Microcredentials are rooted in the digital badge movement that first gained traction to support adult learning in the workforce. One of the earliest players was a group called Open Badges, created by Mozilla Foundation in 2013 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation. This focus can be traced back to the “use of symbols in ancient times to reflect different meanings (and) has evolved into modern-day usage of digital badges and microcredentials to indicate achievements, knowledge, skills, and competencies.”[1]
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Friday, December 30, 2022
The Reason Why Google Doesn't Require Cover Letters Is Counterintuitive And Brilliant - Kelly Main, Inc.
Recently, Jess Penkhues, a Google recruiter said what job seekers have been longing to hear: "applicants don't need to submit a cover letter," reported Business Insider. She goes on to explain how the weight is placed on an applicant's resume, rather than their cover letter. This message was music to many people's ears. But for those looking to increase their chances of being considered for a job, the message this sends that cover letters are a waste of time is a bit misleading, for two key reasons.
Thursday, December 29, 2022
Truly Innovative Leaders Balance Tradition and the Future - Greg Fowler, Illumination
In the fourth episode of our series on Continuing Education as a Leadership Incubator, Greg Fowler, President of the University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC), joined us to reflect on the nature of innovation in modern leadership, and how leaders with a background in continuing education are prepared for this environment. Leadership in a challenging era requires flexibility. An openness to being connected with the mission and purpose of the institution, but an openness to adapting that vision for modern realities.
Wednesday, December 28, 2022
Community engaged learning can help fix recurring issues - James Kennedy, University World News
Increasingly, universities are being asked to prove their contribution to society. Many citizens, aided by social media, have become more overtly critical of science and the democratisation of knowledge has challenged higher education as the sole proprietors of knowledge. Just as important are doubts about the legitimacy of the university that are coming from within. Emerging critiques have questioned the priorities and pressures of the neoliberal university, with some denizens wondering if the university has become too insular, too unmoored from – particularly local – society. The call to become more socially engaged has become more pronounced.
Tuesday, December 27, 2022
State Universities and the College Meltdown - Higher Education Inquirer
While for-profit colleges, community colleges, and small private schools received the most attention in the first iteration of the College Meltdown, regional public universities (and a few flagship schools) have also experienced financial challenges, reorganizations, and mergers, enrollment losses, layoffs and resignations, off-campus learning site closings and campus dorm closings, lower graduation rates, and the necessity to lower admissions standards. They are not facing these downturns, though, without a fight.
Monday, December 26, 2022
This university says it cut emissions by 19% since 2019. Was it all changes in commuting? - Lilah Burke, Higher Ed Dive
Vanderbilt University credits carbon emissions cuts to efficiency, energy sourcing and, yes, travel changes. Here’s what other college leaders can do. While Vanderbilt has an endowment of more than $10 billion and resources to dedicate to such a greenhouse gas reduction, experts say huge spending isn’t necessary for every college that wants to make an impact. Indeed, colleges and universities that top an annual sustainability index from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education are in many cases public institutions — like North Seattle College, New Hampshire’s Keene State College, Michigan’s Grand Valley State University, and Arizona State University.
Sunday, December 25, 2022
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5184871474086069774/3209594621854021535
The U.S. Department of Education recently announced a new initiative that aims to bridge the gap between education and quality jobs. The new plan from the Biden-Harris Administration, Raise the Bar: Unlock Career Success, supports career-connected learning to increase job pathways for students. Supported by the Departments of Commerce and Labor, the announcement of Raise the Bar: Unlock Career Success pledges to increase and expand access to quality training programs to better prepare students in entering high-demand industries.
Saturday, December 24, 2022
Can We Improve Grading by Collaborating with Students? - Brett Whysel, Faculty Focus
What is wrong with grades? Instructors and students have different ideas about what grades are supposed to measure: Should they be about how much students have learned? How much work they have completed? How well they have mastered the subject? (Arguably, they measure none of these well.) Grades can perpetuate bias, inequalities, and injustice, reduce student motivation and willingness to challenge themselves, and add enormous administrative burdens. No wonder many students and faculty dislike grades! However, grades are not going away as a tool for evaluation, sorting, and gatekeeping by institutions and employers, and as a measure of success by students.
Friday, December 23, 2022
Warren Buffett's recent life advice to deal with the stresses of inflation gives you full control of the outcome.- MARCEL SCHWANTES, INC.
