People often go back to school during a recession. But what about when schools are closed? Many of those who have lost their jobs or are sheltering at home due to the global coronavirus pandemic are seeking out education online, and Sebastian Thrun expects this trend to continue long after the worst of Covid-19 has subsided. Known as the optimistic engineer who created Googles self-driving car project, in recent years Thrun has become an advocate for online learning as cofounder and executive chairman of education platform Udacity. At a time when many industries are struggling to cope with lost business, Udacity and its peers are doing well. In just one week in March, Thruns company, which offers courses for adults in AI, data science, and business, signed up more students than it had in the second half of 2019.

On Monday, WIREDs editor in chief, Nicholas Thompson, sat down for a chat with Thrun over Facebook Live. They spoke about why it can be difficult to innovate in schools and how online learning is capable of filling many of the voids created by this pandemic. In the past, Thrun says, school districts and university professors alike had been risk-averse. But hes convinced that the move to online learning forced by coronavirus will help naysayers realize that going digital could make it easier for some to learn. Adult education, Udacitys focus, seems like a good place to start: What companies are beginning to realize in this digital revolution is that their own people are an amazing resource. The coronavirus situation, as sad as it is, has really helped that understanding because now lots of employees are sitting at home."

Still, Thrun freely admits that online education wontand shouldntrender in-person learning obsolete. While programs like Udacity excel at teaching hard skills, social skills like empathy are harder to learn through a screen. Computers can help, he says, but having people on your side will always be an advantage.

Hundreds of readers watched and submitted questions for Thompson and Thrun to answer live, and this was the second in a series of four conversations presented by Salesforce in which WIRED will explore what the coronavirus pandemic means for the future of business, education, technology, and health.

More From WIRED on Covid-19

Continue reading here:
'Education Is a Human Thing'but Covid-19 Will Push It Online - WIRED

Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU), the massive not-for-profit online innovator, is taking the moment of thecoronavirus pandemicto permanently trim its in-person operations to a remotely delivered minimum.

Regardless of when its physical campus in Manchester is safe to reoccupy, SNHU said it plans to cut its base annual tuition charge there from $3,100 (2,500) to $1,000 and to find all available methods of teaching at that price.

SNHU had already been planning to move in that direction over time, its president, Paul LeBlanc, said in an interview. But the virus-driven economic downturn with US unemployment already triple the 8million of the 2009 recession demands that it happen right now, even if all details are not yet finalised, Dr LeBlanc said.

Our families are going to be reeling, he said, and weve got to be prepared with a better answer.

SNHU, with 3,000 on-campus students and more than 135,000 online, has long beencarving outa unique space in post-secondary education that competitors seem unsure whether toenvy or dismisspending moreperformance data.

While for-profit operators have given online teaching a reputation for short-changing students, Dr LeBlanc has emphasised the approachs potential to lower costs and deliver personalised instruction that credits skills gained outside formal class settings.

SNHUs future will retain that approach for its online population while waging an all-out assault on expenditures that are not absolutely necessary on the physical campus.

Easier examples, he said, could include using staff from the online operation, known as College for America, to provide non-academic services such as financial counselling; converting its campus health services to tele-medicine formats; and renting out sports facilities when not used by students.

More fundamentally, Dr LeBlanc envisages more on-campus students taking courses online, plus a rapid expansion of SNHUs Project Atlas, which moves faculty from traditional classrooms to mentor-facilitator roles in which they guide students who learn largely through individual projects or off-campus employment.

Faculty may even be relieved of grading, as SNHU is working with UK-based Pearson to implement assessment systemsdriven by artificial intelligence. Everything is up for debate and discussion, Dr LeBlanc said.

Yet all the computerisation will not mean campusesdevoid of the hum of traditional student activity, Dr LeBlanc said. There is a coming-of-age experience that a campus community offers, he said. You cant do it without the robust presence and interaction of humans.

Although a four-year institution, SNHUs academic programmes have skewed towards offerings regarded as vocational. Dr LeBlanc, however, has long seen demand rising for highly efficient, job-focused instruction.

The 2009 recession sparked a great migration from four-year to two-year schools, he said. That was a dress rehearsal, as bad as it was, for what were about toface.

If SNHUs Manchester campus can open this autumn, its admitted freshmen will have the option of taking their first-year courses there online,with no tuition charge, or getting their deposits refunded, Dr LeBlanc said. Existing students will get their promised traditional classes through graduation.

