by Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed Have you been FaceTiming with friends and family? It’s different, right? We’ve been FaceTiming with my older daughter in South Korea (gap year), my brother (new baby), and my parents. Where we once made phone calls we now FaceTime. There is something about FaceTime that makes conversations conversational. FaceTime eliminates most of the weirdness of online video conversations. FaceTime starts with a single click. The video and audio always works. The sound is great, and matches the good video feed. How will online education change when synchronous online classes improve to the level of casual FaceTime conversations? https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/will-facetime-change-online-education Share on Facebook

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology Colleges and universities are increasingly relying on adjuncts and part-time faculty members to teach their online courses. A quarter of schools have increased the use of online adjunct instructors by five percent or more; 31 percent have increased their use by up to five percent. Yet often, these instructors don’t receive training on how to teach online; the schools lack formal policies for faculty expectations; and faculty are expected to create their own online courses with or without institutional help. Those are some of the findings in an extensive survey on the use of adjunct faculty for teaching online courses, recently reported by the Learning House, a company that runs online programs for schools, and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET), a nonprofit that helps institutions improve their e-learning programs. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/16/survey-not-enough-training-instructional-support-for-online-adjunct-faculty.aspx Share on Facebook

by Touro College An important aspect of an online course is grading assignments and providing feedback. This is especially true in an asynchronous course where there is no real-time interaction between the instructors and students. Once a student completes a learning activity, the instructor teaches via the grading of the assignment and provides clear and helpful feedback to the student. A rubric is one of the most popular grading and assessment tools. Here are five benefits to having rubrics as a central part of an online course http://blogs.onlineeducation.touro.edu/rubrics/ Share on Facebook

by USF Sometimes faculty are hesitant to contact the E-Learning office to request assistance from an Instructional Designer when building or revising an online course. The reasons for this hesitation are as varied as the teaching and learning styles in our university. However, taking that first step to meet with a designer and discuss the design or re-design of an online course can be one of the best steps you’ll ever take for your course and your students. http://usfsm.edu/blog/e-learning-blog-the-role-of-instructional-design-in-course-development/ Share on Facebook

by: Joanna Young, EDUCAUSE Review To win the war for top IT talent, college and university leaders need a strategy for coming out ahead in one key battle: the paucity of women earning degrees in technology and pursuing related careers. The war for IT talent rages on in higher education, and the battlefields range from the classroom to the boardroom. To win this war and attract top IT talent, college and university leaders need a strategy for coming out ahead in one key battle: the paucity of women earning degrees in technology and pursuing related careers. This issue of women in technology cannot be looked at in isolation. It is an outcome of education access and affordability challenges and of ongoing gender gaps in all ranks and types of technology professions. If we can address those challenges and gaps, we could positively impact the number of women working in higher education information technology. http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/10/the-tech-talent-wars-and-womenintech Share on Facebook

by Sue Gee, Iprogrammer Udacity has opened a new Nanodegree in Machine Learning. At advanced level it prepares you to apply predictive models to massive data sets in fields like education, finance, healthcare or robotics. The curriculum for the Machine Learning Engineer Nanodegree has been developed with Google and in his email announcement Sebastian Thrun played up this selling point: If you followed the news, you saw that our partner, Google, just open-sourced TensorFlow, its deep learning software. And get this: our program already has a class on deep learning in TensorFlow in development, overseen by Vincent Vanhoucke, technical lead and manager in Google’s deep learning infrastructure team. http://www.i-programmer.info/news/150-training-a-education/9187-machine-learning-from-udacity-.html Share on Facebook

by SUZANNE BOWNESS, Globe and Mail To help colleges and universities connect with online learners, several Canadian provinces have developed portals to centralize online courses. The latest, eCampusOntario, launched in early October, consolidates 13,000 online courses and 600 online programs from all of the province’s 45 publicly funded colleges and universities. Like a search engine, the new portal allows students to type in keywords that turn up programs and courses on that topic. Listings provide information on content, registration and transfer credit options. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/one-stop-shopping-for-online-courses/article27356635/ Share on Facebook

BY IAIN ALEXANDER, Film Industry Network Filmmakers, digital marketers and entrepreneurs can benefit from incredible Black Friday deals and access online courses for a fraction of their usual price. Whether you are looking to study film, learn about acting or improve your social media game, there are some fantastic deals being offered over the next few hours that will get you high quality training at incredible discounts. Udemyicon are offering 17,000 online courses to all their new subscribers that select a program before midnight Friday with discounts of up to 97%. You can check out some of the most popular courses here and also our recommended selection of online classes that you can book with this deal. http://www.filmindustrynetwork.biz/black-friday-deals-get-up-to-97-off-these-online-courses/29972 Share on Facebook

By Dian Schaffhauser, Campus Technology The University of Georgia estimated that it has saved students $2 million through the adoption of open educational resources (OER) since 2013. According to Edward Watson, director of the university’s Center for Teaching and Learning, "Our approach has been to pursue large enrollment courses using expensive textbooks. This has enabled us to maximize savings for students." The institution has worked with Affordable Learning Georgia, a partnership the University System of Georgia has with California State University, which manages MERLOT, a venerable OER library of resources. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/11/20/u-georgia-nears-2-million-mark-in-oer-savings.aspx Share on Facebook

by David J. Staley, EDUCAUSE Review This essay proposes five models of innovation in higher education that expand our "Ideas of the University," envisioning educational start-ups in the spirit of entrepreneurial experimentation. The author seeks to realize each of these feasible utopias as a way to disrupt higher education. http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/11/the-future-of-the-university-speculative-design-for-innovation-in-higher-education Share on Facebook