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next gen digital learning environment

Updating the Next Generation Digital Learning Environment for Better Student Learning Outcomes

a learning management system (LMS) is never the solution to every problem in education. Edtech is just one part of the whole learning ecosystem and student experience.

Therefore, the next generation digital learning environment (NGDLE), as envisioned by EDUCAUSE in 2015 …  Looking at the NGDLE requirements from an LMS perspective, I view the NGDLE as being about five areas: interoperability; personalization; analytics, advising, and learning assessment; collaboration; accessibility and universal design.

Interoperability

  • Content can easily be exchanged between systems.
  • Users are able to leverage the tools they love, including discipline-specific apps.
  • Learning data is available to trusted systems and people who need it.
  • The learning environment is “future proof” so that it can adapt and extend as the ecosystem evolves.

Personalization

  • The learning environment reflects individual preferences.
  • Departments, divisions, and institutions can be autonomous.
  • Instructors teach the way they want and are not constrained by the software design.
  • There are clear, individual learning paths.
  • Students have choice in activity, expression, and engagement.

Analytics, Advising, and Learning Assessment

  • Learning analytics helps to identify at-risk students, course progress, and adaptive learning pathways.
  • The learning environment enables integrated planning and assessment of student performance.
  • More data is made available, with greater context around the data.
  • The learning environment supports platform and data standards.

Collaboration

  • Individual spaces persist after courses and after graduation.
  • Learners are encouraged as creators and consumers.
  • Courses include public and private spaces.

Accessibility and Universal Design

  • Accessibility is part of the design of the learning experience.
  • The learning environment enables adaptive learning and supports different types of materials.
  • Learning design includes measurement rubrics and quality control.

The core analogy used in the NGDLE paper is that each component of the learning environment is a Lego brick:

  • The days of the LMS as a “walled garden” app that does everything is over.
  • Today many kinds of amazing learning and collaboration tools (Lego bricks) should be accessible to educators.
  • We have standards that let these tools (including an LMS) talk to each other. That is, all bricks share some properties that let them fit together.
  • Students and teachers sign in once to this “ecosystem of bricks.”
  • The bricks share results and data.
  • These bricks fit together; they can be interchanged and swapped at will, with confidence that the learning experience will continue uninterrupted.

Any “next-gen” attempt to completely rework the pedagogical model and introduce a “mash-up of whatever” to fulfil this model would fall victim to the same criticisms levied at the LMS today: there is too little time and training to expect faculty to figure out the nuances of implementation on their own.

The Lego metaphor works only if we’re talking about “old school” Lego design — bricks of two, three, and four-post pieces that neatly fit together. Modern edtech is a lot more like the modern Lego. There are wheels and rocket launchers and belts and all kinds of amazing pieces that work well with each other, but only when they are configured properly. A user cannot simply stick together different pieces and assume they will work harmoniously in creating an environment through which each student can be successful.

As the NGDLE paper states: “Despite the high percentages of LMS adoption, relatively few instructors use its more advanced features — just 41% of faculty surveyed report using the LMS ‘to promote interaction outside the classroom.'”

But this is what the next generation LMS is good at: being a central nervous system — or learning hub — through which a variety of learning activities and tools are used. This is also where the LMS needs to go: bringing together and making sense of all the amazing innovations happening around it. This is much harder to do, perhaps even impossible, if all the pieces involved are just bricks without anything to orchestrate them or to weave them together into a meaningful, personal experience for achieving well-defined learning outcomes.

  • Making a commitment to build easy, flexible, and smart technology
  • Working with colleges and universities to remove barriers to adopting new tools in the ecosystem
  • Standardizing the vetting of accessibility compliance (the Strategic Nonvisual Access Partner Program from the National Federation of the Blind is a great start)
  • Advancing standards for data exchange while protecting individual privacy
  • Building integrated components that work with the institutions using them — learning quickly about what is and is not working well and applying those lessons to the next generation of interoperability standards
  • Letting people use the tools they love [SIC] and providing more ways for nontechnical individuals (including students) to easily integrate new features into learning activities

My note: something just refused to be accepted at SCSU
Technologists are often very focused on the technology, but the reality is that the more deeply and closely we understand the pedagogy and the people in the institutions — students, faculty, instructional support staff, administrators — the better suited we are to actually making the tech work for them.