As SNHU outlined its plans, another leading non-profit provider of online education, Purdue University, alsoreiterated its commitmentto resuming and strengthening its physical campus presence once it can safely do so.

All the evidence reveals, Purdues president, Mitchell Daniels, wrote to the campus community, that students who live and spend more of their time on campus succeed academically at higher rates.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com

Read more:
US online pioneer vows greater push to slash post-pandemic tuition - Times Higher Education (THE)

As the COVID-19 pandemic forces universities across the nation to quickly transition from in-person to online instruction, faculty members are focusing on how to make this change while continuing to maintain quality academic experiences and assess learning outcomes.

Sharing insights on creating well-developed online learning experiences that are meaningfully different from mirroring face-to-face instruction in a virtual classroom was the goal of two Virginia Tech faculty members in an article published recently by EDUCAUSE a nonprofit association that helps higher education elevate the impact of IT.

Barbara Lockee, professor ofinstructional design and technologyand Provost Faculty Fellow, and Aaron Bond, senior director for Professional Development Network and interim senior director for instructional design, innovation, and outreach, co-authoredThe Difference Between Emergency Remote Teaching and Online Learningwith lead author Charles B. Hodges, professor of instructional technology at Georgia Southern University; Stephanie Moore, assistant professor of instructional design and technology at the University of Virginia; and Torrey Trust, associate professor of learning technology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The article seeks to help faculty who have been thrust into the online instruction arena better understand the concepts, similarities, and differences in the design of effective online learning and emergency remote teaching.

Each member of the team involved in developing this article has worked in the area of distance and online education at our own universities for many years, said Lockee. We felt that it was important to convey some key points related to the typical design and development of online learning experiences and how these systematic processes differ from crisis response.

According to the article, effective online education requires an investment in an ecosystem of learner supports, which take time to identify and build. It will be impossible for every faculty member to suddenly become an expert in online teaching and learning in this current situation, in which lead times range from a single day to a few weeks. In contrast to online experiences that are planned and designed from the beginning to be online, the COVID-19 pandemic forced institutions into what is known as emergency remote teaching (ERT), which is a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternate delivery mode due to crisis circumstances. It involves the use of fully remote teaching solutions that would otherwise be delivered face-to-face or as blended or hybrid courses.

Lockee, Bond, and their colleagues share the concern that challenges related to ERT could create a false impression of the effectiveness, academic strengths, and engagement opportunities of systematically developed online teaching and learning.

Unfortunately, our current quick shift to immediate online delivery didnt come with the luxury of time to engage in the kind of informed decision-making afforded by standard instructional design processes, as we are trying to address an immediate, pressing need, Lockee said. As online learning is commonly perceived to be second best or of lesser quality, we fear that challenges incurred in such a quick transition to an unfamiliar platform and instructional approaches may intensify that perception among some faculty and administrators.

Bond said the quick transition to virtual instruction is a significant challenge in that a full online course development project can take months when done properly. The need to just get courses online is in direct contradiction to the time and effort normally dedicated to developing a quality course, Bond said. Online courses created in this way should not be mistaken for long-term solutions, but accepted as a temporary solution to an immediate problem. Its important to recognize that online courses that incorporate comprehensive course design processes also typically have more time to evaluate tools and pedagogical strategies.

Advancing Virginia Techs commitment to creating experiential learning opportunities for students is another area that has required creative solutions during the online transition. Lockee said that in some cases such a transition is not possible if the experiences require specialized resources, equipment, or access to specific locations. However, in many cases, transition is possible through innovative application of technology and communication strategies.

Alicia Johnson, a visiting assistant professor in Virginia Techs instructional design and technology program, is using creative experiential learning strategies to involve her graduate students in new ways to communicate, manage projects, and create in a fully digitally mediated environment. In one class, students are creating open educational resources specifically for online instructors. In another class, she is helping students work with a client referred to her by the Apex Center for Entrepreneurs at Virginia Tech. Students in her class are creating digital instruction for the clients virtual reality learning product for World Language classrooms.

