College completion rates are low. Programs that help students complete college cost money. What if we invest in helping more students graduate from college? What would that do for the American economy? A lot, according to a new study – The Economic Impact of Increasing College Completion–from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Moody’s Analytics. More...
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has issued learner-owned academic credentials on the blockchain. The University’s Digital Diploma Pilot Program allowed a select cohort of students to receive both a paper diploma and a digital diploma anchored to the blockchain. More...
While more than half of all college students are women, less than one-third of all full-time professors are women–and the troubling gaps in academia are proving difficult to close. More...
Top 200 Tools for Learning 2017
Jane Hart, 2017/10/02
The 2017 Jane Hart's list of the top tools used for e-learning (by mostly professionals) is now available. The list is now 200 tools long, but really, after 50 or so you're getting into the cruft. The top of the list, by contrast, is much more mainstream than in the past: YouTube, Google Search, PowerPoint, Google Docs, Twitter, Word, LinkedIn, Facebook and WordPress. More...
Here’s how our minds organize experiences
James Devitt, Futurity, 2017/10/02
While I want to jump on this and say that my long-held theory has been vindicated, I know that I should await confirmation and test6ing. Still, an article that begins "our brains organize experiences by their similarities, new research suggests" just makes me feel fuzzy all over, because this is the theory I was working on 35 years ago and which underlies most of the work I've done since (here's a quick outline). More...
Pymetrics raises $8 million for job-matching with AI and neuroscience games
Bérénice Magistretti, Venture Beat, 2017/10/02
Venture Beat highlights the funding, but I'm more interested in the direction being taken by the technology. Here's the idea: "We collect dense behavioral data from successful professionals in various roles and use machine learning to build models of which traits separate the successful professionals from the general population." This was the idea behind what we called 'Automated Competency Detection and Recognition'. More...
Like to be connected?
Steve Wheeler, Learning With E's', 2017/10/02
"What would happen if someone created a digital platform which schools could use to connect with businesses, experts and industry," asks Steve Wheeler. We're about to foind out because of the service being announced in this post, LikeToBe, which connects professionals with schools and classes. More...
Here's a 21st Century Skill--and How to Teach It!
Daniel Willingham, Science & Education, 2017/10/02
I'm going to give Daniel Willingham props for a no-qualifications admission that he was wrong in the past. He has argued in the past that students should be taught domain knowledge, rather than critical thinking or other '21st century skills'. More...
Why Is Live Interactive Video Streaming So Rare Among MOOCs and LMSs?
Henry Kronk, eLearning Inside News, 2017/10/16
I can answer that question from my own experience. It's really hard to put hundreds of people, let alone thousands, into a live interactive streaming conference. This article doesn't seem to recognize that difficulty. "It’s possible—in a course with scheduled lectures—for students to tune in, listen to a lecture in real time, ask questions, and participate in discussion from a remote location." Well yes, it's possible, but not in video. More...
Raising Robot Literacy: Universal Robots Expands Unique Online Academy, Offering Free Interactive Modules in Robotics Programming
Press Release, Business Wire, 2017/10/16
OK, this is just a press release for a free course in robot programming, though of course its claims that you can "become a robot programmer in only 87 minutes" is obviously ridiculous. Don't follow this link; it will only encourage them. It reminds me once again that advertising is the original fake news. More...
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