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Under the Hood of a Next Generation Digital Learning Environment in Progress

The challenge is that although 85 percent of faculty use a campus learning management system (LMS),1 a recent Blackboard report found that, out of 70,000 courses across 927 North American institutions, 53 percent of LMS usage was classified as supplemental(content-heavy, low interaction) and 24 percent as complementary (one-way communication via content/announcements/gradebook).2 Only 11 percent were characterized as social, 10 percent as evaluative (heavy use of assessment), and 2 percent as holistic (balanced use of all previous). Our FYE course required innovating beyond the supplemental course-level LMS to create a more holistic cohort-wide NGDLE in order to fully support the teaching, learning, and student success missions of the program.The key design goals for our NGDLE were to:

  • Create a common platform that could deliver a standard curriculum and achieve parity in all course sections using existing systems and tools and readily available content
  • Capture, store, and analyze any generated learner data to support learning assessment, continuous program improvement, and research
  • Develop reports and actionable analytics for administrators, advisors, instructors, and students

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more on LMS in this blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=LMS

more on learning outcomes in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=learning+outcomes

digital learning

The Disruption of Digital Learning: Ten Things We Have Learned

Published on Featured in: Leadership & Management    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/disruption-digital-learning-ten-things-we-have-learned-josh-bersin

meetings with Chief Learning Officers, talent management leaders, and vendors of next generation learning tools.

The corporate L&D industry is over $140 billion in size, and it crosses over into the $300 billion marketplace for college degrees, professional development, and secondary education around the world.

Digital Learning does not mean learning on your phone, it means “bringing learning to where employees are.” In other words, this new era is not only a shift in tools, it’s a shift toward employee-centric design. Shifting from “instructional design” to “experience design” and using design thinking are key here.

evolution of L&D The Evolution of Corporate Training

1) The traditional LMS is no longer the center of corporate learning, and it’s starting to go away.

LMS platforms were designed around the traditional content model, using a 17 year old standard called SCORM. SCORM is a technology developed in the 1980s, originally intended to help companies like track training records from their CD-ROM based training programs.

the paradigm that we built was focused on the idea of a “course catalog,” an artifact that makes sense for formal education, but no longer feels relevant for much of our learning today.

not saying the $4 billion LMS market is dead, but the center or action has moved (ie. their cheese has been moved). Today’s LMS is much more of a compliance management system, serving as a platform for record-keeping, and this function can now be replaced by new technologies.

We have come from a world of CD ROMs to online courseware (early 2000s) to an explosion of video and instructional content (YouTube and MOOCs in the last five years), to a new world of always-on, machine-curated content of all shapes and sizes. The LMS, which was largely architected in the early 2000s, simply has not kept up effectively.

2) The emergence of the X-API makes everything we do part of learning.

In the days of SCORM (the technology developed by Boeing in the 1980s to track CD Roms) we could only really track what you did in a traditional or e-learning course. Today all these other activities are trackable using the X-API (also called Tin Can or the Experience API). So just like Google and Facebook can track your activities on websites and your browser can track your clicks on your PC or phone, the X-API lets products like the learning record store keep track of all your digital activities at work.

Evolution of Learning Technology Standards

3) As content grows in volume, it is falling into two categories: micro-learning and macro-learning.

MicroLearning vs. MacroLearning
Understanding Macro vs. Micro Learning

4) Work Has Changed, Driving The Need for Continuous Learning

Why is all the micro learning content so important? Quite simply because the way we work has radically changed. We spend an inordinate amount of time looking for information at work, and we are constantly bombarded by distractions, messages, and emails.

