Blackboard Trend Report: 5/25/2018

Looking to learn more about what’s trending in education? Here’s a recap of some of this week’s top education news. Let us know what you think about this week’s news in the comments below.

3 Takeaways From a Book-Length Federal Report on ‘The Condition of Education’
Chronicle of Higher Education
…The report, which covers the education life cycle from child-care expenses to employment outcomes, provides a useful reminder of the many ways in which the higher-education landscape differs from popular perceptions of it.

New Federal Data Also Show Enrollment Declines
Inside Higher Ed
Undergraduate enrollment in the United States, widely measured as decreasing for the last six straight years, fell by more than half a percent from fall 2015 to fall 2016, according to newly released data from the National Center for Education Statistics. 

Here’s How Western Governors U. Aims to Enroll a Million Students
Chronicle of Higher Education
…The nonprofit university, known for its competency-based teaching approach, has just created a stand-alone organization, WGU Advancement. It will raise money to create new degree programs, as well as new educational models designed to reach tens of millions of adults who need additional skills to succeed in the work force.

Enrollment Declines Steepest in Midwest and Northeast
Inside Higher Ed
Overall college enrollments continue to slide, according to the latest data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, a nonprofit that tracks 97 percent of students who attend degree-granting institutions that are eligible to receive federal financial aid.

Reading the Trend Lines Reshaping Education: A Look at Bryan Alexander’s Book in Progress
EdSurge
This week EdSurge sat down with perhaps the most well-known futurist of higher education, Bryan Alexander, who is working on a new book tentatively titled Transforming the University in the 21st Century, The Next Generation of Higher Education, expected to come out next year.

‘Higher Education’ Isn’t So Popular, Poll Finds, but Local Colleges Get Lots of Love
Chronicle of Higher Education
Democrats and Republicans both see a need for improvements in higher education. But they also really like their local colleges and universities. Those are two of the key findings from polling by New America, a research organization that on Monday released its second annual survey of views on higher education.

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The three-step path to an accessible school website

Website accessibility products that check the content of your website against the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0 AA) are plentiful and sometimes very detailed. Most of the website accessibility tools are similar in their process, but some are so detailed they leave you in a tailspin of confusion trying to interpret accessibility acronyms and use cases.

In most school districts, there’s a lack of website accessibility experts, and many schools are left scratching their heads wondering where to start on the journey of website accessibility. As you begin reviewing and editing your website content for accessibility, consider these tips to help you with your journey.

1: Designate a digital accessibility coordinator

When beginning the process of website accessibility compliance, it’s important to define someone from your district who will serve as the “expert” around accessibility. This role is best served by a person who is familiar with the website and the tools that already exist to meet the desired level of accessibility. Additionally, this person should research and improve their understanding of web accessibility standards as they relate to WCAG 2.0AA.  A few examples of job roles that I’ve seen take on this task include web masters, chief information officers, and public relations leaders.

2: Ensure all new digital content is accessible

As you start reviewing your current website content, it’s important to ensure that all new content is meeting your desired level of accessibility standards. Naturally, the best way to ensure that new content is accessible is to educate the individuals who have access to edit the website. Training will provide editors the necessary skills to not only understand accessibility standards, but to also utilize best practices around digital content both on the website and elsewhere.

You can get training through your website provider, WebAim.org, and w3.org. Some topics to make sure you include in your training are:

• Understanding WCAG 2.0
• Utilizing appropriate formatting
• Authoring accessible files

3: Monitor compliance

After you designate a digital accessibility coordinator, develop a plan for new content, and provide training, the next step is to monitor compliance. Utilizing an accessibility checker is the easiest way to do this, as most will automatically scan your website and report back on potential areas of concern. Although the scanning process is automatic, your digital accessibility coordinator will need to assist in verifying results and developing a plan to fix content that has accessibility issues.

If you’re searching for an accessibility tool, consider one that provides built-in guidance to editors around accessibility guidelines as well as the ability to provide alternative versions of content. This will not only assist your editors in feeling more comfortable with achieving accessibility, it will also help the end-user feel supported in an inclusive environment.

