Gates Foundation launches higher ed podcast “To A Degree”

What: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced the launch of a new podcast series dedicated to higher education. By 2025, two-thirds of jobs will require education beyond high school – yet half of students who start college don’t graduate, and a high-income student is five times as likely to have a degree by age 24 than a low-income student.

The profile of college students is also changing. The majority of students are no longer 18- to 21-year-olds who enroll full-time and live on campus. Rather, the majority of students work while going to college, 40 percent are 25 or older, one-third are first generation college goers, and many are low-income students and students of color.

To A Degree aims to show how higher education must evolve to better support today’s college students. The goal of the foundation’s Postsecondary Success team is to help more students – especially low-income and first-generation students – graduate at higher rates, with high-quality degrees or certificates at an affordable price.…Read More

How tech-based peer mentoring is radically changing recruitment

Too often, “old methods” of introducing high school students to college life still involve paid college-recruiting agents who visit their high school. These “college reps” introduce themselves, distribute printed information, discuss entrance requirements and invite applications.  For those with the time and resources, a “college visit” may be included.

Both systems are usually very structured and rarely involve actually talking with college-age students.  How often do high school students get the opportunity to talk with college students about being successful, both in high school and at the college level? The high school senior almost never speaks with more interesting and authentic people like first-year students, students in their area of interest, college and university professors, or students nearing graduation.

How Technology Can Change Antiquated Recruitment…Read More

App revolutionizes digital credentials, wins higher ed industry award

Digital platform pioneer Credly, in partnership with Lumina Foundation, the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) and the American Council on Education (ACE), announced today the winner of a special ideation challenge aimed at generating breakthrough ideas to help bridge the skills gap for education and industry association leaders.

The winning submission by Chicago-based architect Larry Kearns is a concept for a web-based recruiting ecosystem that matches candidates with potential employers based on a data-driven record of their perspectives and skills, verified by digital credentials.

The judging panel found that Kearns’ proposal for a skill matching application brought a unique perspective to connecting employers and employees and offered an innovative approach to learning pathway design and the role played by industry and trade associations.…Read More

What will learning look like in 2025?

Dawn breaks on a gorgeous morning in summer 2025. Peter has been waiting for this for months. It’s New Student Orientation Day at My University, Peter’s customized version of four formerly separate independent colleges that functionally merged several years earlier.

The Student Experience in 2025

Orientation through VR…Read More

Teachers: Khan-style online tutorials go 2.0 with new technology

Video tutorials in the style made famous by Sal Khan of the Khan Academy changed the face of education, empowering anywhere, anytime learning. However, they were Tutorials 1.0. We now have Tutorials 2.0. The LightBoard has arrived.

A Giant Leap Forward to More “Human” Online Learning

This next stage of evolution of tutorials allows students to get an enhanced experience with a more personal connection between the student and the teacher. Students no longer view only writing with a disembodied voice. They now get to see their teacher, complete with facial expressions, gestures and all the “human” things that make person-to-person explanations appealing. While nothing can replace a one-to-one, face-to-face explanation, this is better than anything in the past.…Read More

Incredible gains in student retention noted by universities using edtech strategies

At the heart of today’s college completion conundrum is the challenge of helping more first-generation college-goers, especially low-income students and students of color, start and finish strong. While first-generation students compose nearly one-third of students entering two- or four-year colleges and universities in the US, only 11 percent of low-income, first-generation students earn a bachelor’s degree within six years. The first-year experience is especially problematic for these students—the Pell Institute found that low-income, first-generation students were almost four times more likely to leave college after the first year than more affluent peers.

More than Financial Support

How can institutions help first-generation students beat the odds in their first year? Increasingly, student success experts find that experiences beyond the classroom walls may hold the key. First-generation, minority and low-income students need more than just financial support to be successful to stay on track toward completing college.…Read More

What the college digital experience will look like 5 years from now

Like many other industries, much of the change occurring in colleges and universities is driven by the rise of mobile devices, the consumerization of IT, and higher customer expectations. With so many educational choices both on-campus and online, institutions have had to set aside their aversion for change in order to meet the digital desires of a new generation of students and compete on a global scale. But what will higher ed’s strategic digital efforts look like in the future?

Then: Simply Keeping Pace

Along with the economic downturn of the late 2000s that caused students, parents, and even prospective employers to begin questioning the value of a college degree, which resulted trends in career and employability-focused education programs and CBE, as well as the replacement of legacy administrative systems with more modern systems, the move to a more digital campus has also been driven in a large part by the demands of a tech savvy-generation raised with smart device in hand and accustomed to anytime, anywhere access to information. Accreditation agencies today are not only looking at student competency and course offerings when rating performance — they’re also looking at student satisfaction surveys and student outcomes.…Read More

A new technology is fundamentally changing learning–here’s how

Students across the U.S. are learning how the body works by studying the anatomy of a frog, a vertebrate with an organ system similar to that of humans. But unlike traditional education lab work that uses real specimens or images of a virtual frog on a screen, a new approach to this standard experiment is taking the act of learning to a unique interactive level, thanks to the use of technology known as blended reality.

What is Blended Reality?

Blended reality combines the physical and digital with augmented reality that takes sensory inputs – sounds, scents, sites and haptic or “touch” feedback–to blur the lines between the real and virtual worlds. By replacing a keyboard and mouse with a touch mat and 2D and 3D scanners, blended reality computers enable students to take actual or printed objects and “put” them right into the computer to create a 3D animated image they can rotate and manipulate. In a blended reality lab dissection, for example, students can scan images of individual frog organs and assemble them with the touch of a keystroke–giving them an in-depth understanding of how each part works and how they work together as a system.…Read More

16 of this year’s biggest teaching and learning issues in higher ed

Since 2011, the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) has surveyed the higher education teaching and learning community to identify its key issues. This year, the top three dominant issues within colleges and universities include those around faculty development, academic transformation and digital and information literacies.

The community polled by the ELI is wide in scope: the initiative solicits input from all those participating in the support of the teaching and learning mission, including professionals from the IT organization, the center for teaching and learning, the library, and the dean’s and provost’s offices.

According to college and university thought leaders, these are the 16 biggest teaching and learning issues in 2017:…Read More

3 tech hacks that help universities cut costs (not students)

It’s no secret that cost control is a hot topic for colleges and universities across the country. Following the 2008 recession, most states have struggled with limited budgets and have had to make difficult decisions that, at times, have included reducing funding for education. In fact, 46 states spent less per student in 2016 than they did before the recession.

Who really suffers as a result of these funding cuts? Students. It’s simple math: As funding decreases, tuition often climbs. Specifically, since 2008, tuition has risen 33 percent for colleges and universities across the United States. Arizona’s tuition rates have increased the most, jumping 72 percent between 2008 and 2014.

But let’s face it: Institutions can only raise tuition fees so high before it begins to affect enrollment, which drops as fewer students are able to foot the bill. And because developing students is the basic premise of higher education, the situation seems pretty clear—colleges need a better way to manage costs.…Read More

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