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Cal State Channel Islands offers a two-week online training course for professors at the university called Humanizing Online Learning, with tips and strategies for forging personal connections with remote students. The course's creator and instructor, Michelle Pacansky-Brock, and the university's vice president for technology and innovation, Michael Berman, talk about the effort, and about how online education can involve a surprising amount of passion—and even some tears.

EdSurge On Air

How One University Works to ‘Humanize’ Online Teaching

A few weeks back, EdSurge traveled to SXSWedu to hear talks about technology and chat with educators and entrepreneurs. But while there, we met someone who spoke about how edtech could better serve students with learning differences in a manner we’d never heard before. In fact, that individual, Ben Gurewitz, is a student with learning differences himself.

Gurewitz is a Bay Area native and currently a freshman at the University of California, Davis—but that represents only a small fraction of how he spends his time. As cofounder of the Diverse Learners Coalition and an active participant in Student Voice, Gurewitz seeks to use his own experiences with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and slow processing disorder as a platform to create change both inside education organizations and amongst the greater populations.

Gurewitz came to the EdSurge offices in Burlingame, California to speak about his own learning experiences in K-12, where the education system is failing to reach students, and whether or not technology is the most important component of serving all students.

What Students With Learning Differences Really Want Us to Know: Q&A with Ben Gurewitz

Virtual schools—a fiercely debated topic. Some, like Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and the American Legislative Exchange Council, are in favor. Others, including researchers like Columbia University professor Aaron Pallas, have pushed back. In fact, last January, Pallas called out DeVos for presenting misleading graduation rates quoted from K12 Inc. while presenting her case for virtual school expansion. 

But politicians and researchers aside, what do the students who attend virtual schools think? Are they pleased with their experiences, or wishing they could return to the brick-and-mortar, traditional schools where they started?

This week, EdSurge sat down with Amanda Regan, a graduate of Virtual High School in Ontario, Canada, and Kiaha Raigoza, a product of California Virtual Academies and the Flex Program through the University of Wisconsin. Unlike the aforementioned researchers and politicians, both Regan and Raigoza experienced virtual schooling for themselves, and shared with us the pros, cons, and questions they still have around the roles that virtual schools can play in both K-12 and higher education.

From the Mouths of Virtual School Students—Personalized and Flexible, or Over-Hyped and Isolating?

Over the past year the pandemic has dramatically altered college teaching, and one side-effect seems to be a rise in exam cheating. In some cases, students are using homework help sites, including Chegg, to get answers during exams. The company has taken steps to respond, but critics say more change is needed. And some say it’s professors who need to change their testing strategies.

EdSurge Podcast

More Students Are Using Chegg to Cheat During the Pandemic. Is the Company Doing Enough to Stop It?

A weekly podcast about the future of learning. Join EdSurge journalists as they sit down with educators, innovators and scholars for frank and in-depth conversations.