In his recent article in EdSurge, Jeff Young (formerly of the Chronicle) profiles an emerging fringe world of post-secondary education where “Nanodegrees,” “MicroMasters,” and “MicroDegrees” are proliferating. Companies like Udacity and edX are looking to stake out territory in this emerging market and trademarking new degree types is one way they’re attempting to do that. […]
Instructure’s Current Market Position
With the proliferation of so many privately funded educational technology companies, the quarterly earnings call of a publicly traded company like Instructure is a rare opportunity to get a detailed look at company performance and hear directly from executive leadership as they respond to analysts’ questions. Sometimes those responses can be guarded, at other times […]
About The New Florida Virtual Campus Survey On Textbooks
As long-time readers know, I strongly believe that the national discussion about the costs of textbooks and course materials is more productive when we focus on actual student behaviors and impacts, rather than artificial numbers used by many organizations. There may be short-term benefit from claiming or implying that the average college student spends $1200 […]
McGraw-Hill Education’s Perspective on Adaptive Learning
Last spring, I had the opportunity to interview some of the top folks on McGraw-Hill Education’s (MHE’s) digital team to get their view on adaptive learning. Between ALEKS, LearnSmart, and SmartBooks, they have the developed the most well articulated adaptive strategy of any of the big publishers, under the leadership of Chief Digital Officer Stephen Laster. […]
The Great Unbundling of Textbook Publishers
When we hear the phrase “unbundling” in education, it usually refers to one of two things. Either it’s about unbundling the university into component parts like separating courses from certification or it’s about unbundling content from textbooks or courses into discrete learning objects. On the spectrum from “figment of the imagination” to “the one and […]
Recommended Viewing: Learning Analytics Webinar on Caliper and xAPI
What happens when you combine the IMS Caliper and SCORM’s xAPI learning analytics standards! You get xCaliper! Can the working groups pull the sword from the stone?
Recommended Reading: Article in Chronicle on Measuring Learning
Dan Barrett’s piece over the weekend in The Chronicle, “The Next Great Hope for Measuring Learning,” deserves a close read. He describes in some detail a ground up effort by faculty and administrators across several institutions to define and measure what it is that students are learning and why it’s important. In doing so, these […]