The Overwhelmed Employee
Too Much Time Searching

sEmployees spend 1% of their time learning

5) Spaced Learning Has Arrived

If we consider the new world of content (micro and macro), how do we build an architecture that teaches people what to use when? Can we make it easier and avoid all this searching?

“spaced learning.”

Neurological research has proved that we don’t learn well through “binge education” like a course. We learn by being exposed to new skills and ideas over time, with spacing and questioning in between. Studies have shown that students who cram for final exams lose much of their memory within a few weeks, yet students who learn slowly with continuous reinforcement can capture skills and knowledge for decades.

Ebbinghaus forgetting curve

Spaced Learning: Repetition, Spacing, Questioning

6) A New Learning Architecture Has Emerged: With New Vendors To Consider

One of the keys to digital learning is building a new learning architecture. This means using the LMS as a “player” but not the “center,” and looking at a range of new tools and systems to bring content together.
The New Learning Landscape

On the upper left is a relatively new breed of vendors, including companies like Degreed, EdCast, Pathgather, Jam, Fuse, and others, that serve as “learning experience” platforms. They aggregate, curate, and add intelligence to content, without specifically storing content or authoring in any way. In a sense they develop a “learning experience,” and they are all modeled after magazine-like interfaces that enables users to browse, read, consume, and rate content.

The second category the “program experience platforms” or “learning delivery systems.” These companies, which include vendors like NovoEd, EdX, Intrepid, Everwise, and many others (including many LMS vendors), help you build a traditional learning “program” in an open and easy way. They offer pathways, chapters, social features, and features for assessment, scoring, and instructor interaction. While many of these features belong in an LMS, these systems are built in a modern cloud architecture, and they are effective for programs like sales training, executive development, onboarding, and more. In many ways you can consider them “open MOOC platforms” that let you build your own MOOCs.

The third category at the top I call “micro-learning platforms” or “adaptive learning platforms.” These are systems that operate more like intelligent, learning-centric content management systems that help you take lots of content, arrange it into micro-learning pathways and programs, and serve it up to learners at just the right time. Qstream, for example, has focused initially on sales training – and clients tell me it is useful at using spaced learning to help sales people stay up to speed (they are also entering the market for management development). Axonify is a fast-growing vendor that serves many markets, including safety training and compliance training, where people are reminded of important practices on a regular basis, and learning is assessed and tracked. Vendors in this category, again, offer LMS-like functionality, but in a way that tends to be far more useful and modern than traditional LMS systems. And I expect many others to enter this space.

Perhaps the most exciting part of tools today is the growth of AI and machine-learning systems, as well as the huge potential for virtual reality.

A Digital Learning Architecture

7) Traditional Coaching, Training, and Culture of Learning Has Not Gone Away

The importance of culture and management

8) A New Business Model for Learning

he days of spending millions of dollars on learning platforms is starting to come to an end. We do have to make strategic decisions about what vendors to select, but given the rapid and immature state of the market, I would warn against spending too much money on any one vendor at a time. The market has yet to shake out, and many of these vendors could go out of business, be acquired, or simply become irrelevant in 3-5 years.

9) The Impact of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Slack Is Coming

The newest versions of Microsoft Teams, Google Hangouts and Google Drive, Workplace by Facebook, Slack, and other enterprise IT products now give employees the opportunity to share content, view videos, and find context-relevant documents in the flow of their daily work.

We can imagine that Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn will result in some integration of Lynda.com content in the flow of work. (Imagine if you are trying to build a spreadsheet and a relevant Lynda course opens up). This is an example of “delivering learning to where people are.”

