The sound of dial-up internet haunts your nightmares and you remember when floppy disks were actually floppy. Was your first crush called Corey? Perhaps you were born between 1977 and 1983
The online magazine Good says xennials are “a micro-generation that serves as a bridge between the disaffection of gen X and the blithe optimism of millennials”.
The New York Times VR app (available for iOS and Android) we can now experience parts of Antarctica in virtual reality. As a part of their Antarctica series The New York Times has published four short films (9-15 minutes) that can be viewed in virtual reality.
The survey findings reveal a mix of confidence and concern about an uncertain future for U.S. higher education:
83 percent of respondents believe that the higher education system today is the best or one of the best in the world;
61 percent think the higher education system will still be the best or one of the best in the world in 10 years;
91 percent expect the number of online programs at their institution to increase in the next decade;
78 percent said colleges and universities are doing a good, very good or excellent job of fostering academic innovation;
A quarter of respondents think the higher education system is heading in the right direction; and
A third of respondents said the pace of change at their own institutions is “too slow,” citing lack of money as the biggest hurdle to change.
“We also found that, amid rising tuition prices and student debt, most deans still believe that higher education is a good return on the investment,” added Selingo.
The numbers reveal a year-to-year online enrollment increase of 226,375 distance education students–a 3.9 percent increase, up over rates recorded the previous two years. More than 6 million students are now online learners, according to the report.
More than one in four students (29.7 percent) now take at least one distance education course (a total of 6,022,105 students).
Graduate students are twice as likely to take all of their courses online (26 percent) as undergraduate students (12 percent).
The number of students studying on a campus has dropped by almost 1 million (931,317) between 2012 and 2015.
The majority of “exclusively distance” students live in the same state as their institution (55 percent), while 42 percent are studying online at an out-of-state institution.
Public institutions educate the largest proportion of online students (67.8 percent), though more online learners in private institutions attend nonprofit schools than for-profits, according to the data.
And according to LMS provider Docebo, the 2016 world-wide revenue for self-paced online learning products and services (in US$ millions) exceeded $23 million in North America, beating out Europe and even Asia by a large margin.
Going corporate: According to the latest market study by Technavio, the size of the global corporate online learning market is predicted to reach an approximate amount of USD 31 billion in revenue by the end of 2020.
An important component: Within online learning, the LMS market is expected to grow at an incredible rate—a CAGR of 24 percent by 2020.
The biggest growth: Within online learning, the cloud is also growing at a tremendous rate. IT spending is steadily shifting from traditional IT offerings to cloud services, and the aggregate amount of cloud is expected to go from $111 billion in 2016 to $216 billion in 2020.
The Internet of Things (IoT), augmented reality, and advancements in online learning have changed the way universities reach prospective students, engage with their current student body, and provide them the resources they need.
The Internet of Things has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in higher education. The increased connectivity between devices and “everyday things” means better data tracking and analytics, and improved communication between student, professor, and institution, often without ever saying a word. IoT is making it easier for students to learn when, how, and where they want, while providing professors support to create a more flexible and connected learning environment.
Virtual/Augmented Reality
Virtual and augmented reality technologies have begun to take Higher Ed into the realm of what used to be considered science fiction.
By 2020 more than 50 billion things, ranging from cranes to coffee machines, will be connected to the internet. That means a lot of data will be created — too much data, in fact, to be manageable or to be kept forever affordably.
One by-product of more devices creating more data is that they are speaking lots of different programming languages. Machines are still using languages from the 1970s and 80s as well as the new languages of today. In short, applications need to have data translated for them — by an IoT babelfish, if you will — before they can make sense of the information.
Then there are analytics and data storage.
security becomes even more important as there is little human interaction in the flow of data from device to datacentre — so called machine-to-machine communication.
some of the findings in Kahoot!’s first-ever EdTrends Report : Google is gaining a stronghold in United States classrooms, with Chrome OS expanding its presence on school computers, while Apple’s iOS has been on the decline since the first quarter of 2015 among students and teachers.
Chromebook had the highest number of users among teachers (44 percent) and students (46 percent), when they were asked about their top devices used. Google’s Productivity Suite (G Suite or Classroom) was the most widely used productivity suite in U.S. classrooms, with 57 percent saying they used it, compared to 23 percent saying they used Microsoft Office 365.
a majority of educators (more than 60 percent) said the purpose of adopting education technology was to increase student productivity and efficiency. Their key educational priorities for 2017-18 are “to improve student learning and outcomes” (88 percent), and to “better leverage available time and motivate students” (71 percent).
Educators saw the top ed tech trends in the next school year as:
Digital platforms for teaching, learning and assessment;
Personalized learning;
Computational thinking, coding and robotics;
Increased understanding of data; and
Gamificiation.
Some other key findings in the report include:
A majority of U.S. public school educators surveyed said they are challenged with budget restraints and lack of resources when it comes to implementing education technology;
A majority of U.S. private school educators said they lack training to understand or adopt new technology;
Many public and private school educators said they saw the adoption of “technology for the sake of technology” as a challenge;
Educators in California struggle with lack of training and “technology for the sake of technology,” while teachers in Texas struggle with bureaucracy, budget constraints and a lack of resources.
MPS students will be receiving devices that come with 3GB of high-speed LTE data (with unlimited data available at 2G speeds if usage exceeds that amount). Students can keep their device up to four years while they are in high school no cost, according to initiative site. Additionally, devices are equipped with filters to block adult content that cannot be disabled and are Free Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) compliant.
These gaps and others “suggest a disconnect, the report stated, “between the impacts that many administrators perceive and the reality of how digital learning is changing the market.” Open-ended responses suggested that expectations for the impact of digital learning were “set too high” or weren’t being “measured or communicated well.” Another common refrain: There’s inadequate institutional support.
While most administrators told researchers that “faculty are crucial to the success of digital learning initiatives — serving as both a bolster and a barrier to implementation success,” the resources for supporting faculty to implement digital learning are insufficient. Just a quarter of respondents said faculty professional development was implemented “effectively and at scale.” Thirty-five percent said implementation was in progress. And a third (33 percent) reported that faculty professional development was “incomplete, inconsistent, informal and/or optional.”
The report offered recommendations for improving and expanding digital learning adoption. Among the guidance:
Get realistic. While the data suggested that digital learning could improve scheduling flexibility and access, among other benefits, schools need to identify which goals are most important and “clearly articulate how and to what extent its digital learning programs are expected to help.”
Measure impact and broadcast it. Forget about small pilots; go for a scale that will demonstrate impact and then share the findings internally and with other institutions.
Use buying power to influence the market. Connect faculty with vendors for “education, product discovery and feedback.” Insist on accessibility within products, strong integration features and user friendliness.
Prepare faculty for success. Make sure there are sufficient resources and incentives to help faculty “buy into the strategy” and follow through on implementation.
