24 JANUARY – Business education initiatives are rapidly adapting to the demands of modern employees. A recent Ladders report found that over a quarter of professional jobs in the US will be fully remote by the end of the year. This trajectory is compounded by the current industry standard of employees with basic digital skills training, everywhere from administration to cyber-security.

These factors, which are essential in developing a prepared workforce, are what businesses are struggling to integrate into their education programs. A 2014 survey from DecisionWire found, amongst one-million employees from various fields, that nearly one-third of line-level managers felt that they lacked the information required to do their job effectively. In contrast, 78% of mid-level managers said they did have the required information. These findings highlight a discrepancy of knowledge when it comes to internal business practices.

Intellum, a business education solution for customers, employees, and partners, recently launched the Intellum Framework. A step-by-step process, which provides a foundation for companies to enact their education strategy.

The Framework was developed by Intellum CEO Chip Ramsey’s trialed and tested methodology. It is composed of three guided exercises that focus on a company’s key performance indicators: goals, audiences, and content. The worksheets work by relying on buildable objectives for each section, from what problem needs to be solved, to what education initiative or resources are being put in place. Let’s say a company is experiencing a declining customer renewal rate. The Framework guides them through an exercise of identifying what audiences impact that problem and what educational initiatives can help those audiences make positive changes to achieve the goal of having happier, more engaged customers who want to renew.

eLearning Inside spoke to the Chief Strategy Officer and VP of Education Strategy, Vicky Kennedy, about the development and purpose of Intellum Framework.

“In 2019 Chip (Ramsey) had done a lot of work with the methodology itself and worked with different clients to demonstrate why a repeatable procedure can create successful educational programs with meaningful impact. I was part of the client side so I was part of that whole process of giving feedback and homing in on this methodology. This includes: making sure you have a business goal, that you understand your audience and you’ve identified audience needs and learner personas, and that you have the right resources in place to do all this because educational programs require unique resources that other types of content issues don’t. It’s different from a marketing content initiative, it requires its own unique resources.”

When all three worksheets are completed, a final mapping worksheet is done to piece all the objectives together and provide a cohesive action plan for the company’s education program.

“We look at each initiative from the perspective of achieving a goal,” said Kennedy. “We map it all together at the end, so we say “this audience member participated in this certification, and they passed with an 85% score, and because of that they renewed their contract for six months. We start telling that story with education, and that’s what the Framework does. Bring it all together so we can actually see the story we’re trying to tell and make sure that everyone is on the same page to work towards the same goal.”

Intellum Framework was trialed on Kennedy’s own team to see whether the Framework created a positive change.

“I actually went through the exercise with my own team as an initial practice and it was quite interesting to see how it’s not just about filling in this sheet, it’s not just an academic exercise. It forces a lot of conversation around “what is the goal here, how did these two programs work together, how did these two audiences interact and what are we trying to achieve with this.” I used that conversation as kind of a framework to the Framework. As we rolled it out with different clients it’s kind of the same phenomenon where you see that it’s not just filling out a worksheet but it’s really sparking conversation around business goals.”

Kennedy goes on to discuss the main purpose of this exercise is to help companies prioritize their goals. “Business goals are the most important thing. It’s the first thing that we recognized in the methodology, to make sure that you are actually achieving ROI with education, and going back to my L&D examples, it makes things a little clearer for businesses, who are focused on educating employees and want to see a change in employee performance.”

Intellum is partnered with a catalog of industry giants, including Google, Amazon, and Mailchimp. The gap for upskilling employees remains wide, with 1-in-3 Americans having the potential to access higher-paid jobs with the right to skills training. Intellum Framework has the potential to be a game-changing tool for mass-scale employee education.

Featured image: Intellum.

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Applying for a job can be a difficult task, especially if it’s a vacancy you have your heart set on. There’re so many factors that can go against you, and more often than not they come from your own head; lacking confidence is one of the main aspects.

There are techniques and practices you can adopt which will better your opportunities. From scouring job sites to getting your CV seen.

1. Read the job vacancy carefully and identify the key skills required

Identifying the skills the employer is looking for is the first step. You can do this by reading the vacancy details. Do you have the necessary experience? Can you learn the skills? These are important questions to ask yourself. The more often you can answer yes, the more confident you can feel going into the interview.

LinkedIn is a great tool for this. According to the skill set you have, and the filtering of jobs you are interested in, the platform will alert you on whether you match the criteria of the job listed. This feature is highly adaptable for a wide range of users and makes your job search precise.

If you have any follow-up questions about the vacancy details, you can try contacting the person who posted the job. Their contact details are usually listed with the job vacancy.

2. Make a list of your top skills or experiences you believe are relevant

Making a list of the relevant skills and experiences you have will give you the chance to see if the job will be a good choice for you. Since you have read about the job vacancy, this should be easy.

Do a skills inventory to see what you’re good at, according to a report by the Institute for Employment Studies, employers are not just concerned with how many skills you have, but how you present them. A skills inventory is simple; you just write down all your skills and when you’ve finished, you’ll probably have a list of top skills to mention in the interview.

3. Tailor your CV to these requirements

It doesn’t matter if this is your first resume or your 100th; your CV should showcase your relevant experience and achievements. You should be able to see a clear path from your experience to the skills and experience the employer is requesting. Your CV should be in a format which the employer can easily read. And it should be on-brand.

For example, if the vacancy is for a marketing job, you should make sure your CV is visually appealing. Also, if the job calls for experience in PowerPoint, be sure to include your PowerPoint skills in your CV.

4. Prepare

It’s a good idea to bring a list of questions to the interview. Interviewers should give you a chance to ask questions, and it’s good to take that opportunity.

Researching on the company itself is also a must when presenting yourself. You could ask about the company’s communication style and training programs; this is a good way to get a feel for the company culture and show employers you are committed.

A mock interview is a chance to prepare yourself for a real interview. This can be done with a friend, a family member, or a career advisor.

Taking part in a mock interview provides a realistic rehearsal of a real interview. You should be able to ask yourself the same questions you would ask in the real interview, and you should be able to answer them. Going through this process will give you the confidence to answer these questions in the actual interview.

Dressing the part is a good way to show the employer you are professional. This is an important step in the process of receiving a job offer.

5. Follow up after the interview

Following up after the interview is a great way to show the employer you’re interested in the role. This shows that you are interested in the company and the job.

If you follow up after the interview, you can ask about the next steps in the process and you can also reiterate your interest in the role. This will show the employer that you are serious about the role and you want the job.

Featured Image: Glenn Carstens-Peters, Unsplash. 

