Category Archives: Technology Skills

Link: 3 Online Education Trends That Will Shape How You Hire in 2016

The CEO of Coursera shares three trends that he thinks will shape the relationship between education and employment in the near future:

  • Job Seekers Will Build Portfolios of Online Certificates, the New Currency for Skills
  • Learning Will Become the Most Coveted Perk at Hot Employers
  • The World Will Become Your Hiring Pool

Levin, Rick. “3 Online Education Trends That Will Shape How You Hire in 2016.” Forbes. February 25, 2016.

8 Characteristics of Good Online Video

video-online-learningAccording to a report published in the MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, instructor-generated video can have a positive influence on student satisfaction with, and engagement in, online courses. But not all videos are created equal.

Research conducted by the American Academy of Neurology also reveals that “watching videos helps boost brain plasticity,” or the ability of the brain to undergo physical changes at any age. Learners who were trained to perform a particular task through videos performed better than those who learned through images and text, the researchers found—and they concluded that video has a “higher impact on the brain.”

 

Learn 8 high-impact strategies here.

Link: 7 Trends That Will Revolutionize Online Learning

The idea that online learning could actually be better than face-to-face instruction has gained credence in recent years as new technology solutions promise to make the educational experience more personalized and engaging. Has that time finally arrived? Here, eCampus News looks at seven trends that have the potential to remake the world of online learning.

Read full article here.

File: Educational Technology and Faculty Development in Higher Education

This report looks across EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS) and ECAR resources to tell the story about how faculty use technology, how students experience technology, and how institutional practices support educational technology. Together, the findings from these sources provide a three-dimensional perspective for how technologies in the teaching and learning environment are used by faculty, consumed by students, and supported by institutions.

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/edtechknowledge/files/2015/12/ers1507-1fv6jr3.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”]

Dahlstrom, Eden (2015). Educational Technology and Faculty Development in Higher Education. EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research, EDUCAUSE.

Link: 7 Things You should Know About Video Communication

Educause (2013)

Live video communication is becoming a staple in educational venues, where instructors employ it for office hours, online courses, presentations by special lecturers, just-in-time learning, or coordination with researchers in the field. It can offer a convenient venue for faculty meetings, staff liaising, and project planning when not all parties are on-site.

Read the full article here.

Link: Cleveland’s Thinkbox is a Big Bet on University Makerspaces

Case Western Reserve University’s new 50,000 square-foot, $35 million center for innovation provides a space for anyone–especially students, faculty, and alumni–to tinker and creatively invent.

Charnas explained that the seven floors have been designed to accommodate different stages of development for a person or a project. The first floor is dedicated to community, a gathering place; the second floor is for ideation with lots of whiteboards and open space for brainstorming. The third floor is for prototyping, while the fourth floor is for fabrication — don’t ask me to explain the difference. The fifth floor is open projects space, essentially workbenches and storage. The sixth floor organizes resources for entrepreneurs and the seventh floor serves as an incubator for small groups that form to develop a new product.

Dougherty, Dale. “Cleveland’s Thinkbox is a Big Bet on University Makerspaces.” Make: October 30, 2015.

See also the think[box] web site.

Link: College Reinvents “Shop” Class for the Digital Era

This fall the University of Illinois will open a space for collaborative repair of consumer technologies called the “Illini Gadget Garage.” Students and faculty who bring in broken devices will work alongside Gadget Garage staff to repair them, ideally learning a set of transferrable skills. This effort is part of a sustainability initiative that includes a focus on extending the life of consumer electronics.

Bethke, Ron. “College Reinvents ‘Shop’ Class for the Digital Era.” eCampus News, October 13, 2015.

Also see the University’s article on the Illini Gadget Garage.

Link and File: Partial Credit – The 2015 Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology

[embeddoc url=”https://blogs.uoregon.edu/edtechknowledge/files/2015/10/Faculty-Attitudes-on-Technology-2015-1x2qcqt.pdf” download=”all” viewer=”google”] The most recent survey of faculty attitudes on technology produced for Inside Higher Ed details the 2015 responses to multiple aspects of educational technology use, online learning, and social media effects on academia. The responses come from 2,175 faculty members and 105 academic technology administrators.

Colleges and universities have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on technology they believe will improve student outcomes and simplify administrative tasks. Educational technology companies continue to demolish investment records on a quarterly basis. With all this money raised and spent under the guise of improving postsecondary education, the 2015 Inside Higher Ed Survey of Faculty Attitudes on Technology suggests that many instructors believe the gains in student learning justify the costs — even if the results are perhaps less significant than desired.

Infographic: Student Mobile Workspaces

CampusTechnology provides a  snapshot of how students consider and use mobile devices in their Student Mobile Workspaces Infographic, including:

  • The value of technology from the students’ perspective
  • How students feel their devices are viewed by their institution
  • Ed tech leaders weigh in on the importance of remote access for students
  • Bridging the gap between user expectations and higher ed capabilities

94% of higher education leaders agree that students should have access to applications and data anywhere, on any device, but 55% said their institution does not provide this level of access to students today.

If you are a member you can read more about this infographic in CampusTechnology, September 17, 2015.

 

 

Link: In Sign of the Times for Teaching, More Colleges Set Up Video-Recording Studios

Meg Bernhard, “In Sign of the Times for Teaching, More Colleges Set Up Video-Recording Studios,” Chronicle of Higher Education, July 31, 2015.

Gardner Campbell, vice provost for learning innovation and student success at Virginia Commonwealth University, says he’s seen an increase in the last five years in what he calls “self-service production facilities” — on-campus studios that require minimal setup and are easy for any faculty member to use. Indeed, those facilities seem to be appearing more and more frequently; Ohio State University’s studio opened just last fall, and one at Dartmouth College, called the “Innovation Studio,” opened in May.

The article examines the increasing efforts on college campuses to provide video production support for online and hybrid course instruction.