Years ago, he counseled that investing in oneself and improving one's own talent "is the best thing you can do." That's why sharpening your skills and becoming consistently good at something is one of the strongest protections against inflation. "Whatever abilities you have can't be taken away from you. They can't actually be inflated away from you," he said. "The best investment by far is anything that develops yourself, and it's not taxed at all." To heed Buffett's advice about being exceptionally good at something, we need to know what exactly we should be good at.
Thursday, December 22, 2022
A look at trends in college consolidation since 2016 - Higher Ed Dive
The last few years have been tumultuous for many U.S. colleges. Pressure to lower tuition, stagnating state funding and a shrinking pool of high school graduates has strained many institutions’ bottom lines and questioned their long-term viability. Those pressures have caused some to close. For many still in operation, the coronavirus pandemic and its economic impact is adding a host of uncertainties to already tight operations. We’ve been tracking consolidation across higher education since the fall of 2018, looking back as far as 2016. Our goal was not to create a death watch but rather to give our readers a tool to show the scope of that activity and any patterns within it. To make those trends easier to detect, we updated our tracker with a map showing closings and significant consolidations by state.
Wednesday, December 21, 2022
Differential in Starting Salaries between Bachelor's and Master's Grads is Diminishing - Kevin Gray, NACE
Although there remains a salary advantage for college students obtaining a master's degree, the differential between average starting salaries of recent graduates earning bachelor’s degrees and master’s degrees is diminishing, according to results of NACE’s First Destinations for the College Class of 2021 report. The survey found that there is currently a 22.5% salary differential between the degree levels. This is the lowest differential in recent years and is a drop from 26.1% for the Class of 2020 and from 31.8% for the Class of 2017. (See Figure 1.)
Tuesday, December 20, 2022
Artificial Intelligence - Charlie Giattino, Edouard Mathieu, Julia Broden and Max Roser, Our World in Data
It is easy to underestimate how much the world can change within a lifetime, and so it is worth taking seriously what those who work on AI expect for the future. Most AI experts believe there is a real chance that human-level artificial intelligence will be developed within the next decades, and some believe that it will exist much sooner. How exactly such powerful AI systems are built and used will be very important for the future of our world, and our own lives. All technologies have both positive and negative consequences, but with AI the range of these consequences is extraordinarily large: the technology has an immense potential for good, but also comes with large downsides and high risks.
Monday, December 19, 2022
37 Years Ago, Steve Jobs Said the Best Managers Never Actually Want to Be Managers. Science Says He Was Right - Jeff Hayden, Inc.
Steve Jobs obviously didn't build Apple on his own; when he died, the company had approximately 40,000 employees. Since Jobs reportedly interacted with only about 100 employees, Apple naturally employed hundreds of managers. Here's Jobs, in 1985, on the early process of recruiting and hiring managers: We're going to be a big company, we thought. So let's hire "professional managers." We went out and hired a bunch of professional management, and it didn't work at all. They knew how to manage, but they didn't know how to do anything.
Sunday, December 18, 2022
The search for a unified model of modern academic life - William G Tierney, University World News
The internet has exploded the idea that place-based institutions are one culture. To be sure, some institutions still have students in physical classrooms, but even the nature of those interactions has shattered the institutional culture of the faculty. A professor used to be the arbiter of knowledge. We have seen, however, the gradual acceptance of laptops in the classroom such that a professor might make a statement that was once taken as fact and can now be disputed by a simple search of a website immediately after a statement has been made. Students now have a vastly different interpretation of what constitutes a classroom and, by inference, what constitutes the faculty.
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Creating quality online learning through strategic planning practices - Times Higher Education
As universities seek to boost student enrolments, it’s clear that providing quality, online-only courses will be crucial in attracting the best talent and keeping up with student needs. At the Times Higher Education World Academic Summit, Darcy Hardy, associate vice-president for academic affairs (US) at global edtech company Anthology spoke to educators about the importance of incorporating e-learning into their institutions’ long-term strategy and vision. Hardy revealed figures from a survey of students and university leaders undertaken by Anthology this year, showing that 80 per cent of students prefer at least some courses to be completed online, and 41 per cent prefer fully online courses over hybrid or face-to-face teaching.
Friday, December 16, 2022
The right online learning experience will boost retention and engagement - Phill Miller, eCampus News
While colleges can make getting a degree more affordable, flexible, and adaptable by implementing more online teaching/learning processes, most universities are stuck using archaic systems that aren’t catered to online students. They are clunky, difficult to use, and fail to create an engaging environment. That’s why higher education institutions need to prioritize delivering an interactive online learning experience. Here’s how.