New work environments will be learning environments

10) A new set of skills and capabilities in L&D

It’s no longer enough to consider yourself a “trainer” or “instructional designer” by career. While instructional design continues to play a role, we now need L&D to focus on “experience design,” “design thinking,” the development of “employee journey maps,” and much more experimental, data-driven, solutions in the flow of work.

lmost all the companies are now teaching themselves design thinking, they are using MVP (minimal viable product) approaches to new solutions, and they are focusing on understanding and addressing the “employee experience,” rather than just injecting new training programs into the company.
New Capabilities Needed

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more on elearning in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=elearning

International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning

International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning (IJMBL)

An Official Publication of the Information Resources Management Association and the International Association for Mobile Learning
Editor-in-Chief: David Parsons (The Mind Lab by Unitec, New Zealand)
Published Quarterly. Est. 2009.
ISSN: 1941-8647|EISSN: 1941-8655|DOI: 10.4018/IJMBL

Description

The International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning (IJMBL) provides a forum for researchers in this field to share their knowledge and experience of combining e-learning and m-learning with other educational resources. Providing researchers, practitioners, and academicians with insight into a wide range of topics such as knowledge sharing, mobile games for learning, collaborative learning, and e-learning, this journal contains useful articles for those seeking to learn, analyze, improve, and apply technologies in mobile and blended learning. The journal spans theoretical, technical, and pedagogical issues in mobile and blended learning. These embrace comprehensive or critical reviews of the current literature, relevant technologies and applications, and important contextual issues such as privacy, security, adaptivity, and resource constraints.

Topics Covered

  • Comprehensive or critical reviews of the current literature
  • Evaluation of mobile or blended learning in practice
  • Future of mobile or blended learning
  • Knowledge Sharing
  • Learner interaction/collaborative learning
  • Mobile games for learning
  • Mobile or blended learning applications
  • Mobile or blended learning applied at different levels of education from pre-school to tertiary and beyond
  • Pedagogical and/or philosophical underpinnings of mobile or blended learning
  • Privacy and security issues
  • Related research in learning, including e-learning and pedagogical approaches
  • Resource constraints in the delivery of mobile or blended learning
  • Reviews of the application of mobile or blended learning in multiple contexts
  • Role of Wikis, blogs, podcasts, messaging, other online tools, and Web 2.0 components in learning delivery
  • Roles of mobile, pervasive, and immersive technologies in education
  • Technologies that directly or indirectly support mobile or blended learning systems (devices, networks, tools etc.)
  • Theoretical approaches to mobile or blended learning solutions
  • Use of mobile or blended learning in professional environments

Mission

The primary mission of the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning (IJMBL) is to provide comprehensive coverage and understanding of the role of innovative learning theory and practice in an increasingly mobile and pervasive technological environment. As technology enables a more seamless experience of device supported learning worlds that may integrate mobile, embedded, augmented, and immersive technologies, we may expect to see increasing interest and activity in blended approaches to learning. IJMBL brings together researchers at the forefront of this field, in both technology and pedagogical practice and assists them in the development and dissemination of new approaches to both mobile and blended learning.

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More on mobile and blended learning in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=mobile+learning
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=blended+learning

International Journal of Game-Based Learning

International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL)

Editor-in-Chief: Patrick Felicia (Waterford Institute of Technology, Ireland)
Published Quarterly. Est. 2011.
ISSN: 2155-6849|EISSN: 2155-6857|DOI: 10.4018/IJGBL

Description

The International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL) is devoted to the theoretical and empirical understanding of game-based learning. To achieve this aim, the journal publishes theoretical manuscripts, empirical studies, and literature reviews. The journal publishes this multidisciplinary research from fields that explore the cognitive and psychological aspects that underpin successful educational video games. The target audience of the journal is composed of professionals and researchers working in the fields of educational games development, e-learning, technology-enhanced education, multimedia, educational psychology, and information technology. IJGBL promotes an in-depth understanding of the multiple factors and challenges inherent to the design and integration of Game-Based Learning environments.

