Data Security for New Norm Distance Learning - Santa Clarita Valley Signal

Whatever the future of distance learning, online classroom offerings will still be a draw for working adults. This survey by the Strada Education Network showed that over half the Latino and Black (52% and 54%), as well as a significant portion of Caucasians surveyed (34%), plan to enroll in online education and training programs after the pandemic passes.  In the meantime, with students spending more time on line, data security concerns are greater than ever. Students tend let their guard down in their eagerness to find information and source material for their classes and assignments.
https://signalscv.com/2020/06/data-security-for-new-norm-distance-learning/

College closings, economic upheaval make a case for blockchain adoption - Ted Mitchell, Education Dive

"Addressing issues of interoperability between education and employment are more important than ever," writes American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell.  In periods of economic crisis like this one, higher education typically serves as both a backstop for displaced workers and an engine for economic recovery. But today's crisis is exposing widening fault lines between educational institutions and the demands of an increasingly dynamic world of work. At the core of that challenge is a disconnect between the ways higher education and the labor market talk about, measure and signal individuals' skills.
https://www.educationdive.com/news/college-closings-economic-upheaval-make-a-case-for-blockchain-adoption/580082/

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Matters - Ted Mitchell and John O'Brien, EDUCAUSE Review

Aspirations for social equity and transformation of students' lives have been the heart and soul of higher education from its inception.  At the same time, despite idealistic aspirations and concrete progress, inequities in higher education persist. Indeed, higher education, a sector that leads in so many areas, still has much progress to make in leading the way for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/5/diversity-equity-and-inclusion-dei-matters

Blended learning will reshape the future of learning - JARED STEIN, eCampus NewsSome have called the COVID-19-related campus closures education’s black swan event. It may well prove to be. At the very least, the current moment presents higher education with an opportunity to adapt how it designs and delivers education in ways that anticipate future crises, and ultimately make teaching more effective and engaging for students. I don’t mean that every faculty member must become an ardent online teacher, content with remote interactions over face-to-face. But every faculty member must become fluent with critical technology, leveraging it in even their traditional brick and mortar courses as naturally as they might.
https://www.ecampusnews.com/2020/06/16/blended-learning-will-reshape-the-future-of-learning/

Pressure mounts for universities to anticipate in-demand jobs - MATT KRUPNICK, Hechinger Report

But producing grads with needed skills is something employers say America hasn’t done well. Colleges and universities are already being called upon to anticipate areas of growth and supply and to help Americans learn the skills they’ll need to weather the impending recession. Eighty-three percent of employers said last year they were having trouble finding suitable job candidates. More than a third noted a lack of skills among candidates, and more than half that the skills gap was wider than ever.
https://hechingerreport.org/pressure-mounts-for-universities-to-anticipate-and-train-people-for-in-demand-jobs/

Facebook just released a database of 100,000 deepfakes to teach AI how to spot them - Will Douglas Heaven, MIT Technology Review

Deepfakes⁠ have struck a nerve with the public and researchers alike. There is something uniquely disturbing about these AI-generated images of people appearing to say or do something they didn’t. With tools for making deepfakes now widely available and relatively easy to use, many also worry that they will be used to spread dangerous misinformation. Politicians can have other people’s words put into their mouths or made to participate in situations they did not take part in, for example.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/06/12/1003475/facebooks-deepfake-detection-challenge-neural-network-ai/

We need to reimagine higher education, not just repair it - Francisco Marmolejo, University World News

Crises can make innovations that seemed previously impossible suddenly inevitable. There will be years of ‘a reckoning’ that higher education institutions will go through. But the ‘new normal’ we must shape needs to begin with the recognition that putting classes on Zoom isn’t change. Higher education institutions need reimagining, not just repairing. Educators, policy-makers, employers and investors must urgently give thought to what a post-COVID world should look like and what role higher education institutions must play to make that world a reality.
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200612100902318

The 7 elements of a good online course - George Velestianos, the Conversation

As an education researcher who has been studying online education and a professor who has been teaching in both face-to-face and online environments for more than a decade, I am often asked whether online learning at universities and colleges can ever be as effective as face-to-face learning. The answer isn’t as unequivocal as some would like it to be. Individual cherry-picked studies can support any result. But systematic analyses of the evidence generally show there are no significant differences in students’ academic outcomes between online and face-to-face education.
https://theconversation.com/the-7-elements-of-a-good-online-course-139736

Good College Teaching Does Not Require Sharing Air with Students - Michael Hunter Schwartz, Tomorrow's Professor