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Webflow, the no-code web-design platform, has recently announced that it will be offering its services for free to all students. Last month, the company made the move to provide a free annual CMS site plan to help students build a strong design portfolio, without the barrier of affordability or specialized coding skills. The unique no-code feature has proven successful amongst users and investors, with Webflow having raised over $200 million in funding, valuing the company at $2.1 billion as of 2021.

“The web is an essential part of learning and expression–and for too long, it’s been too hard for too many to harness the web’s full power. Webflow’s mission is to remove barriers for anyone to build for the web and by offering Webflow free to students we’re dramatically expanding access to a modern platform to boost student studies,” said Vlad Magdalin, the CEO of Webflow. “We’ve already seen incredible websites built by students at Carnegie Mellon, California College for the Arts, Dartmouth, Purdue, and more–and we can’t wait to see what students will build next.”

Webflow worked with the students on the Masters in Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI) program at Carnegie Mellon, surveying the design portfolios the students managed to develop with the platform. eLearning Inside caught up with the program coordinator of MHCI, Jennifer McPherson, who talked about their experience with Webflow:

When were you first introduced to Webflow? Was there a particular project you needed it for?

I was first introduced to Webflow in April 2019 when some of my team came to me and asked if they could purchase a lite version of Webflow to build their project website.

Were you familiar with web design or website builders before using Webflow?

Yes, I was familiar with website building prior to Webflow; several of my students had been building websites for many years leading up to the switch.

Webflow gives people the ability to learn and share their work with other people, do you think this community-building aspect is encouraging for those who have never tried web design before?

Absolutely! In the case of our particular program, we have found that using Webflow has encouraged all team members to get involved in the platform. It’s been nice because we often have students working in teams of five or more, and Webflow enables them to work together.

The site includes tips on SEO, advanced CMS, and customizing domains, all design features which are essential to running a website today. How accessible has Webflow made these features? Are you comfortable using them?

Webflow’s tips across features have made the platform super accessible, easy to deploy, and test quickly. Many of my students like using Webflow because of the ease of accessibility and features.

Before starting any project, Webflow asks users a series of questions to personalize their experience of using the platform. Does this make web design easier to navigate, especially for beginners who may not know what they want to build?

Absolutely! Our students come from a variety of technical backgrounds. Some have extensive experience while others don’t have any. Webflow has made it easy for students to create their websites using templates and used the other tips provided to build out their websites to their liking.

The stand-out feature of Webflow is its capability of building and managing a website without the use of code. Has this omission been helpful to you? Will it encourage those intimidated by web design to try it out?

Yes, the low and no code features have been a game-changer! As part of our program, my students have a required portfolio as well as a website for their capstone projects. Webflow has made it easier for a team with less technical knowledge to create a website with ease. And again, students are able to deploy it and test it quickly, make changes, deploy and test again!

Is there something Webflow can offer to people who already have experience in web design and coding? would it provide a different approach for them?

From my experience, the students with more technical experience have still used Webflow because of its ease of creating, deploying, and being able to host a website directly with the platform. Webflow has allowed those students to create complex websites and portfolios while taking away the stress of web designing and coding.

There are website builders similar to Webflow, like Wix and Squarespace. What makes Webflow different from them?

Webflow’s mission is to democratize building for the web and I’ve seen that as a primary focus when it comes to education, especially now with their free offering for students. Through our partnership, Webflow has continued to make investments in its product to better help users. Webflow facilitates the creation and support of completely customizable immersive web experiences.

Are there any design features the site hasn’t included that you would like to see?

So far, Webflow’s design features have covered everything that I’m looking for from an educator standpoint.

Is there anything else you would like to mention about Webflow?

Webflow has been a great collaborator! I have worked with Webflow for the last several years to get my current and former students access to the tool. I’ve had so many students create their professional portfolio using the tool, as well as their capstone website in which they talk about their client-sponsored project for the spring and summer semesters.

Part of my role for our program is to seek tools the students wish to use and try to build relationships with those companies and tools as a way to provide the students with a wide range of tools they’ll use during their one-year professional program and hopefully beyond that as well. Webflow has been a great partner in this endeavor.

Featured Image: Brooke Cagle, Unsplash

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The past three years have highlighted the growing reliance students have on online learning platforms, accelerating our use of both training sites to learning management systems. The catalyst of COVID has seen an explosion in the EdTech sector, according to Grand View Research’s 2021 report, the market size was estimated at USD 89.49 billion in 2020, and is expecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of almost 20% from 2021 to 2028. With all this attention from investors, it is important to remember the audience of EdTech companies and the fundamental communication needed with them for online learning to work. The Institute For Education Innovation (IEI) consists of over 60 of the nation’s most innovative superintendents, who are dedicated to working with education technology providers to make learning more engaging and accessible to K-12 learners.

eLearning Inside connected with CEO of IEI Doug Roberts to talk about the fresh insight superintendents bring to the EdTech conversation and the launch of the organization’s Supes’s Choice Award:

You mention on your website how due to COVID your organization had to transition to smaller, more virtual, events and meetings. How has COVID changed the landscape of K-12 education, both for students and education bodies?

A: While at-home learning works well for some, and flexibility in learning modalities is important, there is broad recognition that students need to be in schools.

There is a lot of talk about “learning recovery,” but superintendents aren’t looking back — they’re looking ahead and focused on meeting the needs of their students and families where they are now. That requires flexibility, adaptability, and innovative thinking — qualities our superintendents demonstrated manifestly throughout the pandemic.

In addition to instruction, school districts are increasingly being asked to provide a multitude of services to students and their families, including social, professional, medical, counseling, mental health, dental, and food services. The more roles we ask our schools to play, the more critical they become.

The pandemic also changed the relationship between school districts and technology providers. EdTech companies have done an incredible job of rolling out solutions for the many challenges brought about by the pandemic. But at the same time, there is still a disconnect between some of the technology being offered to school districts and the solutions they actually need.

What do superintendents bring to the EdTech conversation? Do they represent perspectives lacking in other areas of the field?

A: The pandemic demonstrated how dedicated, adaptable, and entrepreneurial the nation’s superintendents are. They know their districts better than anyone and can offer valuable insights to solution providers about use cases, the feasibility of business models, and implementation plans. Superintendents understand the classroom, the procurement process, the budget, and the politics of the boards and communities they serve.

