Archive of ‘distance learning’ category
Designing Online Assessment
Designing Online Assessment. Solutions that are Rigorous, Trusted, Flexible and Scalable
Remote work has zero negative impact on productivity
It’s official. Remote work has zero negative impact on your productivity
https://interestingengineering.com/remote-work-zero-negative-impact-productivity
Novoed.com and Miro
How not to write about HyFlex or online learning
Remote Learning Power and Privilege
How Remote Learning Subverts Power and Privilege in Higher Education
It is important to use the lessons of this transition to challenge what Paulo Freire calls “the banking system” of education—where professors aim to simply deposit knowledge into students—and instead create inclusive pedagogies that acknowledge the diversity of our students and provide a safe space that invites them to speak up. Decolonization is not just about removing a few dead white men from our syllabi, or adding more women of color. It’s about making sure that everyone’s experience is represented. It’s about decentering the traditional power hierarchy in the classroom, so that the professor is not the sole transmitter of knowledge who imposes a singular (and often Western) view. It’s about ensuring equitable participation among students, so that they don’t remain silent and passive receivers whose varied life experiences are dismissed.
In a Zoom classroom, the teacher is no longer the central authority. Chat offers real-time parallel participation. The ability to enter and exit at will equalizes power.
Even before the pandemic, many educators knew that the traditional methods of teaching and research would have to be overhauled at some point. As a professor of humanities, I had been aware of the need to employ hybrid pedagogies more in tune with the digital age and shortened, over-stimulated attention spans. Advantages to joining students in their digital space far outweigh dated arguments railing against the medium; if anything, the pandemic’s isolating effects already prompted students to seek refuge there.
At this moment, the modern university stands at a turning point. Instead of wanting to go back to how things were, we should be looking at radical pedagogical interventions that make the most of remote learning as an accompaniment to the traditional classroom experience. This is the time to put “interdisciplinary” ideas into practice by experimenting with new methodologies.
‘maze’ of education credentials
Growing ‘maze’ of education credentials is confusing consumers, employers
As more jobs require postsecondary training, more providers jump in to offer it — including fakes and scammers
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/12/26/education-credential-certificate-scams/
a “maze” of nearly a million unique education credentials in the United States, the nonprofit Credential Engine reports, including not only degrees but also badges, certificates, licenses, apprenticeships and industry certifications.
The way new kinds of credentials are being developed and awarded is “a bit like the wild West,” a study by the Rutgers University Education and Employment Research Center found.
Even before the pandemic and the subsequent labor squeeze, 39 percent of human resources managers said they spent less than a minute reading a resume, according to a survey by CareerBuilder.
Conventional higher education institutions are increasingly alarmed about the holes that have developed in a system that was previously much simpler.
A quarter of American adults now hold nondegree credentials, meaning something short of an associate or bachelor’s degree, according to federal data, and they’ve become more popular in recent years.
“As online education becomes normalized, as a credential from Google or Microsoft can get someone a job, all of a sudden we’re in an environment where higher education doesn’t have a monopoly on education,” Ahluwalia said.
The Credential Engine Registry so far includes full or partial information on about 30,000 educational credentials. That’s about 3 percent of the total it eventually hopes to list.
+++++++++++++
more on credentials in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=credentials
China online ed
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2021-12-10-in-china-online-degrees-on-hold-even-as-moocs-rise
With China muscling its way into the first ranks as a global power in science and technology—building vast new academic complexes, climbing to the top ranks of the world’s elite universities, surpassing the U.S. in PhD graduates in science and engineering, and on its way to outperforming all other nations in science and technology academic citations—I was puzzled to discover that China is on hold in offering online higher ed degrees.
To expand the nation’s technical talent pool, Chinese universities are upgrading their capacity to offer more up-to-date science and technology courses, with universities just beginning to introduce degrees in artificial intelligence, machine learning, software engineering and other advanced specialties. For China, the move is a departure from its centuries-old tradition of favoring literature and the liberal arts.
China has come a long way from cinema-style instruction to adopt more common digital learning practices, often closely following U.S. advances in online pedagogy, such as flipped classrooms and MOOCs.
Curiously, China’s reluctance to offer online degrees parallels the attitude toward online degrees in the Ivy League in the U.S.—both have embraced MOOCs while turning away from virtual degrees out of concern that remote degrees will damage their reputations.
+++++++++++++++++++++
more on online ed in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=online+education
the Future of Online Education
Stritto, R. A. T. and M. E. D. (2021). What is the Future of Online Education? The Perceptions of Instructors with Over a Decade of Online Teaching Experience. Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 24(4). https://www.westga.edu/~distance/ojdla/winter244/thomas_stritto244.html
my annotations here:
Rather than asking if online education is going to replace “traditional” education, institutions need to think through how different modalities can meet student needs. Institutions can also communicate with students about the tradeoffs associated with different educational modalities, so that students can choose courses that are the best fit for their lives.
K12 online competency based
a performance- or competency-based approach to education
little evidence that personalized learning improves student learning, in part because so many different approaches are used.
Advocates of competency-based education say they believe public opinion is also shifting their way. They point to a recent national poll showing that 74 percent of voters think the lack of personalized learning in schools is “a problem.”
+++++++++++++
more on competency based ed in this iMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=competency+based