Edsurge On Air

It’s not unheard of for an instructor to tee up a YouTube video for a lesson, only to have the content blocked by the school or district’s censorware. And while administrators might have good intentions when they decide to use censorware, censorship is often only effective for those who play by the rules. It’s one reason why writer and activist Cory Doctorow thinks schools and educators should rethink their approach to surveillance and censorship. In science fiction novels like “Little Brother,” he has explored the implications of mass surveillance, and on the popular blog Boing Boing, he has written on topics such as net neutrality, open access and user privacy. EdSurge recently sat down with Doctorow in San Jose, Calif. at Worldcon, a science fiction convention, to get his take on everything from surveillance in K-12 schools to open access publishing in higher education.

MOOCs have gone from a buzzword to a punchline, especially among professors who were skeptical of these “massive open online courses” in the first place. But what is their legacy on campuses? MOOCs started in around 2011 when a few Stanford professors put their courses online and made them available to anyone who wanted to take them. The crowds who showed up were, well, massive. We’re talking 160,000 people signing up to study advanced tech topics like data science. The New York Times later declared 2012 as the ‘year of the MOOC,’ and columnists said the virtual courses would bring a revolution. But in the rush of public interest that followed, skeptics wondered whether online courses could help fix the cost crisis of higher education. Was this the answer to one of the nation’s toughest problems? The answer, it turns out, is, no. Actually these days you don’t hear much about MOOCs at all. In the national press there’s almost a MOOC amnesia. It’s like it never happened. But these courses are still around,

How good are schools at learning? Can they get better? As a culture, we worry a lot about student learning. But students don’t learn in a vacuum: Most are part of organizations (namely schools) that involve adults who also are engaged in learning, both individually and collectively. So what could help them learn? Here’s the one of the biggest quiet buzzwords in education: Networks. They can happen in any community—among educators, among schools or districts themselves and, of course, among students. And so emphasizing learning networks nudges educators to think about learning in different ways. Three recent books explore the power of learning networks. This past spring, EdSurge caught up with the authors at the Personalized Learning Summit sponsored by Education Elements. Ed Elements CEO Anthony Kim, who works with hundreds of educations throughout the US, wrote “The New School Rules: 6 Vital Practices for Thriving and Responsive Schools” with Alexis Gonzales-Black. As Kim worked with school leaders, h

Even the best instructors may not be able to reach every student. And often that’s because there is a disconnect between what students expect from college teaching and what actually ends up happening in the classroom. In July, three members from EdSurge Independent, a student-run group that meets weekly to discuss ideas around higher education and technology, joined EdSurge Live to share what they wish faculty knew about students today, and propose ways to fuse instructional gaps. The guests are Angele Law, an MBA student at MIT Sloan School of Management and a strategic summer associate at Boston Public Schools; Patrick Grady O'Malley, who's pursuing a master’s degree in digital humanities at the Graduate Center, CUNY, and who holds a master’s in educational communications and technology from NYU; and Megan Simmons, an undergraduate at Barnard College in New York City, where she studies political science.

People love to try to figure out what Apple is up to and to guess their strategy—that’s true for its education strategy as well. But often there’s not much to go on beyond press releases and speculation. So when Apple’s longtime vice-president of education, John Couch, published a book this year with his thoughts on the future of education and accounts of his work at Apple, it opened a rare window into how the company’s views on education. The book is called Rewiring Education: How Technology Can Unlock Every Student's Potential. And yes, it does offer some anecdotes about how Steve Jobs thought about computers in education, including how he referred to computers as an “amplifier for intellect” the same way a bicycle amplifies the physical push of the rider. In the book, Couch writes that Jobs predicted this mental bicycle would “allow us to go beyond—to discover, create and innovate like never before.” But the book is also full of frustration—at what Couch sees as the slow pace of change at schools. He’

Often the algorithms that shape our lives feel invisible, but every now and then you really notice them. Your credit card might get declined when you’re on vacation because a system decides the behavior seems suspicious. You might buy a quirky gift for your cousin, and then have ads for that product pop up everywhere you go online. In education, schools and colleges even use big data to nudge students to stay on track. As we create this data layer around us, there’s more and more chance for systems to misfire, or to be set up in a way that consistently disadvantages one group over another. That potential for systemic unfairness is the concern of this week’s podcast guest, Virginia Eubanks. She’s an associate professor of political science at SUNY Albany and a longtime advocate for underprivileged communities as well as an expert on tech. She’s the author of Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, which The New York Times called “riveting” and noted that that’s an u

Caroline Hill is a firecracker. She keynoted the Blended Learning Conference in Rhode Island and INACOL in Florida. At both events she asked educators to challenge their notions of the use of technology in the classrooms and their conversations around equity. She has been a DC educator for years, but is now embarking on a new venture, creating an accelerator with the goal of scaling equity. She hopes to combine the start-up mentality of the edtech world with social justice issues in a really unique way.

