Edsurge On Air

What happens when a popular theory of market research used by fast-food restaurants (to do things like improve their milkshakes) is applied to the process of choosing a college? We talked to Michael Horn, co-author of a new book that does just that. But does it make sense to bring a theory from dollar-menu items to higher education?

For this week’s podcast, we’re looking at the role that African-American scholars and teachers have played in preserving the history of slavery and its aftermath, which in so many ways is still not widely known and appreciated. We talk with scholars who helped mark the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans in what would become America. Episode page: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-09-17-the-fight-to-preserve-and-teach-african-american-history

This week we’re talking about cybersecurity at schools—and how secure—or in some cases how vulnerable—the tech systems in school systems are. At the center of our story: Bill Demirkapi, who managed to bust into two key student information systems of his high school, then tried to tell the edtech companies to get them to fix their software—with mixed results. Episode page: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-09-10-a-bored-student-hacked-his-school-s-systems-will-the-edtech-industry-pay-attention

What is your favorite satirical take on higher education? Maybe Jane Smiley’s "Moo." Or Don DeLillo’s "White Noise"? Or it could be Rodney Dangerfield’s "Back to School." Let’s face it, there almost endless works of fiction poking fun at academic life. As the summer ends and we head into the fall semester, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate this rich tradition of parody of academic life, and look at what these works say about the big challenges facing higher education today. For this episode, we talk to three different writing professors with something to say about satire. One is the author of an acclaimed academic satire. Another did an unusual work of satire on Twitter to call attention to the plight of adjuncts. And the third has a suggestion for the academic satire that he wishes someone out there would write. Episode page: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-09-03-satirical-takes-on-higher-ed-and-why-they-matter Julie Schumacher's recommended works of campus satire: Don DeLillo, "White Noise" Davi

What if teaching the scientific method in schools is giving students the wrong idea about how rigorous work is done by scientists? That’s the unusual hypothesis being made by John Rudolph, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of “How We Teach Science: What's Changed, and Why It Matters.” We sat down with Rudolph to talk about the fascinating history of teaching the subject in the U.S., and why we’re still searching for the right approach. Episode page: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-08-27-should-schools-teach-the-scientific-method-new-book-says-maybe-not

People have a tendency to treat technology and big data as neutral, sterile and immune to mortal failings. Yet the digital tools we use at schools, jobs and home don’t simply fall from the sky—humans produce them. And that means human biases can and do slip right into the algorithms. We talked with Ruha Benjamin, associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of new book “Race After Technology.” She points out that some people’s fantasies are other people’s nightmares.

When you hear the word “inventor,” you might think of household names like Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or the Wright brothers. But today, there are plenty of young inventors whose names you’ve never heard of—not yet, anyway. These are middle and high school students who have developed solutions to major economic and social challenges, ranging from health care and transportation to agriculture and the environment. Leigh Estabrooks, invention education officer at the Lemelson-MIT program, thinks all students—no matter their GPAs or ZIP codes or learning challenges—can be inventors.

Parents are giving up custody of their kids to get need-based college financial aid. That was a headline last week in ProPublica Illinois, and it got people talking once again about the madness around college admissions. In comments on the ProPublica article and in other online forums, though, plenty of people chimed in expressing sympathy for these Chicago-area parents, calling their move a clever solution to an overwhelming challenge facing their children. To these commenters, the real problem is the high cost of college and what they see as unfair rules around how much parents are expected to contribute.

One of the most popular topics these days in education is mastery learning—the idea that the pace of a class should match what each student is ready to learn, as a way to ensure they’re really grasping material. But it can be hard to show educators what mastery learning looks like in practice. Cara Johnson has extensive experience both teaching and helping others using the approach. She talked with EdSurge about how she reaches parents and skeptical students—and shares her best tips for a successful mastery classroom.

What if you could map every book and article assigned in college courses around the world and see which authors are making the most impact? A project run out of Columbia University is working to do just that. It’s called the Open Syllabus Project, and this month its leaders released a new version of their tool that analyzes assignment lists from more than six million syllabi. But there could be unintended consequences.