At the Institute for Education Innovation (IEI), my role is to bring together education technology providers and superintendents to engage in constructive problem-solving and innovative thinking around technology in schools. Companies, investors, or philanthropists considering rolling out a new education solution can come to IEI, meet our superintendents, get feedback on their idea, and hear from superintendents about their districts’ particular needs. Entrepreneurs and executives seeking to scale up or continue to grow their existing services or solutions can work with IEI to grow their relationships with some of the nation’s most innovative district leaders

Are there any online learning platforms that have stood out to you during the pandemic?

A: The pandemic was a reminder that one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to technology. Every school district has unique challenges that require specific solutions. School is ultimately an engagement system, so whatever tools can best support that critical engagement between teacher and student, is the technology that’s most needed.

That said, we have seen a rise in the number of solutions providing direct instruction to students and those helping districts manage multiple platforms for digital instruction. The pandemic exposed that our industry has produced a wide variety of high-quality solutions and services, but districts were left to connect dots among a disconnected patchwork of independent solutions. IEI hopes to lead the charge to galvanize the EdTech industry around the needs of districts through the leadership of some of the nation’s most forward-thinking superintendents.

You recently launched the Supes’ Choice Awards, what features do you look for in a good EdTech product?

A: Each school district has unique needs and the technology required to meet those needs will vary. What works well for one school district won’t necessarily work well for another, depending on its demographics, location, size, culture, etc. It can be difficult for superintendents to weed through the many emails they receive from well-intentioned solution providers, and it can be just as difficult for those companies to understand the needs of the districts they are pitching.

Edtech companies often make the mistake of overthinking features before they have spent time listening to superintendents about what their school districts need. IEI superintendents don’t look for features. They look for partners. The younger the company, the more priority they place on the people who started and run the company. You may not have figured it all out yet, but if you bring your product team onto a

Zoom with a district leadership team to scope out a potential new feature or report, you’ll earn a district’s partnership for several years. The “features” that IEI superintendents look for are humility, an ability to listen, and an unrelenting commitment to the students they serve.

That’s why IEI launched the Supes’ Choice Awards — to give EdTech companies of all sizes an opportunity to have their products reviewed by school district superintendents and receive valuable feedback about what a good product looks like for their district.

Supes’ Choice Awards uniquely offers feedback to all entrants, not just the winners. There are 15 categories that companies can enter (and companies can enter multiple categories), including Innovator of the Year, Best Pivot on a Dime, Equity and Anti-Racism Champion, and STEM/STEAM Instructional Solution. Entries are due October 30.

In parallel, what features do you think EdTech companies should avoid when developing their products?

A: What superintendents prefer, and what works best, is when companies engage with school districts about their individual needs and specific challenges, rather than just pushing the latest product or “kitchen sink” solution on them. These two-way conversations, which IEI helps to facilitate, unfortunately, don’t happen often enough but can provide tremendous value for both parties.

There are no silver bullets, so if you pitch one, the conversation is over before it starts. And the surest way to get ignored by district leaders is to email them that you have a solution for “learning loss.” That’s a red flag that you are not listening to what districts need.

What do you think EdTech companies should be paying attention to when it comes to what students need from online learning?

A: While it’s great that companies are working on solutions to support virtual and remote instruction, the core of the K-12 experience still occurs within the “four walls” of a classroom at the direction of a trusted classroom teacher. Solutions that seek to support students outside of the school day should include opportunities to engage classroom teachers.

It’s also really important that all solution providers pay attention to equity in not only their business models and use case designs, but in staffing their leadership teams. Districts increasingly want to work with providers whose teams look like the students they serve.

What new advancements in EdTech are you looking forward to/ keeping an eye out for in the future.

A: My hope is that EdTech companies will do a better job of engaging with the districts they are doing business with in order to learn more about their specific challenges and needs and then invest in technology to address those needs. There is too often a disconnect between the products being created and the actual needs of a school district. Focus less on features and focus more on people. The way to build your business is not by building features, it’s by building relationships. That’s what we do at IEI.

Featured Image: Compare Fibre, Unsplash

The post Why EdTech Companies Need Superintendents: Interview With the CEO of the Institute For Education Innovation, Doug Roberts appeared first on eLearningInside News.

2021 is here—but the challenges associated with the past year and Covid-19 remain. Vaccine production and distribution continue in the U.S. and much of the world, but unexpected delays have cropped up. President-elect Joe Biden has promised to deliver 100 million doses in the first 100 days of his presidency. But learning will continue in remote or hybrid formats for large populations of the world throughout much of the year. After the vaccine has been deployed sufficiently to create herd immunity, education in 2021 will still be drastically altered from pre-Covid-19 times.

Dr. Rhianna Rogers (pictured right), among many other roles and titles, is an associate professor of interdisciplinary studies in history and anthropology and the director of the Global Indigenous Knowledge program at SUNY Empire State College. Dr. Rogers has also conducted remote college residency programs since 2018, is a prominent member and practitioner of the open source community, and a highly experienced online educator.

“There has always been this idea that online education is ‘subpar’ and that individuals who are not learning in person are not getting as much,” Dr. Rogers said over videoconference. “But that idea is not accurate according to the real data. Online education actually has more opportunities for students to engage.”

Education in 2021: Embrace Your Holistic Digital and Analogue Self

Those engagement opportunities, however, are not available unless a skilled online educator brings them out. And to do this, according to Dr. Rogers, both teachers and students need to embrace a reality that has been growing for years. Stakeholders need to stop viewing their digital and IRL selves as distinct. Instead, we need to recognize that they are two separate manifestations of the same person.

“Before we had COVID, people had a digital self,” Dr. Rogers said. “We had trolls, people were catfishing others, and a lot of us were pretending to be somebody else online. But as education and work have gone remote, and I’m speaking through an anthropological lens, we’re starting to see the worlds blur. We’re seeing the combination of the actual person and the digital person mixing in new ways. And I think we have to acknowledge that.

“We’ve seen that with how people had overt isms. And now they covertly have isms, whatever those isms might be. As we move forward into 2021, we’re going to have to grapple with what that means. What does it mean when worlds are blurred? And how will we create a professional and educational environment that accounts for the differences that people have? How do we acknowledge those real, lived experiences that we used to delete before? You know: having children, being a mother, being a father, being single parent? Now you can’t delete that. Because you can see that on video today?”

Effective Online Learning Requires Hard Work Up Front and Institutional Support

There are some who viewed the rapid shift to online learning almost overnight as a referendum on online learning. But those who have spent years creating and teaching online courses—and the learners who have attended them—know that the difference between best practices and an emergency response. When it comes to education in 2021 and beyond, that will need to change.

