by George Anders , Forbes Although Coursera got its start in Silicon Valley, the Mountain View, Calif., company has attracted an increasingly global user base in the past three years. Currently, 51% of Coursera’s learners are in emerging markets, up substantially from the mid-20s at Coursera’s start. Koller notes that while the U.S. still provides the company’s largest pool of learners, the site’s next three countries, in terms of user popularity, are China, India and Brazil. All three are in emerging markets where English isn’t the national language, Koller observes. Eager to make the most of such opportunities, Coursera is stepping up efforts to provide more local-language content in Asia and Latin America. http://www.forbes.com/sites/georgeanders/2015/09/22/courseras-hunt-for-feedback-reveals-a-divided-world/ Share on Facebook

by Michael Bernick, Fox and Hounds The California community colleges, at the Chancellor’s Office level and among individual colleges, have been taking the lead, actively studying the certification and badge system. A recent mapping effort by the Sector Navigators staff among the Colleges detailed the growing number of certifications. In Advanced Manufacturing, for example, the mapping effort found over 170 certifications being issued by independent entities, including 80 separate certifications by the National Center for Construction Education & Research, 52 certifications by the National Institute of Metalworking Skills, and 17 certifications by the American Society for Quality. Beyond the certifications is the growth of "stackable certifications". The idea behind stackable certifications is that a worker can gain certifications in several specialties to expand job options. http://www.foxandhoundsdaily.com/2015/09/the-role-of-certifications-and-badges-in-californias-workforce-world/ Share on Facebook

BY GRAHAM WINFREY, Inc Online course-takers say web-based classes are helping them get raises, promotions, and new startup skills. Free online courses are having a major impact in helping workers advance their careers, a new study shows. A recent survey from online learning company Coursera, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Washington shows that 87 percent of individuals who take online courses with the goal of career advancement are finding success doing so. Nearly 35 percent reported tangible benefits, including receiving a raise, getting a promotion, finding a new job, or starting their own business. http://www.inc.com/graham-winfrey/how-online-courses-can-help-entrepreneurs-close-the-skills-gap.html Share on Facebook

by IBN Live Search engine giant Google and online education company Udacity on Monday launched IT courses in India, branching outside the US to tap the country’s millions of software developers scrambling for jobs. The pair teamed with Indian conglomerate Tata to offer online technical training courses, focusing on teaching software developers to build apps for Android, the Google-backed mobile operating system. Costing 9,800 rupees a month, the degrees will take between six and nine months to complete, with lessons from Google instructors based in the United States. Students will get 50 per cent of tuition costs back on graduation. http://www.ibnlive.com/news/tech/google-launches-online-it-courses-in-india-1107658.html Share on Facebook

by Jordan Friedman, US News In the digital age, learning coding skills is becoming a great way to change career paths or boost your resume, experts say. As technology advances, coding classes online are growing tremendously in popularity, whether it’s free and low-cost programs or computer programming certificates and full degree options offered through colleges and universities. "More and more businesses - whether it’s journalism, law or container shipping - are being upended by technology," says Zach Sims, CEO and co-founder of Codecademy​, an online platform that offers free coding classes. "By understanding coding you are able to understand those changes and contribute to that sequence of changes." http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2015/09/23/3-ways-to-gain-coding-skills-in-online-courses Share on Facebook

by Natalie Kiteroeff, Bloomberg For all their problems, free online classes may have a net positive effect on your career. A new study shows that most people who took a free massive open online course, or MOOC, say it helped their careers, including by getting them a new job or helping them start a business. "This type of research illustrates the possibilities MOOCs offer to change the educational landscape," write the authors of the study, published Tuesday in the Harvard Business Review. The study was conducted by researchers at Coursera, an online education platform, and professors at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Washington, who have taught MOOCs. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-23/want-a-new-job-take-these-online-classes Share on Facebook

