LinkedInLearning announced

LinkedIn has formalized the blending of Lynda.com courses and its own professional data and networking services with the launch of LinkedIn Learning. This new site provides access to “thousands” of video courses in an on-demand format that can be viewed on mobile devices; it includes transcripts and closed captions and offers administrative tools for tracking user analytics. A major area of emphasis will be education environments, including K-12 and higher education.

LinkedIn acquired Lynda.com in spring 2015. LinkedIn itself will soon become part of Microsoft. That acquisition was announced in summer 2016 and is expected to be finalized by the end of this year.”

From CampusTechnology.

The State of Video in Education

Webcasting, lecture capture now became integral to education, survey administered by Kaltura found. They say that universities are using video more frequently as part of regular education. You can read more about the study here. To read more about video in instruction and ways to create video, please go to my Diigo collection.  Interested about videoconferencing? Attend an NU workshop on Sept 30, 10-11 in 1204 and get additional resources here.

University May Remove Online Content to Avoid Disability Law

U.S. Justice Department finds that Berkeley MOOCs and YouTube content don’t meet federal requirements. So, the University is planning to remove the content as they think it is too costly co comply. More here.

Most frequently cited violations for online content:

  • Many videos do not have captions.
  • Many videos lack “an alternative way to access images or visual information (e.g., graphs, charts, animations or URLs on slides), such as audio description, alternative text, PDF files or Word documents).
  • Many documents “associated with online courses were inaccessible to individuals with vision disabilities who use screen readers because the document was not formatted properly.”
  • Some videos that had automatically generated captions were “inaccurate and incomplete.”

It is important to consider accessibility guidelines and regulations when designing any content: either for online or on-campus learning.

UN Considers Proposal on Goals and Indicators for Educational System Outcomes and Equity

…”This report on measuring educational outcomes and equity from UNESCO is quite ground-breaking for the breadth and approaches toward identifying indicators for educational outcomes”.

The post is available at iNACOL and the UNESCO report Thematic Indicators to Monitor the Education 2030 Agenda: Technical Advisory Group Proposal is published as well.  17 goals and 169 indicators!

How does language learning affect the brain?

Students at NU speak several languages (e.g., Kazakh, English, Russian, and possibly some other languages they learnt at secondary schools or in their families).  But how does language affect the brain?  The study says that people who are bilingual have longer attention spans and a better ability to focus (according to researchers from the UK’s University of Birmingham). Researchers performed tests on a group of people who spoke only English and another group who since an early age have spoken English and Chinese.  Read more about this study here.

Most Innovative Universities

US News and World Report published a list of most innovative universities (27 US schools). This is their 2nd ranking of such a kind. You can view the list here.  ASU, MIT, and Stanford took the first three places the 2nd consecutive year.  Check them out and see what improvements they are making for their students through innovative approaches to curriculum, student services, faculty, campus life, technology, or facilities.

Quality Matters Launches Certificate Program

Quality Matters (QM), which offers quality assurance programs for online courses, is this fall expanding into online teaching certification. QM offers seven one- to two-week workshops that, when completed, award participants a Teaching Online Certificate attesting to their skills as effective online instructors. The Wednesday-to-Wednesday workshops, which cover topics such as assessment, course design and technology skills, are hosted every month, priced at $100 a week for members.