Thursday, December 15, 2022
What’s New in Digital Equity: Data Shows Digital Divide Progress - Jack Quaintance & Julia Edinger, GovTech
A new analysis of government data by the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society found that the United States as a whole is making some progress toward closing the digital divide. While experts in the space often say the digital divide is never going to be all the way closed — technology evolves too quickly for digital skills training to sufficiently keep up with it — there are some metrics you can look toward, including those related to broadband adoption. The analysis looked at data from the American Community Survey that showed wireline broadband adoption rose by 4.7 points between 2019 and 2021. That is more than twice the 2 points of growth that occurred between 2017 and 2019.
Wednesday, December 14, 2022
4 Keys to Getting Rural Broadband Right - Brent Skorup and Patricia Patnode, Governing
It’s not just about the dollars but about spending the money effectively. The focus should be on reducing costs for the private companies that provide most of the investment, rather than propping up sickly projects. In our estimation, the main villain for states and Internet service providers is complexity. The Government Accountability Office recently reported that there are more than 100 federal broadband programs at more than a dozen agencies. The GAO declared bluntly: “The U.S. broadband efforts are not guided by a national strategy with clear roles, goals, objectives, and performance measures.” Yet new federal subsidies are flowing, and there are already signs of weak programs and excessive costs, including one project spending more than $200,000 per household.
Tuesday, December 13, 2022
Comprehensive Learner Record Standard™ - IMS Global
The Comprehensive Learner Record Standard™ (CLR Standard™) is the new generation of secure and verifiable learning and employment records supporting all nature of academic and workplace recognition and achievements including courses, competencies and skills and employer-based achievements and milestones. Recommended by AACRAO, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, the Comprehensive Learner Record Standard™ from 1EdTech is a technical specification designed to support traditional academic programs, co-curricular and competency-based education as well as employer-based learning and development—in any domain where it's important to capture and communicate a learner's and worker's achievements in verifiable, digital form. Designed to be used, curated, and controlled by the learner, the CLR Standard™ is a modern and web-friendly interoperable learner record structured for easy understanding yet flexible enough to support a wide range of use cases to meet the needs of learners and workers, registrars and employers.
Monday, December 12, 2022
Accessibility can’t be an afterthought in college programs - Laura Ascione, eCampus News
A new Open Education Resources (OER) initiative from the nonprofit Teach Access aims to expand awareness of digital accessibility in higher education. Teach Access works with education, industry, and disability advocacy organizations to enhance students’ understanding of digital accessibility as they learn to design, develop, and build new technologies–has launched. Built in collaboration with instructional design firm iDesign, the organization has launched Teach Access Curriculum Repository, which brings together more than 250 teaching resources to support teaching accessibility across a wide range of computer science, technology, and design programs.
https://www.ecampusnews.com/2022/11/30/accessibility-oer-college-programs/
Sunday, December 11, 2022
What Smart Leaders Do to Make Every Meeting Remarkably Effective - Jeff Haden, Inc.
Whenever someone said something like, "That will never work," he immediately interrupted. "Reframe that," our boss would say. So we did. "There's no way we can get everyone to work overtime this weekend" turned into "What do we need to do to make sure everyone will be willing to work this weekend?" Now you're in problem-solving mode. Maybe you can temporarily move a few people from another department. Maybe you can change your production flow so finished product is pulled, not pushed. Maybe you can work with freight carriers to reduce the number of packages staged in the shipping area at any time.
Saturday, December 10, 2022
If You Can Pass Any of These 6 Leadership Tests, Science Says You'll Be a Much More Effective - Jeff Haden, Inc.
Inspiration. Collaboration. Authenticity. Engagement and empowerment. It's easy to name some of the qualities of a great leader. Still: Since most great leaders are made, not born, it's a lot harder to possess those qualities when you have little or no leadership experience. Fortunately, there are a number of research-based leadership strategies you can embrace that will start paying instant dividends -- both in terms of employee engagement and bottom-line results -- on your path to gaining broader leadership skills.
Friday, December 9, 2022
Understanding the Approach to Lifelong Learning - Tanya Zlateva, Evolllution
To help prospective students navigate the complex landscape of degrees, certificates, micro-credentials and delivery formats, a successful marketing approach must provide individualized outreach in addition to rich content on programs, modalities, employment trends on multiple venues such as social media, webinars, interactive panels, peer discussions and industry presentations. Marketing is transformed into mentoring and coaching for career success. We have implemented this approach through our admissions office, which proactively reaches out to students and guides them through the process.
