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Online Education Market 2020 is slated to grow rapidly in the coming years With key Players by 2025 - News Parents

Ossining families, staff and community members took part in an education equity rally in White Plains on January 18, to fight for greater education funding from the state.

Ossining is one of the Harmed Suburban Five school districts, which receive some of the lowest percentages of Foundation Aid in the state. The Harmed Suburban Five is a coalition of parents, teachers, and administrators who are fighting for equity in the Ossining, Port Chester-Rye, Glen Cove, Riverhead and Westbury school districts.

Dozens of families showed up to the Richard Daranco Westchester County Courthouse on a bitterly cold morning. The Ossining and Port Chester communities had gathered in front of the Martin Luther King Jr. statue at the courthouse a year ago, to push for more state aid. We need to make sure that were not standing here next year, said Dr. Raymond Sanchez, Ossining schools superintendent.

Foundation Aid is the largest state education grant to school districts. The Harmed Suburban Five receive less than 55 percent of the Foundation Aid they are due because the formula has not kept pace with the shifting demographics that have led to significant increases in student enrollment and decreases in community wealth. For the Ossining School District, the funding gap is $14 million.

By contrast, other school districts in New York receive an average of about 80 percent of the funding they are due under the current Foundation Aid formula, which was established in 2008.

State legislators and Governor Andrew Cuomo are in the process of developing a budget for the 2020-21 fiscal year. The governor released his proposal on January 21. The deadline for finalizing the state budget is April 1.

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Ossining Community Rallies for Higher Education Funding - River Journal Staff

Programs in Stanfords Office of the Vice Provost for Technology and Learning (VPTL) will be realigned this fall, integrating them with related university activities and bolstering Stanfords efforts to advance teaching and learning both on campus and globally, Provost Persis Drell announced.

Under our long-range vision, we are embarking on an exciting range of activities to advance the science and design of learning itself, the on-campus educational experience for students at Stanford and global educational offerings for learners beyond Stanford, Drell said. These next organizational changes we are making are about aligning our efforts to help us meet our ambitious goals in education, both on campus and beyond.

Already last fall, VPTLs Center for Teaching and Learning became part of a new Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Development, Teaching and Learning, bringing together a range of functions that support faculty development in the areas of teaching and mentoring.

Effective Sept. 1, two additional changes will be made:

First, VPTLs Learning Technologies and Spaces unit will become part of the Office of the Vice Provost for Student Affairs (VPSA).

The unit provides technology tools and services to support the on-campus learning experience for faculty and students, including the Canvas learning platform, and is leading an effort to imagine the future of learning spaces at Stanford. These activities are closely aligned with those of Student and Academic Services, part of VPSA, which is responsible for classroom planning and scheduling, among other curricular and student support functions.

Second, VPTLs extended education and global learning programs will continue to collaborate in a new structure, with the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) housed within the School of Engineering, recognizing the schools strong history of innovation, leadership and faculty engagement in extended education. The Stanford Center for Health Education (SCHE), which extends health education to a global community of health professionals, will continue to report to the School of Medicine.

The programs will continue to support faculty across the campus, in all schools and disciplines, in developing online coursework and credentialed education programs for individual learners, along with regionally contextualized custom programs for governments and organizations around the globe. SCPD will continue to manage the Stanford Online brand of online course offerings and credentialed programs.

In addition to Stanfords work in supporting faculty teaching and mentoring, evolving the on-campus learning experience, and advancing global and extended education, Dean Dan Schwartz and faculty in the Graduate School of Education are taking the lead in developing Stanford initiatives to tackle chronic challenges in education more broadly. The GSE will play a key role collaborating with campus partners to advance educational innovation, Drell said.

The existing VPTL organization will wind down when the program realignments occur Sept. 1. Michael Keller, who has overseen VPTL since 2018, will continue as vice provost and university librarian, a role he has held at Stanford for 27 years.

I deeply appreciate Mikes stewardship of these programs over the last two years, and I want to extend generous thanks to the staff in the programs who are working to provide these important and valued services both to the campus community and to learners well beyond our campus, Drell said. These activities will continue to flourish with the support and leadership of the staff and faculty, and we believe the new reporting lines will provide a sound and cohesive path forward for them.

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New Stanford organizational structure aims to support technology-enabled campus and global education | Stanford News - Stanford University News

Desperate institutions offer overflow rooms and YouTube live streams instead of a seat in front of a lecturer

Students paying 9,250 or more for tuition struggled to get a seat at some university lectures. Photograph: Alamy

Students at prestigious universities have been turned away from overcrowded lectures and told to watch classes online or in overflow rooms.

