by Kallen Diggs, Huffington Post Many people have debated whether a college education is necessary to be a success. The education industry is changing and also reforming the beliefs that many once had about college. On average, millennials are taking six years to get their bachelor’s degree instead of four years. What does that mean for MBA students? Many people believe that an MBA can be a good requisite for entrepreneurs. However, most of us know that many people have become amazing entrepreneurs without an MBA degree. So, the question remains: Should millennial entrepreneurs pursue an MBA?Recently, the University of Illinois made their MBA courses available for free through the online education platform, Coursera. It can be a great opportunity for people to earn some credentials, which may be helpful as entrepreneurs. Students who are interested in getting the actual MBA degree need to apply for admission and pay about $20,000 in tuition. Paying $20,000 is quite a deal when you consider the average cost of an MBA. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kallen-diggs/should-millennial-entrepr_b_8234666.html Share on Facebook

by Post-Bulletin Lots of workers - 29 percent according to a recent survey by Spherion Staffing - are worried that they don’t have the skills to get ahead. There’s ample evidence, though, that many workers, including those who’ve already racked up college and post-graduate degrees, are taking courses to keep their skills marketable. "Across the board, from entry level jobs on up, there’s increasing demand for skills," explains Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. "Even a Ph.D.," he notes, may need a course to "keep ahead of new processes." http://www.postbulletin.com/jobs/online-courses-offer-career-advancement/article_4ca90d6e-6916-11e5-8583-8b757cafc36a.html Share on Facebook

By Kevin Gibbs and Claire Stuve, eCampus News Two professors describe online learning platform features that can enable engaging online learning experiences—and why they’re critical to real success. High failure rates. Low retention. Disengaged students. These problems exist at many universities, but more and more institutions and instructors, like us, are leveraging online learning to turn that story around—but real success goes beyond just a format switch. As an instructor and an educational technologist, we want to see online learning reflect the quality of great teaching that takes place face-to-face. http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/online-learning-engagement-223/ Share on Facebook

by Fred Wasser, KNPR Bob Murphy is the director of evaluation research at the Center for Technology in Learning at SRI International. He also wrote a book about online learning and the research on its effectiveness. "In general, the quality of the effectiveness research was pretty poor," he said, "However, what we did find was that in general online learning, folks in online learning courses, did as well or better than adults and students in traditional courses." http://knpr.org/knpr/2015-10/online-learning-how-effective-it Share on Facebook

by Robert Nicholls, Market Business A new system from MIT has outperformed human intuition using its algorithms. It’s amazing, and perhaps a little frightening: an MIT computer’s algorithms outperformed human intuition in a groundbreaking new test. The findings will be presented this upcoming week at the IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics. There are a number of tasks the researchers believe the computer could be helpful at. One example listed in the report is looking at statistics and predict if a student is likely to drop out of an online course. It’s just one of many examples where the machine could immediately be put to work. http://www.themarketbusiness.com/2015-10-18-mits-unique-computer-system-aims-to-take-the-humans-out-of-data-analysis Share on Facebook

by Online Learning Consortium The Online Learning Consortium (OLC), the leading professional organization devoted to advancing the quality of online learning worldwide, today announced it has received a $2.5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to speed adoption of next-generation digital courseware solutions by higher education institutions and faculty, in order to improve outcomes in general education courses, especially for disadvantaged and underserved student groups. Next-generation digital courseware, which is based on the science of learning and best practices in user experience (UX) design, has been shown to improve student learning outcomes for disadvantaged students. This grant will support OLC’s efforts to promote awareness of research, pedagogy, and best practices in the broader digital learning domain to speed adoption and facilitate the kind of innovation that is critical to closing the widening gap in degree attainment between economically privileged and low-income students. http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/online-learning-consortium-awarded-adaptive-learning-grant-300158908.html Share on Facebook

By Meris Stansbury, eCampus News In a recent report published in the Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, authors Dr. Elke M. Leeds, associate vice president of Technology Enhanced Learning and associate professor of Information Systems for KSU, and Dr. Jim Cope, executive director of the distance learning center at KSU, mention that in Stephen Haggard’s "The Maturing of the MOOC," many state and public institutions have not yet been able to qualify or quantify the value proposition in order to justify engagement with the open course market. "Measures of anticipated success are based on measures of academic course success, when in actuality one is not necessarily a substitute for the other," say the authors. They mention that in Reich and Ho’s "The Tricky Task of Figuring Out What Makes a MOOC Successful," course drop-outs are not a breach of expectations, but rather a natural result of the online, open environment. http://www.ecampusnews.com/top-news/mooc-course-completion-973/ Share on Facebook

By Leila Meyer, Campus Technology Sensory messaging devices, stress-reducing headpieces, biometric authentication bands and more — these cutting-edge wearables could soon be coming to your campus. From the Apple Watch to the plethora of activity trackers such as Fitbit, wearable technology is becoming more common — and companies are creating a steady stream of new devices that we can wear on our eyes, head, wrist and body to communicate, consume and compute. Here are seven cutting-edge wearable technologies and some of their potential applications in and out of the classroom. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/10/14/7-up-and-coming-wearable-technologies.aspx Share on Facebook

by Karen MacGregor, University World News Boundaries between contact and distance universities are rapidly blurring, and boundaries between institutions and developers of technology-enhanced learning ought to be broken down if both worlds are to benefit from each other’s expertise in the interests of sustainable development, thought leaders told a global conference on open, distance and e-learning. Major shifts and challenges for open and distance learning, and how it might support the newly adopted United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, were explored by a panel at last week’s conference of the International Council for Open and Distance Education, or ICDE. http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20151017100641870 Share on Facebook

by Nathan Bernard, The Next Web Over the last several months my co-founder Chirag and I have spent a lot of time thinking about micro-learning as we build our startup, Lrn. We are big supporters of the micro-learning format -specifically on mobile- and believe it can make educational content easily accessible to a global audience. In this post we hope to shed some light on the current trend and why micro-learning makes a ton of sense right now. Micro-learning is learning in short, focused bursts of information. For example, a typical micro-learning activity could be viewing a flashcard, memorizing a word, listening to a short podcast, watching a brief video or answering a series of questions in a quiz. http://tnw.to/c4kUR Share on Facebook