At the beginning of the outbreak of the pandemic through to today, Dr. Rogers has spent a lot of time sharing online teaching resources. Many view the shift to online learning last year as a hectic time. But Dr. Rogers sees another dimension at work.

“Some K-12 instructors I encountered had never used PowerPoint,” Dr. Rogers said. “They had never heard of Zoom, they had never heard of learning management systems. A lot of educators were and are technophobic. The vast majority of people who did not engage were afraid. They had never studied educational technology in real fashion. All of this was thrown on at once.”

“If you were in a classroom setting, and you threw someone in without getting a degree, imagine how scary that would be. But we did that same thing with educational technology. We didn’t provide trainings. I know some institutions didn’t have any educational technologists on staff at all. Whole school districts had no one to consult. That is why it was really ineffective that first semester.”

Viewed from an outside perspective, it’s easy to write off Dr. Rogers’ online teaching habits as super-human efforts. She curates all her own teaching resources from open educational resources (OER) and her students pay nothing for textbooks. She also maintained a book and computer loan system out of her office in pre-Covid-19 times. Besides creating and teaching numerous online courses, she also leads the Buffalo Project, which regularly surveys and records student behavior to create a more equitable online learning environment.

But Dr. Rogers insists that good online teaching habits are well within the abilities of most, if not all, instructors. “I have a catalogue of at least 25 different courses that I’ve built with Empire State College that are fully online,” Dr. Rogers said. “And here’s one of the things that I would say: it might take a lot of effort upfront to develop something. But if you do it right the first time, you don’t have to redo it. You can actually just make updates–slow, incremental updates.”

The Digital Divide Cannot Be Overstated

As a final point, the digital divide became a well-known phrase in 2020. But as Dr. Rogers sees it, the issue extends far beyond who does and does not have internet service and adequate learning devices at home. Anyone hoping to improve equity in education in 2021 will need to grapple with this issue.

“We’re going to see a rise in the digital divide, because the individuals who are operating without technology are going to fall further behind than they were before” Dr. Rogers said. “The individuals who have had the opportunity to adjust for the last two semesters are going to continue to progress. So for education in 2021 and beyond, we’re really going to see a divide along socio-economic lines and a divide along racialized lines.

“I was talking to a New York State agent earlier today. And she was mentioning that they sent out this survey at the beginning of the term. Almost half of the districts didn’t respond, because they didn’t even know where it was. So imagine–the administrators–they still are learning technology. They’re not used to working in email. They’re not used to any of this stuff. If that’s the administration, imagine what’s happening with the students who have even less opportunity to learn this. I think the biggest thing that we will see is those with privilege and access will continue to move forward. But those without are going to continue to be pushed behind unless something happens to bridge that divide that comes from a state or national level.”

Featured Image: Forest Simon, Unsplash.

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David Levin has led one of the largest educational publishers in the world. Before that, he made a name for himself by completely revamping the business operations of a 200 year-old U.K. publisher. But for the past year, he has been obsessed with online teacher training.

“The lack of emphasis on pedagogy to support online and hybrid learning—that is just striking,” Levin said over videoconference (pictured right). When the Covid-19 pandemic broke out early this year, the ASU Entrepreneur-in-Residence quickly organized a massive free event, REMOTE, to help connect postsecondary educators with skilled online learning practitioners. The event drew 26,000 participants. Now, Levin is working to repeat the conference for K-12 teachers. ASU’s REMOTE K12: The Connected Teacher Summit will go down on January 9. It is free to attend, and registration is currently open. Educators who attend can earn a professional credential from ASU.

Levin’s involvement in online teacher teacher is doubly ironic. He joined ASU in late 2019 right as his department (ASU’s EdPlus) debuted an end-to-end adaptive education platform to support its entire undergraduate biology degree. Since, Levin has also joined the AI developer SparkBeyond as chairman, among other ventures.

Hearing Levin speak about the integration of learning technology and teacher training, however, his outlook on education comes into focus.

How 2020 Has Brought Online Teacher Training Front and Center

“Look at the massive investment K-12 has made in technology—and it has been massive,” Levin said. “Contrast it with the investment that pretty much any other institution made in technology, all the way from the military to government to business. The biggest investment by far has been in software and in evolving workflow. People have been asking how they can use technology to do something differently. Well, education didn’t do any of that.”

ASU has announced the REMOTE K12: The Connected Teacher Summit in which teachers and attendees can register for free and earn a ASU K12 Remote Teaching Skills Certificate from @asueducation. Read more and register: https://t.co/YFYLdUGrcA #remotelearning #certification

— ASU Helios Decision Center (@DCEdExASU) November 20, 2020

Levin is hardly the first individual who has criticized K-12 edtech spending. Sector-wide spending in the U.S. totaled an estimated $13 billion before the pandemic. We won’t know the full cost of education technology during 2020 for some time. A sort of cottage industry has formed to help schools make better use of their edtech licenses. But tracking edtech’s return on investment is not easy. And except for educators who have proactively trained in the online modality, there was little incentive until 2020 for educators to seek online teacher professional training.

“There has been no corresponding investment in the follow-through, the pedagogy, the teaching, the workflow in a business sense,” Levin said. “It’s funny because, in every other domain, digital technology has totally changed practices and conduct. Productivity is a word with which you should tread cautiously in the world of education. But however you measure it, militaries are more effective today. Corporations are faster-moving and more agile. Governments deliver services in a totally different way. And yet, the way we’ve looked at education hasn’t changed.”

The Connected Teacher and Faculty Summits

Throughout 2020, Levin has been working to correct course. In partnership with ASU (and many sponsors like Pearson and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), Levin helped organize REMOTE: The Connected Faculty Summit this July. The event featured experienced online educators who presented some high impact actionable best practices. It drew 26,000 professors and lecturers (including roughly 700 K-12 teachers), who spent an average of three to five hours engaging in the event. Individual sessions saw audiences in excess of 5,000 people.

“We got sack loads of fantastic responses,” Levin said. “People were saying, ‘My institution has not done any teacher professional development. I’ve had no idea how to approach this.’”

Following the event, there was an overwhelming interest in repeating it with a focus on K-12. This follow up—REMOTE: The Connected Teacher Summit—will occur on Saturday January 9.

According to Levin, many themes are common across K-12 and higher ed online teacher professional training. But there are also important differences.

“Higher ed instructors have a dozen years, fifteen years of building domain expertise in delivering online learning to a large body of students,” Levin said. “That practice existed before 2020. When we built the agenda for that event, we could look to people who were running grant programs and who were known in the network.