It’s important to remember that achieving accessibility compliance is not a destination, but instead a journey. As new content is added and removed from your site, the process of checking and ensuring that content is accessible remains crucial. As editors become more comfortable with the definition of accessible content, the number of accessibility concerns will decrease, leaving you with a highly accessible and usable website. Remember, accessible content is better content. To learn more,  visit our accessibility resource center for checklists, guides, policy samples, training, and accessibility tools.

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How to Use a Browser to Preview Responsive Courses

Here’s a simple way to test your published courses when building responsive mobile learning. While each browser is a bit different, most have some sort of emulation features.

Preview Your Published Responsive Courses

Open the course and right click to access the developer tools (see tutorials below). From there you can access the device emulator to test how the course will respond to different devices or screen resolutions. For example, here’s a responsive e-learning course I published in Rise. I want to see how it responds to other devices after it’s published. Some people scale their browsers to do this, but it makes more sense to use the browser’s feature instead.

Get the Aspect Ratio of Popular Devices for Responsive Courses

One side benefit is that in Chrome and Firefox they expose the resolutions for different mobile devices. Even if you don’t use the responsive emulators, it’s still an easy way to get the aspect ratios and resolutions of the popular mobile devices. I use these to to set the story size dimensions for my mobile Storyline courses when I build for specific devices.

Unfortunately, Microsoft’s Edge is a bit myopic and behind the times as they assume that people only use their devices. Of course, it doesn’t really matter because you can choose the orientation and customize the resolution.

How to View Responsive Courses Tutorials

Here are some quick tutorials where I go through this feature in the following browsers:

• Chrome
• Firefox
• Edge
• Internet Explorer 11 (Why bother?)

Each browser is a little different, but it is a handy feature to access when building responsive mobile learning. One thing to keep in mind is that what you get via the browser is an emulation and may not be an exact representation of how your course will really behave, but for the most part it should be fine.

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Upcoming E-Learning Events

2018

• St Louis: July 17 & 18. Articulate Community Roadshow. Register here. ATD St. Louis members get a 25% discount. Contact ATD St. Louis for more information.
• Other events coming soon.

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Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for elearning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly elearning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool elearning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This elearning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

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How to Use a Browser to Preview Responsive Courses original post at The Rapid E-Learning Blog

Blackboard Trend Report: 5/18/2018

Looking to learn more about what’s trending in education? Here’s a recap of some of this week’s top education news. Let us know what you think about this week’s news in the comments below.

Don’t know the graduate next to you? You’re not alone. One-third of students take at least one class online.
Washington Post
Once the backwater of higher education, online learning is now mainstream. At a time when overall enrollment in higher education is declining, the number of online students continues to climb. More than 6.3 million students took at least one online class in 2016, according to an annual analysis of federal data by the Babson Survey Research Group. That represents 32 percent of all students in higher education, up from 26 percent in 2012.

For Free Community College, Online Learning Isn’t Always Part of the Recipe for Success
EdSurge
Free community college programs are springing up around the country, aiming to bring more students to local higher-ed institutions. But several colleges experimenting with such programs are avoiding a tactic that other public institutions are increasingly using to boost numbers: online learning.

States’ Ed-Tech Directors Working to Make Student Data More Useful for Instruction
Education Week
States are collecting more student data than ever, but aren’t managing it in a way that helps districts make decisions that support teaching and learning. A new, national report hopes to change that, based on suggestions from state ed-tech and academic leaders that could improve the use of that data by educators.

Commentary: The Perils of Trashing the Value of College
The Chronicle of Higher Education
…For millions of others — especially those attending the community colleges and less-selective public institutions that serve the vast majority of American students — college is the place that hones skills and knowledge, builds professional networks, and clarifies life goals. It’s the place where you learn to devote close attention to a hard task, to work alongside others on complex problems, to stick with a long-range challenge. Those “signaled” virtues are well-earned. Data from the Collegiate Learning Assessment show that some of the sharpest student gains happen at regional public universities — institutions that prize opportunity above exclusivity.