Thursday, December 8, 2022
Women prefer text contributions over talk in remote classes - Laura Spitalniak, Higher Ed Dive
Female students show a stronger preference for contributing to remote classes via text chat than their male counterparts, according to peer-reviewed research published in PLOS One, an open-access journal. Researchers also found all students were more likely to use the chat function to support or amplify their peers’ comments than to diminish them. Given these findings, the researchers suggested incorporating text chats into class discussions could boost female participation in large introductory science classrooms, where women are less likely to participate than men.
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
Rethinking professional learning and development - Alison Bell, eCampus News
There’s a common denominator for our workforce, and it’s that nearly every worker craves learning and development opportunities – something not all employers offer to employees. Since the pandemic, 3 in 4 Americans agree acquiring new skills leads to more job opportunities. We can think of learning and development as everything an organization does to encourage professional development to enhance workplace performance, including online learning, training programs, or any opportunity to help its employees continue their higher education while also being able to work full time.
Tuesday, December 6, 2022
The Shifting Role of Technology in Higher Ed -James Wiley, Illumination
The rapidly evolving digital space is shifting the way higher ed leaders look at enrollment trends. Finding new strategies to leverage technology across the institution may be their best chance to thrive. On this episode, James Wiley, Principal Analyst at Eduventures talks about enrollment woes and how modern institutions are looking using technology to not only attract and retain students, but also leverage it to create a seamless backend framework.
Monday, December 5, 2022
Building a Team to Lead in a Crisis: Four Key Steps - Erkia James, Knowledge at Wharton
As a Prepared Leader, you need to be ready to do the following: Make space for other people to stand up, speak up, and contribute as the situation dictates. Let go of your ego and be humble enough to allow others to take the lead as the situation dictates. Let these things happen spontaneously and without obstacles as the situation changes. Building a crisis team is like putting together a puzzle. Each piece should play its role and fit well enough with the others to make a complete picture. The four action steps linked below can be used to guide your efforts.
Sunday, December 4, 2022
PROOF POINTS: 861 colleges and 9,499 campuses have closed down since 2004 - Jill Barshay, Hechinger Report
Despite high profile stories about the closing of small liberal arts colleges, such as California’s Mills College and Vermont’s Green Mountain College, college closures have actually declined in the past five years. But the numbers may spike again as declining U.S. birth rates soon translate into fewer graduating high schoolers after 2025. First, the numbers. Thirty-five colleges and universities shut down in 2021, a 70 percent decrease from 2016, when a peak of 120 colleges shuttered, according to an analysis of federal data by the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO). For-profit operators ran more than 80 percent of the 861 institutions that ceased operations between 2004 and 2021.
Saturday, December 3, 2022
Distinctive Excellence: The Key to Effectively Managing Continuing Education Units - Michael Frasciello, Evollution
Distinctive excellence is where the quality question is best addressed. Quality is an experience our students perceive from their first inquiry to their last learning engagement. When the entire student lifecycle experience is perceived as high quality, we see enrollment growth, more consistent persistence and increased retention in our programs. In this context, the most important aspect of quality is doing what we have always done in our CE units: recognizing that our students bring valuable experience and perspectives into our programs and classrooms. We best address the quality question by not viewing our students through a deficit lens but through a distinctiveness lens—through their life experiences, perspectives, discipline, focus, prior learning and potential.
Friday, December 2, 2022
Faculty elitism is hurting your institution - Cheryl Hyatt, eCampus News
One of the most pernicious ways we undercut the vital work of higher education is through maintaining a culture of faculty elitism. In most colleges there is a stark division between faculty and professional staff. At its worst, that can lead to costly errors from undervaluing the input of others or noxious work environments where professional staff are treated as underlings. Snobbery on college campuses is one of the most counterproductive things we do.
Thursday, December 1, 2022
Faculty elitism is hurting your institution - Cheryl Hyatt, eCampus News
One of the most pernicious ways we undercut the vital work of higher education is through maintaining a culture of faculty elitism. In most colleges there is a stark division between faculty and professional staff. At its worst, that can lead to costly errors from undervaluing the input of others or noxious work environments where professional staff are treated as underlings. Snobbery on college campuses is one of the most counterproductive things we do.
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