The Observer found that students paying 9,250 or more in Manchester, Nottingham and Lancaster, had struggled to get a seat in lectures. Manchester University maths students in a 600-capacity hall were given slips with a link to a YouTube live stream and told they could sit in a coffee shop and watch. They were also given the option of sitting in a separate overflow theatre to watch the stream, without being able to participate or question lecturers.

Last October, the University of Nottingham advertised a 9.65-an-hour role for a temporary worker to monitor the overflow live stream for first-year law students. In November, psychology students at the University of Lancaster were sent to overflow rooms and given the option to watch lessons on their laptops because lecture theatres were full..

Overflow rooms typically accommodate large audiences when well-known figures give public lectures. All the named universities said that overflow classes were a short-term arrangement to cover busy periods at the beginning of the academic year.

Sofija (who declined to give her surname), a student at the University of Manchester who attended the maths lecture, told the Observer that she saw people being turned away. The economics undergraduate decided to stop going to the class because it was so difficult to concentrate.

Even if you were in the lecture and got a seat, it was literally impossible to pay attention, she said. Ive got an anxiety disorder, which gives me some sensory issues, it was 100% impossible for me to pay attention or learn anything. I did not go to the lectures, I had to watch them online.

The National Union of Students, which represents higher education students, said that packed lectures were a result of desperate universities being forced to bring in as much tuition-fee income as possible.

In a separate example of overcrowding, a physics lecture at Kings College London, one of 24 universities in the elite Russell Group, was reportedly so busy that students were told to cram in, with some standing at the back.

Julio Figueroa, an international student from Mexico who pays more than 25,000 a year to study at Kings College London, said that he had to take his own chair into a physics lecture on at least two occasions. We are in a Russell Group university, I feel like this shouldnt happen, he said.

There is no evidence of the university running overflow lectures, and it said it had no knowledge of students taking their own chairs into lectures.

Universities UK, which represents higher education providers, said it was important that all students could access lectures. Universities will be mindful to ensure this does not compromise the quality of teaching or disadvantage students not attending in person. There is no indication of common or continuing issues with students being asked to join overflow or online lectures against their wishes, a spokesperson said.

The University of Manchester said that the maths overflow was temporary. When overcrowding does occur, we work with schools to resolve it as quickly as possible and use various solutions, including moving the lecture to a larger location or splitting the cohort into smaller groups.

Nottingham said its overflow lecture was the result of a timetabling problem that affected a small number of students. For a two-week period last September, a particular set of law lectures proved more popular than anticipated for the allocated theatre capacity, it said. Rather than disappoint students, we arranged a live stream of the lecture for some 20 students in the adjoining theatre, with full technical support and additional tutorials to ensure they could explore the lecture topic in person with tutors.

Lancaster said it had run overflow lectures owing to the popularity of its course. There is always a staff member present in the streamed venue and there are mechanisms in place so students can ask questions.

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No room for you in lectures, top universities tell first-year students - The Guardian

Sean Cauvet, News Editor February 17, 2020

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There are big changes coming to Grand Valley State University in 2020. GVSU President Philomena Mantella and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer announced on Wednesday a new education plan that will be geared toward non-traditional students that are over the age of 24, with work experience and at least 30 earned college credits.

Today we are announcing degrees and certificates for the two million working Michiganders who have some college credit, but had to leave school before earning a bachelors degree, Mantella said. These busy adults are looking for realistic, affordable, high-quality offerings to advance their careers and to complete their journey. That is why weve developed and accelerated online degree programs that will support them.

Whitmer plans to use her newly-approved $35 million budget to implement the program, with the hope for expansion on the horizon.

Mantella made sure to clarify that these degrees are geared toward degree completion, not just participation.

They (the students) have the convenience of online learning, but the value added of a community experience. And the program doesnt require you to pick a path but allows you to choose your own. The featured accelerated degree program is 19 months long, and grounds you with an interdisciplinary bachelors degree and one of four certificates built around high-demand workplace needs like project management, data analytics, global communication and leadership.

When asked about how she would give a program that is based online a community feel, Mantella noted design among other things.

The online is not a format of just publishing content. First of all, the online design is one that will encourage teamwork, encourage connections and will be very vibrant. In addition, were utilizing all our sites and again we hope this will be wildly successful and we can do it in other communities with what Ill call light touch experiences where students will gather together face-to-face with their faculty. We will have success coaches for the students along the road so they can have in-person or online meetings, so we have many ways for them to form a network. I call them light touch because Its specifically designed for the working adult who has lots of demands and can intermittently enjoy those experiences face-to-face.

Along with the program, Mantella and Whitmer brought along two students that have already expressed interest in enrolling, Alyx Dean and Dustin Stek. Dean was previously enrolled at GVSU and is seemingly exactly who this program is designed for.

