BIG FIVE HEADLINES
Missed the weekly podcast update? Listen to the full episode here or read the short summary below.
1. FALL ELECTION CYCLE
‘Tis the election season and — quoting Alex — education has become “not just a polarizing issue, it’s one of THE polarizing issues.”
Youngkin created a tip line for parents to report teachers who discuss "divisive" concepts in the classroom. He said he would make sure to catalogue all reports but now faces second suit as he refuses to release submissions publicly.
Democrats Cede ‘Party of Education’ Label to GOP: A new poll shows that voters in 62 congressional battleground districts no longer trust Democrats over Republicans on issues related to education. Before the pandemic, Democrats had a double-digit advantage on which party was more trusted on education.
2. 2022 CHLOE 7 REPORT
The QualityMatters and Eduventures released their CHLOE 7 report. Chief Online Officers expect that by 2025, most students will take a combination of face-to-face and online courses, and that demand for online learning will increase, though not as fast as in 2020-21.
While online learning leaders think fully in-person will be a rarity, so will fully-online: it is an important time for institutions to re-evaluate and reconsider what activities require physical space and bring the most value to learners.
3. BIG TECH VS UDEMY
Amazon has launched an online learning platform that lets individuals offer courses, similar to Udemy. It has already attracted popular Udemy instructors and currently offers 130 courses on cloud computing and programming.
In January 2021 Facebook started testing their so-called Facebook Classes, allowing users to live stream courses. Unlike Udemy and other platforms, their courses are live and offer various teaching tools to instructors, including breakout rooms, annotations, polls, timers, virtual hands, screensharing, and whiteboards.
The question is, do Amazon and Facebook have the market cap and users to bootstrap an online course ecosystem?
4. METAVERSE
Podcast episodes are incomplete without a Metaverse mention, so here it is.
Will there be one Metaverse to rule them all? Deloitte Metaverse Report says not at first. Building the Metaverse will start with decentralized, multi-centered ecosystems. We don’t know how — and if — they’ll end up converging.
Bringing back the Harvard Metaverse in Education Report, educators should think not only of the benefits, but also the limitations of XR. Some things to consider:
inclusion & accessibility
affordability
cognitive load (what’s the Goldilocks’ rule of XR)
FUNDING + M&A
ANOTHER FIVE
1. EDTECH REALITY CHECK
This is Natasha Mascarenhas’ takeaway after interviewing 7 investors about the future of edtech. Long story short, the edtech frenzy of the pandemic is over; now businesses need to figure out how to navigate the slow economy of today.
2. IS A DEGREE WORTH IT?
A new government watchdog report found that the Education Department fails to alert student loan borrowers quickly enough about their eligibility for loan discharge in the wake of school closures, potentially causing them to suffer financially. The White House is meeting with student debt activists and advocacy groups this week to discuss forgiving large amounts of student loan debt, weighing the political consequences of such a decision. A White House official said Biden would decide by the end of the month, and the expectation is that he’ll at least extend the payment freeze until after the November elections.
As more and more people question the value of the degree, companies and non-profit organizations offering certificates are on the rise. Such programs “simply repackage information that any college student would learn in mostly introductory courses” and offer in a way that’s more accessible and affordable. Another problem seems to be overcomplicated financial aid options.
3. 2U’S NEW STRATEGY
2U moves “from a deliberately high cost, full package of services to a stackable set of services and incentives for lower tuition”. The edX acquisition, on the other hand, will extend the company’s offerings to include free MOOCs, stackable certificates, bootcamps, short courses and full degrees.
The jury is still out on whether this new strategy of partnering with elite colleges and offering lower-cost programs will work, so it’s worth it keep an eye on 2U in the next couple of years.
4. CHILDREN’S LEARNING
Google launches a website version of its Read Along education app for children, initially released as Bolo in 2019. The ad-free platform helps children can learn to speak languages like English, Portuguese, Spanish, Hindi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati and Urdu by reading stories using Google’s speech recognition and text-to-speech text.
5. ONLINE COURSES: QUANTITY AND QUALITY
The list of online courses is growing fast, but colleges risk lapses in quality. Quality standards vary greatly across institutions, and most do not gather sufficient data to evaluate their content, methods and outcomes.
LISTEN
In the latest Edtech Insiders episode, we talk to to Josh Chernikoff, founder of Flex Tutors and Cascade Communications:
“There's this new idea of the storyteller. Obviously, storytellers aren't anything new. They've been around since the dawn of time. But I think people are trying to be better storytellers now because there are so many emails, so many products, so many people trying to get the attention of superintendents and principals.”
READ
“Great book from John Hattie, an education pioneer.” - Alex
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