Florida focused, it is not Florida exclusive and we invite you, our colleagues around the world, to explore the TOPkit website and actively participate in its accompanying community of practice.

To learn more about this site and its contributors, please read About Us.

New study reveals that collaboration is still not a prevalent online learning habit; mobile phones have yet to be used for serious learning.

Research consistently shows that effective teachers are the most important school-level factor influencing student outcomes. It therefore comes as no surprise that many education reform efforts focus on supporting and improving the teaching profession. At the same time, technology-focused initiatives continue to gain momentum in education—as seen through the White House’s ConnectEd Initiative and the more than 3,100 superintendents who have signed the Department of Education’s Future Ready pledge to increase student access to quality digital learning.

In the competition for scarce education dollars, these two advocacy camps sometimes conflict, especially if technology seems to be a play for cutting teacher jobs. But teachers and technology are only at odds when advocates from the respective camps fail to see technology’s critical role in complementing high-quality teaching.

At the Learning Counsel’s Annual Gathering and National Awards event, twelve leading districts were recognized for their vision and innovation in integrating digital curriculum and technology into their teaching and learning process. Attendees at the event included top education executives from around the U.S., who gathered to acknowledge exemplary progress and discuss how innovation, technology, and school and classroom remodeling is pushing the education envelope—all in the name of better outcomes for our youth.

“The Learning Counsel is helping education leaders chart a course that includes actionable data and current trends,” said Janell McClure, the director of Digital & Multimedia Learning from Cobb County School District. “These awards share incredible examples of innovative thinking. The knowledge we’ve gained at this Gathering event will guide our work as we continue to strive for excellence in teaching and learning through digital platforms, tools, and practices.”

The top 10 IT issues for 2017, reiterated in today's report:

Information security;
Student success and completion;
Data-informed decision-making;
Strategic leadership;
Sustainable funding;
Data management and governance;
Higher education affordability;
Sustainable staffing;
Next-generation enterprise IT; and
Digital transformation of learning.

Harvard University is issuing certificates for anybody who passes one or more of the same online courses that are also taken by incoming students prior to starting their Harvard Medical School curriculum and used by the institution's faculty to "flip" their classrooms.

The courses make up the university's new "HMX" program, consisting of online instruction for medical education. The HMX classes each last 10 weeks and cover physiology, immunology, genetics and biochemistry. Rather than using "traditional lectures and PowerPoint slides," these programs introduce real-world scenarios, animation, concept videos, notetaking guides, assessments, interactive components and videos that take participants into clinical settings.

The price of each course is $800, or $1,000 when taken two at a time, or $1,800 when all four are taken simultaneously. To get a taste of the experience, the university is granting free access to lessons from the immunology and physiology courses.

As education becomes more accessible with advanced technology, more and more students are opting to enroll in online schools or take some of their traditional college courses online.

But as this trend grows, institutions are finding it necessary to address faculty concerns and ensure online programs are high-quality and rigorous.

Online and blended learning programs from higher-ed institutions across the nation certainly inspire innovation, but higher-ed administrators must consider faculty point of view amidst these changes, according to Building Trust: How to Address Faculty Concerns about Online Education, a new whitepaper from Wiley Education Services.

Nearly five years ago, 58 percent of professors in a Babson College survey described themselves as having “more fear than excitement” about the growth of online learning; more than 80 percent of academic technology administrators, on the other hand, said they felt more excitement than fear.

The whitepaper aims to help administrators better understand faculty concerns about online learning, and it also offers recommendations to address those concerns.

An Albert Einstein chatbot on Facebook Messenger is a window into how the chat service could be used as an educational tool — at least when it comes to simple facts.

The chatbot is intended to promote National Geographic’s new show Genius, which is about Einstein. And it does that, with a constant stream of gifs and pictures from the show. The conversation was also bookended by references by both the show and a March for Science happening on the National Mall in D.C. this weekend.

These new online learning myths are spreading almost as fast as program creation.

New research by National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education Equity Fellow Dr Cathy Stone from The University of Newcastle has informed comprehensive new guidelines for improving student outcomes in post-secondary online learning, with a focus on undergraduate retention and course completion.

Qualitative interviews with 151 higher education practitioners from Australia and the United Kingdom consistently illustrated the need for a strategic, tailored approach to online programs, with an emphasis on student engagement and an individualised approach to monitoring, support and outreach.

The full report, Opportunity through Online Learning: Improving student access, participation and success in higher education and the 10 National Guidelines for Improving Student Outcomes in Online Learning are available on the NCSEHE website.

Technology has changed just about every field, including education. Digital learning is reshaping education in unprecedented ways. The ways in which students learn are changing rapidly thanks to technology, and both students and teachers will benefit from it.

There are several specific changes that we can expect to see as digital learning takes over education. For one, the way teachers present information and how students work with that information has changed. Students are asked to be more hands-on and collaborative than ever before. There are also new skills that students must learn, such as digital literacy.

Massive open online course (MOOC) provider edX is introducing 16 new MicroMasters programs this spring that span business analytics, digital product management, cybersecurity and data science fields.

The expansion builds on the success of the MicroMasters program launch last September, when MIT debuted 19 programs that covered topics such as artificial intelligence and supply chain management. For this launch, continuing partners and their MicroMasters courses include:

Columbia University: Business Analytics  
Rochester Institute of Technology: Cybersecurity; and
Curtin University: Marketing in a Digital World.

Users without Google’s  G Suite for Education accounts can now access Google Classroom from a personal Google account. Classroom also offers more administrator controls that allow G Suite users with domains outside of their own to join.

The company said in a blog post announcement that teachers and students will now be able to use their personal accounts to teach or attend classes and manage assignments. Sometime over the coming weeks, Google will give personal accounts the ability to create their own classes as well. For now, administrators will notice that Classroom has updated settings with new controls that allow them to easily monitor who can join their classes. To add a user from an outside domain, for example, both the administrator and other user need to whitelist the other’s domain in their settings. This feature enables outside guests, like visiting teachers or students, to quickly integrate into their host’s Classroom.

In many cases, there seems to be a tendency to water down expectations when it comes to integrating technology.  

During a recent presentation on digital pedagogy for deeper learning I asked attendees to discuss then share out on TodaysMeet how they were effectively integrating technology in their classroom, school, or district.  There was an emphasis on describing in detail what effective use of technology meant to them.  As the results poured in there were a few consistent responses that stood out. Most attendees flat out stated that they or their schools/districts were not effectively integrating technology. Others confessed that they weren’t sure what effective use constituted.  Many of the remaining responses centered on just a listing of tools that were being used as a measure of effectiveness. 

Last week, I spoke with a friend who helps schools launch blended-learning programs about what she sees as the biggest barriers inhibiting program success. Her answers were intriguing. First, she suggested that schools need to ensure that teachers, students, parents, and administrators all have a shared vision for why blended learning would be good for their students before getting into the “what” and “how” of a program. But after developing this shared vision, one of the biggest challenges, she noted, was helping teachers trust their students.

By definition, blended learning gives students more control over the time, place, path, or pace of their learning. But for experienced teachers in a traditional classroom setting, it can be difficult to imagine a class operating successfully when students have a high degree of autonomy. My friend noted that teachers often worry about students surfing the web when they are supposed to be working or not showing up to school at all if their blended-learning program affords them flexible school hours.