I had the pleasure of actually attending Grand Valley from 2010-13. At that point in my life, I wasnt sure what I was going to do with my degree, I was going for nonprofit management at that time. I decided to step away, did a year of service with a Americorps, then I realized I needed a real job and I ended up in the insurance industry. Several years later, I feel like Im at a solid place in my career where I can take some time for myself and pursue something Ive been looking to do since I left, Dean said.

Similarly, Stek wasnt able to finish his degree when he was younger because life came at him fast.

When I was 19, I had my first child. Being 19 and working full-time, it was pretty difficult to juggle school and raise a family. Unfortunately, I put school on the back burner and focused my efforts on raising a small family. Twelve years later, hopefully a little more stable and more mature, I thought it was wise to finish my degree here and I came across the program. With it being an online format for a working adult, I figured I can spend a few nights a week advancing my career and making that accomplishment of completing my bachelors degree, Stek said.

To help ease those considering and convince them to take the first step, Mantella announced that the first class will be fully refunded.

Getting started is really scary, Mantella said. Grand Valley is confident in our design and in you, so were launching the program with our investment in your success. As proof of our confidence in you, we will reimburse the cost of your first course to apply to a future one. We want to lower your risk to just get started now.

Mantella continued by saying that the changing workplace demands creativity, and GVSU is up to the challenge.

Were confident that this will be a meaningful contribution to our businesses, communities and the state of Michigans full participation in the knowledge economy, Mantella said.

Also, Mantella clarified the difference between the new program and the current online classes that GVSU offers to its students.

(The difference) is in the design of the program. Theyre six weeks and in terms where people can focus intensely on a subject. Theyre not cohort-based, meaning that everyone doesnt have to start at the beginning and go through the same two or three years. Also, weve never offered the portfolio across all of our sites, so in the design, the modality ,and the physical location (there are new) dimensions, Mantella said.

When Whitmer was elected Governor of Michigan in the midterm elections 14 months ago, she made a goal to have at least 60% of Michiganders have a post-secondary certificate or degree by 2030. This program will help her reach that goal, and she says the partnership is a sign of things to come.

Philly, Grand Valley State, thank you for taking this leadership role on and Im hoping that others see the wisdom in the path that you are forging and replicate it, Whitmer said. For now, we know that Grand Valley is going to make a huge impact on so many lives in our state. This is what real leadership that improves peoples lives looks like, congratulations.

The program will first roll out in Grand Rapids, Allendale, Holland, Traverse City and Detroit with more to come. Although Whitmer used many road metaphors throughout the announcement, she ended with a powerful one.

We need to change our culture of thinking of prosperity as a ladder, (where) theres one way up, into more rock climbing. Theres a different path for everyone to independence and prosperity in their work. This is one additional path for Michiganders to be able to get the skills that they need to get into a great paying job, Whitmer said.

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Never too late: GVSU President Mantella and Governor Whitmer announce new online program - Grand Valley Lanthorn

A Queensland university has offered itself as an online backup for rival institutions Chinese students, as Australian universities seek ways to teach almost 100,000 people stranded in China by the Covid-19 coronavirus-related travel ban.

The University of Southern Queensland (USQ) has offered 25 per cent fee scholarships to Chinese students who are unable to attend their regular Australian campuses in semester one, and opt to study online with USQ instead.

Vice-chancellor Geraldine Mackenzie described the offer as a goodwill gesture, backed by our expertise and experience in online learning, to ensure that the Australian university sector continues to maintain its excellent reputation in China.

Students who wanted to take up the opportunity for cross-institutional study would need approval from their regular universities, she stressed.

The offer comes as Australian institutions with significant Chinese enrolments seek ways to maintain course continuity. Most including Melbourne, Monash, Queensland, Sydney and University of Technology Sydney (UTS) are giving some or all of their Chinese students the option of studying online for between two and five weeks, and in some cases a full semester.

Experts question the technical feasibility of rapidly escalating online options for Chinese students accustomed to on-campus delivery. But Professor Mackenzie said USQ had a proud history of distance education.

She said USQ courses had been studied online by Chinese students for decades. Over the past three years people in China had studied 14 USQ degrees online, in areas including commerce, science and business administration.

An education consultant said USQs offer raised all sorts of logistical problems such as the compatibility of its course content and appeared to be an attempt to shore up international enrolments at rival universities expense.

The consultant, who asked not to be named, said USQ should have discussed the option privately with other universities rather than going over their heads [and] trying to get the affected students togo to USQ for the semester.

Professor Mackenzie emphatically denied any intention to poach. She said USQ had discussed the option with other universities last week, and other online-intensive institutions had made similar offers.