Johnsons students are using multiple online platforms to solve instructional and training problems for others, as well as gaining experience in the instructional design process and remote project management. They are creating digital design documents, process books, scripts, storyboards, and prototypes using a variety of digital content creation tools that help them design instructional products to share with their stakeholders. They will be showcasing their experiences soon at Virginia Techs Virtual ICAT Day.

As universities continue to use online platforms to teach, Lockee and Bond say that flexibility and familiarity will be key in how effective faculty are in actually educating and engaging students in a virtual environment. I would encourage faculty to stick with technology and tools that they are familiar with and to consider the same for students, said Bond. They should consider the most important components of course content remaining and teach those components. Trying to get everything in with the time remaining will cause stress for students and faculty alike.

Lockee adds that flexibility will be equally important in terms of how faculty create effective online educational experiences for students and also in strategizing how to wrap up the remainder of the semester.

Its a good time to reconsider our original plans and decide which activities and assessments are essential and which may possibly be adapted or eliminated due to time limitations. In some sense, this quick transition to online teaching also requires flexibility in our own expectations of ourselves and our students as well, said Lockee.

Visit link:
Helping peers across the nation create tools for effective online learning | - University Business

So, what have you been doing lately? All that time youve been saving by not going to the beach or dining in restaurants has been put to good use, right? You perfected your cast weeks ago, learned how to tie flies (you always said you were going to, as soon as you had the time), and your reading list is all caught up.

Now, before you resort to something drastic, like binge-watching The Sopranos or taking a look at the honey-do list, how about doing something to improve your boating skills? After being out there on the water with a lot of yall, I think this might be just the ticket. Im getting tired of having to send up prayers to St. Brendan (patron saint of boatmen, divers, mariners and sailors) and the Flying Spaghetti Monster every time I see another vessel that might cross my path.

To help you out with that, Americas Boating Club, part of the United States Power Squadrons, has some online offerings. Start with their free how-to videos on YouTube. Americas Boating Channel has a bunch of stuff. A lot of it covers the basics (a great refresher; just sayin), and there are also videos that deal with more complex issues almost 100 of them altogether. Start looking through them at https://bit.ly/2RUlkZt.

If you need more in-depth information, there are 10 interactive online seminars that will provide exactly that. Now, these arent free, but theyre not real spendy either at 30 bucks a pop. Choose from courses dealing with weather, using GPS, marine radio, hurricane preparation, AIS electronics, propane systems, cruise planning and more.

Each of the seminars is about two hours long and provides a huge amount of useful information that youll reference time and again. Go to https://bit.ly/ 3522lSp to see for yourself. If youre not sure whether a seminar is right for you, you can preview them for free.

If youre new to boating, you should get started with a basic boating safety course before you do anything else, including take the helm. You can do that online as well (for $35) at AmericasBoatingCourse.com.

Actually, I recommend this course to boaters of any experience level. Ive had people tell me theyve been boating their whole lives but learned something new when accompanying a new boater to one of these courses in person. Ill bet the same is true online.

While these boating courses will be offered again in person, it might not be for a while. Classes always slow down over the summer when our snowbirds are up north, so you might have to wait until fall. Or, you could take them online now in a safe and socially distant way and start becoming a better boater right now, today. It just kinda makes sense to me. And, bonus, its a great excuse to avoid reorganizing the garage.

Contact Capt. Josh Olive at 941-276-9657 or Publisher@WaterLineWeekly.com.

Read the original here:
Be a better boater: Online education will improve your skills - yoursun.com

The Dean of Faculty of Technology at Delhi University (DU) on Wednesday wrote to the Vice-Chancellor highlighting issues with online modes of education and recommended alternative routes.

With regard to efforts taken by teachers to extend educational resources through digital platforms, the Dean, Sachin Maheshwari, asserted that they could only supplement classroom teaching and had to be made available to all students. However, he argued that many students of the university would not be able to access computers, smartphones or high speed Internet, thus, being deprived. Besides this, he highlighted that effective teaching and conducting of experiments could not take place through such modes.

Mr. Maheshwari also raised concerns of a possible rat race wherein restoration of teaching-learning and online evaluation may be proclaimed for nefarious reasons involving financial, political interests.. This could, thus, prove detrimental to academics, he argued.

Mr. Maheshwari said that the need of the hour was to successfully weather the pandemic and consequently cover lost ground with holistic team efforts. He also pointed to other institutions such as IITs which had advanced their summer vacations instead of going through online evaluations.

