How will emerging technologies impact the future of education? While it’s easy to get caught up in the hype around trends such as the metaverse and artificial intelligence, true progress comes in slow, incremental improvements in using technology to inform teaching and learning, according to Neil Heffernan, professor of computer science and director of the Learning Sciences and Technologies Graduate Program at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Here, we talk about augmented reality, intelligent tutoring systems and the need for better research infrastructure in ed tech.
The digital transformation of higher ed has been going on for years, but the current pandemic has brought that process into laser focus – and accelerated digital efforts perhaps like nothing else could. Institutions are going through deep shifts in culture, workforce and technology, enabling new educational models, transforming operations, and even changing the whole value proposition of a higher education. Yet at the same time, digital transformation is so expansive it can be difficult to define, and even harder to manage. We spoke with Betsy Reinitz, director of enterprise and IT programs at EDUCAUSE, about what digital transformation means, how to start a Dx journey, the biggest obstacles to Dx and more.
The pandemic accelerated digital transformation and the adoption of new learning models at many colleges and universities — but higher ed culture has some catching up to do. While institutions traditionally measure change in decades, we're now in a time when flexibility, innovation and risk-taking are key to student access and opportunity as well as institutional survival. We spoke with Dr. Mark Lombardi, president of Maryville University, about why the business model of higher ed is broken, the importance of lifelong learning and technology's role in moving universities toward a better future.
Colby College in Maine is investing $30 million to create the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the first cross-disciplinary institute for AI at a liberal arts institution. Among its goals: utilizing AI to transform teaching, learning and research in a wide variety of disciplines. Yet it's not just about how AI can inform the liberal arts, according to Amanda Stent, inaugural director of the Davis Institute. It's also about how a liberal arts perspective can bring about a better understanding of whether, how, and in what ways the use of AI can benefit — or harm — our society. We spoke with Stent about the most critical AI skills for students, the ethics behind AI algorithms, what you should ask yourself about the AI tools you allow into your home, and more.
Over the past few years, online learning in higher education has gone through a period of disruptive change. Not only did the pandemic trigger a massive shift from in-person classes to online, but it also brought new models of hybrid learning to the forefront. And micro-credentials, programs certifying specific competencies that can stand alone or be applied toward a larger degree, have gained momentum as learners have needed to reskill and compete in an evolving workforce. To explore these trends and more, we spoke with Dr. Betty Vandenbosch, chief content officer at Coursera, about the state of online education, the future of the traditional four-year degree, and what universities should be doing to keep up with alternative credential pathways.
A team from Indiana University set out to expand the scope of pedagogical research by creating ManyClasses, a model for studying how students learn not just in a single classroom, but in a variety of different classes across multiple universities. For this episode of the podcast, Executive Editor Rhea Kelly spoke with researchers Emily Fyfe and Ben Motz about how ManyClasses works, the challenges of using a learning management system to conduct research, what they learned from the first ManyClasses experiment, and more.
In 2015, California State University launched Graduation Initiative 2025, an ambitious plan to increase graduation rates and eliminate equity gaps in degree completion across the system's 23 campuses. Then halfway through that work, COVID hit — and all those student supports and services had to shift online. For this episode of the podcast, we speak with Dr. James Minor, assistant vice chancellor at CSU and leader of the Graduation Initiative, to find out how CSU kept students on track despite the challenges of the pandemic, the technologies and infrastructure that were needed to support students remotely, and what will remain in place going forward.
For many years, the Horizon Report has been tracking trends, technologies and key practices in teaching and learning. But this year, there's one striking difference: the impact of a global pandemic on practically every aspect of higher education. In this episode of the podcast, we speak with Kathe Pelletier, director of EDUCAUSE's Teaching and Learning Program and co-author of the report, about key technology trends, their impact on IT departments, new education models and more.
When you picture a university innovation center, what comes to mind is usually a lot of hands-on collaboration and networking. But what happens when that heavily in-person experience is forced to go virtual? For this episode of the podcast, we talk with Matt Segneri, executive director of the Harvard Innovation Labs, to find out about the past year's challenges and successes converting in-person student activities into virtual experiences that still capture that entrepreneurial vibe.