Ask your friends to tell you about their best teachers. They likely will describe people who were passionate about their fields and student learning, knew their subjects cold, communicated great faith in students’ capabilities and insisted they live up to those expectations, were excellent explainers, and were caring, authentic, respectful, and well prepared for class. For the past 20 years, I have been publishing books and articles about effective teaching approaches; the qualities your friends would name are typical of the best teachers. Poor in-person teaching happens every day at every university.... Poor online teaching also happens every day. But great teaching and deep learning also happen online.
https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1803

Seven myths about online education - A. Joseph Dorairaj, the Hindu

An effective transition to an online mode of teaching-learning requires the debunking of several false views.  COVID-19 has turned the world upside down. All sectors, including the education sector, have been drastically affected all sectors including education. The world is searching for new strategies to cope with this pandemic and its aftermath. Higher educational institutions are now looking at online teaching-learning as a window of hope. Many institutions and teachers have taken efforts to incorporate online education and are trying to use tech tools to such as Learning Management Systems (LMS) and web conferencing platforms.
https://www.thehindu.com/education/seven-myths-about-online-education/article31766396.ece

ECAR Study of the Technology Needs of Students with Disabilities, 2020 - Dana C. Gierdowski and Joseph Galanek, EDUCAUSE Review

Technology in higher education can be both an aid and a challenge for students with disabilities. Institutions and instructors can take steps to ensure that these students have equitable access, and those same measures can help all students, particularly during the era of emergency remote teaching.
https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/6/ecar-study-of-the-technology-needs-of-students-with-disabilities-2020

Planning for the Post-COVID-19 Workforce: Four Scenarios -Knowledge at Wharton

In order to help leaders and organizations manage uncertainty driven by COVID-19, we have developed four scenarios for the future of human capital in the year 2023, with implications for companies operating in different industries as well as regions of the world. Each scenario presents unique opportunities and challenges. And with those opportunities and challenges, winning operating models, organizational structures, leadership profiles, skills, talent and organizational cultures can be identified for each scenario.
https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/planning-post-covid-19-workforce-four-scenarios/

While focus is on fall, students’ choices about college will have a far longer impact - Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report

An entire forest of potential future graduates is now imperiled by the cataclysmic pandemic that has large numbers of students saying they will delay their higher educations, take time off, opt for community college or shift to studying part time.  While attention has been focused on the impact of these choices on enrollment in the fall, each has also been shown to slow down or derail students on their way to degrees. For them, and for employers who need educated graduates, that means the effects of this crisis will be felt not just for one semester, but for six or more years.

https://hechingerreport.org/while-focus-is-on-fall-students-choices-about-college-will-have-a-far-longer-impact/

Technology, Truth and Tomorrow - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Education

The time of truth telling, backed by video, has arrived to ensure our standards of justice and equity. And it is not just video technology. Big data have a role in telling the story. Through the gathering and analysis of big data, the truth is being exposed every day. Though privacy is being lost day by day by the proliferation of video, the nearly ubiquitous presence of video shines a virtual light on the mundane day-to-day activities, but also on the bigotry and crimes that are committed. If we are very careful to validate sources and methods of both videos and big data, we will arrive at the truth. The truth is there to see if we are prepared to search vigilantly and to verify. And the truth delivered by technology can set us free. These skills are key to the success of our students in their careers as well as their personal lives. That is our hope for tomorrow: that increasingly truth will be collected, verified and disseminated through technology. That truth will lead to greater justice, more freedom and better lives for all.
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/technology-truth-and-tomorrow

Consider the Three Ds When Talking about Digital Transformation - Betsy Reinitz, EDUCAUSE Review

Digital transformation is a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution's business model, strategic directions, and value proposition.1  Institutional responses to the coronavirus pandemic have provided CIOs with an opportunity to talk with other campus leaders about digital transformation, and that conversation can start with a better understanding of digitization, digitalization, and digital transformation.
https://er.educause.edu/blogs/2020/6/consider-the-three-ds-when-talking-about-digital-transformation

Microsoft 'to replace journalists with robots' - BBC

Around 50 contract news producers will lose their jobs at the end of June, the Seattle Times reports, but a team of full-time journalists will remain. Twenty-seven of those losing their jobs are employed by the UK's PA Media, the Guardian reports. One journalist quoted in the paper said: "I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs - now it's taken mine." Microsoft is one of many tech companies experimenting with forms of so-called robot journalism to cut costs. Google is also investing in projects to understand how it might work.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52860247