She said she expected very few students to take up the option: It certainly wont be in the thousands and it wont be in the hundreds. At most it will be someone wanting to pick up a couple of subjects in maybe a business degree.

We made the offer because we already have students studying online in China with our partner institutions. Very few of us have that sort of capability. To be brutally frank, a student currently enrolled in the University of Sydney isnt going to suddenly change to USQ based on doing one or two subjects with us externally.

USQ and other regional universities have attracted little of the massive cash injection that Chinese students have delivered to large research-intensive universities. University of Sydney sociologist Salvatore Babones has calculated that the Group of Eight institutions and UTS collectively attracted A$2.79 billion (1.45 billion) from Chinese students in 2018. USQ earned just A$45 million from its entire international cohort.

But Professor Mackenzie said all Australian universities would suffer if the virus crisis turned students off Australia. At the moment, everybodys doing everything they can to help. Theres a real sense of camaraderie in this because were all in it together.

john.ross@timeshighereducation.com

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Covid-19 coronavirus crisis: university offers itself as online fallback - Times Higher Education (THE)

Celebrate a Day of Giving -- Dan Giedeman, an SIU Carbondale alumnus, spearheaded the plan for the Balancing Education, Experience & Reality Scholarship. During the 2019 SIU Day of Giving, nearly 1,100 people donated more than $50,000 to create two endowed scholarships. This years Day of Giving is Wednesday, March 4. Last years event raised $911,837 through nearly 3,000 gifts.

February 17, 2020

by Pete Rosenbery

CARBONDALE, Ill. Southern Illinois University Carbondale has spent its 150th anniversary year celebrating its past and looking toward its future. The focus on the future continues with the 2020 Day of Giving on March 4, when university alumni and friends can support a range of programs and initiatives that will move the university forward.

For 150 years, SIU has dedicated itself to higher education excellence and service to the region, state and beyond, said Chancellor John M. Dunn. Since the beginning, the success of the university and its students has been enhanced with the support of alumni and donors, many of whom who found their own success at SIU.

One Vision. 24 Hours

The Day of Giving is the first Wednesday of March to commemorate the universitys Founders Day. The theme for the fourth annual event is One Vision. 24 Hours, said Vice Chancellor for Development and Alumni Relations Rae Goldsmith.

The theme speaks to bringing everyone together for a day in support of a shared vision for the universitys future, said Rae Goldsmith, vice chancellor for development and alumni relations. Throughout the day, friends of SIU are invited to make online donations at siuday.siu.edu to areas of the university that they hold most dear.

A year ago, nearly $912,000 was raised for scholarships, programs and other SIU priorities from nearly 3,000 gifts from 46 states and 10 countries. In three years, more than $1.7 million has been raised.

Media advisory

Reporters, photographers and news crews are invited to attend the fourth annual Day of Giving celebration set for 2 p.m. on March 4 in the first floor rotunda at Morris Library. Chancellor John M. Dunn will be speaking.

Private support for SIU is essential

The 24-hour campaign is a university-wide effort to inspire alumni, students, parents, friends and the larger university community to make a gift to any area of the campus.

Philanthropy has never been more important than it is now, Goldsmith said. This private support helps funds scholarships for students who otherwise might not have access to higher education. Support from philanthropic sources also funds program enhancements and hands-on learning experiences for students.

We hear from many donors that they give because their experience at SIU changed their lives and they want to pay it forward, she continued. Others tell us that they know that SIUs success and the success of the region are closely linked, and they want to invest in the universitys future.

Donors can choose to support more than 150 initiatives and projects, including the Sustainability Green Fund and Saluki Alumni Plaza Project. Those who dont see a particular project of interest listed can select Other and include the name of the program or fund they wish to support in the comments section.

6 a.m. kickoff; giveaways and fun throughout day

The Day of Giving online tickertape begins at 6 a.m. March 4 and will run through 5:59 a.m. on March 5. Giving is tracked at siuday.siu.edu in real time.

Along with the online giving momentum that will build throughout the 24 hours, giving booths will be set up from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on March 4 at the Student Center, Morris Library and a new location, the Alumni Center, in Woody Hall. The booths will feature several giveaways including SIU@150 memorabilia and sunglasses and refreshments from Cristaudos.

In keeping with the one vision theme, virtual reality booths will be set up where visitors can put on headsets and travel across campus and other specific areas in Carbondale. Contributions at these booths will also be logged online.

Challenges, matching gifts are part of the fun

Some donors will challenge others to match their gifts, multiplying the impact of donations. And once again, four traveling trophies will be awarded to both academic and non-academic units based on the largest number of gifts and most dollars raised. Only gifts made on #SIUDAY are eligible for match and challenge opportunities.