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DU Dean against online education, writes to V-C - The Hindu

The "Online Education Market in India 2019" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

With the increasing adoption of the Internet and rise in awareness about e-learning, the online education industry is expected to witness promising growth during the forecast period.

The online education market in India was valued at INR 39 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach INR 360.3 billion by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of ~43.85% during the 2019-2024 period. Ease of learning, flexibility, and a wide range of study materials have influenced the overall growth of the industry.

However, the lack of formal recognition and accreditation, and abundance of freely available content presents a critical threat to the growth of the sector. The industry is moving towards the adoption of innovative technologies like Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), Big Data Analytics, Blockchain and others to improve the learning experience.

Segment Insights

The online education market is segmented into primary and secondary supplemental education, test preparation, reskilling and certification, higher education language, and casual learning. The online primary and secondary supplemental education segment was valued at INR 11.99 Bn in 2018 and is expected to reach INR 123.65 Bn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of ~46.48% during the 2019-2024 period. The change in consumer behavior towards detailed learning and surge in demand from tier II and tier III cities are driving the growth of this segment.

The online test preparation market is expected to reach INR 94.75 Bn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of ~50.84% during the 2019-2024 period. This segment is expected to be the fastest-growing segment in the online education market, owing to growth in career-focused population, enhanced Internet infrastructure and increased penetration of digital payment methods.

The online reskilling and certification market is expected to reach INR 93.81 Bn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of ~36.95% during the 2019-2024 period. The growing business landscape has widened the skill gap among employees, which is why the demand for reskilling courses is picking up.

The online higher education market was valued at INR 5.01 Bn in 2018 and is expected to reach INR 40.63 Bn by 2024, expanding at a CAGR of ~40.74% during the 2019-2024 period. The conventional education system is insufficient for the growing population, and therefore students are switching to online higher education courses.

Key Market Trends

Gamification is one of the most prevalent trends among online education providers to encourage learning through immersive experiences. Simulation of concepts, level advancement badges and incentive-based learning are driving user engagement on online education platforms. Online learning players, nowadays, are continuously competing to offer differentiated products to the target audience, mostly by offering value-added services with regular courses. Value-added services like internships, live projects, group discussions, and career counselling sessions, offered along with regular courses enhance users' experiences.

Competition Analysis

The Indian online education market is highly fragmented with around 3,500 edtech start-ups operating in the country. Many foreign players are entering the Indian online education industry. BYJU's, Udemy, Coursera and Duolingo are a few prominent players in the industry, catering to the requirements of different target audiences.

Key Topics Covered

Chapter 1: Executive summary

Chapter 2: Socio-economic indicators

Chapter 3: Introduction

3.1. Market definition and structure

3.2. The online education ecosystem

3.3. Stages of development

Chapter 4: Market overview

4.1. Online education market in India - overview

4.1.1. Historical market size

4.1.2. Forecast market size

Chapter 5: Market segmentation

5.1. Online education market segmentation

5.1.1. India online education market share based on category

5.1.2. Online primary and secondary supplemental education

5.1.3. Online test preparation

5.1.4. Online reskilling and certification

5.1.5. Online higher education

5.1.6. Online language and casual learning

5.2. Segment-wise stages of development

Chapter 6: Technology landscape

6.1. Market trends

6.2. Technology landscape

Story continues

Chapter 7: Government initiatives

Chapter 8: Market influencers

8.1. Market drivers

8.2. Market challengers

Chapter 9: Competitive landscape

9.1. NIIT Limited

9.2. Aeon Learning Private Limited

9.3. Coursera Inc.

9.4. Duolingo Inc.

9.5. Individual Learning Private Limited

9.6. Simplilearn Solutions Private Limited

9.7. Sorting Hat Technologies Private Limited

9.8. Think & Learn Private Limited

9.9. Udemy India L.L.P.

9.10. upGrad Education Private Limited

Chapter 10: Website benchmarking

Chapter 11: Recent investments

Chapter 12: Recent development

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/dkbxph

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200417005258/en/

Contacts

ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

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Online Education Market in India Worth INR 360 Billion by 2024, Exhibiting a CAGR of ~43% - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Yahoo Finance

Many educational institutions in the world are offering online courses, and the trend is that more educational institutions will start offering them. Theonline education started nearly30 years ago, mainly in the United States. Online courses and programs are offered as a regular part of an institutions programs. That is, institutions that were initially in class or face-to-face started offering online courses either due to competitive pressure from other institutions or for economic reasons and somedaymay replace the in-class or face-to-face educational system. Online education has become so common that the U.S. News & World Report ranks 345 U.S.online undergraduate programs and 335 MBA programs every year.

