by Esme Nicholson, WBEZ A new university in Berlin is exclusively geared to refugees. Kiron University relies on existing online courses and aims to be tuition-free and accessible to asylum seekers worldwide. Markus Kressler pulls up a virtual seminar on mechanical engineering, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, on his laptop. The 25-year-old is a co-founder of Kiron University, a Berlin-based program for refugees that taps into open-source online lectures from other universities. Kiron University students take courses online for the first two years, working toward a bachelor’s degree while they apply for asylum and acquire the paperwork and qualifications needed to enter a partner university, local to where they are, to complete the degree. "Basically, everyone can already log into these courses," Kressler says. "What we do is we just take these courses, bundle them into degree programs and make cooperation with real universities so that they also recognize these courses in order to really get a degree in the end." http://www.wbez.org/news/migrants-pour-germany-launches-online-university-them-113386 Share on Facebook

By Roger Riddell, Education Dive The U.S. Department of Education on Wednesday unveiled the Educational Quality Through Innovation Partnerships (EQUIP) program, an experimental pathway to Title IV funding for partnerships between higher ed institutions and nontraditional programs. The program has been brewing for some time under the experimental sites initiative, though it will remain limited to about 10 applications from applicable partnerships. Likely candidates for participation in the pilot include coding bootcamps, MOOC providers, and various short-term certificate and corporate training programs, and according to Inside Higher Ed, inclusion will also give institutions freedom from a federal aid ban on colleges that outsource over half of their content or instruction to an unaccredited third party. http://www.educationdive.com/news/ed-dept-pilot-opens-aid-to-alternative-credentialing/407333/ Share on Facebook

by Beth Porter, TechCrunch People often express worry that the relative anonymity of online learning environments and the disconnected nature of being in a MOOC (massive online open course) leads to more opportunities for academic dishonesty and outright cheating. However, emerging and improving technologies may prove to offer more — not less — protection from would-be cheaters. All online learning environments collect data — copious amounts — about their learners, and software is especially good at revealing patterns that may signal that cheating is happening. Knowing that you might get caught can be a powerful deterrent. Likewise, several new technologies seek to prevent cheating from the outset. These include virtual proctoring, identity verification and problem randomization — all of which we explore in this article. http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/15/how-software-helps-keep-online-learners-honest/ Share on Facebook

By Knight Center Hundreds of judges and other jurists (prosecutors, attorney, lawyers, etc) from Latin American and Caribbean countries have already signed up for a six-week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) in Spanish on the "International Legal Framework on Freedom of Expression, Access to Information and the Safety of Journalists." The course that starts on October 26 is offered by UNESCO and the Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in partnership with the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin. https://knightcenter.utexas.edu/blog/00-16360-judges-can-take-online-course-freedom-expression-offered-unesco-and-knight-center Share on Facebook

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

by Lyndy Berryhill, Oxford Eagle By staying up to date with how today’s students learn, University of Mississippi instructors also are keeping up with how they are distracted. A new app called Pocket Points is designed to reward students for not checking their cellphones during class with coupons. Once the app is downloaded, a student can sit down in class, open the app, lock their smartphone and start scoring points. Points vary throughout the day, but the more students use the app on campus, the points per class can increase. Students can score up to three per class period. The points can then be redeemed at local businesses or in larger chain stores as well as online. http://www.oxfordeagle.com/2015/10/11/app-helps-students-pay-attention-in-class/ Share on Facebook

by Susan Groenwald, The Philadelphia Inquirer Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates have some company. Today, more than one in five working-age Americans is a college dropout. Unfortunately, most dropouts aren’t tech billionaires. Many are nontraditional students who leave school not because of academic concerns, but because of issues specific to their stage of life: a sick family member, a job loss, a lack of family support or just the pure shock of returning to school after a long hiatus. Colleges must do more to reverse this trend. After all, they bear at least some responsibility for the fact that 20 percent of their students walk away. Schools can drive down the dropout rate — and get more students to graduate — by investing in staffing support and resources for high-risk students. http://www.dailyegyptian.com/opinion/article_885bfc2e-76c5-11e5-b949-d3c41c451a76.html Share on Facebook