Topics Covered

  • Adaptive games design for Game-Based Learning
  • Design of educational games for people with disabilities
  • Educational video games and learning management systems
  • Game design models and design patterns for Game-Based Learning
  • Instructional design for Game-Based Learning
  • Integration and deployment of video games in the classroom
  • Intelligent tutoring systems and Game-Based Learning
  • Learning by designing and developing video games
  • Learning styles, behaviors and personalities in educational video games
  • Mobile development and augmented reality for Game-Based Learning
  • Motivation, audio and emotions in educational video games
  • Role of instructors
  • Virtual worlds and Game-Based Learning

Mission

The mission of the International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL) is to promote knowledge pertinent to the design of Game-Based Learning environments, and to provide relevant theoretical frameworks and the latest empirical research findings in the field of Game-Based Learning. The main goals of IJGBL are to identify, explain, and improve the interaction between learning outcomes and motivation in video games, and to promote best practices for the integration of video games in instructional settings. The journal is multidisciplinary and addresses cognitive, psychological and emotional aspects of Game-Based Learning. It discusses innovative and cost-effective Game-Based Learning solutions. It also provides students, researchers, instructors, and policymakers with valuable information in Game-Based Learning, and increases their understanding of the process of designing, developing and deploying successful educational games. IJGBL also identifies future directions in this new educational medium.

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more on gaming and gamification in this IMS blog:
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=gaming+and+gamification

elearning market in decline

Global E-Learning Market in Steep Decline, Report Says

By Richard Chang

https://campustechnology.com/articles/2016/09/01/global-elearning-market-in-steep-decline.aspx

a recent report released by Ambient Insight Research, a Washington state-based market research firm.

Revenues for self-paced e-learning in 2016 are heavily concentrated in two countries — the United States and China. The growth rate in the U.S. is at -5.3 percent, representing a $4.9 billion drop in revenues by 2021, while in China, the rate is at -8.8 percent, representing a $1.9 billion drop by 2021. The e-learning market in China has deteriorated rapidly in just the last 18 months, the report said.

  • Of the 122 countries tracked by Ambient Insight, 15 have growth rates for self-paced e-learning over 15 percent during the next five years. These countries are heavily concentrated in Asia and Africa, with the two outliers being Slovakia and Lithuania.
  • Eleven of the top 15 growth countries will generate less than $20 million by 2021. Of the top 15, Slovakia and Lithuania are anticipated to generate the highest revenues for self-paced products by 2021, at $55.4 million and $36.5 million, respectively.
  • The growth rates are negative in every region except Africa, where the growth is flat at 0.9 percent. The steepest declines are in Asia and Latin America at -11.7 percent and -10.8 percent, respectively. The economic meltdowns in Brazil and Venezuela are major inhibitors in Latin America.
  • There are 77 countries with flat-to-negative growth rates. The countries with the lowest growth rates are Yemen (-18.7 percent), Brazil (-19.8 percent), Qatar (-23.5 percent) and Venezuela (-26.8 percent).

Self-paced e-learning products include online courses, managed education services, managed training, e-books and learning management systems, according to the report. The author does not consider mobile and game-based learning, which are growing, to be in the self-paced e-learning category.

The news on the self-paced e-learning industry is so bad, Ambient Insight will no longer publish commercial syndicated reports on the industry, the firm says on its website and in the report.

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more on elearning in this IMS blog

https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=elearning

online learning lingo

Proportion of Content

Delivered Online

Type of Course

Typical Description

0%

Traditional

Classroom-based teaching with assignments and activities which students pursue independently of each other.

1 to 29%

Web Facilitated

Web resources and technologies are used to facilitate what is essentially a face-to-face course. May use webpages and course management systems (CMS) to post syllabuses, readings and assignments.

30-79%

Blended / Hybrid

Course blends online and face-to-face delivery. Substantial parts of the content are delivered online and discussions, team projects and activities and web safaris are used for learning. The number of face-to-face sessions is decreased as the volume of online activity increases.