Access to higher education is a big topic these days, but debates about how to expand access often assume a one-size-fits-all model of what college should be. A new book due out this fall argues for the creation of colleges of many shapes and sizes, including a new set of low-cost options that are hyper-focused on helping students who just can’t afford a four-year campus experience get a first job. The book is called A New U: Faster + Cheaper Alternatives to College, and it is written by a venture capitalist making bets on which alternatives he thinks have the most promise. The author is Ryan Craig, Co-Founder and Managing Director of University Ventures, and in the book he acknowledges a key drawback to the vision he is outlining. Many of these new college alternatives will intentionally leave out general education, and extracurriculars—or time for pranks with roommates. Craig stresses that such full-service colleges will continue to survive for those who can afford them, but that providing more career-fo

If Purdue University’s purchase of the for-profit Kaplan University can be thought of as a wedding, there were plenty of people in the audience shouting objections throughout the ceremony. The loudest were Purdue professors, who argued that the pair were far too incompatible to unite. Among those professors is David Sanders, an associate professor of biological sciences at Purdue and past chair of the university’s Faculty Senate. He organized a petition against the merger, which created what is now called Purdue University Global. When the EdSurge On Air podcast featured an interview last week with Purdue Global’s chancellor, Betty Vandenbosch, Sanders wrote in offering to share the faculty side of the story. And though the knot is already tied, he and other professors at Purdue say they would still like to have a say in how this new institution operates.

When leaders of Purdue University wanted to move into online education, they took the unusual step of buying an existing online university, a big one with 30,000 students. And here’s the most surprising part: that online school it bought, Kaplan University, was a for-profit business—part of a sector that’s been criticized for high costs and poor outcomes for students. The deal sparked vocal protests from Purdue professors, and hundreds of them signed petitions opposing the arrangement, calling it an unprecedented privatizing of public education. Purdue leaders, meanwhile, say that Kaplan has better outcomes than other for-profits and that it serves an important audience of adult students who aren’t able to go to a traditional campus. This month Purdue University Global held its first graduation under the new banner. But what exactly is different now at the online institution, and how does this whole thing work? To try to get some answers, EdSurge talked with Betty Vandenbosch, the chancellor of Purdue Uni

There is an art to making science fun and entertaining. Bill Nye has done it, and so has Neil deGrasse Tyson. Maybe now it’s time for a woman? For this episode of the EdSurge On Air podcast, we’re joined Sophia Shrand, host of the comedic YouTube show, “Science with Sophie.” “Science with Sophie” mixes a bit of feminism with science, a difficult combination of things to put together in a comedic fashion. EdSurge talked with Shrand about her comedic history and how educators can learn from her work, making science entertaining.

The college affordability crisis is a familiar story to most Americans. A simplified version often goes that state funding for higher-ed institutions has decreased dramatically over the years, which has translated into massive tuition hikes for students and their families. Sandy Baum, a fellow in the Education Policy Program at the Urban Institute, watches the issue—and its proposed solutions—closely. The story usually gets encapsulated into examples of students trapped in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt. And while this may be the case for some students, Baum notes that it’s not always the full picture. EdSurge talked with Baum about these issues—and about how innovative approaches are or aren’t helping solve the college affordability crisis.

In the education technology business, Larry Berger is considered—if not the smartest guy in the room, then certainly one of the wiser ones. With more than 20 years in the industry, Larry has seen the ups and downs, twists and turns. In 2000 he co-founded Wireless Generation, which pioneered the use of data, digital diagnostics and assessments to support students. It was bought in 2010 by News Corporation, which invested more than $1 billion into the company and rebranded it as Amplify. News Corp’s commitment proved to be a short-lived, however. The media giant sold Amplify to private investors five years later. Today, Larry Berger leads Amplify as its chief executive. The company is no longer as high-profile—or as big—as it once was. So what is Amplify today? What have the past years taught him, and where is the company going? EdSurge recently sat down with Berger for an update on what Amplify’s up to, along with his thoughts on how the curriculum business is evolving. He also talked about the challenges f