Online education is structured learning, in which the instructor and student are separated by time and space, uses the latest technology to bridge the gap between participants in education (Ham, 1995; McIsaac&Gunawardena, 1996).The World Wide Web made the existence of online education possible. In addition, the phenomenon has further accelerated due to the willingness of students to obtain a degree via the Internet anytime from anywhere. It is further made possible by the desire of the educators to teach anytime from anywhere and make some extra money or being a part of their teaching load.

Edu.gov defines An online course as one in which at least 80 percent of the course content is delivered online. Face-to-face instruction includes courses in which zero to 29 percent of the content is delivered online; this category includes both traditional and web-based courses. Accordingly, the definition of an online course has remained consistent for 30 years. While there is considerable diversity among course delivery methods used by individual instructors, the trend continues. The 2015 Survey of Online Learning, Online Report Card: Tracking Online Education in the United States, conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group and others found that the number of higher education students was taking at least one online course in 2015; it is up by 3.9 percent from the previous year. Growth, however, was uneven; private nonprofit institutions grew by 11.3 percent while private for-profit institutions saw their online enrollments decline by 2.8 percent.

While there is considerable diversity among course delivery methods used by individual instructors, the following is presented to illustrate the prototypical course classifications by Ed.gov:

The proportion of Type of Course Typical Description

Content Delivered

0% Traditional Course where no online technology use-

content is delivered in writing or orally.

1 to 29% Web Facilitated Course that uses web-based technology to

facilitate what is essentially a face-to-face

course. May use a Course management system

(CMS) or web pages to post the syllabus and

assignments.

30 to 79% Blended/Hybrid Course that blends online and face-to-face

delivery. Substantial proportion of the content

is delivered online, typically uses online

discussions, and typically has a reduced

number of face-to-face meetings.

80+% Online A course where most or all of the content is delivered

online. Typically have no face-to-face meetings

Ed.gov stated that in the United States more than 2.8 million (14 percent) of all higher education students were taking all of their highereducation instruction online in the fall of 2014. Almost half (1,382,872,or 48%) of those students learning exclusively at a distance did so at a public institution. For-profit institutions accounted for slightly less than one-third (843,579,or 30%) of only online enrollments. Exclusivelyonline education students are a growing segment of the overall student population. 12.5% of all higher education students in fall 2013 were enrolled in online education.

Ed.gov reports that the number of institutions that have or are planning a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) has remained relatively steady. That is, in 2012. 2.6 % offered MOOC and 9.4% with plans to offer. In 2013, it increased to 5.0% offering a MOOC and 9.3% with plans to offer. In 2014, it increased to 8.0% offering a MOOC and decreased to 5.6% with plans to offer. In 2015, 11.3% reported having a MOOC and 2.3% with plans to offer.

Despite muted support by faculty, growth has continued. The study reveals that only 29.1% of academic leaders say their faculty accepts the value and legitimacy of online education.60.1% of the faculty with the largest online enrollments and 11.6% of the faculty with no online enrollments accepts the online program. The academic leader considered online program critical to their long-term strategy fell from 70.8% last year to 63.3% in 2015. The 2015 survey found that the number of students increased by 3.9%. 28% percent of the students (5,828,826) were taking at least one online course, a total of 5.8 million students were taking some online courses (2.85 millionwere taking all their courses online, and 2.97 million were taking some not all). 72.7% of the entire undergraduate and 38.7% of all graduate students were taking online courses offered by public institutions.

As a result of the rapid growth of online education, the quality of learning has been questioned. The question commonly asked, Is online learning as effective as traditional face-to-face education. Research by Arbaugh (2000) andVerduin& Clark(1991) found no significant difference between conventional and online learning. Many studies (Russell 2002,Gagne & Shepherd, 2001)alsofound little difference in the quality of education received through online learning versus classroom learning. That is, students taking online courses performed as well as students taking courses via the traditional method.