Online tutoring is big business—especially for a growing number of companies that connect native English-speaking teachers with children in China for live video lessons. These services can work really well as second jobs teachers in the U.S., who can wake up early and get in a couple of hours of tutoring before going to their classroom jobs. But some teachers say they’ve wound up facing unexpected encounters, as they’ve witnessed parents engage in harsh physical discipline on screen that some describe as abusive. So what do you do when you’ve seen something like this? And what should the companies who run these tutoring services do? Read the full story at http://bit.ly/tutoringconcerns

For most of us, hearing something just once isn’t nearly enough to commit it to memory. But with today’s crowded curriculum, sometimes one explanation is all kids get. Ten years ago, Sal Khan set out to change that with his Khan Academy videos, which let kids replay lessons as many times as they want. EdSurge sat down with Khan to discuss his vision for reinventing schools, his recent focus on testing and what he thinks about the recent stumbles of AltSchool, a nearby network of tech-driven independent schools.

“Impact investing” is a term that has become increasingly trendy. And one of the largest higher-ed foundations—The Lumina Foundation—is getting in the game. John Duong, managing director of Lumina Impact Ventures, explains how venture capital supports its mission to drive better postsecondary outcomes, and why “impact-washing” (a spin on whitewashing) is increasingly becoming a concern.

This week’s podcast features an unlikely education leader. His name is Anthony Johnson, and the title of his book explains the unlikely part: it’s called High School Dropout to Teacher of the Year. Johnson’s story is about second chances and falling in love, the surprising parallels between his work as a correctional officer and his work as an educator and what it means to reinvent the system that failed him. Listen here.

Plenty of groups these days are trying to reinvent college. There are entrepreneurs and foundations rushing to try to offer higher education in new shapes, sizes, formats and price points. Meanwhile at colleges, researchers and innovators are diving into learning science and experimenting with new teaching methods as well. But those groups don’t always talk to each other, or even know about each other are working on. This week on the podcast we talk with Mitchell Stevens, a Stanford University sociology professor who wants to create more 'connective tissue' among these disparate groups.

In Louisiana, educators have to worry about privacy when it comes to technology. The state has perhaps the most restrictive data-privacy law in the country when it comes to education, where violators can be punished by up to six months in prison or $10,000 in fines. EdSurge sat down with Kim Nesmith, director of data governance, privacy, and edtech for the Louisiana Department of Education, to talk about the strictest student data privacy law in the country—and what it takes to help Louisiana educators face their fears and offer technology services to students and families in spite of that law (and with a healthy awareness of privacy).

“Someone should create a Center for Social Solutions, identify a handful of challenges and try to work on them over the next decade.” That directive guided professor, historian and author Earl Lewis to start just such a center at the University of Michigan. EdSurge sat down with Lewis to talk about how the center is using research to tackle some of the biggest challenges our world faces today.

At a time when more than 7 in 10 transgender students face bullying or harassment over their gender identity, some advocates are trying to buck the troubling trend and create more inclusive environments for students. Advocates Becca Mui and Vanessa Ford share their thoughts on gender-neutral bathrooms, tackling bullying and how every school can prioritize safety for all students.

"I no longer think there's a huge difference between for-profit and public higher education," Tweeted George Siemens, a professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and a longtime observer of tech in higher education. "Sit in enough faculty meetings, meet with enough leadership, and it becomes clear that it's all about money." The argument got some pushback from others who disagreed, so we reached out to Siemens and others in the conversation to hear them out.

It's hard for students, professors or even journalists to get a glimpse of just how much data colleges collect on students these days as they go about their coursework. That didn’t stop Bryan Short, who was a student at the University of British Columbia in 2016 when he got curious to know what information the learning management system at his university had collected on him and how it was being used. And what he found—that is, once he got a hold of it—left him feeling pretty uneasy.