The Carbondale in the 80s and 90s Facebook group came together last year to establish the Balancing Education, Experience and Reality scholarship. The group earned a trophy for receiving the largest number of gifts for a non-academic unit with 1,025 donations, while SIU Athletics earned the highest total for most dollars raised with $202,123. The SIU School of Medicine won the academic unit prize for both categories, with 410 gifts totaling $140,299.

Other ways to donate

In addition to online and in-person giving, the donations, which are tax deductible as allowed by law, can be made by calling 618/453-4900 or by sending checks payable to the SIU Foundation to Mail Code 6805, Carbondale, Illinois 62901. If sending a check to the foundation, indicate in the memo that the gift is for #SIUDAY and mark campus unit and the priority you wish to support.

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SIU to celebrate 150 years of success, look to future with the Day of Giving on March 4 - SIU News

Illustration: Chaitanya Dinesh Surpur Thats a corolla? Where is a flowers calyx? If these terms take you back to diagrams in textbooks, you must be older than 25.

Chances are your biology teacher was syllabus-focussed and maybe even boring. Chances also are that your teacher was not dressed la Shah Rukh Khan in the 2000 film Mohabbatein as part of an elaborate video setup, to teach you what a corolla is in a 60-second video on TikTok.

In another video, Firdausi is inside what looks like the sea, with computer-generated images of fish swimming around. How do you tell if a fish has bones or cartilages by just looking at it? Firdausi explains with the help of animation, in just under a minute.

Firdausi is an associate professor at edtech company Toppr, which has a learning app for students from classes 5 to 12 and multiple entrance exams. In October, social media platform TikTokowned by Chinese internet giant ByteDance and famous for its short videosrolled out #EduTok, an e-learning programme for India, for which it has engaged content creators such as Toppr.

Is the #EduTok bet paying off? It could, and could signal the future of education too.

The exam includes logical reasoning, quantitative analysis and English vocabulary. The study material on Gradeup and TikTok is tailored for that, she explains. While Gradeup offers quizzes, Tomar also found tips and tricks to solve math problems quickly on TikTok.

Being on TikTok does not require heavy concentration and the interactive format is such that we can learn at any time, even when we are travelling. Every day, I get to learn at least seven to eight new words of English vocabulary, she says.

Tomar believes that given the information overload and various distractions, edtech apps streamline education, while platforms like TikTok add an element of fun. If we are moving toward 5G in telecom, why stick to just books in education? We have to speed up there too.

For an entire generation of students, studying is becoming less about textbooks and more about smartphones. Indias online education market is set to grow to $1.96 billion with around 9.6 million users in 2021, up from $247 million and about 1.6 million users in 2016, according to Online Education in India: 2021, a report by KPMG in India, and Google.

To keep students hooked on to their respective platforms, education providers are experimenting with test prep and lessons on social media channelsnot just TikTok, but also platforms like Telegram and Bigo Livethat host snappy videos, bite-sized formats, real-time online group studies, interactive quizzes and live streaming. This is a step further from long videos or image-based learning that were popular on YouTube and Facebook respectively. This is edtech 2.0, if you will.

Education vs Engagement For a generation hooked to content, how do you strike a balance between education and entertainment?

Its evolving and were figuring it out, says Shobhit Bhatnagar, CEO and co-founder of Gradeup. Not only must faculty members be subject matter experts, but they also have to have great delivery, screen-presence and creativity.

Teachers go through the equivalent of auditions at the time of hiring, giving demonstrative recorded lectures. Were working on building technology to help us here too, adds Bhatnagar. For example, the system should be able to quantify certain paramenters: The number of times eye-contact is made; how many times teachers ask interactive questions like Samajh aaya? [Do you understand?]

The difference here is that in a regular classroom, students have to stick around. Here, if they lose interest, they will open another tab, and head to another distraction, he adds.

To make sure they maintain the balance between education and engagement, edtech startups are investing in full-stack studios, equipment and media trainers, who have experience with TV shows and news.

Arshad Shahid, creative head of Toppr says a lot of their success is credited to this media team. It took them over two to three months of trial and error to understand what really clicks with students: Videos that explain concepts with informal language, interactive graphics, and references to films and pop culture. Earlier, we would spend 2 hours for one video. Now, after the script is ready, we can shoot within 15 minutes, says Shahid.

It is competitive and creates a lot of pressure on teachers. The media trainers see how teachers are performing on camera and train them on how to act, how to engage and create interaction, says Bhatnagar, whose Gradeup has four TikTok channels and eight Telegram groups, each with 10,000 to 15,000 followers.