Pioneering College for Adults Struggles in Middle Age
Inside Higher Ed
Excelsior College, founded to help adults complete degrees online, staggers after curtailing its biggest program over quality concerns. Administrators say “repositioning” is working, but a more competitive market awaits.

‘Schools Can’t Police Providers.’ Education Leaders Call For Restoration of Net Neutrality Rules
EdSurge
Last December the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to repeal net neutrality, a set of rules prohibiting broadband providers from prioritizing web traffic. In response, this Wednesday, senators will have the opportunity to vote on a resolution under the Congressional Review Act that could block the FCC’s repeal, restoring net neutrality rules.

Georgia State Reinvents Itself as an Engine of Social Mobility
New York Times
For decades, Georgia State was downtown Atlanta’s rather unremarkable commuter school, founded “as a night school for white businessmen,” as the college’s spokeswoman, Andrea Jones, says, and kept racially segregated until the 1960s.But the college has been reimagined — amid a moral awakening and a raft of data-driven experimentation — as one of the South’s more innovative engines of social mobility. By focusing on retaining low-income students, rather than just enrolling them, the college raised its graduation rate to 54 percent in 2017 from 32 percent in 2003.

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Continuing our commitment to accessibility: Introducing Blackboard Ally for Websites

Creating accessible content is a challenge that many educators, institutions and organizations around the world face daily. Over the course of the last year, you probably have heard us talk a lot about the challenges of course content accessibility and how our solution, Blackboard Ally, focuses on making digital course content more accessible by integrating seamlessly into the Learning Management System (LMS).

But that is just one piece of the puzzle. Just think about all the different contexts in which content can be consumed in today’s digital age. Our vision for Blackboard Ally has always been to try and touch as much of the content that is consumed daily as possible. One of the most common questions we received since we launched the product last year is “can it scan my website too?”.

Up until now the answer to that question was slightly abbreviated. In December, we released an integration with Blackboard Web Community Manager (WCM) as the next step to helping K-12 districts incorporate accessibility into their school websites. Now, we’re very pleased to introduce Blackboard Ally for Websites, our newest tool that focuses on helping make public website content more accessible.

Our main goal with Blackboard Ally for Websites is to help you take control of your content with usability, accessibility and quality in mind without being limited by a specific CMS. It integrates with your existing CMS and will scan your website and embedded media for accessibility issues to provide actionable reporting that allows you to find and prioritize those issues that are most impactful.

We are excited to continue our commitment to accessibility and to provides schools, institutions and organizations a consistent way of tackling accessibility across both the private LMS content and the public website content. This is the next positive step forward in the progress we can make together with solutions to help make better content, better experiences and provide more options for everyone to succeed.

To keep up to date on the most recent news and information on Blackboard Ally, join our User Group or visit the website.

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Analytics is not a Rotisserie Oven

You can’t just set it and forget it.

Analytics are simply a tool. As a tool, they are only as effective as the institutions that wield them. But effectiveness hinges on experience. How can an institution with little or no experience with learning analytics accelerate its adoption and make an immediate impact? It’s a chicken and egg situation that can be difficult for institutions to get out of by themselves. That’s why we have developed a new Learning Analytics Data Strategy Workshop. With help from our team of experts, institutions can accelerate their learning analytics journeys by understanding the data that is already available to them and determining how it can be most effectively mobilized in support of institutional strategy.

As the field of learning analytics flourishes and vendor tools proliferate, many institutions still feel like they are not receiving value from their educational data. It is tempting to begin by licensing a promising technology and trusting that people and practices will emerge on their own. If you buy it, they will come, right? Institutions feel pressure to extract value from their data and buying a tool may seem like a way to accelerate progress. Unfortunately, in the absence of clearly defined goals and a strategy for achieving them the potential of analytics can be squandered, student success initiatives can stagnate, and resistance to transformative innovation can increase.

Learning analytics is now mature enough as a field that many colleges and universities have at least small pockets of interest. Faculty and administrators are using data for their own purposes and deriving a lot of benefit. But the true value of analytics in higher education is its ability to scale, through the widespread strategic adoption of common technologies and high impact practices.