However, no one should make a blanket statement that all online programs are as good as face-to-face. It is always hard to judge the quality of something wherethere is no universallyagreed-upon metric. Such is the case for education -where there is no singlemeasure of education quality -either for face-to-face or for onlineeducation. Therefore, the only way to measure the quality of education online vs. face-to-face is to ask the academic leader to rate the relative quality of the learning outcomes for online courses vs. face-to-face courses.Ed.gov evaluated the personal perception of the chief academic officer about the relative quality of online and face-to-face instruction. Their perceptions remain important as they makecriticaldecisions for their institutions.The proportion of academic leadersthat rated online education as good as or better thanface-to-face instruction was 57.2% in 2003 that went up to 77.0% in 2012. However, it went down to 71.4% in 2015.

However, academic leaders at institutions with online offerings have consistently held a more favorable opinion of the learning outcomes for online education than those at institutions with no offerings. Institutions with the largestonline enrollments (10,000 or more distance students in fall 2014)have 41.7% consider it superior to face-to-face instruction. Only27.7% of those with smaller online enrollments (5,000 to 9,999) consider it superior, and 14.1 consider it inferior. 23.2% of the institutions with smaller online enrollments (less than 5,000) consider it inferior, 15.8% as superior, and61.0% the same. 51.2% of the no online education enrollments consider it as inferior.

Whether online education is better, the same, or worse, is subject to whom one asks. As shown above, the opinion depends on who is offering online education. However, there is no real data that prove, which is better. Regardless of the question of quality, many top institutions in the United States and other countries are offering online courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. However, with the pandemic of COVID-19, it seems that not only many more institutions of higher learning will consider it, but also the K-12 (U.S.school system) may find it necessary to start developing online courses. Therefore, the future of online education looks brighter, and those who get on this bandwagon now will grow and make money.

The writer is Ph.D. (USA), Professor Emeritus (USA)

Excerpt from:
Online Education Good or Bad; Here to Stay! - Daily Times

Central Washington University Director of Jazz Studies Chris Bruya jumps on the bike every now and then to get out of the house to clear his head in between outlining his online studies programs.

Director of Orchestral Activities Nik Caoile is in charge of a 75-member orchestra. Caoile is working hard to develop a spring semester, online Band-Aid that will help his department bridge the gap until it can get back to normal, hopefully in the fall.

Fourth-year trombonist Cole Lobdell is from Richland, but continuing his studies here in Ellensburg. He misses that live contact playing in the Jazz Band I, but has picked up a little playing time in a virtual big band collaboration called the Isolation Big Band.

ONLINE EDUCATION

Business as usual at Central Washington University in a COVID-19 pandemic world has become one of creative thought at this point. Between seniors and grad students trying to complete the final quarter; department heads and professors scrambling to put a criterium up online, higher education is finding new ways to make an impact. And, of course the underclassmen are preparing as they settle into their particular field of study.

It is especially challenging in the music department where studies arent exactly an equation that can be posted online. Take away the hands-on exposure of playing or singing together, well lets just say, creativity is the song of the day.

Teaching cannot be replaced by an online format, so this is more of a Band-Aid for the spring and hopefully we get back to normal in the fall. What Im trying to do is make my courses synchronized. When Im giving a common time, Im putting in the material and theyre digesting that material on their own, said Caoile, who received the Outstanding Orchestral Achievement Award from the Washington Chapter of the American String Teachers Association.

Theyre actually finding different motivations as they work their day without a schedule. Theyre learning how to work on that on their own in terms of self-discipline. But what we do is a social art form, and Ive gotten some feedback from the students saying what they really miss is being on stage or rehearsing together, seeing each other every day.

ALL THAT JAZZ

Bruyas jazz department is in the same boat. How does the eye contact and band energy translate to the isolation of education during a stay-at-home pandemic? He said his first reaction was to cancel jazz bands (large ensembles) and combos (small groups) because its just not possible to rehearse online, let alone perform.

It became apparent that cancelling classes would be detrimental to the health of the department, college and university, so I began to think about how we might move in the online direction, he said.

He eliminated rehearsal and playing together in a unified way, but could not eliminate anything else. Playing with proper style, intonation, dynamics, and tone could all be taught and evaluated online.