By Digital Arts UK FutureLearn is kicking off free online courses for pros across branding, design, animation, VFX and more. The courses have been created using £200,000 of funding from government quango Creative Skillset. FutureLearn, which describes itself as the only UK-based MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform, will allow creative pros to learn skills from brand storytelling to animation techniques from professional bodies and universities. Courses beginning in the next few weeks include Digital Storytelling: Filmmaking for the Web, Brand Storytelling: How to Use Narrative to Sell, An Introduction to Screenwriting, Film Production, and How to build a Sustainable Fashion Business. http://www.digitalartsonline.co.uk/news/creative-business/free-online-courses-for-designers-artists-creative-pros-offered-by-futurelearn/ Share on Facebook

by Jeffrey R. Young, Chronicle of Higher Ed An academic social network has added a tool it hopes will shake up the system of peer review. The network is called Academia.edu, and it has grown to more than 25 million registered participants, who use it mainly to post their published papers in order to help others find them (and, it’s hoped, cite them). The site’s new tool, called Sessions, lets researchers post papers that are still in progress, and invite colleagues to comment on them so the papers can be improved before being submitted to peer-reviewed journals. Richard Price, chief executive of Academia.edu, says the intention is to recreate online what happens at academic conferences, where scholars present new research and face questions and critiques from peers in the field. http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/academic-social-network-hopes-to-change-the-culture-of-peer-review/57419 Share on Facebook

By Corinne Lestch, Fed Scoop Andrew Marcinek was hired by the Office of Educational Technology to work on connecting K-12 and higher ed schools to openly licensed educational resources. According to officials, Marcinek will work with "tool providers and developers, district and state leaders, and educators" to connect them to open educational resources, also known as OER, which can range from podcasts to digital libraries and games. The announcement comes as President Barack Obama once again directed his focus to a key higher education issue: trying to hold colleges accountable to students with a new website. http://fedscoop.com/education-department-announces-new-open-educational-resources-hire-and-college-website Share on Facebook

By Michael Hart, Campus Technology How do you make sure everybody with access to information on your campus knows what they have and how to keep it secure — in an ever-changing landscape of behaviors and risks? So, are you worried about the teaching assistant in the basement of the chemistry building selling beakers to students to use in their labs? How about the system the popular pizza place across the street from campus is using to process credit card transactions? Probably not — but you should be. It’s likely those activities, and more just like them, would fly way below the radar at most institutions of higher education. However, they can make your school just as vulnerable as any information gap you might find in the admissions office. http://campustechnology.com/articles/2015/09/24/data-security-in-higher-ed-a-moving-target.aspx Share on Facebook

by the University of Wisconsin George Mosse was one of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s iconic professors: a pioneering historian with a gift for connecting the past to the present. Mosse was an authority on Nazism who himself fled the Nazi regime, writing influential works on fascism like "The Crisis of German Ideology" and "The Nationalization of the Masses." Students flocked to his UW classes from 1955 until his retirement in 1987, drawn by his charismatic style and his insights into European cultural history. Mosse died in 1999, but a unique online course from UW-Madison’s Division of Continuing Studies is bringing his lectures to a new audience. From Oct. 5-31, What History Tells plans to recreate the exhilarating experience of sitting in Mosse’s classroom. http://news.wisc.edu/24034 Share on Facebook

by Claire Zillman, Fortune Together, the Ivy League’s online learning group and the magazine are offering courses in business strategy. The online education market got another player on Wednesday when Cornell University’s online learning group, eCornell, and Fortune announced the launch of an online business education program. The program titled "Mastering 21st Century Business Strategy" consists of six courses, each of which takes five to seven hours to complete. Participants who complete all six classes, which will cover topics like strategic positioning in markets and mergers and acquisitions strategy, will receive a certificate in business strategy from Cornell. Professor Justin Johnson of Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management designed the program, which will feature videos from several Fortune journalists. http://fortune.com/2015/09/23/cornell-fortune-education-program/ Share on Facebook

