While the large incumbent learning management systems serving higher education have the resources to frequently develop new features or even acquire other companies outright to add to their stack, everyone else has a series of tough decisions they need to make. eLeaP, an LMS developed by the Louisville-based Telania, has won long-time clients in compliance industries, life sciences, and elsewhere with its careful adherence to federal regulations and substantial eCommerce features. The LMS just completed its fifth redesign since launching in 2005.

Disclosure: Telania LLC. owns eLearning Inside.

“This time around, we really wanted to lay the foundation for what the system truly can be in its next iteration,” said Telania founder and CEO Don Weobong. “It wasn't just a visual upgrade, it was a process of us asking, ‘How can we build an infrastructure that will support machine learning, AI, and a mobile workforce that is trending younger? How can we ensure that the technology is going to be able to support training and learning going into the future?”

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Beyond 2020: How eLeaP Redesigned Its LMS for the Future of Workforce Development

Automated, AI-powered software and applications already help learners around the world gain knowledge without the help of another human. In fewer cases, developers have deployed similar technology into hardware that can move, watch, listen, record, and interact. Humanoid robot teachers have been developed and deployed in classrooms on limited bases around the world. For some, this is cause for excitement. Others are more cautious, or even deeply concerned. Two researchers from Durham University, Professors Douglas Newton and Lynn Newton, recently published an article describing the current uses and concerns of humanoid robot teachers, along with a proposed code of practice.

"Humanoid Robots as Teachers and a Proposed Code of Practice"  https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2019.00125

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Humanoid Robot Teachers Are Here

Education technology is used widely in schools and districts across the U.S. Collectively, U.S. K-12 education spends more than $12 billion every year on edtech licenses. But on average, 27% of an edtech product’s licenses are never activated or used.

That’s according to analysis from LearnPlatform, an edtech effectiveness system that aims to measure and inform schools about their use of technology. On November 20, the company released their annual usage trends report.

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27% of Edtech Licenses Go Unused: LearnPlatform Report

Online tutoring—where instructors reach students via the internet, often using videoconferencing—has continued to grow in popularity. Some have begun to investigate how learners fare in this environment compared to traditional face-to-face classrooms. But fewer have looked into how teachers use and adapt to this environment. A recent academic article, however, looks into certain effects of the online environment. Specifically, the investigators wanted to see what effect student absenteeism had on online tutors. They discovered that, following a student no-show, online teachers smiled less and were, themselves, more than twice as likely to miss the next tutoring session.

“The Spillover Effects of Customer No-Shows: Field Evidence from an Online Education Platform” was released on SSRN in November. Authored by Professors Hengchen Dai (UCLA) and Dennis Zhang (Washington University in St. Louis), the study was intended to add to the research on customer and employee behavior in the service industry. But its findings also bear strong implications for the fields of education and education technology, and represent a perspective that often goes overlooked.

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What Happens to Teachers When Online Students Miss a Class?

Another MOOC provider has found the business training sector provides a more reliable customer base than academic students. On December 10, Coursera announced its enterprise training business has witnessed 100% year-over-year growth and now stands as the company’s largest customer share.

In 2019, Coursera signed or renewed deals with Adobe, Mastercard, Southwest Airlines, and the NYC Department of Small Business Services, among others. Over the company’s history, they have partnered with over 2,000 businesses to deliver employee training, 60 of which are among the Fortune 500.

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Coursera for Business Announces 100% YoY Growth

In the final months of the current decade, U.S. students received two lackluster report cards. First in October, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card) delivered 4th and 8th grade test results in math and reading. While scores went up or down by a few points in all categories, the results were largely unchanged compared to 2017.

Then, in November, the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA) released their results from 2018. American students scored average in reading and science and below average in math.

These results led many stakeholders to issue a familiar refrain. The New York Times headline read “‘It Just Isn’t Working’: PISA Test Scores Cast Doubt on U.S. Education Efforts.”

So: after such a history of average and more or less unchanging test scores, are these claims true? Have these dollars (taxpayer and otherwise) spent on public education and edtech been squandered?

No one, of course, has been able to definitively and convincingly answer in the affirmative or negative.

But there are several points to raise that compromise the conclusion that American public education and/or the impacts of edtech are hopelessly mediocre.

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Education and EdTech in the 2010s: A Lost Decade or a Period of Progress?

As the month, the year, and the decade come to a close, many have voice predictions about the year to come. The staff at eLearning Inside don’t pretend to own a crystal ball, let alone confidently make any predictions about the future. But over the course of our reporting, we have certainly encountered various technologies and their innovative uses that have yet to be used at large scales, but appear to demonstrate huge potential. We’ve described a few that show the most promise below. This episode is also available in podcast form on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. It is also available as a video on YouTube.