It is a major challenge to bridge the gap between promising small-scale projects and broader strategic initiatives, one that only a handful of campuses have been able to do successfully. It is even more challenging to be faced with the ‘blank slate,’ acknowledging the potential for learning analytics to increase learning outcomes, student retention, and institutional performance, but not knowing where to start. I know from personal experience just how challenging it can be to garner institutional support from the grass roots. And I have seen many institutions start with technology, only to flounder when their investments do not immediately provide strategic value – because their investments were not strategically aligned with institutional priorities in the first place.

At Blackboard, we want to see colleges and universities thrive in their use of educational data. By thinking about the digital learning environment in the contexts of broader challenges, institutions can gain increased value from the educational technology investments they have already made. Our new Learning Analytics Data Strategy Workshop is designed to help institutions understand the teaching and learning data they collect, and how this data can be leveraged to address core institutional challenges like enrollment, progression, retention, and graduation.

Want to learn more about how Blackboard can help optimize the use of data in support of teaching, learning, and student success at your institution? Reach us directly or visit us online.

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Analytics is not a Rotisserie Oven original post at Blackboard Blog

The Future of E-Learning

Here’s an excerpt from a recent presentation on the future of learning technology.

I went to school to be a video producer. Right after I graduated, the video industry changed from analog to digital. At the time digital video technology was cutting-edge and super expensive. And I was stuck in a job with an organization that had no money, so I felt that everything was was passing me by and I’d never catch up.

I see a lot of the same things in our industry today. So much is changing and it’s hard to keep up. It can be quite stressful.

We’ll look at some emerging technologies and how they impact our jobs and then how it really impacts you.

E-Learning Democratized

A few years back, it was expensive to build e-learning courses. That changed with the PowerPoint-to-Flash tools like Articulate Studio. Those tools let all organizations into the e-learning world and made it possible to bring course content to the masses.

Over time, the tools evolved as we went from PowerPoint to Storyline.

E-Learning Made Easy

It took a lot to build web pages a few years back. Now you have sites like Wix where you can build a pretty sophisticated site in minutes. The same thing is happening with e-learning. Look at how easy it is to build a course in Rise.

There are the naysayers who complain about this. I actually had someone tell me that we should limit access to the software to only people with the training to build courses. That may have worked in the Soviet Union, but I prefer a less elitist approach. Give them the tools and then help them learn to use them better is a more charitable approach.

Besides, organizations will always opt for quicker, cheaper delivery (especially when most of their courses are explainer-type content).

Virtual Reality is Virtually Here

One emerging technology is virtual reality (VR). When done right it can create truly immersive experiences. I’ve seen some really cool demos and it’s definitely going to create opportunities for different ways to learn.

With that said, many of the virtual reality demos I see are simple 360° videos with clickable hotspots. They’re not much more than labeled graphics. There is a novelty to them, but it seems like a lot of work to create video labeled graphics. Not sure how much more valuable they are than static images once you get past the novelty of viewing them.

The real value in virtual reality is being able to interact with the environment and not just move around and click for information, like in the images above where you work in a simulated dental office.

The reality (that’s not virtual) is that building an immersive virtual environment is cost prohibitive for most organizations. Until the costs to produce come way down, for most organizations virtual reality will be a pipe dream.

Augmented Reality is a More Affordable Reality

With augmented reality (AR) a lot of the cost of production is reduced. Instead of trying to create a virtual world, we augment the real world with additional content and experiences.

Ikea and other sites allows us to put furniture in real rooms to see how it will fit.

We can use our phones to translate content in real time or learn what’s around us.

And we can learn new things, just in time at our point of need.

If you want to play around with augmented reality, check out HP Reveal and learn more about what some of the tech leaders are doing:

• Microsoft
• Apple
• Google
• Facebook

The Technology That Will Really Change Your Job

Virtual and augmented realities are cool and obviously have a role in our industry, but the technologies that will really change your jobs are artificial intelligence (AI) and big data.