Bhopal-based Pushpendra Dhakad, who runs a coaching class called Fly High Academy, doesnt have as sophisticated a set-up, but has 2 million likes on TikTok, and more than 350,000 followers. He is an #EduTok creator, but his target audience is not just students. I signed up on TikTok to take educational content farther. Homemakers, security guards, vegetable vendors, shopkeepers watch my videos, and I want to teach them basic, conversational English, he says. I teach common English phrases, pronunciation, the difference between American and British English, and so on.

Similarly, Singapore-based live-streaming network Bigo Live, made a $100 million investment in India last year, and is focussed on Indias rural communities. Last year, we hired over 200 qualified teachers who were able to teach English and soft skills such as Excel, PowerPoint and elementary Photoshop, says Mike Ong, vice president (government relations), Bigo Technology. We have significantly grown our strength in India; from 200-odd employees last year to 1,000 now.

Baby Steps The first wave of e-learning took off with YouTube and Facebook, where viewers watched long-form videos. In this next generation, the focus is on real-time, short-form and condensed learning. However, experts say that while such tools can aid in driving engagement and delivering single concepts, for in-depth learning, long formats works better.

This where Telegram has gained ground. It works and looks much like WhatsApp. However, a Telegram group can have up to 2 lakh members, whereas WhatsApp groups can have 256 members at most. Telegram also has quick file-sharing features so that files dont need to be downloaded and can be accessed from the cloud. Edtech companies are seeing reams of textbooks and answer sheets digitisedand often piratedon Telegram groups.

The way we look at it, you cant stop the piracy, says Abhishek Patil, co-founder, Oliveboard, an online platform for entrance exam preparation, with 6 million registered users. So instead, were working on building our own presence on Telegram, creating videos and e-books. We see that a large section of students is using Telegram specifically to study, versus TikTok, which is a mix of entertainment and education.

Hadia Khan, 19, a biotech student at Allahabad University, is one such student. On Telegram, each group has more than 15,000 members, so there are a few hundred active users at any given point, she says. If I get stuck at a particular question, I can post my query and someone will help me out in real-time. Its like group study, but online.

Khan signed up for an annual Oliveboard subscription since it is cheaper than coaching classes. I realised that on Facebook groups, there are many trolls and irrelevant comments, she says. But on Telegram, theres almost no spamming, and the administators are quick to delete anything unfit.

Stepapp gamifies the learning process for math and science from classes 6 to 12 in the CBSE and ICSE curricula; students can earn virtual currency and real scholarships too. Parents can get real-time reports of their progress. Ive been working on it for 10 years, Tyagi says.

With children, weve long believed that they can either play or study. Here, they can do both. Youll have concise concepts at your fingertips and a revision bank, all while feeling like you are playing a game.

Stepapp, like Oliveboard, uses TikTok and Instagram as marketing tools to draw students to their apps. For Toppr and Gradeup, too, the function of the social media channels is to build branding and visibility, to go where the students are and incentivise them to come to the main platform.

Relative to Facebook and YouTube, these platforms are still in the early stages in terms of getting actual outcomes, says Bhatnagar. We still havent learnt enough about them to make big investments, so just about 3 to 5 percent of our marketing budget is allocated here. Most of this is to understand what kind of users we can acquire and what return on investments we are getting. As our learning and the quality of data we can get from these platforms as advertisers rise, so will our focus here.

Facebook and YouTube continue to lead the charge in edtech, but newer players are seeking alternative avenues. On YouTube, students can get MIT lectures free of cost too why would they come to me? asks Tyagi. Thats why we didnt want to get into that space, and instead, build our own.

Fast forward Will we see a world in which students no longer need to go to physical classrooms?

There are many things that technology cannot do. A students writing skills cant be improved remotely, and technology cannot shape his or her personality, says Tyagi. However, theres a lot that can be done with technology, and we cant ignore that.

When the internet was first adopted, there was a hue and cry about it replacing books, says Narayan Ramaswamy, partner and head-education, KPMG in India. Even at work, many things are discussed on Telegram, WhatsApp or Facebook groups. You cant rely on the internet for entirely factual information, but you cannot do without it. Similarly, social media is a part of the students life, and if we want to proactively engage with them, we need to be present on social media too.

If the platforms lead to productive learning, theres no harm, Ramaswamy adds. Individual students can find the most effective processes for their learning. We should not control these things. However, colleges or education providers should not rely on them too much, else their offering will become diluted.

(This story appears in the 28 February, 2020 issue of Forbes India. You can buy our tablet version from Magzter.com. To visit our Archives, click here.)

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When TikTok Becomes Your Teacher - Forbes India

Roundup It's a long weekend in the US, though sadly not in Blighty. So, for those of you starting your week, here's some bite-sized machine-learning news, beyond what we've recently covered, if that's your jam.