80+%

Online

A course where all, or almost all, of the content is delivered online with no or a very small number of face-to-face meetings.
  • Synchronous learning
  • Asynchronous learning

Flipped Classroom

Competency-Based Learning

open learning
Flexible learning (badges)

Gamification

Immersive Learning Environments

Adaptive Learning and Assessment

Systems
Simulation
Immersive Tutoring

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Glossary of Online Learning Terms http://theelearningcoach.com/resources/online-learning-glossary-of-terms/

E-Learning Terms
http://www.bpcc.edu/educationaltechnology/glossary.html

LMS and student learning

Techniques for Unleashing Student Work from Learning Management Systems

http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/02/13/techniques-for-unleashing-student-work-from-learning-management-systems/

the fundamental problem is that learning management systems are ultimately about serving the needs of institutions, not individual students.

In his manifesto on Connectivism, George Siemens writes that in Connectivist learning environments, the “pipes” of a course are more important than what flows through those pipes. The networks that students build are durable structures of lifelong learning, and they are more important

by having students own their learning spaces and democratize the means of production. Rather than forcing students to log in to an institutional LMS, I asked them to create their own websites, blogs, Twitter accounts and spaces on the open Web. In these spaces, students could curate links and connections and share their evolving ideas. Whatever they create is owned and maintained by them, not by me or by Harvard. They can keep their content for three months, three years, or the rest of their lives, so long as they continue to curate and move their published content as platforms change.

so, it is back what i claimed at the turn of the century: LMS were claimed to be invented to make the instructor’s life “easier”: instead of learning HTML, use LMS. My argument was that by the time one learns the interface of WebCT, one can learn HTML and HTML will be remain for the rest of their professional life, whereas WebCT got replaced by D2L and D2L will be replaced by another interface. I was labeled as “D2L hater” for such an opinion.
Now to the argument that LMS was a waste of instructors’ time, is added the new argument that it is also a waste of students’ time.

The way that Connected Courses deal with this challenge is by aggregation, sometimes also called syndication. All of the content produced on student blogs, websites, Twitter accounts and other social media accounts is syndicated to a single website. On the Flow page, every piece of content created by students, myself and teaching staff was aggregated into one place. We also had Blog and Twitter Hubs that displayed only long-form writing from blogs or microposts from Twitter. A Spotlight page highlighted some of the best writings from students.

This online learning environment had three important advantages. First, students owned their means of production. They weren’t writing in discussion forums in order to get 2 points for posting to the weekly prompt. They wrote to communicate with audiences within the class and beyond. Second, everyone’s thinking could be found in the same place, by looking at hashtags and our syndication engines on t509massive.org. Finally, this design allows our learning to be permeable to the outside world. Students could write for audiences they cared about: fellow librarians or English teachers or education technologists working in developing countries. And as our networks grew, colleagues form outside our classroom could share with us, by posting links or thoughts to the #t509massive hashtag.

 

 

 

robocolleges

https://higheredinquirer.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-growth-of-robot-colleges.html

some frightening full-time faculty numbers at some large online universities.

Robot colleges have de-skilled instruction by paying teams of workers, some qualified and some not, to write content, while computer programs perform instructional and management tasks. Learning management systems with automated instruction programs

The assumption is that managing work this way significantly reduces costs, and it does, at least in the short and medium terms.  However, instructional costs are frequently replaced by marketing and advertising expenses to pitch the schools to prospective students and their families.
The business model in higher education for reducing labor power and faculty costs is not reserved to for-profit colleges.  Community colleges also rely on a small number of full-time faculty and armies of low-wage contingent labor.
In some cases, colleges and universities, including many brand name schools, utilize outside companies, online program managers (OPMs), to run their online programs, with OPMs like 2U taking up as much as 60 percent of the revenues.