• Look at how the marketing world already uses data. They know who you are, where you’re at, and what interests you. And they use that to send all sorts of information. Essentially they’re learning to serve you the content you want.
• Your phone already reviews your messages and emails and can craft appropriate responses.
• Chatbots are designed to interact with you and deliver the right content.
• Here’s Google Assistant making calls for you while you sit at home binge watching your favorite shows.
• AI is already crafting hundreds of articles and news pieces. Maybe we’re onto something. The fake news is coming from fake people.

Most of what drives e-learning is compliance and regulatory training. Often, we’re just rehashing content that already exists someplace else. Soon, that’ll all be automated. Organizations will be able to pull custom content together to meet the needs of its learners. They’ll be able to create chatbots and other tools to push what you need when you need it. This emerging technology will create articles, documentation, guided instruction, and probably even videos. In that world there won’t be much need for instructional designers.

While it’s exciting to see and anticipate these emerging technologies, it does induce a bit of stress. Can we keep up? Will we be out of work?

I’ll leave you with this one thought.

Twenty-five years ago when I created custom presentations using Harvard Graphics (pre PowerPoint) I thought that one day people will know how easy this is and I’ll be out of work. Today, close to three decades later, not much has changed. Sure we’ve got a lot of cool technologies and all of that. But the presentations and the courses are still mostly the same quality (for good or bad).

So take heart in knowing that you’re part of an exciting industry with emerging technology, but don’t fear being out of work anytime soon.

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Download the fully revised, free 63-page ebook: The Insider's Guide to Becoming a Rapid E-Learning Pro

Upcoming E-Learning Events

2018

• St Louis: July 17 & 18. Articulate Community Roadshow. Register here. ATD St. Louis members get a 25% discount. Contact ATD St. Louis for more information.
• Other events coming soon.

---

 

Free E-Learning Resources

Want to learn more? Check out these articles and free resources in the community.	Here’s a great job board for elearning, instructional design, and training jobs	Participate in the weekly elearning challenges to sharpen your skills
Get your free PowerPoint templates and free graphics & stock images.	Lots of cool elearning examples to check out and find inspiration.	Getting Started? This elearning 101 series and the free e-books will help.

Image already added

The Future of E-Learning original post at The Rapid E-Learning Blog

Entrepreneur and Education Advocate Sheila Johnson to Deliver BbWorld 2018 Keynote

I’m honored to have entrepreneur, philanthropist and education advocate Sheila C. Johnson deliver a keynote at BbWorld 2018, taking place July 17-19 in Orlando, Florida. Ms. Johnson’s accomplishments span business, arts and education, women’s empowerment and community development.

Named by Forbes in 2017 as one of the “Top 50 most successful self-made women,” Ms. Johnson has blazed new trails in multiple business sectors. She co-founded Black Entertainment Television (BET), which was acquired by Viacom in 2000. She’s founder and CEO of Salamander Hotels & Resorts. In addition, she’s Vice Chairman of Monumental Sports & Entertainment and the only African-American woman to have ownership in three professional sports teams: the Washington Wizards (NBA), Washington Capitals (NHL) and Washington Mystics (WNBA).

A common thread throughout Ms. Johnson’s journey is a passion for empowering others to reach their full potential through education. She began her career as a concert violinist and music teacher in the Washington, D.C. area. Today, The Hill School in Virginia is home to the Sheila C. Johnson Performing Arts Center, New School’s Parsons School of Design in New York City is home to the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center and Morrisville State College in Upstate New York is home to the Sheila Johnson Design Center. She’s also a member of the Leadership Council at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership, where she founded the Sheila C. Johnson Leadership Fellowship, which supports emerging leaders who share a commitment to reducing disparities in African-American communities.  She also is a member of the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which focuses on bridging the minority achievement gap in higher education.

As institutions continue to adapt to meet the needs of today’s learners, Ms. Johnson brings a business perspective to tackling some of the biggest challenges in education. From workforce readiness to access to education, her strong business acumen and enduring commitment to education will no doubt inspire our client attendees.