Check your training data: A popular dataset for training self-driving vehicles, including an open-source autonomous car system, failed to correctly label hundreds of pedestrians and thousands of vehicles.

Brad Dwyer, founder of Roboflow, a startup focused on building data science tools, discovered the errors when he started digging into the dataset compiled by Udacity, an online education platform.

I first noticed images that were missing annotations, Dwyer told The Register. That led me to dig in deeper and check some of the other images. I found so many errors I ended up going through all 15,000 images because I didnt want to re-share a dataset that had such obvious errors.

After flicking through each image, he found that 33 per cent of them contained mistakes. Thousands of vehicles, hundreds of pedestrians, and dozens of cyclists were not labelled. Some of the bounding boxes around objects were duplicated or needlessly oversized too.

Training an autonomous car on such an incomplete dataset could potentially be dangerous. The collection was pulled together to make it easier for engineers to collaborate and build a self-driving car. Thankfully, a project to develop such a system using this information seems to have died down since it launched more than three years ago.

Udacity created this dataset years ago as a tool purely for educational purposes, back when self-driving car datasets were very hard to come by, and those learning the skills needed to develop a career in this field lacked adequate training resources, a Udacity spokesperson told El Reg.

At the time it was helpful to the researchers and engineers who were transitioning into the autonomous vehicle community. In the intervening years, companies like Waymo, nuTonomy, and Voyage have published newer, better datasets intended for real-world scenarios. As a result, our project hasn't been active for three years.

We make no representations that the dataset is fully labeled or complete. Any attempts to show this educational data set as an actual dataset are both misleading and unhelpful. Udacity's self-driving car currently operates for educational purposes only on a closed test track. Our car has not operated on public streets for several years, so our car poses no risk to the public.

Roboflow has since corrected the errors on the dataset, and issued an improved version.

Standing up to patent trolls works: Mycroft AI, a startup building an open-source voice-controlled assistant for Linux-based devices, was sued for allegedly infringing a couple of patents, as we reported earlier this month.

Mycrofts CEO Joshua Montgomery spoke to The Register about his strong suspicions that he was being targeted by a so-called patent troll. His biz was told by a lawyer representing the patents' owner to cough up a license fee, and when Montgomery ignored the request, a patent-infringement lawsuit was filed against his company.

The mysterious patent owner, Voice Tech Corp, turned out to a brand new company in Texas, USA, and it's address was someones bungalow, according to court filings. All of that fueled the growing speculation that, yes, Voice Tech Corp, was probably a patent troll.

Now, after facing sufficient resistance from Mycroft, Voice Tech Corp has dropped its case. Montgomery threatened to fight the lawsuit all the way to get Voice Tech Corps patents invalidated so that no other startup would have to face the same problem.

More Clearview drama: The controversial facial-recognition outfit that admitted to harvesting more than three billion publicly shared photos from social media sites is back in the news again.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed it is trying to get Clearview to remove the claim from its marketing that its facial recognition code was verified using a methodology used by the ACLU. The rights warriors said they had no involvement in the product and do not endorse it. In fact, the union is pretty much against everything Clearview is doing.

Clearview boasts that its technology is 99 per cent accurate following numerous tests. Buzzfeed News, however, reckons it is nowhere near that good. The upstart previously said its algorithms helped police in New York City catch a terrorist planning to plant fake bombs on the subway. NYPD denied using Clearviews software.

Google, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook have sent Clearview cease-and-desist letters demanding the startup stop scraping images of their platforms, and to delete those in its database. In a bizarre interview, Clearviews CEO fought back and said he believed that since all the photos were public, his stateside company, therefore, had a First Amendment right to public information." Er, yeah right.

Public funding for AI, 5G: President Donald Trump has vowed to spend more of US taxpayers' money on the research and development of emergent technologies, such as AI, quantum computing, and 5G, than traditional sciences.

The Budget prioritizes accelerating AI solutions, according to a proposal, subject to congressional approval, published this week. Along with quantum information sciences, advanced manufacturing, biotechnology, and 5G research and development (R&D), these technologies will be at the forefront of shaping future economies.

The Budget proposes large increases for key industries, including doubling AI and quantum information sciences R&D by 2022 as part of an all-of-Government approach to ensure the United States leads the world in these areas well into the future.

Trump pledged to spend $142.2bn in R&D for the next fiscal year, nine per cent less than this year. While AI and quantum computing are favored, there's less federal funding for general research and development for the other sciences.

The Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and others, will see cuts. The DOEs Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) will be particularly hard hit: not only does the proposed budget effectively eliminate the agency, it must pay back $311m to the treasury.

You can read more about the proposed budget for the fiscal year of 2021, here.