“The contrast with K-12 couldn’t be stronger,” Levin continued, “because the domain expertise hasn’t been developed in the same way. The muscle is still really raw.”

As a result, the second REMOTE conference is holding a competition for K-12 educators. ASU is asking attendees to nominate those they believe have developed strong online teaching or leadership capabilities. Selected winners will be invited to present on the practices they have developed.

Levin acknowledges that proper online teacher professional training takes years. The REMOTE conferences present a means for educators to improve their online teaching in the absence of that possibility.

“We’re not providing a holistic course in how to do fantastic online and hybrid teaching,” Levin said. “We’re designed to be a fantastic resource available on-demand. Let’s say Miss Jones is going to teach a class tomorrow and is just freaking. She needs some ideas. Over the course of fifteen minutes, the conference is going to present some great ideas about her specific domain.”

Conference presentations are organized by grade level and teaching disciplines. Besides various subjects, these disciplines will also include things like serving special needs students or addressing mental health issues.

Looking Forward to 2021

Levin hopes that the lessons and best practices of online teacher professional training learned this year will not be forgotten.

“If we go back to school, and everybody says, ‘Thank God for that Covid-19 vaccine. Now what were we doing?’ That to me will be a terrible wasted opportunity,” Levin said. “It will be an indictment, a terrible indictment of education. We’ve learned things that are really important. And it’s been very painful to learn them. We shouldn’t forget them.”

REMOTE: The Connected Teacher Summit will go down on January 9 for one day. Teachers can attend at no cost. Registration is currently open.

Featured Image courtesy of ASU.

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It’s no surprise that nearly  every aspect of our lives – including our jobs – revolves around or is significantly impacted by technological advancements of the last half-century. The healthcare industry, including medical education, has been immensely impacted by modern disruptive technologies. According to McKinsey, more than $80 billion has been invested into health tech since 2015.

Not only has the field of medicine itself changed and advanced, but how future physicians are trained is also evolving as the demand for innovation continues to increase. We see this especially now, as the global Covid-19 pandemic is highlighting the limits of healthcare systems worldwide and the need for well-trained physicians in all corners of the globe.

Digital Technologies Were Disrupting Medical Education Well Before the Outbreak of Covid-19

Dr. Peter Horneffer, MD is a long-time proponent of using disruptive technologies to scale the educational capacity of medical institutions in an effort to address the growing global shortage of physicians. Dr. Horneffer is also the Director of Medical Education Programs for Lecturio, a digital medical education resource which uses learning science-based tools to educate medical students worldwide and whose core mission includes addressing this growing physician shortage.

We caught up with Dr. Horneffer to discuss some of the recent developments in online medical education and how he envisions the future of this industry in post-covid times.

This interview is edited for clarity and length. 

Kate Hiller: You have a lot of experience both as a medical professional and as a medical educator. How do you see some of these new education technologies changing the field of medical education? 

Dr. Peter Horneffer: We know that traditional ways of learning, i.e. reading manuscripts or textbooks, or sitting in lectures, yields a relatively low retention rate.

I think we are at the dawn of an era in which the educational process will leverage technology to become much more efficient, and also much more available.

You don’t need to travel necessarily to a center of learning to benefit from professors who not only have a good understanding of the material but are gifted in how to convey it. You can transfer that knowledge you know via the internet and distribute it widely. Not only will students be able to learn more effectively, but we can distribute that information much more broadly, you can make it available to a much wider audience and recruit students who might not have had the opportunity to learn effectively.

KH: Theory and foundational sciences are a major part of any medical curriculum. But what about clinicals? 

PH: In all my experiences in online medical education, I have always felt that medical school can never be a solely online proposition because interpersonal skills are fundamental to what you need to learn to be a successful physician.

Integrating a computer simulation software such as Body Interact allows for interaction within the simulated tests. So this will have benefits even in the post-COVID-19 era when you do interview patients and work through clinical scenarios, because it’s an exercise that can be practiced in an online modality. I think the answer is that there are a lot of computer-based modalities that will help hone the process. Medical education will adapt and I think students will return to the bedside sooner than they think.

KH: What role do online educational platforms play for students then, especially in the midst of the current pandemic?

PH: Educational platforms have a huge role to play for students, and not just during the pandemic. Specifically during this time of social distancing, the abilities of educational platforms to provide oversight can be invaluable – monitoring assignments, performance, and even offering guidance for students and faculty. Furthermore, with travel restricted, platforms with pre-recorded content can be used to fill the void during the pandemic.

KH: Do you see any of the COVID-19-required technological shifts being implemented in medical schools right now as part of the future of medical education? 

PH: I’m hopeful that it will not only catch on, but that it will predominate. If you look at the results of the learning studies or learning science, there is a clear advantage of having students prepare in advance. My hope and expectation is that as teachers or educators are pushed out of their comfort zones, they realize that not only are they making do to accommodate the requirements of social distancing, but in fact they can work toward a more effective and reliable methodology, which I am optimistic will be the future educational process. I’m hopeful that one of the silver linings of COVID-19 is that it will be a catalyst for new health educators to understand not only is this a convenient way to provide continuity, but ultimately a superior way to provide education.

While Digital Technology Holds Huge Potential, It Will Never Fully Replace Traditional Instruction

But what disruptive technologies specifically exist and currently impact the transmission of medical education? There is no way to directly transition from a classroom-focused model to a digital-first model of teaching – it just doesn’t work the same. Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have been around for decades now, but rather than following this strategy of pumping information online in video form, more recent technologies allow for active participation rather than just passive interaction. Augmented reality can “put” medical students and residents in an operating room and provide them with a more comprehensive “view” of the patient or the patient’s data. Data collected through the Visual Human Project or a 3D anatomy model helps students to get up close and personal with the human body, no cadaver necessary. Going back to foundational science, online platforms provide Qbank questions, video lectures, retention questions, and more to help students learn from wherever they are.

There are many other techniques and technologies available that medical students and educators use to perfect their craft. As medical care also advances and evolves, so will medical education. What we’re seeing now is a general shift toward the digital that will ultimately lead to more comprehensive, extensive, and superior medical education around the world.

Author Bio: Kate Hiller has masters degrees in Journalism from the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University and in Global Mass Communication from Universität Leipzig. Her writing has been published in numerous publications, including The Huffington Post, Cincinnati Magazine, The Post (Athens), and various lifestyle and educational blogs. Kate currently lives and works in Leipzig, Germany.

Featured Image: National Cancer Institute, Unsplash.

