Nearly 60 percent of education employees have taken a "mental health day" to deal with work-related stress, a count that's significantly higher than in other industries. That's according to a recent survey of 1,004 office workers and business decision-makers in the United States and Canada. The survey, conducted by KRC Research on behalf of Staples, asked employees in various industries about current trends in the workplace, including health, wellness and stress issues.
Flipping a science course, by having students watch videos first to learn basic concepts and step-by-step procedures for doing lab work, can improve the outcomes. That's the finding of an experiment run at DeSales and Clemson Universities in a research project sponsored by a journal publisher that produces such videos. The project was undertaken by TERC, a nonprofit STEM education research and development organization, on behalf of the Journal of Visualized Experiments.
There's never been a better time to seek funding for education technology. According to Metaari, 2017 turned out to generate the most investment dollars ever in the learning technology industry. It topped $9.5 billion globally, up from $7.3 billion in 2016, which was itself 46 percent higher than the $6.5 billion in investments made in 2015. The latest year's funding went to 813 ed tech companies, the highest ever recorded, according to the learning market research company.
In a recent study, 10 percent of simulated phishing e-mails sent to users in education institutions were successful, triggering the recipient to click on a fraudulent link. That's according to the 2018 State of the Phish report from Wombat Security Technologies, in which researchers measured the average click rates on phishing tests across various industries. Education had an average click rate of 10 percent; the industries that performed worst in the tests were telecommunications and retail, with 15 percent and 14 percent average click rates, respectively.
The practice of faculty relying on bundled textbooks and, specifically, access-code materials to provide course problem sets, quizzes, tests and case studies, has wreaked havoc with student efforts to find cheaper textbook alternatives. According to a new report from the Student PIRGs, among a sample group of schools, 45 percent of these supplemental resources were unavailable from any source other than the campus bookstore. As the report's authors noted, the use of those bundles, which exist behind paywalls, eliminates the ability of students to "shop around," which means they're "forced to pay full price for these materials." They also can't resell their textbooks because the access codes typically have expiration dates.
Global shipments of PCs showed a slight year-on-year improvement in the fourth quarter of 2017, up 0.7 percent to 70.6 million sales, according to a new report.
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.
College students in STEM majors are the most likely to be confident regarding their job prospects, according to new survey results from Gallup and Strada Education Networks. But among all students, confidence shrinks as graduation nears. While 36 percent of first-year students said they expected to graduate with the "knowledge and skills" they'd need to be successful in the job market, only 32 percent of seniors were as confident.
An American Council on Education survey found that only 12 percent of college and university presidents ranked the use of institutional research and evidence in the top five areas of growing importance for the future.
According to a new report, the California State University system could do a better job of tracking enrollment and outcomes and helping students know what's available online.