CEO of AI startup steps down over allegations: The CEO of Clinc, a small artificial-intelligence outfit spun out of the University of Michigan, has resigned following claims he sexually harassed employees and customers.

Jason Mars, an assistant professor of computer science at the university, was accused of physically accosting clients, making lewd comments about female employees and interns, and hiring a prostitute during a work trip.

In an email to employees at Clinc, first reported by The Verge, Mars said the allegations against him were rife with embellishments and fabrications. He did, however, admit to drinking too much and partying with staff in a way thats not becoming of a CEO.

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Please check your data: A self-driving car dataset failed to label hundreds of pedestrians, thousands of vehicles - The Register

February 17, 2020 | 5:32 AM

Spotlight PAis an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PennLive/The Patriot-News.Sign up for our free weekly newsletter.

(Harrisburg) With $4 million in state funding, Pennsylvania is buying ads and preparing to award grants to nonprofit organizations, grassroots groups, and colleges to ensure every resident is counted in the 2020 census.

We are making sure that we are counting everyone from rural, suburban, and urban areas in Pennsylvania, said Norman Bristol Coln, executive director of Gov. Tom WolfsComplete Count Commission. We also recognize that our state is more diverse than ever before, so we have to concentrate our efforts on the hard-to-count populations.

The census takes place every 10 years to count each person in the country. The information is used to determine each states share of billions of dollars in federal funding and number of U.S. House seats.

For the first time, the U.S. Census Bureau is asking most people to fill out the survey online. Every household will be invited to participate by April 1.

The commission a coalition of advocacy, education, housing, and religious organizationscreatedby Wolf in September 2018 originally requested $13 million from the legislature for outreach efforts, a dollar for each Pennsylvanian. But lawmakers were hesitant to make an investment of that size, Bristol Coln said.

Finally, they recognized the important work that needs to be done, especially when it comes to the $27 billion in federal funds we get through the census [each year], he said. They came back to the table and they provided us the opportunity to have the $4 million to do the complete count.

Jan Murphy / PennLive

Pennsylvanias second lady Gisele Fetterman (at podium) announces at a Capitol news conference her upcoming statewide tour to try to get hard-to-reach populations to participate in the 2020 U.S. census.

The funding was included in avoting reform packagepassed in 2019. Neighboring New York isputting$20 million in state funding toward the census, while New Jersey and Maryland have appropriated $9 million and $5 million, respectively.

The state has a $2.5 million contract with Red House Communications to produce and place census ads through radio and television stations, and in traditional print media, according to a Department of Community & Economic Development spokesperson. The state has also targeted Latinx and black news outlets, Bristol Coln said, as well as social media platforms.

The department is also reviewing applications for the $1 millionCensus 2020 Outreach Grant Program, which will award nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and higher education institutions with up to $50,000 in funding. The money will be used to target hard-to-reach groups through outreach efforts, including buying local media ads or sponsoring census-related events.

Theapplication processcloses Feb. 14. The other $500,000 in state census money is allotted for miscellaneous expenses, including printed materials for communications purposes, a department spokesperson said.

Hard-to-reach populations a blanket term for groups like minorities, immigrants, low-income earners, renters, farmworkers, and rural residents are a priority for the states Complete Count Commission. Some immigrants can behard to reachbecause of language barriers, mistrust in the U.S. government, and fear of repercussions, according to commission member and immigrants-rights group CASA.

Pennsylvania is home to a growing Latinx population, including Puerto Ricans who sought refuge in the state after Hurricane Maria in 2017. More than 10,000 people arrived in Pennsylvania after the devastating storm, according to CASA.

Hansi Lo Wang / NPR

Ed Reed (right), Fair Counts program manager, and Djemanesh Aneteneh, an operations and events administrator, look over a map showing the Wi-Fi hotspots the group has installed around Georgia.

President Donald Trump had sought to add a question about citizenship to the census, leading to concerns about an undercount of immigrant households, butultimately did not prevail. Second Lady Gisele Fetterman, who wasbornin Brazil, istouringselect counties to promote participation.

Although the survey is being offered online,Complete Count Committees locally focused groups formed by municipalities or community leaders are still depending on census workers to canvas areas. But finding workers to count these critical populations has been difficult.

Februarydatafrom the Census Bureau shows successful recruitment efforts in Pennsylvanias largest counties, including Allegheny and Philadelphia. But several rural counties in the state are under 40 percent of the hiring goal.

It has been a great challenge for the Census Bureau to fill all the temporary jobs for census 2020 due to a low unemployment rate and the digital component to the application process, Bristol Coln said.

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Pennsylvania is spending $4 million to ensure hard-to-reach groups are counted in the 2020 census - PA Post