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“Woz U isn’t a school,” said company CEO Jacob Mayhew on more than one occasion during a video conference interview. But it has continued to provide training in software development, cybersecurity, and data science. Billed as an ‘Education-as-a-Service’ provider, it once ran online and in-person coding bootcamps. It hoped to provide K-12 STEM education, a startup accelerator, and a platform to connect tech talent with employers. It laid plans to open campuses in 30 U.S. cities and establish 15 international schools.

Today, the company maintains a more measured outlook. It partners with businesses along with private and for-profit institutions of higher education. “We supply content, training, and networking to our partners,” Mayhew said. This summer, it gained approval to conduct a U.S. Department of Labor Registered Apprenticeship Program in conjunction with the University of Phoenix to provide upskilling to Infosys trainees. Under the program, Infosys pays its apprentices while they both work in house and train with Woz U resources. But Infosys can use federal funds to supplement the cost of that training, get reimbursed for up to 75% of the wages it pays for six months, and get other kickbacks for related costs. Many states also offer tax credits to businesses using this program.

For Woz U, it’s a significant turnaround from the past year when renewal for its education license was unanimously denied by the Arizona Board for Private Postsecondary Education.

Woz U’s nearly three-year saga provides an eccentric story that sits at the intersection of Silicon Valley, for-profit colleges, coding bootcamps, online learning, and the shifting American workforce. It was launched with guidance and branding from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and staffed largely by veterans of Arizona’s for-profit education sector.

Woz U’s Adventures in Arizona For-Profit Education

It was the latter who fell out of favor with the Arizona State Board. The company launched initially without approval from the Board to operate and confer certificates. Throughout its lifetime, it has maintained a precarious financial situation and failed to ask the board for permission to change ownership.

But the final straw came in 2019. Woz U was partially owned by Brent Richardson, the CEO of Dream Center Education Holdings (DCEH). He also chaired its board of directors. Richardson’s LLC owned South University, Argosy University, and Art Institutes, all for-profit colleges. Richardson formerly served as the CEO of Grand Canyon University, a for-profit college that has since transitioned into non-profit status.

The DCEH holdings had recently been purchased from the collapsing Education Management Corporation (EDMC) with regulatory help from the U.S. Department of Education under Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Under Richardson’s leadership at DCEH, each of these for-profit schools continued to decline and eventually folded, leaving thousands of students in the lurch. David Halperin provides an in-depth rundown of these events on his site Republic Report.

Following these events, the Arizona State Board voted unanimously to deny Woz U a renewal for license to operate. Though it had an opportunity to appeal, Woz U signed a consent agreement to stop practicing as a school in the state. It agreed to teach out its last coding bootcamp students, who completed their studies this spring. In addition, Richardson agreed to leave his position and sell his stake in the company.

Turning Over a New Leaf as a Labor Department Registered Apprenticeship Program

Reflecting on this period, Mayhew speaks of these events as a bygone era.

“Woz U doesn’t run any bootcamps. We did that back in the day,” he said (though coding bootcamp students were still completing their studies in 2020). “The biggest thing that we want to be able to work on at Woz U is how do we reach out to the largest amount of people that we can to train them in the new digital era.”

The company has found new life as a Department of Labor Registered Apprenticeship Program training provider. Over the course of the current administration, President Donald Trump has continued to expand federal support for apprenticeship programs.

This has been a source of controversy since Mr. Trump signed the executive order announcing the expansion in 2017. The original order called for lessened regulation and approval of a new Industry-Recognized Apprenticeship Program. This is different from the Registered Apprenticeship Program in which Woz U participates.

Funding has also led to controversy. The Department of Labor acknowledged misspending $1.1 million on apprenticeship program spending in November of 2019. In March of this year, the Department announced plans to expand apprenticeship funding to $100 million. That funding has yet to gain congressional approval.

Where’s Woz?

Where does Steve Wozniak, the man who lent his name to the for-profit institution, fit in to the picture?

“I think what Steve Wozniak does is he gives us his passion and drive and direction,” Mayhew said. “He’s very open and passionate about helping everybody get into technology. He’ll randomly call in and talk to us. He shows up usually about every six or seven months. He’ll stop by and want to talk people. The problem is we really don’t have graduates anymore for him to come talk to. He’ll have Zoom meetings with different groups of people and stuff like that, but he isn’t teaching or writing curriculum. We’re not a school, per se.”

Correction August 6, 2020: An earlier version of this article stated that Woz U partners only with for-profit colleges to deliver its training. It also partners with private non-profit institutions. The previous version of the article also indicated that Woz U only offers its training on a whitelabel basis. The company does offer Woz U branded training in some instances. In addition, Woz U does not directly receive compensation from the Department of Labor to deliver its training. Infosys is eligible to have the costs of the training it hires Woz U to administer partially covered by the Department.

Media courtesy of Woz U.

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For those acquainted with the swirls of UK’s open EdTech, Titus Learning‘s Seb Francis needs no introduction. Startup Ambassador —host of the Startup Secrets Podcast— and the youngest leader of any Moodle Partner out there, Seb is already a prominent name in one of the most frantic tech spaces today. But a far and wide conversation with Francis on Titus, Moodle, the UK and their collective futures underlines a confident and attuned voice. By defying conventional thinking, Titus Learning has earned recognition and respect among Moodle Partners. It was recognized with the first ever Moodle Appreciation Partner of the Year award at the first MoodleMoot Global. It secured interesting paths of growth in Europe and Asia —Titus is also a certified Moodle Partner in Hong Kong, the only one so far. And it was part of the first batch of premium Moodle Partners, with the first announcement of a major Moodle Workplace initiative.

This post was first published by LMSPulse.

To get started, I’m really interested about what made you get into the EdTech and the open source space?

My background has actually always been within EdTech.

I went to university for about three months in the UK. Then I dropped out. It wasn’t quite right for me. My first job from there was with a Moodle Partner, kind of a chance encounter to begin with. It wasn’t necessarily a straight path, but I stayed in there and it brought out a lot of my personal interest in IT and education. I started at a relatively low rank and worked my way up to working in kind of a more senior capacity. I worked with international clients and particularly international schools.

My manager at the time was Mike Bennett, the other co-founder of Titus. We were at a conference looking at the competition, at some of the frustrations that we had with the existing learning providers in the market. We wanted to do something different. We decided to develop a tailored option with customized platforms. We wanted to make sure that each Moodle solution we provided looked different.

By creating unique experiences, we realized we needed a big, big focus on training, support and consultancy. We felt that was lacking with a lot of other learning providers, where more or less they would just give you the system, but not the support needed to make the best of it.