By Erika Morphy, CMS Wire Vancouver, British Columbia-based Hootsuite debuted an online learning portal called Podium this week that’s devoted to classes on (what else?) social media. There’s no charge for the classes and a quick preview suggests they are worth the time invested in watching them — especially since they are free, outside of a $200 fee for people who want to be certified. http://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/hootsuite-gets-stickier-with-free-online-classes/ Share on Facebook

by B Daily Jobs today are changing faster than ever - too fast for the traditional education system to keep up and adequately train the next workforce. The majority of Udemy courses taken (75%) are work related as people look to move their careers forward, either in traditional workplaces or by building their own businesses. The report identifies the changing face of learning. Twelve of the top 20 most popular courses would not have been heard of a decade ago. As technology moves at such a fast pace, skills such as web and app development are now paramount to British businesses, but not universally taught in traditional education. People need to keep their skills up to date and in order to stay relevant, they have to keep learning long after they leave school. https://bdaily.co.uk/entrepreneurship/25-09-2015/brits-using-online-learning-to-boost-career-prospects/ Share on Facebook

By Darwin Green, US News With online learning, military students don’t have to worry about whether moving will interfere with their studies. It was the winter of 2012, and my wife and I were waiting to hear the location of her next military post. I wanted to enroll in college because I needed to start a career I could use wherever we ended up. We got the orders for Nebraska one month prior to moving. Several weeks after we arrived, I started taking online classes at Pennsylvania State University—World Campus, where I’m now in my last semester of earning an online degree in psychology. Based on my experience, here are three things people from the military community should know about online learning. http://www.usnews.com/education/online-learning-lessons/2015/09/25/3-things-the-military-community-should-know-about-online-learning Share on Facebook

by Michael Hotchkiss, Princeton University Princeton University continues to broaden its online teaching and learning efforts and has become a charter member of the edX Consortium. As a result, millions of learners will have the opportunity to take free classes offered by Princeton faculty on the edX online platform. The first course taught by a Princeton faculty member on edX is scheduled to begin in October. Jennifer Widner, a professor of politics and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, will lead the course "Making Government Work in Hard Places." http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S44/30/40Q82/index.xml Share on Facebook

by Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, CIO Make sure development suits introverted employees — they have more influence than their quiet dispositions might suggest. Imagine this scenario: For the fifth time that morning, the management training facilitator asked if there were any questions. The roomful of mostly introverted engineers fell silent. Rather than engage people in small groups or ask them to write down their ideas, she continued to run her class the way she had always done — geared toward extroverts. The result? The quieter folks in the room weren’t heard, nor were they engaged with the material. The extroverts who might have benefited with their questions and contributions also lost out. Learning methods are often not created with introverts in mind, but they should be. http://www.clomedia.com/articles/6498-is-your-learning-introvert-friendly Share on Facebook

by Audrey Mullen, EdSurge We asked San Jose high school sophomore Audrey Mullen to share how she and her peers actually use various edtech tools and how they really feel about their teachers’ blended learning approaches. The result is a straight-from-the-source playbook that no blend ed teacher-or entrepreneur-will want to skip. And don’t miss Audrey’s list of four "tools that save my life," below. https://www.edsurge.com/news/2015-09-25-a-cat-is-not-a-dog-and-other-advice-for-blended-learning-teachers Share on Facebook

by MIT Shigeru Miyagawa, professor of linguistics and the Kochi-Manjiro Professor of Japanese Language and Culture at MIT, has earned a reputation as a leading voice for the use of technology and digital innovation in education. Since the earliest days of the Web, he has worked to realize its potential as a tool for teaching and learning, and he was a member of the faculty committee that recommended the creation of MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) in 2001. He has continued to advocate for the open sharing of educational materials, for which he was honored with the 2012 President’s Award for OpenCourseWare Excellence. Most recently, "Visualizing Japan" — a massive open online course (MOOC) inspired by "Visualizing Cultures," co-taught by Miyagawa, Dower, Harvard University historian Andrew Gordon, and Duke University art historian Gennifer Weisenfeld — has been nominated for the Japan Prize in Education Media. This is a prestigious international prize awarded to educational broadcast and digital media programs selected from around the world. http://news.mit.edu/2015/visualizing-japan-mooc-nominated-for-japan-prize-0925 Share on Facebook