In Australia, there’s a university that was set up to focus on distance education called Deakin University. It started about 40 years ago -- before the internet really got going, so that meant sending lessons through the mail. These days, of course, distance education means online courses and its not a new idea anymore, but officials worry that if they’re not careful, they’ll just end up offering the same kind of education-by-mail ethos in a digital format. They’re trying to reboot their online efforts, in what they are calling a “cloud campus,” where educational experiences are designed to be digital first. And since they also have plenty of in-person students these days, they want to reinvent the campus experience as well, by trying to blend education into busy lives. For Deakin, that has meant developing their own personal assistant for students, a bit like Siri or Alexa, but that can remind you to do your homework. To find out more about what this university down under is up to, we recently sat down wi

Running a lemonade stand may be the most entrepreneurial project that students get to experience. But increasingly, schools leaders want to take the spirit of these old-fashioned projects and create more—and more meaningful—opportunities for students and teachers alike to think creatively and build skills that will prepare them for future careers. In districts like Boston Public Schools, officials have set up new teams devoted to “innovation,” to rethink everything from professional development and instructional design to class schedules and school culture. These efforts are often lumped into one overused term: “innovation.” (But what does it really mean?) EdSurge recently sat down with Sujata Bhatt, managing partner of innovation at Boston Public Schools, to learn more about what exactly a district innovation job entails, and what it takes to get people to not only adopt an innovator's mindset, but also execute on new ideas.

A college degree isn’t the only path to meaningful work. In fact, these days it seems like there are more kinds of credentials than ever, some new ones even have trademarked names like Nanodegrees and MicroMasters. One leading force in reinventing the credential is the Lumina Foundation, one of the largest foundations focused on higher education. The group has an ambitious goal to increase the number of Americans with some kind of high-quality credential. But what counts as high-quality? And how can students and employers sort through all the new options. To get at those issues, EdSurge recently sat down with Courtney Brown, the Lumina Foundation’s vice president for strategic impact. She laid out the group’s vision for the future of credentials, and talked about what the cartoon The Jetsons says about the future of education and the workplace.

The campus of the future will be “networked,” argues Peter Smith, meaning that more and more academic-related services will be outsourced. That, in theory, will allow each campus to focus its energies on what it can do best and turn to outside companies and nonprofits for the rest. It’s a key claim in his new book, “Free-Range Learning in the Digital Age: The Emerging Revolution in College, Career, and Education,” due out next month, and it’s one that might unsettle college administrators accustomed to directly overseeing more campus services in-house. Smith has a unique perspective on innovation in education. He has led experimental colleges, including designing and launching the Community College of Vermont back in 1970, and becoming the founding president of California State University at Monterey Bay in 1994. He’s also been a force in politics, having served as a state senator in Vermont, Lieutenant Governor in that state, and then a U.S. Congressman. These days he’s back in higher education, as a pr

The eruption of teacher strikes in states all over the country caught national headlines, adding to the already heated debate about the questionable state of affairs in public schools. But the strikes aren’t over, so what is the next step for these educators? The quick-fix plans put together by legislatures in states such as Arizona and West Virginia feel more like a band-aid put on an ailing illness than an actual change. Educators in these states note that the "war" has not been won. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers union in the country, joins the EdSurge On Air podcast for a lively conversation on what comes next for teacher strikes, working (or not working) with Betsy DeVos, and why she takes offense from people who come in to ‘disrupt’ public education.

You could call extension schools the original MOOCs. Universities first opened these offshoots more than 100 years ago, and at the time they were innovative—throwing open the campus gates by offering night classes without any admission requirements. Extension Schools were the original attempt by higher education to offer a low-cost version for the non-elite. Thanks to a recent push towards online courses, Harvard University’s Extension School now has more students than the rest of Harvard combined. Well, unless you count the students in MOOCs, those free online courses, which are offered through a different division of the university. Let’s face it, the number of different types of degrees you could get from Harvard is getting confusing, and the same could be said for many other universities as well. EdSurge recently sat down with the dean of Harvard’s Extension School, Hunt Lambert, to ask him to sort through all these offerings and give his vision of where his school is headed.

The phrase competency-based education is quite a mouthful, but it was all the rage a few years ago among college leaders looking to expand access to their programs. The idea can sound radical, since it often involves doing away with courses as we know them, to focus on having students prove they can master a series of skills or concepts one at a time. It’s safe to say that competency-based education hasn’t caught on as widely as its promoters hoped, and these days you don’t hear that much about it. In part that’s because some serious questions have been raised about the model. So what’s up with CBE, as it’s known? To try to find out, we talked with one of the pioneers of bringing the approach to a traditional university, Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, which a few years ago started a competency-based program called College for America. And LeBlanc has helped shape policy around CBE on a national level as well. In 2015 he spent a few months on leave from Southern New Hampshire