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Original story: https://news.elearninginside.com/the-2020s-nascent-technologies-that-show-promise-in-education/

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The 2020s: Nascent Technologies that Show Promise in Education

Virtual charter schools and blended programs have continued to grow in American secondary education. In the 2017-18 school year, just under 300,000 learners were enrolled in full-time remote programs, while 133,000 studied in a blended program. While the sector long enjoyed less oversight and public attention than brick-and-mortar counterparts, that has begun to change in the past few years. But despite this increased regulation, instances of fraud have increased in the sector.

In December, the Education Commission of the States (ECS) published a rundown of state legislation passed between 2017 and 2019 relating to virtual charter schools. (ECS is a non-partisan federally-mandated group that tracks education policy at the state level.)

According to the report authored by Ben Erwin, 106 bills were introduced in 36 different state capitols in the past three years. Of these, 45 were enacted.

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Article: https://news.elearninginside.com/regulators-are-catching-up-to-virtual-charter-school-growth-but-fraud-persists/

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Regulators Are Catching Up to Virtual Charter School Growth, But Fraud Persists

On January 8, edX, the non-profit academic and professional training platform, announced a suite of courses that would allow online students to earn and accumulate transferable college credit. The new offering is known as MicroBachelors.

The organization says MicroBachelors are intended primarily for adults who have attended college, but did not graduate. With these online courses, students can make up credits to fill a whole degree.

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Original story: https://news.elearninginside.com/edx-announces-stackable-undergraduate-credit-offering-microbachelors/

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edX Announces Stackable Undergraduate Credit Offering: MicroBachelors

Few higher education forecasts—for students or schools—have been sunny lately. On the one hand, tuition and fees have risen sharply in the past thirty years. Total student loan debt reached $1.5 trillion in the third quarter of 2019. Colleges and universities, meanwhile, are facing drops in enrollment that are expected to last through this decade, if not further. But a new report out from the College Board paints a different picture. For graduates, college still pays off financially, and is correlated with increased health benefits, civic engagement, and more.

Since 2004, College Board has prepared annual reports titled Education Pays: The Benefits of Higher Education for Individuals and Society. The latest iteration was published on January 14.

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College Board report: https://research.collegeboard.org/pdf/education-pays-2019-full-report.pdf

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College Board Trends Report: Higher Education Still Pays

Liberty University is one of the biggest universities in the U.S., especially when it comes to private institutions and online enrollment. LU is an Evangelical Christian school, and sports Division I football and basketball teams. They also maintain confusing and even questionable statistics when it comes to important institution factors, like admissions, graduation rates, and post-graduate earnings. While the school struggled to maintain enrollment during the early and mid-2000s, it experienced massive enrollment growth beginning in 2007. Publicly available data indicates that this is due to both to a largely-expanded online program and aggressive investments in digital marketing and leads generation.

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Original story with links to information and resources: https://news.elearninginside.com/liberty-university-one-of-americas-largest-online-educators-spent-over-157-million-on-admission-leads-between-2009-and-2016-their-8-year-graduation-rate-is-44/

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Liberty University Invested Big in Private Data and Admissions Leads to Grow their Online Program

In recent years, online and blended learning has been put to use frequently during periods when teaching face to face is impossible. eLearning has been used to maintain instruction during hurricanes, heavy snows, floods, and fires. Educators have even continued to teach with online and blended learning during violent conflicts when traveling to schools becomes no longer safe. Communities often rally behind these efforts and view it as a best-case-scenario with all things considered. But that is not always the case. In a recently published article, researchers interview professors from the University of Cape Town (UCT) who were abruptly forced to take their courses online when protesters shut down campus. Though placed in a highly unique situation, their insights carry relevance for other online and blended learning responses to crises and the pedagogy more generally.

University of Cape Town researchers Laura Czerniewicz, Henry Totter, and Genevieve Haupt recently published “Online teaching in response to student protests and campus shutdowns: academics’ perspectives,” in The International Journal of Education Technology in Higher Education.

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Original article: https://news.elearninginside.com/what-role-should-blended-learning-play-during-campus-crisis-or-unrest-insights-from-the-feesmustfall-movement/

Study: https://educationaltechnologyjournal.springeropen.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s41239-019-0170-1

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What Role Should Blended Learning Play During Crises? Insights from the #FeesMustFall Movement

On February 13, Instructure shareholders were set to vote on the proposed private equity buyout deal with the firm Thoma Bravonews on February 13. But before the vote, news emerged that Instructure had failed to gather enough investor support to allow it to go through. The company postponed the shareholder vote to February 25. 