By Tara García Mathewson, Education Dive Kennesaw State University in Georgia has dubbed its entry into the world of massive open online courses a success — not by the traditional standard of course completion, but based on branding, student access, and return on investment. According to eCampus News, MOOCs have increased the brand visibility for the university and expanded student access to KSU course materials. Researchers also measured the ROI, defined by the number of MOOC participants who later enrolled in a university program, and in the first year, KSU far exceeded its goal to simply break even. http://www.educationdive.com/news/value-of-moocs-more-nuanced-than-completion-rates/407548/ Share on Facebook

by Mir Juned Hussain, Tech Portal Google, during its I/O 2015 developer conference in May had announced a partnership with Udacity to launch a six-course Android Development Nanodegree. The company wanted to allow developers to learn how to write apps for Google’s mobile operating system. Surprisingly, these new Nanodegrees turned out to the most popular ones by Udacity, attracting more than 300,000 people to enrol in the courses. As a part of that initiative, Google has now introduced a new Nanodegree, which will consist of a Tech Entrepreneurship certificate, access to coaches, guidance on your project, help staying on track and career counseling. If all you want is the content, quizzes, and projects, all of that is available online for free at udacity.com/google. http://thetechportal.in/2015/10/19/google-teams-up-with-udacity-introduces-tech-entrepreneur-nanodegree/ Share on Facebook

by Today Online Chinese universities are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on sleek videos and translations. They are advising instructors to abandon dull lecturing styles. And they are coaching professors on how to deal with foreign students, telling them to embrace open discussion and dissent. But the effort faces significant challenges, most notably convincing overseas students that their courses are intellectually compelling and rigorous, despite China’s strict limits on academic freedom. It also puts online education providers in a difficult position, forcing them to strike a balance between preserving academic freedom and maintaining high standards for thousands of courses. Mr Yong Zhao, an education professor at the University of Oregon, compared China’s push in online education to its efforts to build an international following for its flagship news network, CCTV, in the past decade. "China has been on the receiving end of education for a long time, and now it has a big opportunity," Professor Zhao said. "The question is, can it really reach anybody? Does it have the same credentials, quality and authenticity?" http://www.todayonline.com/chinaindia/china/china-turns-online-courses-promote-culture Share on Facebook

by KTHV Universities across the state are expanding and strengthening their online degree programs. According to Arkansas Business, it’s an attempt to attract some of the 300,000 plus potential students who can’t attend classes on a campus. The University of Arkansas system recently launched its online-only university called the eVersity, which is designed to go after Arkansans who have some college credits but aren’t in a position, either financially or personally, to attend college to complete or earn a degree. Online degree programs have been around in Arkansas for years and now many Arkansas universities are ramping up those efforts. http://www.thv11.com/story/money/business/arkansas/2015/10/19/arkansas-business-ark-colleges-doing-more-to-get-online-students/74244500/ Share on Facebook

By Joshua Kim, Inside Higher Ed If I worked for any of the open online learning platforms - EdX or Coursera or NovoEd or OpenLearn - I’d create a dedicated mobile only team. I’d send the team to China (or India) and have them design an open app learning platform from scratch. I would accept that the future of higher education is in the emerging countries of East and South Asia, Africa, and South America. If the future of learning is digital, and the digital future of learning is mobile, will that future unfold on the mobile web or the app? Do learning platform providers have the bandwidth to code for both the mobile web and the app? Is trying to do both mobile web and apps for education limiting the quality and reach of both? https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/technology-and-learning/mobile-learning-apps-vs-web Share on Facebook

BY SUSAN FISER, the Concordian Concordia has joined with the Council of Independent Colleges, an organization dedicated to helping small liberal arts colleges, in offering a new program called Consortium for Online Humanities Instruction this year. Concordia was among 100 colleges who applied to be a part of the program, and was one of 21 colleges who were accepted, according to Dr. George Connell, chair of the humanities department. The program was mostly sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which helps promote and support the department of humanities in the United States. Each college offers two classes to the program. http://theconcordian.org/2015/10/22/humanities-courses-go-online Share on Facebook

by Phil Tann, Android.net As part of a seemingly long running partnership, Google has today announced a new collaboration with Udacity in the form of a new course focusing on Android Wear development. The course includes practical advice, code snippets and sample code, the clear aim of which appears to be to get more developers involved with Android Wear and make it the dominant wearable platform. The best part about the course from Udacity is that its not an expensive course, in fact; it’s free. They’re looking at 6 hours per week from developers to work through the course and expect it to take most users around 2 weeks so it’s not a huge commitment to take your app to greater heights on Android Wear. http://ausdroid.net/2015/10/22/udacity-google-collaborate-help-developers-get-best-android-wear/ Share on Facebook

by Harvard University Welcome to your window into online learning at Harvard. Curated by Harvard Alumni Association alumni volunteers, this selection of courses reflects the variety of topics, platforms, and structures the University has to offer. Engage with classes that interest you at your own time and pace, wherever and whenever you want. Offerings will be refreshed throughout the year, so check back for updates. This is just a starting point. If you don’t find what you’re looking for on this page, explore the rest of the Online Learning site. You can use the tools at the top of the page to sort by category or course title. Harvard Online Learning provides opportunities for lifelong learning, including open courses from HarvardX, for-credit programs from Harvard’s Division of Continuing Education, and a selection of offerings from across Harvard’s professional schools, from business to public health. Dive in now and learn something new. http://online-learning.harvard.edu/alumni Share on Facebook