That was basically it. We continued to focus on customized solutions for international schools, and after a few years, we built a client a global client base around the worlds: East Asia and Southeast Asia, China, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, Brunei. Of course, we also have customers in the UK and mainland Europe. We got certified as a Moodle Partner in September 2017, and we’re now a Moodle Certified Premium Partner in the UK and Hong Kong.

We have grown organically as a company, so we’ve never had to take any outside investment or give away equity. I think you can make better decisions from a business perspective this way, and also from an educational or pedagogical perspective.

How has your proximity to the startup scene influenced your history and the growth of Titus?

I’ve worked a lot with startups, especially Virgin Start Up. They work on early-stage startup, and they provided us with mentors and help for about 18 months. I was selected out of about 1,500 people and 10 of us became Virgin Startup Ambassadors. We then worked with other startups in helping promote Virgin and the work that was being done. I also run the Startup Secrets Podcast, where I interview anyone: From a really early stage entrepreneur, to those who have gone on to sell the company for hundreds of millions of pounds. And I’m currently in the process of creating and launching a new tequila. Obviously, Titus is the number one priority. But I think once you start a business, you soon start to see a few other opportunities as well.

How would you describe the relationships and attitudes of the startup community, and the venture capital in particular, towards open source technologies?

It’s an interesting situation. From a commercial side, it might seem odd that in our revenue models we have to “hitch off” a percentage to support a software that is free. But I think VC’s views on open source software aren’t all tainted. They understand the importance of making the software development process sustainable.

Currently, Moodle Partners can have quite different sizes and goals. We’ve obviously got great aspirations, and our growth plan is to be one of one of the biggest Partners out there. But right now, we benefit from being able to stand on a world-class software, without which we would not be able to create new value.

Open source demands a new way of thinking about the technology business. One that many people would only appreciate if it ceased to exist. Unfortunately, many people still don’t, and as a result they don’t care about it because it isn’t always the most lucrative. Some even claim there is no inherent value in an open source company since there is no IP. But I think in many ways models like us are still novel to some. From a business model perspective, we can still deliver on product, revenue, and innovation.

From Titus’ perspective, we balance the amount of support we give to the open source world with how we develop and protect our own innovation. But at the end of the day, we stick with open source because it’s proven. Moodle is production ready, tried and tested. The customer base is proven.

You do risk being dependent upon the provider of the open source technology. There’s always the possibility they decide to change their direction, strategy, products, or target users. But I believe the program continues to work because the mutual benefits to strengthen our partnerships are proven too.

Do you feel comfortable with the relationship you have with Moodle HQ?

Yeah, absolutely. We have been partners for over two years now.

Part of it is just a trust thing. It is something you become aware of that goes beyond the contractual elements, which are also in place. Then there are the logistics of it: Moodle needs to convince dozens of people around the world, thousands of customers, employees, millions of users, that it is reliable and trustworthy. What they have accomplished in terms of their reliability for a whole open source ecosystem is impressive and worth kept building on.

Many partners, Titus including, are moving firmly into the corporate learning space, which is expected to become more valuable than education. We are aware Moodle Workplace is likely to bring some changes to the relationships with us and other partners. There will be frustrations. I am pleased by the fact that in the past 12 to 18 months Moodle has brought in a lot of really experienced new people onboard. As long as we retain the good relationships, I’m sure we can sail forward.

It would seem that Moodle’s recognition to Titus as Appreciation Partner of the Year speaks precisely to your efforts on sustainable relationships…

Yeah, of course. To receive the award, one recognition among the eight given that night, among the near 90 partners around the world, was brilliant.

The Appreciation Award in particular was given to the partner who put the most effort and had the most impact with newer initiatives from Moodle executives. The kind of reasoning behind the Appreciation award will change each year.

We’ve built up a huge pipeline of potential clients for Moodle Workplace. We have been some of the most active in the trials, we even have involved customers and we expect they will bring tens of thousands of users to Moodle Workplace early on.

It was also really good to receive the award in the atmosphere of a Global Moot. To meet partners, developers and experiences from 20, 25 countries was exceptional. And it was also great to meet so many members of the Moodle HQ team in one place, since they are based all over the world. The next one is only set to grow more, and are considering joining in as a sponsor.

Sounds awesome. Going back home, how would you describe the UK LMS space and the relationships with the other partners? Only the UK and the U.S. have 6 partners, it suggests a fairly high level of competitiveness.

The relationship is quite good too. Obviously, at certain times we are competition and we’re going up against one another. And when we do that, we want to win and we feel that we’re better than the other partners in terms of what we do and what we deliver. I envision Titus to be Moodle Partner of choice. I want us to be the one with the fastest growing rate of sales, and the one who does the best job both in sales and market as well as development.

But personally, I think it’s very important that we get on well with everyone. Everyone shares ideas, whether things are going well, or not so well. Sometimes we can collaborate, or refer opportunities to partners who specialize in a different sector. Everyone has a unique strength. We have a stronghold on international schools, and we’re also doing an increasing amount of content creation.

So overall, good relationships are at the core of what we are doing.

Aside from good relationships, what are Titus priorities going forward?

In terms of content, we want to leverage Moodle’s partnerships, especially that with Premium Integrator GO1. But we also have a great in-house content development team with expertise on interactive content and Articulate Storyline specifically. We even have our own video production department.

So we’re certainly looking to get video content made with our clients, although most of it will be for their internal use. We expect custom content development to help bolster our sales and become even more profitable over the next few years.

Aside from content, are there any other topics or trends you believe will become relevant in 2020?

There is obviously a growing interest in Mobile learning. Mobile learning is pretty much part of the deal now. We expect better mobile experiences and the Moodle apps to get better, maybe less reliant on the regular Moodle version. Not every learning experience is fit for mobile though, so the push is going to happen at different paces. But mobile learning is going to be a gateway for other ideas, especially involving personalization and artificial intelligence.

In terms of AI and virtual assistance, we are currently at a “listening” stage, looking at how it is implemented. Would they be used in picking content, or modifying parts of it? Then we should also assess how learners would adapt to them.

One particular area of interest at Titus is the use of chatbots for reporting and analytics. One of our developers, Farham Karmali, was the first to showcase a basic version of a Moodle chatbot in 2017. Since then we’ve had customers asking about its availability. In this sense, I think innovation in AI, chatbots and machine learning will come from two sources: You have the innovators, the developers that produce the software and features; then you also have the demand from the market. For now, all I can say is that we are having an increasing number of conversations on the issue.

This post was first published by LMSPulse.