Is this the secret of smart leadership? - Dave Robson, BBC

It’s more than two millennia since the philosopher Socrates argued that humility is the greatest of all virtues. His timeless observation was that the wisest people are the first to admit how little they really know. Science has been slow to catch up to this argument, but the last decade has offered a spate of new studies examining this trait and its effects on our thinking and reasoning. According to this research, people with greater humility are better learners, decision-makers and problem solvers. One study even found that someone’s humility could trump actual IQ in predicting their performance.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200528-is-this-the-secret-of-smart-leadership

Demand for online learning services soars during pandemic - Maryse Zeidler · CBC News

The Great Courses, MasterClass and Coursera see big rise in new subscriptions.  As the coronavirus pandemic forces many to hunker down at home, a growing number of people have turned to online learning resources like MasterClass, the Great Courses and Mango Languages. The Toronto and Vancouver public libraries say patrons have flocked to the online learning services they offer.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/online-learning-services-covid-19-1.5591100

Digital Ethics in Higher Education: 2020 - John O'Brien, EDUCAUSE Review

I believe we are at a crucial point in the evolution of technology. We must come to grips with digital ethics, which I define simply as "doing the right thing at the intersection of technology innovation and accepted social values." This is a straightforward-enough definition; however, given the speed of technology change and the relativity of social values, even a simple definition may be trickier than it seems.
https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/5/digital-ethics-in-higher-education-2020

Could Big Tech’s move to permanent remote work save the American heartland? - Mark Muro, Brookings Institution

Last week, Facebook announced that as many as half of its employees could permanently work from home in the coming years, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to upend traditional office routines. The push happening around remote work is as game-changing for the future of tech as the launch of the iPhone was in 2007. Facebook’s announcement, following a similar one from Twitter, may be as important for the nation’s traumatized economic geography as it will be for general office culture.  If delivered on, Facebook’s plan to allow employees to work outside of expensive, superstar cities really does seem like a watershed moment. Widespread remote work, especially in the tech sector, might very well prompt a degree of geographic healing.
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/05/26/could-big-techs-move-to-permanent-remote-work-save-the-american-heartland/

5 steps to get the internet to all Americans - Tom Wheeler, Brookings Institution

Released in April, the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 2020 Broadband Development Report identified approximately 18 million Americans—principally in rural areas—without access to any broadband network. Regardless of how it is funded, the solution to universal broadband in America is not to patch the old program, but to throw it out. The program now in place was designed for a telephone-oriented world, not the internet economy. Here are five lessons we learned that should apply to any program to provide universal broadband for all Americans.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/5-steps-to-get-the-internet-to-all-americans/

Remember the MOOCs? After Near-Death, They’re Booming - Steve Lohr, NY Times

Coursera... added 10 million new users from mid-March to mid-May, seven times the pace of new sign-ups in the previous year. Enrollments at edX and Udacity, two smaller education sites, have jumped by similar multiples.  “Crises lead to accelerations, and this is best chance ever for online learning,” said Sebastian Thrun, a co-founder and chairman of Udacity.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/26/technology/moocs-online-learning.html

Orienting Students to Online Learning: A Must for Student Success - Jaimie Hoffman , Megan Eberhardt-Alstot and Jill Leafstedt; EDUCAUSE

Orientation experiences support students' transition to the first year of college, which is essential for student success.1 This support is particularly important for those students from historically marginalized populations.2 Orientation for online learners should be holistic and would ideally mirror content delivered in the onsite orientation experience, since students enrolling in online courses may come to campus infrequently or possibly not at all. Student orientation helps to foster student success; research suggests that those who participate in orientation programs generally perform better than those who do not and persist to graduation at a higher rate.3
https://er.educause.edu/articles/2020/5/orienting-students-to-online-learning-a-must-for-student-success

The 5 Stages of Moving Online - Rhea Kelly, Campus Technology

From determining a remote learning strategy to planning for the new normal and enabling standards-based practices, these five phases describe the progress institutions are making toward excellence in teaching and learning online.  This is a time for institutions to pause and reflect. Were there any shortcuts taken that need to be undone? In addition, it's important to survey faculty and students to determine what additional support might be needed. Many institutions may have skipped this stage, feeling the pressure to move forward with planning for the summer and fall terms, the panelists noted.
https://campustechnology.com/articles/2020/05/13/the-5-stages-of-moving-online.aspx

Hope Matters - Mays Imad, Tomorrow's Professor

More specifically, I am thinking about students who don’t have a safe environment at home -- for whom residence halls and classrooms have served as a sanctuary, students who have found a community within college, or students who rely on college for their sustenance and security. In other words, most students. So how can we, teachers, be that “dancing clays” to balance our students’ mental and emotional loads, so that they may stumble just a little bit less? Reflecting on that experience and my questions, I came up with a short list of what I would’ve liked my teachers to do had I been a student who was sent home due to COVID-19.
https://tomprof.stanford.edu/posting/1799