2018 NMC Horizon Report

2018 NMC Horizon Report

Cross-Institution & Cross-Sector Collaboration Long-Term Trend: Driving Ed Tech adoption in higher education for five or more years

Although a variety of collaborations between higher education and industry have emerged, more-explicit frameworks and guidelines are needed to define how these partnerships should proceed to have the greatest impact.

links to the Webinar on the report:
https://events.educause.edu/educause-live/webinars/2018/exploring-the-2018-horizon-report

link to the transcript: https://events.educause.edu/~/media/files/events/educause-live/2018/live1808/transcript.docx

Proliferation of Open Educational Resources Mid-Term Trend: Driving Ed Tech adoption in higher education for the next three to five years

The United States lags on the policy front. In September 2017, the Affordable College Textbook Act was once again introduced in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate “to expand the use of open textbooks
It is unlikely that ACTA will pass, however, as it has been unsuccessfully introduced to two previous Congresses.

The Rise of New Forms of Interdisciplinary Studies

Faculty members, administrators, and instructional designers are creating innovative pathways to college completion through interdisciplinary experiences, nanodegrees, and other alternative credentials, such as digital badges. Researchers, along with academic technologists and developers, are breaking new ground with data structures, visualizations, geospatial applications, and innovative uses of opensource tools.

Growing Focus on Measuring Learning

As societal and economic factors redefine the skills needed in today’s workforce, colleges and universities must rethink how to define, measure, and demonstrate subject mastery and soft skills such as creativity and collaboration. The proliferation of data-mining software and developments in online education, mobile learning, and learning management systems are coalescing toward learning environments that leverage analytics and visualization software to portray learning data in a multidimensional and portable manner

Redesigning Learning Spaces

upgrading wireless bandwidth and installing large displays that allow for more natural collaboration on digital projects. Some are exploring how mixed-reality technologies can blend 3D holographic content into physical spaces for simulations, such as experiencing Mars by controlling rover vehicles, or how they can enable multifaceted interaction with objects, such as exploring the human body in anatomy labs through detailed visuals. As higher education continues to move away from traditional, lecture-based lessons toward more hands-on activities, classrooms are starting to resemble real-world work and social environments

Authentic Learning Experiences

An increasing number of institutions have begun bridging the gap between academic knowledge and concrete applications by establishing relationships with the broader community; through active partnerships with local organizations

Improving Digital Literacy Solvable Challenge: Those that we understand and know how to solve

Digital literacy transcends gaining discrete technological skills to generating a deeper understanding of the digital environment, enabling intuitive and discerning adaptation to new contexts and cocreation of content.107 Institutions are charged with developing students’ digital citizenship, promoting the responsible and appropriate use of technology, including online communication etiquette and digital rights and responsibilities in blended and online learning settings. This expanded concept of digital competence is influencing curriculum design, professional development, and student-facing services and resources. Due to the multitude of elements of digital literacy, higher education leaders must obtain institution-wide buy-in and provide support for all stakeholders in developing these competencies.

Despite its growing importance, it remains a complex topic that can be challenging to pin down. Vanderbilt University established an ad hoc group of faculty, administrators, and staff that created a working definition of digital literacy on campus and produced a white paper recommending how to implement digital literacy to advance the university’s mission: https://vanderbilt.edu/ed-tech/committees/digital-literacy-committee.php

Adapting Organizational Designs to the Future of Work

Technology, shifting information demands, and evolving faculty roles are forcing institutions to rethink the traditional functional hierarchy. Institutions must adopt more flexible, teambased, matrixed structures to remain innovative and responsive to campus and stakeholder needs.

Attempts to avoid bureaucracy also align with a streamlined workforce and cost elimination. Emphasis has been placed on designing better business models through a stronger focus on return on investment. This involves taking a strategic approach that connects financial practice (such as analyzing cost metrics and resource allocation) with institutional change models and goals.124

Faculty roles have been and continue to be impacted by organizational change, as well as by broader economic movements. Reflective of today’s “gig economy,” twothirds of faculty members are now non-tenure, with half working part-time, often in teaching roles at several institutions. This stands as a stark contrast to 1969, when almost 80 percent of faculty were tenured or tenuretrack; today’s figures are nearly inverted. Their wages are applying pressure to traditional organizational structures.Rethinking tenure programs represents another change to organizational designs that aligns with the future of work.