By LORI GABLE, Rochester Business Journal Rochester Institute of Technology is launching an online bachelor of science degree program, the university said Friday. The degree in applied technical leadership program is aimed at working professionals who have associate degrees in fields such as technology, public service, military and health. As part of RIT Online, all courses are taught online. The curriculum is multidisciplinary and draws on several RIT programs and colleges, officials said. The required upper-level core courses include applied leadership, human resource development, crisis intervention, environmental health and safety law, and service quality from the College of Applied Science and Technology; project management from the School of Individualized Studies; financial accounting from the Saunders College of Business; and public policy and technical communication from the College of Liberal Arts. http://www.rbj.net/article.asp?aID=219248 Share on Facebook

by Kurt Eisele-Dyrli University Business Fulfilling a connection need: Troy University’s Trojan Cafe (left) has had more than 19,000 users in the past year, and Northern Virginia Community College’s virtual student union (right), still in expansion mode, has had about 500 users so far. For all the advantages of online learning—flexibility, personalization and affordability among them—there can be downsides for some students. Traditional, on-campus students can take advantage of a wide variety of social and extracurricular opportunities, but online students may feel isolated and disconnected from their peers and from their college or university—and risk losing the engagement so crucial to student success. Linked below are reports from three higher ed institutions in various stages of addressing these issues via a virtual student union. http://www.universitybusiness.com/article/keeping-remote-college-students-connected Share on Facebook

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive The number of video game design programs has increased dramatically in recent years, responding to demand from students more than demand from employers. Many of these programs are at the community college level, giving students associate degrees to take into the job market. The problem is, there were only 6,000 jobs posted in video game design last year, according to Matt Sigelman, CEO of Burning Glass Technologies. Out of those 6,000 jobs, 89% required a bachelor’s degree or higher, and fewer than 5% were open to candidates with no prior experience. Sometimes the jobs students are being prepared for in college degree programs don’t match the need in the economy. Share on Facebook

by Brooke Lennington, KSNT In the small town of Clay Center, Kansas is a grandma, who is battling cancer and homework all at the same time. She does it all just to fulfill a promise before she dies. It started out as a bad cough five years ago. The x-rays revealed a spot: Stage 4 lung cancer. "They did a biopsy immediately and, by that Thursday, they took my right lung," said Judy Renton, cancer survivor. Realizing her cancer diagnosis could leave her with little time, she went online and found her guardian angels, The Insight School of Kansas Adult School Learner program. "Everything is done online," Leatha Hall, Judy’s school counselor said. "Classes are live so they open their computer, they login, they see a live class session." She started taking her online classes, while at the same time getting chemotherapy at the Topeka Cancer Center. "I could spend those 6 hours in chemo to do my homework and even go to class," Renton said. http://wric.com/2015/09/26/kansas-grandma-cancer-survivor-goes-back-to-school-to-fulfill-promise-2/ Share on Facebook

by Brian Rashid, Forbes Fifteen million people have made a choice. They chose to learn and grow and expand and advance. They sat in their apartments in New York City or their flats in London or their huts in Colombia. They came to learn from the four corners of the world. They opened their computer screens or turned on their mobile devices. These 15 million people had two things in common. They used Coursera. Their lives improved. As of today, Coursera launched more than 100 new courses in Spanish from the some of the best Universities across Latin America. That is 10 times the amount of courses previously on the platform. They also have 60 courses that have been subtitled or fully translated in Spanish. A majority of these offerings are career-focused courses like business english, IOS development, data analytics, green marketing, and entrepreneurship. Oh, and the mobile app is now also available in Spanish, making it easier for its users to navigate. http://www.forbes.com/sites/brianrashid/2015/09/29/coursera-expands-to-latin-america-in-big-ways/ Share on Facebook