Upcoming events include the Innovations Conference, Digital Signage Expo 2018, University Innovation Alliance National Summit, SANS 2018, O.L.C. Innovate and the A.A.C.C. 98th Annual Convention.
Two new reports from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine tackle data science for educators. One report summarizes the findings of a workshop on training students to "extract value from big data." The other is intended to help institutions envision data science from an undergraduate perspective. Both reports are available on the National Academies Press website.
M.D.R.C., the College Promise Campaign and the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association have launched the College Promise Success Initiative, a project that aims to expand the support provided to students in College Promise programs. The idea is that Promise programs can see greater success when they address the many barriers low-income students face to college achievement, beyond just covering tuition and fees.
Students in the University of Missouri System have access to more affordable course materials, thanks to a new agreement with McGraw-Hill Education that lowers the cost of the company's electronic textbooks by 38 percent. The books will be offered through the university's AutoAccess program, which provides e-books through U.M.'s learning management system as part of its Affordable & Open Education Resources initiative.
Rice University and 10 other institutions in Europe, Asia and Australia have agreed to be part of a three-year "Credits for MOOCs" program that allows students from the participating schools to enroll in specific free online courses from the other member schools and receive transfer credits for passing them. When it's fully up and running, the pilot effort will feature from three to 10 credit-bearing online classes from each institution for the "virtual exchange." The program, which is in its second semester for the 2017-2018 academic year, currently features 18 courses.
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Educational Technology has announced it will launch a new "Higher Education Ecosystem Challenge" that seeks "multi-sector teams to propose design concepts for a truly student-centered ecosystem." Those ideas with the most potential for improving the outcomes of students "that need postsecondary education the most" will be launched with the help of "a variety of partners."
More than nine in 10 respondents to a new survey consider the world a better place because of science. Almost eight in 10 consider the best days of science still to come. And two-thirds are excited about the impact of science on society in the future.
A new report proposes a framework by which open educational resource initiatives — and particularly those promulgated by for-profit organizations — might be measured. The CARE framework has three purposes, according to its authors: to help make sure "the O.E.R. community's values can be maintained as the movement scales"; to gauge the practices of "new entrants" to the O.E.R. field (especially those out to make money from it); and to build educator confidence in participating in O.E.R., including those who contribute their own materials and may be uncertain regarding its use by for-profit publishers.
Paul Allen has committed $125 million over three years to support the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and to launch "Project Alexandria," a new research initiative to explore "common sense artificial intelligence." Allen is, of course, the co-founder of Microsoft and a philanthropist known most recently for investing in efforts to discover the underwater wreckage of American naval ships sunk during WWII.
According to a new national survey from MindEdge Learning, 52 percent of employees in the United States are concerned about losing their jobs to robotics, artificial intelligence and automation. The edtech firm polled 1,000 management-level workers across a variety of industries, including technology, manufacturing, financial services and healthcare, about the rise of robots and AI in the workplace and the skills workers will need to remain secure in their careers.