Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Closing the ‘drop-out gap’ for students near credit completion

New research reveals that nearly 1 in 5 students who do not graduate from college have completed 75 percent or more of their required credits, highlighting a troubling gap in college completion.

The analysis of more than 300,000 students at 53 institutions, released by Civitas Learning, also shows that 1 in 10 students will reach the 90 percent credit completion threshold before leaving without a degree.

At four-year institutions, about 13 percent of nonpersisting students had completed 75 percent or more of credit threshold, and about 6 percent had reached the 90 percent credit threshold.…Read More

7 alarming problems with students’ critical thinking

Critical thinking is one of the top-requested skills employers look for in job applicants, but are colleges and universities doing enough to help students develop this skill?

Fifty-nine percent of surveyed adults ages 18-31 who attend or attended a college or university say they are very confident in their soft skills, including critical thinking—but that same survey also shows a decrease in that group’s ability to distinguish between false and factual information.

The second annual State of Critical Thinking survey from MindEdge asks respondents to complete a brief quiz requiring them to use digital literacy and critical thinking skills. In 2018, respondents scored lower on every question compared to 2017, and 52 percent of this year’s respondents received a failing grade.…Read More

First-of-its-kind gene editing curriculum emerges at community college

A $1 million NSF grant has paved the way for what may be the first-ever community college to include gene editing curriculum technology.

In partnership with Christiana Care’s Gene Editing Institute, Delaware Technical Community College (Del Tech) has developed a unique curriculum that will include gene editing in two courses in the biological sciences program.

As part of the NSF grant, Del Tech also will hold a series of workshops to teach gene editing techniques to community college faculty across the U.S. The workshops will help faculty develop their own gene editing curriculum.…Read More

A blueprint for creating a successful MOOC

Brick-to-click education is not a matter of if, but rather, now. In a constantly growing global community, education modalities are evolving to meet the demands of a knowledge-thirsty and driven population.

One approach to meet these demands is the development of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). MOOCs are intended to:

  • Host large numbers of students.
  • Accommodate an internationally diverse community.
  • Increase access for students from non-traditional regions.
  • Support international marketing and recruitment strategies for universities.

However, the almost-10-year experience with MOOCs has yielded mixed outcomes. The average retention rate for MOOCs is four percent of the enrolled class, which defeats the purpose of providing accessible, available, and equitable education.…Read More

6 steps to gain faculty support for online learning

I have the unique privilege of viewing the development of online learning through three different lenses: as former chaired and tenured faculty and program head at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, as former dean at Babson College in Mass., and now, as principal learning strategist at ExtensionEngine. I’ve had many conversations with institutional leaders, and too often they are complaining about how their faculty get in the way of plans for online programs.

Recently, a case at Eastern Michigan University came to light in which the administration and faculty had very different experiences with online efforts. Unfortunately, most situations that I’ve encountered are more similar to this than they are different.

Faculty are often seen as barriers to change, the “opposition” of administration in leading a school to greatness. This doesn’t have to be the case. Let me point out a few changes that would make the process more successful.…Read More

How my university is disrupting higher education

If higher education is a ship, it has struck an iceberg. It’s taking on water rapidly, and while the situation is urgent, many people on board simply refuse to acknowledge what’s happening.

The lifeboats in this metaphor? Disruption.

That may sound a little dramatic, but it’s undeniable that many colleges and universities are stuck in 20th-century—or even 19th- century—models of higher education. In our 21st-century world, that’s no longer acceptable. Institutions are floundering, and if they don’t start to catch up, they are going to sink.…Read More

Creating successful teachers with video coaching

Teaching elementary math—especially explaining the conceptual basis of algorithms and procedures— can be particularly challenging for novice teachers. Therefore, teacher-preparation programs need to provide robust support to help education preservice teachers (EPTs) acquire this specialized content knowledge and teach a high-quality math curriculum.

At the University of Indianapolis, technology-driven initiatives have helped our elementary EPTs master these instructional skills while engaging them in reflective professional learning. In particular, video coaching has been instrumental to our EPTs’ growth.

Implementing video coaching
Nearly four years ago, our junior-level EPTs were struggling to create rich mathematical tasks during their student teaching at a local highly diverse, high-needs elementary school. EPTs were challenged with transforming their lessons from procedures and worksheets to more authentic, child-centered, and culturally-appropriate tasks.…Read More

How digital courseware can ease students’ financial worries

More than 20 million students are currently enrolled in a 4-year degree program, and 7 in 10 students will graduate with not just a degree, but with student loan debt, too.

Digital tools can bring about new and positive change when it comes to higher-ed affordability, said Michael Hansen, chief executive officer of Cengage Learning, in a recent post.

When 38 percent of students say they earned a poor grade and 20 percent say they failed a course, all due to inability to afford the course materials, the focus should turn to education access and how funding restricts that access for many students, Hansen wrote.…Read More

8 key components of cybersecurity education

A newly-released set of cybersecurity curriculum recommendations aims to improve postsecondary cybersecurity education and produce graduates ready to fill alarming workforce gaps.

The new set of guidelines, Cybersecurity Education Curriculum (CSEC2017), is necessary to keep pace with the world’s growing dependence on cyber infrastructure, which spans everything from financial services and utilities to government systems and citizens’ personal information.

The recommendations are the product of a two-year joint task force led by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the IEEE Computer Society (IEEE-CS). The ACM identifies five primary computing disciplines as part of cybersecurity: computer engineering, computer science, information systems, information technology, and software engineering.…Read More