Organizational structures are continuing to evolve on the administrative side as well. With an emphasis on supporting student success, many institutions are rethinking their student services, which include financial aid, academic advising, and work-study programs. Much of this change is happening within the context of digital transformation, an umbrella term that denotes the transformation of an organization’s core business to better meet customer needs by leveraging technology and data.

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added Nov 13, 2018

6 growing trends taking over academic libraries

BY MERIS STANSBURY
March 24th, 2017

Horizon Report details short-and long-term technologies, trends that will impact academic libraries worldwide in the next 5 years.

6 growing trends taking over academic libraries

Short-Term, 1-2 years):

  • Research Data Management: The growing availability of research reports through online library databases is making it easier for students, faculty, and researchers to access and build upon existing ideas and work. “Archiving the observations that lead to new ideas has become a critical part of disseminating reports,” says the report.
  • Valuing the User Experience: Librarians are now favoring more user-centric approaches, leveraging data on patron touchpoints to identify needs and develop high-quality engaging experiences.

(Mid-Term, 3-5 years):

  • Patrons as Creators: Students, faculty, and researchers across disciplines are learning by making and creating rather than by simply consuming content. Creativity, as illustrated by the growth of user-generated videos, maker communities, and crowdfunded projects in the past few years, is increasingly the means for active, hands-on learning. People now look to libraries to assist them and provide tools for skill-building and making.
  • Rethinking Library Spaces: At a time when discovery can happen anywhere, students are relying less on libraries as the sole source for accessing information and more for finding a place to be productive. As a result, institutional leaders are starting to reflect on how the design of library spaces can better facilitate the face-to-face interactions.

(Long-Term, 5 or more years):

  • Cross-Institution Collaboration: Within the current climate of shrinking budgets and increased focus on digital collections, collaborations enable libraries to improve access to scholarly materials and engage in mission-driven cooperative projects.
  • Evolving Nature of the Scholarly Record: Once limited to print-based journals and monographic series, scholarly communications now reside in networked environments and can be accessed through an expansive array of publishing platforms. “As different kinds of scholarly communication are becoming more prevalent on the web, librarians are expected to discern the legitimacy of these innovative approaches and their impact in the greater research community through emerging altmetrics tools,” notes the report.
  • Improving digital literacy: According to the report, digital literacy transcends gaining isolated technological skills to “generate a deeper understanding of the digital environment, enabling intuitive adaptation to new contexts, co-creation of content with others, and an awareness of both the freedom and risks that digital interactions entail. Libraries are positioned to lead efforts to develop students’ digital citizenship, ensuring mastery of responsible and appropriate technology use, including online identity, communication etiquette, and rights and responsibilities.

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more on the NMC Horizon Report in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=horizon+report

LMS on customer experience

The Best Learning Management Systems based on Customer Experience

This Top 20 LMS list has been created using a holistic approach and is based on input from actual LMS users.
The order of appearance depends on Customer Satisfaction (CSAT Score), Customer Effort (CEF Score) & Customer Expectation (CEX Score).

https://elearningindustry.com/directory/software-categories/learning-management-systems/best/customer-experience

  1. https://www.looop.co/
  2. https://www.skillcast.com/
  3. https://www.ispringsolutions.com/ispring-learn
  4. https://www.knolyx.com/
  5. https://ecoach.com/
  6. https://www.nimble-elearning.com/
  7. https://learnamp.com/features
  8. https://www.skolera.com/en/Default.aspx
  9. https://www.neolms.com/
  10. https://www.sofialms.com/
  11. https://www.crossknowledge.com/
  12. https://claned.com/
  13. https://www.talentlms.com/index/aff:bing
  14. https://www.totaralms.com/
  15. https://chamilo.org/chamilo-lms/
  16. https://open.edx.org/
  17. https://moodle.org/
  18. https://www.litmos.com/
  19. https://captivateprime.adobe.com/acapindex.html
  20. https://www.docebo.com/

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more on LMS in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=lms

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