What Ive come up with is not really earth-shattering or ground-breaking, but it is working and enrollment is at or very near usual in-person classes, Bruya said. What were doing in both jazz bands and combos is asking students to play along with professional recordings, matching as closely as possible what they are hearing on the recording to their own playing. They get a week to master each selection, record themselves, then post their recording for evaluation.

JAZZ BAND I

Lobdell has been the lead trombone in Jazz Band I the past couple of years. Whats going on now is that all three jazz bands have been lumped together and the online structure is for everyone.

Bruya has chosen eight well-known composition/arrangements that have ensemble passages that involve jazz vocabulary, style, dynamics and ensemble playing. It is the kind of playing and musicianship that is consistently taught in the in-person rehearsals.

Were doing more of a curriculum thats designed more toward the teachers career part of band education, said Lobdell. Were listening to the recordings for things we can improve. Were not playing in the concert band at all.

My goal is to be a teacher, so Im getting a chance to these exercises of analyzing and fixing things. So, this is extremely helpful.

SETTING A STANDARD

Said Bruya, With the Jazz Harmony & Keyboard, Ive been considering creation of video lessons for quite some time so Im taking the opportunity to develop fairly short how-to demos, focused assignments and clear outcomes, he said. I think it will work out nicely and if successful I may offer the class in a hybrid mode or full asynchronous online, as soon as next year.

If you would like to hear a bit of Lobdells work online, visit https://youtu.be/ZHIv0LehaC8 (Tall Cotton) or https://youtu.be/FzaJrbzg7Ig (Bounce).

Read more:
Central Washington University music department adjusting to the online education - Daily Record-News

One consequence of coronavirus: It will become more apparent that good online education is easier said than done.

Nobody planned for an abrupt mass migration of traditional college courses to the internet.

But because of coronavirus, thats where we are.

Hundreds of thousands of students have been told to clear out their belongings and head home, many through the end of the semester. In nearly every case, colleges have said that instruction will continue online.

Making it work will require much more than giving every professor a Zoom account and letting instruction take its course. Thats partly because not all students will be able to access or benefit from suddenly online courses equally.

Undergraduates at places like Harvard, Stanford and M.I.T. will largely have no problem getting online to complete their work. But one recent study found that roughly 20 percent of students have trouble with basic technology needs. Their data plans are capped, their computers break, or their connections fail. Those with technology challenges are disproportionately low-income and students of color, who are also more vulnerable to dropping out.

Those students need courses that are not just accessible, but also well designed.

In some ways, colleges have been building toward this moment for more than a decade. One-third of all undergraduates are enrolled in online classes now. Thirteen percent are learning exclusively online. Online course-taking has increased for 14 consecutive years, even as overall enrollment has declined.

Colleges have also adopted so-called learning management systems, virtual platforms that help faculty interact with students on campus and off. Like all modern institutions, college now exists in a state of constant electronic connectivity.

Ideally, online education accomplishes at least three distinct things: distance, scale and personalization. All of them will be hard for colleges to manage in the coming weeks.

Tools for communicating at a distance have steadily improved over time. But theyre not perfect, as anyone who has ever participated in a video conference call can attest.

(OK, now I can see you but I cant hear you theres a little microphone button at the bottom of the screen, did you click on that? There! Thats better. Can everyone who isnt talking put themselves on mute? One of you is apparently in a crowded bus terminal of some kind?)

It takes practice and skill to teach effectively at a distance. Colleges have largely let individual faculty members decide whether to participate in online learning, and some have gotten very good at it. Others havent. Now the most traditional and recalcitrant instructors will have to do something difficult theyve never done before.

It also takes practice to learn at a distance. Theres a structure inherent to learning on campus, a rhythm and tangibility that keeps students connected to the academic community. Some students easily adapt to a virtual environment. Others dont. Now students used to learning one way will have to adapt quickly. Research suggests that academically marginal undergraduates struggle the most in fully online classes.

One way to manage the problem of inexperienced online professors is to increase the number of students being taught by the most successful teachers. Scale is currently a big part of online college, because thats where all the profits are. Its why for-profit colleges got into the online game early, and why public and private institutions are rapidly growing their offerings now.

But scale requires time and money upfront. The only way for one professor to reach hundreds or even thousands of students is to embed the learning process in technology. The simplest example is recording a lecture that students can view online. But effective online courses require much more. Many campuses now employ full-time instructional designers who help faculty map out courses and degree programs. They also create learning modules, online exercises, virtual laboratories and assessments.