How Americans see digital privacy issues amid the COVID-19 outbreak - BROOKE AUXIER, Pew Research

The ongoing coronavirus outbreak has brought privacy and surveillance concerns to the forefront – from hacked video conferencing sessions to proposed government tracking of people’s cellphones as a measure to limit and prevent the spread of the virus. Over the past year, Pew Research Center has surveyed Americans on their views related to privacy, personal data and digital surveillance.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/05/04/how-americans-see-digital-privacy-issues-amid-the-covid-19-outbreak/

China pivot towards Europe in HE, research ties expected - Yojana Sharma, University World News

The COVID-19 crisis and pre-existing China-United States tensions exacerbated during the pandemic will mean a rebalancing of cross-border academic relations, student and academic mobility, and in the pattern of research collaborations with China. But while the new landscape is not yet clearly mapped out, some trends are emerging, experts on China and international higher education have said.
https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20200520100218970

A Post-Pandemic Strategy for U.S. Higher Ed - Vijay Govindarajan and Anup Srivastava, Harvard Business Review

University leaders must use what they are learning in crisis now to position their institutions for greatest impact in the decades to come. That means using data now from the current forced online learning experiment and initiating small pilots during the next academic year to test future higher education models. This article is intended to set the agenda for university leaders to develop a point of view about the future which can guide short-term action. They must choose between the three paths.
https://hbr.org/2020/06/a-post-pandemic-strategy-for-u-s-higher-ed

Online learning just as effective for STEM students: study - Technology Decisions

The Cornell University study, titled 'Online Education Platforms Scale College STEM Instruction With Equivalent Outcomes at Lower Cost', tracked more than 300 students in Russia, where top universities standardise online classes for use by institutions with fewer resources.  "This new study offers the best available evidence to judge whether online learning can address issues of cost and instructor shortages, showing that it can deliver the same learning outcomes that we're used to, but at a much lower cost." These online courses cost institutions 80% less per student than in-person classes, the study found, while blended classes combining online lectures with in-person discussions lowered the per-student cost by nearly 20%.
https://www.technologydecisions.com.au/content/futureed/news/online-learning-just-as-effective-for-stem-students-study-665442902

After the Pandemic: Prepare to Emerge More Resilient and Responsive - Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed

Worldwide, the higher education challenges are the same: to become more resilient to disruption by disasters and more responsive to students and the workplace. It is certain that this past semester and summer will bring about changes in the way we all deliver learning. We have learned that our delivery mode must be more resilient than our physical campuses can be. We have known that our campuses can be vulnerable to hurricanes, earthquakes and other natural disasters, but now we are acutely aware that “the way we have always done things” is vulnerable to epidemics. Wisely, we are considering ways we can be more resilient. So, what are our options?
https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/prepare-emerge-pandemic-more-resilient-and-responsive

Online learning, now at an all-time high, signals a new future for education - Hope Reese, Tech Republic

COVID-19 has brought schools and workplaces online. Here's what the transition means for the future of MOOCS. The coronavirus pandemic is radically shifting the global economy, transforming workplaces, community spaces, and education.  And overall education online--including virtual classrooms, language apps, online tutoring, or online education software--has also surged during the pandemic, with the market expected to hit $350 billion by 2025.
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/online-learning-now-at-an-all-time-high-signals-a-new-future-for-education/

Turning Remote Education Into Online Education This Fall - Elizabeth Johnson, Inside Higher Ed

Most colleges and universities quickly pivoted to remote instruction after COVID-19 forced suspension of on-campus activities. Academic leaders and faculty across the nation did yeoman's work to effect such a drastic change. Yet we learned this spring that the basic transition of face-to-face courses into remote delivery did not provide the comprehensive learning experience students require.
https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2020/05/20/how-turn-springs-remote-courses-high-quality-online-courses-fall-opinion

Exploring the State of University Online Learning - Brian Runo interviews Ray Schroeder, MarketScale

Schroeder and host Brian Runo discussed the state of online learning for universities as the world faces the COVID-19 pandemic. With predictive models showing possible new surges of cases in the fall, some universities are going to continue online, while others will reopen for fall with safety precautions in place. Schroeder and Runo also chatted about what to expect from online learning in the future and how universities can prepare for education in the future.
https://marketscale.com/industries/education-technology/exploring-the-state-of-university-online-learning/