Then, on February Instructure CEO Dan Goldsmith announced on February 18 that he plans to leave his role as chief executive of the company, along with his position on the board of directors. Goldsmith will remain in his post until March 6. In the meantime, senior Instructure leaders will form a joint office of the CEO as they begin a search to fill the role with the help of a hired firm.

On the same day, Thoma Bravo revised their definitive agreement with Instructure. They will begin a tender offer at some point before February 25 to buy all outstanding Instructure stock at $49.00 a share. After the tender offer is completed, Instructure plans to merge with Thoma Bravo.

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Instructure Failed to Gain Shareholder Support for a Private Equity Buyout. What Comes Next?

In the early weeks of 2020, coronavirus has spread around the world. As the death toll from the respiratory virus has surpassed 2,500, numerous regions and cities have restricted travel, discouraged public gatherings, or put lockdowns in place. While many have been forced to cancel their plans as a result, a growing number of schools, businesses, and organizations have sought to conduct business and education as usual using technology and eLearning applications.

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Coronavirus: How Schools Are Using Technology to Learn on Lockdown

The academic publisher and edtech provider Wiley announced an ambitious move in digital publishing on March 2. In collaboration with Jisc and U.K. universities, the company has agreed to a four-year deal that will allow researchers to publish their work online in Wiley journals with an open access license at no cost to themselves. 

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Wiley Strikes Open Access Publishing Deal with UK Universities

In the early months of 2020, coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, surged in China and surrounding countries, leading to large-scale school closings. The virus has since spread around the world and has arrived in the U.S.

On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic. No one knows how far, wide, and long coronavirus will spread. While young people—especially children—tend to handle the virus far more effectively than older patients, closing public institutions like schools where many people mingle on a daily basis has been seen by some as an effective way to combat the spread of the illness.

We reached out to a handful of remote learning experts, schools, and edtech developers to get their advice on how best to deal with extended coronavirus closures. This post marks the first in a series of three.

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Coronavirus Has Arrived. Will an LMS Be Enough for Remote Learning?

As coronavirus-related school closures continue to effect education systems around the world, an increasing amount of educators are doing their best to keep their courses going online. In this effort, teachers have coalesced on Twitter around the hashtag #instructionalcontinuity. Many often hear and repeat that, when it comes to online learning, fostering interpersonal interaction is one of the biggest challenges.

But what, exactly, does that term mean? And what’s the best way of going about boosting interpersonal interaction in an online class? Bloomsburg University Professor Scott Mehall tackles this issue in a recent scholarly article. “Purposeful Interpersonal Interaction in Online Learning: What Is It and How Is It Measured?” was published in the latest version of Online Learning, the official journal of the Online Learning Consortium.

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Latest issue of Online Learning: https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/issue/viewIssue/114/36

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Interpersonal Interaction Is Crucial for Instructional Continuity. But What Does that Mean?

As edtech and eLearning technologies have gone from a novelty to commonplace in education systems around the world, their use has been plagued by a common question: do they work as effectively as traditional instruction? While the question is far too broad to be useful to anyone, a group of researchers recently took a mostly unexplored approach. They wanted to see how learners with different working memory capabilities learned in an online context. What’s more, they identified numerous functions of online modules—such as learning time, repetition of material, and quiz performance—to see if it correlated with working memory.

While the research has intrinsic merits, the authors also believe their findings can be used to help design eLearning features to be more effective and more personalized for all learners. If educators can identify a learners’ working memory capabilities simply through how they learn online, then they can both adapt future online learning content and in-person instruction to better suit each student.

“Predicting Visiospatial and Verbal Working Memory by Individual Differences in E-Learning Activities” was authored by a team of researchers from Umea University and Linnaeus University in Sweden and Hypocampus, a Swedish eLearning developer. It was published in Frontiers in Education on March 17.

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Study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.00022/full?utm_source=F-NTF&utm_medium=EMLX&utm_campaign=PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE

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Researchers Link Working Memory to Online Learning Habits, a Step Forward in Personalized Learning

On March 30, the uphill battle education publishers McGraw-Hill and Cengage have been fighting to complete a merger got a little steeper. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ruled that the companies’ proposal to sell off a number of their current holdings was not sufficient to maintain competition. As a result, the CMA did not extend their blessing for the merger to move ahead.

Earlier in March, two members of the U.S. House Antitrust Subcommittee, Chairman David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Commerce Chair Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, wrote a letter to the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division asking for increased scrutiny over the deal.

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