The designers are good at their jobs and getting better. But its an expensive and labor-intensive process. The reason that many colleges are signing away up to 70 percent of future online tuition revenue to private for-profit companies is that those firms offer the financial capital and expertise needed to convert traditional courses online.

Its impossible to transform a college course into the virtual world overnight. Which means the students currently boxing up their clothes and laptops also wont benefit from the advantages of technology-enabled personalization. Fully online courses are usually, in whole or in part, asynchronous, meaning that students can learn when they need to.

A parent with a job can log on after putting the kids to bed at night, rather than hunt for a parking spot to make a 10 a.m. on-campus lecture. Thats a simple but powerful kind of personalization, particularly if people are caring for loved ones who are sick.

While the popular idea of individual learning styles has been largely discredited by academic research, people still bring vastly different levels of knowledge, talent and context to the classroom, virtual or otherwise. The long-sought-after dream of technology-enabled education is to build machines that can assess these differences, react to them, and give students a better educational experience personalized to what they know and need.

There are decades of research in this field, and many promising theories and tools, but as of yet no breakthrough technologies in terms of cost and student learning.

What does all of this mean for colleges suddenly forced to move online because of the coronavirus pandemic? The only thing they can create right now is distance, which is important of course for health reasons. They do not have the time or resources necessary to map out the rest of their courses and build online versions on the fly that can accommodate large numbers of students. They will not be able to train their teachers how to teach or their learners how to learn. There will be little personalization.

College professors and administrators care deeply about the health and education of their students. In the coming weeks, they will rally around their responsibilities as teachers and develop many innovative solutions to the sudden challenge the pandemic has created. But in a sense, its a mistake to say that colleges will be moving to online education. All theyll really be doing is conducting traditional education at a distance. That will be hard enough.

Kevin Carey directs the education policy program at New America. You can follow him on Twitter at @kevincarey1. His book, The End of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere, explores information technology and higher learning.

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Everybody Ready for the Big Migration to Online College? Actually, No - The New York Times

An unwavering commitment to this form of delivery prevented elite schools from using digital media to lower costs for all of their students, or investing in the pedagogical expertise that might have rendered online learning options complementary in practice and commensurate in quality to face-to-face instruction. This is why tens of thousands of students and faculty at some of the wealthiest and most esteemed universities in the world are finishing their coursework in video chat rooms this spring, instead of having the opportunity to take advantage of high quality interactive and pedagogically sound online options. We can only speculate how things might have been different if residential schools had invested as much in online learning platforms as they have in recruiting star researchers, renovating dormitories or upgrading athletics facilities over the last 20 years.

We recognize that residential programs provide a great deal more to students than mere coursework. They are relationship machines, generating countless friendships, intimate partnerships and professional network ties. That machinery doesnt translate easily to digital life, which is why residential-campus students, when told to complete their coursework on computers, feel cheated out of much of the value associated with residential college attendance.

We also recognize that online formats bring their own risks. When poorly designed and bereft of genuine human attentiveness, online delivery can be disastrous for students who are not well prepared for college-level coursework. Inequitable outcomes will almost surely result if the makeshift approaches being used to weather the current crisis continue indefinitely.

Going forward, educators will need to study and compare learning outcomes for different kinds of students in a variety of instructional formats. With prudent investment, careful observation and a commitment to ongoing improvement in both physical classrooms and online, quality instruction can be provided irrespective of delivery mode.

Well-resourced institutions should use their capital and scientific endowments to create and model best practices: building best-in-class online learning platforms and then adopting and promoting research-based approaches to iterate and improve on instructional design. Here the nations esteemed research universities are ideally positioned to serve the entire sector: they have the scale, expertise, and research infrastructure to make signal advances in applied learning science.

Additionally, administrators, faculty and alumni should recognize the costliness of requiring students to leave their homes and physically cohabit with one another for four years. How much of that is really necessary? Might two or three years of being on campus together suffice for four?

This is not a fanciful idea. For example, the University of California system now requires that one junior transfer student be admitted primarily from the states community college system for every two traditional entering freshmen students. Students admitted this way receive most of the benefits of a University of California education while enjoying substantial savings on tuition, room and board charges during their initial college years.

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What Is a College Education in the Time of Coronavirus? - The New York Times