Featured Image: Chuttersnap, Unsplash.

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While online learning has taken hold in many disciplines, J.D. degree programs have been slow to follow. The American Bar Association (ABA), the sole accreditor of juris doctor programs in the country, has only recently warmed to the idea. For years, they resisted change, citing low quality and poor academic results from online programs as their main reason for withholding their blessing. The handful of law programs that have gained ABA approval for their online J.D. did so by placing a huge emphasis on the quality of their programs. Now, with in-person law programs across the country moved hurriedly online, some educators fear their programs’ reputation is about to suffer.

“It’s important to distinguish between emergency remote instruction and quality online learning,” said University of New Hampshire Franklin Pierce School of Law Dean Megan Carpenter. “The type of online hybrid instruction that we and that other law schools offer in their hybrid JD programs—it’s a very different animal. I hesitate when I hear people discussing this as an experiment.”

The Fight to Gain Accreditation for Online J.D. Programs

For many years, the ABA has allowed online learning on a limited basis. The organization’s Standard 306: Distance Education stipulates that a law student can’t conduct more than one third of their degree online. Until recently, first-year students were further limited from studying online.

But in the past few years, the ABA has begun to grant variances to a handful of schools. Mitchell Hamline School of Law was the first to launch an online J.D. in 2015. They were soon followed by law programs at Loyola University, Syracuse University, Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, the University of New Hampshire, University of Dayton, and many others.

While some use the shorthand of ‘online J.D.’ to describe these programs, they are all technically blended or hybrid, involving a short amount of instruction on campus throughout the degree.

According to the ABA, their primary concern has always been the quality of education.

“There initially was skepticism in the legal education community about distance learning, which mirrored concerns in higher education generally,” said ABA Managing Director of Accreditation and Legal Education Barry Currier in a previous interview. “eLearning was linked in the minds of many to ‘correspondence’ education, which the ABA Standards had never allowed as a permissible form of legal education.”

To respond to this concern, educators had to make the case that they could deliver the same quality of instruction online as they do face-to-face.

Reaching Online and In-Person Parity

Syracuse University College of Law’s JDinteractive, for example, stakes a claim as the first “fully interactive” hybrid or online J.D. program. Even for the asynchronous portions of the degree, faculty working with instructional designers have created numerous features that require students engage with and respond to the material they’re learning.

“My general rule of thumb, which I’ve communicated with our faculty, IT staff, and instructional designers, is that you shouldn’t be able to take a JDi course while you’re doing the dishes,” said Nina Kohn, who serves as the David M. Levy Professor of Law and Faculty Director of Online Education at Syracuse.

“A student told me that he had gone for a dental procedure with the hope that he’d be able to complete the week’s asynchronous lesson while waiting in the dentist’s office. But once he tried, he realized it would be impossible because of the constant embedded exercises. I thought to myself, ‘Good, I’ve done my job.’”

UNH also built their online program with the view that it had to match or exceed in-person instruction. Their intention was partially inspired by the need to support the ‘Externship’ aspect of their degree. Modeled on medical residencies, UNH law students spend a large portion of their second and third years working in a legal capacity, which often takes them away from campus.

Enter Coronavirus

When the outbreak of COVID-19 reached the U.S. and shut down virtually all face-to-face instruction, the ABA issued a memo encouraging institutions to respond to the pandemic by going online and allowed that the pandemic could “necessitate or make advisable some departure from the normal operation of the law school’s J.D. program.”

Online J.D. programs were well-equipped to transition their in-person students online. “We were lucky in that we had the capacity to easily move in-person students over to the online modality,” Syracuse Professor and Faculty Director Nina Kohn said. “We have a student affairs office that’s used to working with students remotely. We have an office of career services that knows how to make programming available online. We have an IT staff that understands how to support faculty and students on Zoom.”

“Our transition has been seamless,” UNH Dean Megan Carpenter said. “We already demonstrated to the ABA that we can provide services for students across the board remotely. We can provide things like, for example, library services with chat functions. We’re very well prepared for for this moment.”

An ‘Experiment’

While online J.D. programs were well-positioned to respond to the COVID-19 outbreak, the vast majority of law institutions in the U.S. were less prepared. Across fields of study, institutions of higher education had to move their classes online, regardless of whether professors, instructors, faculties, and administrations had any experience with digital pedagogy.

As a result, there is a vast difference currently between online degrees that have been designed to emphasize quality and those that have been forced to maintain instructional continuity.

Many members of the public and the media, however, have not made this distinction. Furthermore, many have cast the rapid transition online as an experiment that will serve as a referendum on all online learning.

NPR aired a segment titled “The Biggest Distance-Learning Experiment: Week One.” In an article for the Brookings Institute, Southern New Hampshire University (one of the largest online schools in the country) President Paul LeBlanc also described the transition as an “experiment in online learning.”

In an essay titled “Coronavirus and the Great Online-Learning Experiment” for the Chronicle of Higher Education, history of education Professor Jonathan Zimmerman wrote, “For the first time, entire student bodies have been compelled to take all of their classes online. So we can examine how they perform in these courses compared to the face-to-face kind, without worrying about the bias of self-selection.”

Educators who have sought to emphasize quality in their remote courses—including in online J.D. programs—don’t necessarily see things this way.

“I’m impressed by how quickly law schools responded to the Covid-19 crisis,” Professor Kohn said. “However, I do have two big concerns about how the rapid move online it will affect the future online learning, both as it relates to J.D. programs and to higher education more broadly. First, I worry that that, because of the fast or even frantic move to bring courses online, there wasn’t sufficient emphasis on maintaining quality. As a result, faculty and students are experiencing online classes that are of marginal quality—and this may create low expectations for future online learning. It may discourage the intensive work that faculty and institutions need to be doing to effectively support student learning in the online space.

“Second, I’m concerned that this period of online learning will leave a bad taste in people’s mouths. Students will look back on this time as a period in which their education suffered. Educators and administrators who remain skeptical of the online modality, in turn, will have their fears confirmed. As a result, the overall reputation of online learning may suffer because the version of online learning most people will have experienced will have little resemblance to best practice.”

UNH Dean Megan Carpenter is quick to emphasize that teaching with digital technology shouldn’t necessitate a lower quality learning experience:

“It’s not an either-or thing. When we use the term hybrid, I think we really need to take that literally. There are so many opportunities to engage face-to-face and using technology together that enhance the learning experience for students across the board. I hope that this situation forces us all. I hope we get to that place where that light bulb goes off–where that little piece of magic might happen–and we figure out how to teach and learn in a new way.”

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