California Community Colleges Mass-Producing Student Makers

Six months after the official launch of a $17 million makerspace initiative, California community colleges are mass-producing student makers. The "CCC Maker Initiative" has funded makerspaces in 24 campuses with the intent of offering educational activities that will help students prepare for their careers. Each college received implementation grants of between $100,000 and $350,000, renewable for a second year.

Microsoft AI Gives Deaf RIT Students Auto-Captioning Boost in Lecture Presentations

The Rochester Institute of Technology is one of nine colleges to pilot the use of an artificial intelligence-powered speech and language technology that Microsoft has produced. Microsoft's Translator for Education provides the intelligence behind Presentation Translator, a Microsoft "garage project" that breaks down the language barrier by letting users offer continually updated subtitled presentations from PowerPoint. As the presenter speaks in one of 10 supported languages, the add-in generates subtitles directly under the presentation in any of 60 different text languages.

Research: Majority of STEM Classes Still Consist of Lectures

More than half, 55 percent, of STEM classroom interactions are lectures, according to a new study from University of Nebraska-Lincoln researcher Marilyne Stains. The study looked at 550 faculty as they taught more than 700 undergraduate STEM courses in more than 2,000 classes at 25 institutions in the United States and Canada.

When Learning Matches Work and Life, Students Appreciate Their Education More

A new survey of consumers found that the more tied their college courses are to their work and daily lives, the greater they believe they've received a "high-quality education" that was worth the cost. Among respondents to a Strada Education Network and Gallup survey, those who "strongly" agreed that the courses they took are directly relevant to what they do at work and that they learned important skills during their education that come in useful day-to-day were nearly three times more likely to strongly agree that they had received a high-quality education, compared to those who strongly disagreed. And the same group was five and a half times more likely to strongly agree education was worth the cost, compared to those who strongly disagreed.

Research: Online Courses Associated with Improved Retention, Access

Online courses are associated with higher retention and graduation rates, increased access and cost savings of as much as 50 percent, according to a new study from Arizona State University.

Carnegie Mellon Releases Design for Sub-$500 Bioprinter under Creative Commons License

In addition to improvements in cost, the device reportedly allows for larger-scale printing and greater precision than many commercially available bioprinters. The team released its research under a Creative Commons license to encourage others to build their own as well.

Campus Labs to Acquire Chalk & Wire

Data and assessment company Campus Labs is expanding its analytics platform with the acquisition of Chalk & Wire. Chalk & Wire's learning assessment and credentialing tools will "allow Campus Labs to provide enhanced and integrated ways to assess student learning [and] unlock the power of student learning across varied, measurable learning paths," according to a news announcement.

OER Vendor Top Hat Commits to CARE; Opens Content

An open education resource vendor has committed to following the CARE Framework for the care and feeding of OER available through its site, while also announcing that 90 percent of the resources in its own OER repository will be freely available to students. Top Hat, which has a cloud-based teaching platform and other digital learning tools, announced its "open content initiative," eliminating platform or subscription fees for access to its course content Marketplace.

Echo360 Integrates Amazon Transcribe Automated Speech Recognition

Echo360 is teaming up with Amazon Web Services to make video content more accessible. The company today announced it will integrate Amazon Transcribe automated speech recognition technology into its video platform, giving each recording a viewable, searchable transcript.

Panopto Adds NewTek NDI Support

Panopto has added support for the NewTek NDI standard to its lecture capture system. This allows Panopto's software to be used in conjunction with NDI-enabled devices, including IP-based cameras.

U Michigan Begins Construction on Dedicated Robotics Facility

The University of Michigan has begun construction of a new robotics building that will house classrooms, offices, purpose-built labs and an open collaboration space. Dubbed the Ford Motor Company Robotics Building, the 140,000-square-foot, four-story facility is slated for completion in early 2020 and will also feature a three-story area for flying aerial robots and drones, garage space for self-driving cars, an outdoor obstacle course for walking robots, and space dedicated to rehabilitation and recovery robots such as prosthetics and exoskeletons.

Research Finds Online Service Providers Boost Program Enrollment

Universities that contract with an online program management company tend to outperform those that go it on their own, according to research by Eduventures. On average, schools working with O.P.M. providers have seen a five-year online enrollment increase significantly above that of peers.

RIT Students Win Game Development Challenge

Students from the Rochester Institute of Technology took the two top spots in the student developer category of the New York State Game Development Challenge. Sponsored by Empire State Development, the challenge asked students and independent game developers to submit ideas for games, prototypes, business plans, mentorship plans and development timelines. The competition was hosted by R.I.T.'s Center for Media, Arts, Games, Interaction and Creativity, a facility focused on fostering innovation, entrepreneurship and regional economic growth (and winner of a 2017 Campus Technology Impact Award).

Upcoming Events

Call for Nominations, Papers & Proposals

Upcoming Webinars

Webinars on Demand