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.

Could GRIT be a trend that sticks in higher-ed?

A new partnership focuses on teaching students to improve their GRIT in order to help them accomplish their goals.

pearson-students-gritRecently, the idea of GRIT, or Growth, Resilience, Instinct and Tenacity, is increasingly seen by educators and even the Obama Administration as a key to success in higher education.

And the same goes for employers. A poll sent to 20,000 employers across the world by PEAK Learning revealed that if a decision came down to someone with perfect skills and qualifications but little to no GRIT versus someone with high GRIT but missing a few pieces of useful experience, a whopping 98 percent said they would rather employ the later.

PEAK Learning was founded in 1987 by Paul G. Stoltz, Ph.D., as part of his 35-year quest to answer the question of why certain people win or succeed while others do not. Initially, Stoltz turned to everything from psychology to neuroscience, but was unable to find any substantive answers. Eventually, he discovered what he believes is an accurate predictor: adversity.…Read More

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A new pathway for job-seeking IT students

CodersTrust focuses on helping students improve their IT and coding skills for outsourcing and the online freelance market

coding-CodersTrust-IT

According to a report by McKinsey, freelance portals will create more than 150 million jobs globally by 2025.

And a new education startup called CodersTrust is aiming to teach students new IT and coding skills in order to land those freelance and outsourcing jobs–a goal that CodersTrust believes will be critical for future economies.…Read More

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Why ‘potential completers’ should matter to your institution

Competency-based education programs could prove useful to a specific set of students, known as ‘potential completers’

competency-based-education31 million students have left college without earning a degree in the last 20 years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, leaving a huge amount of almost-students degree bereft.

Welcome to the term ‘potential completers’: a specific set of students characterized by a set of personal issues (financial struggles, simple boredom, family concern, lack of time) that forces them to quit a traditional degree pathway, though ideally they’d like to continue with their education.

Many of these people go on to accumulate a respectable skill set after leaving college, enabling them to become experienced “potential completers” down the line, said President of Excelsior College in Albany, New York, Dr. John Ebersole, LPD. “They should be valued and honored.”…Read More

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The 30 best online programs for veterans

Among federal crackdown of companies serving student veterans, U.S. News and World Report releases rankings of best online programs

veterans-online-educationThe treatment of veteran and military students has been in the news a lot lately — but for all the wrong reasons.

In May, student lender Sallie Mae agreed to pay more than $97 million in settlements to resolve allegations that it charged members of the military “excessive rates” on student loans.

Several departments, including the Department of Justice and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, alleged that Sallie Mae violated the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act by improperly obtaining default judgements and by imposing interest rates that exceeded the 6 percent allowed by federal law.…Read More

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Empty classrooms and online learning

A study conducted by the University System of Georgia found that its buildings are only in use 25 percent of the work week.

The University System of Georgia’s buildings are empty about 75 percent of the work week, a study conducted by the system has found. The findings have already prompted some system building projects to be halted and other universities to consider similar studies on their own campuses.

According to the study, which examined all 31 of Georgia’s public universities, the low use may be because of the way most residential campuses condense the school day to fit between the hours of 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., Monday through Thursday.

As a potential solution, the researchers suggest forgetting about those “peak hours” and spreading the classroom use throughout the day, aiming for the buildings to be used 40 hours per week.…Read More

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British company improves student engagement online

BlikBook is a social platform that allows students and educators to connect online through a specific question.

A British company aiming to improve online engagement in higher education has just raised more than $1.5 million in funding and is eyeing the United States market.

BlikBook started in 2010, but is now gaining popularity in England and Ireland. This summer, the platform is being used in courses at a third of universities in the two countries.  The company recently announced that it will move its headquarters to Dublin, though an office will remain in London, where the company was launched.

“This is a nice first test for us in geographic expansion,” said Cheyne Tan, BlikBook’s managing director. “We’re really driving out trials in the U.S. now. We’ve been selectively, and quietly, doing tests there.  It’s definitely a market that understands this type of thing.”…Read More

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Brief relief, long-term questions on student loans

About $1.2 billion of the $6 billion cost of the low-interest rate extension comes from a GOP plan to limit federal subsidies on Stafford loans for undergraduates to six years.

Congress might have averted a doubling of interest rates on millions of new federal student loans, but the fix is only for a year, leaving students on edge over whether they’ll face a similar increase next summer.

“It’s scary,” said Faith Nebergall, a student at Indiana University whose loans currently total upward of $20,000. “And it’s unfair to kind of be kept in the dark as to how much money we owe.”

Under an agreement passed June 29, interest rates on new subsidized Stafford loans will remain at 3.4 percent for another year. That’s estimated to save 7.4 million students about $1,000 each on the average loan, which is usually paid off over 10 or more years.…Read More

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College cost website raises questions about Romney’s higher-ed stance

Full Sail's CEO has donated nearly $50,000 in support of Romney's presidential campaign.

The for-profit Florida university that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney supports as a model for holding down college costs is one of the country’s priciest schools, according to a new Education Department (ED) website that helps prospective students compare tuition costs.

The College Affordability & Transparency Center, launched June 12, compares college and university net prices, or the tuition and fee costs minus grant and scholarship money given to its students. The federal website also lets students see where net college prices are rising at the fastest rate.

Full Sail University, a school based in Winter Park, Fla., has the third highest net price of all U.S. for-profit colleges, and it costs more for students than any public or nonprofit college, according to the Transparency Center’s online calculator.…Read More

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For-profit college default rate spikes; industry hits back

Some for-profit colleges have default rates of more than 25 percent.

Colleges and universities of every kind have seen student loan default rates jump this year, with for-profit schools that have recently come under government scrutiny recording the sharpest increase in defaults.

For-profit colleges and the industry’s lobbyist groups criticized a new report from the U.S. Department of Education (ED), released Sept. 12, that showed 15 percent of for-profit college students have defaulted on their school loans, marking a four-percent increase.

The report focuses on students who should have begun repaying their academic loans in 2009. Overall, the national student loan default rate rose from 7 percent to 8.8 percent.…Read More

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Can’t afford college? No problem, students say

Four in 10 students say they don't know what their tuition payments will be.

Most college applicants said they would attend a school even if tuition was well out of their price range, and just a fraction of college hopefuls use an online tuition calculator before they commit to an institution, according to a new national survey.

The survey, conducted and published by the College Board and the Art and Science Group, included responses from high school seniors in the winter of their final year before college–called early prospects–and seniors six months later, as they prepare for high school graduation. The survey dubs these respondents as late prospects.

About two-thirds of late prospects–ready to decide on a college to attend the following fall–said they would struggle to afford tuition, but would attend the school because it offered “strong academics in my field of interest,” “a prestigious reputation,” and an “active, vibrant social life,” among other attributes.…Read More

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