Attempts by the faculty union at Eastern Michigan University to fight a recent agreement the institution made with online education services provider Academic Partnerships have failed. But an independent mediator warned campus officials that the university had better limit AP's services to the confines of its contract. Otherwise, faculty and administration could well find themselves back in arbitration.
According to the Babson Survey Research Group's latest annual report on distance education in the United States, online student enrollment has grown for the 14th year in a row. Nearly a million additional students took distance education courses in 2016 compared to 2012, and more than 30 percent of college students took at least one distance education course during the 2015-2016 academic year.
OpenScholar, an open source website-publishing system specifically for higher education, has publicly separated from Harvard University to become a private company. The website creation service is already used by more than 75 institutions, not counting the 9,000 sites within Harvard itself, where it was developed.
This week Google and Coursera will officially kick off the "Google IT Support Professional Certificate," a program that offers training to people who want to enter the information technology field but lack the time and resources for a formal education. A new series of massive, open, online courses available through Coursera and developed by Google experts will train beginners and prepare them for job readiness in eight to 12 months, according to the two companies.
A new training center at the University of Memphis hopes to foster data analytics talent in the Mid-South region. The institution's FedEx Institute of Technology, a technology and research organization focused on innovation and emerging tech, has partnered with analytics company SAS to launch a series of courses on SAS programming and advanced analytics topics. The collaboration marks the first SAS public training center at a university.
Upcoming events include the Educause Learning Initiative Annual Meeting, LearnLaunch Across Boundaries Conference, eLearning 2018, T.D.W.I. Las Vegas Conference, Innovations Conference, and Digital Signage Expo 2018.
The city of Chicago wants to introduce its students to coding by expanding its use of Apple's "Everyone Can Code" program in K-12 and community colleges.
Over the next year, the higher education segment can expect to see a major shift to blended learning; an innovative education stack from an existing institution to "rival" the bachelor's degree; and serious inroads to cross-border online learning. Those are the predictions for 2018 from Eduventures, a membership advisory service for colleges and universities.
The Digital Production Group of Stanford University Libraries has launched a pilot project to produce digital 3D models of bones and other artifacts for use in research and instruction.
A Texas community college is working with a four-year institution to help students ease the cost of earning their engineering degrees. Houston Community College engineering students can begin their four-year programs through its Texas A and M-Chevron Engineering Academy, which allows them to be co-enrolled in HCC and Texas A and M University. The savings runs to the "tens of thousands of dollars," according to John Vasselli, HCC dean of engineering.