I can’t wait for Ms. Johnson to share her unexpected journey and the importance of perseverance in her success as a business leader in her keynote on Tuesday, July 17, kicking off a jam-packed BbWorld agenda. The annual event is one of the largest edtech conferences in the world bringing together thousands of educators, administrators and industry leaders from around the world to network, share successes, and build action plans addressing critical issues in education. This year’s conference will focus on how Blackboard is partnering with its clients in K-12 districts, higher education institutions, government agencies and companies to help them drive success for their learners. The conference also features DevCon, a day-and-a-half agenda focused on the developer community.

Don’t miss the opportunity to join us this July in Orlando. Visit www.bbworld.com to learn more and register.

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Blackboard Trend Report: 5/11/2018

Looking to learn more about what’s trending in education? Here’s a recap of some of this week’s top education news. Let us know what you think about this week’s news in the comments below.

When More Info Isn’t Better for Students
Inside Higher Ed
New findings by researchers at Stanford University suggest that academically competitive college students actually perform worse over all when they get access to digital course-planning platforms that show how previous students performed.

Technology integration at California’s 114 community colleges is ‘a balancing act,’ chancellor says
EdScoop
Eloy Oakley tells EdScoop how he juggles technology investment and implementation across so many different institutions serving so many students.

Free textbooks? Federal government is on track with a pilot program.
Washington Post
The federal government’s first major investment in the free use of textbooks remains on track, Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) said Monday in a letter examining a pilot program by the Education Department. Congress designated $5 million in the fiscal 2018 budget to support the creation or expansion of open-educational resources: peer-reviewed academic material released under an intellectual property license that permits free use.

Proposed Federal Rule Making on ‘Innovation’ and Aid
Inside Higher Ed
…The posting’s brief description of the proposed rule making said it would include a focus on the “credit hour, competency-based education, direct assessment programs and regular and substantive interaction between faculty and students in the delivery of distance education programs.”

American Higher Education Hits a Dangerous Milestone
The Atlantic
As younger generations become more racially diverse, many states are allocating fewer tax dollars to public colleges and universities.

New Report Examines, Advises on Higher Ed Trends
Campus Technology
U.S.-based advisory, tax and audit firm Grant Thornton has issued its seventh annual report on “the state of higher education.” Among its many topics of interest: preparing for social media risks, building quality into IT systems, outsourcing via a shared services consortium and preparing for disruption.

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Blackboard Trend Report: 5/11/2018 original post at Blackboard Blog

Join us in Recognizing Global Accessibility Awareness Day

At Blackboard, we see accessibility as an Imperative, and I’m proud that again this year we are participating in Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD). Since 2012, GAAD has aimed to get everyone thinking, sharing best practices and learning about digital access and people with different disabilities.

On May 17, we will host a “follow-the-sun” series of webinars focused on accessibility in education at all levels and across the globe.

The webinars span five different time zones in 24 hours.  Our roster of expert speakers includes educators, policy makers, and advocates. We are excited about this year’s stellar lineup of speakers which include:

• Paul Harpur, Senior Lecturer at The University of Queensland, will tell his story as he reflects on creating a better learning environment for all learners.
• Heidi Pettyjohn and Dave Rathbun from the University of Cincinnati will share stories and strategies on providing tools and education through involvement on strategic eLearning and university initiatives to understand how accessibility fits into the work that they do.
• Brett Christie will discuss outcomes of California State University Universal Design for Learning efforts, which began in 2005. At the core of this effort is professional development that provides faculty and staff the support and training necessary to ensure that students with disabilities are provided a high quality postsecondary education.
• Ben Brown and Tracy Sangster from the Davidson Institute, a K12 school for the profoundly gifted, will talk about designing courses that are flexible and emphasize the students’ preference in learning.

For a complete list and to register, please visit http://webinars.blackboard.com/Global-Accessibility-Awareness-Day-2018

As inclusive thinking spreads across the education community, we all have a unique opportunity to positively impact the lives of people with disabilities. Learners’ fundamental goals remain the same, regardless of their physical or cognitive abilities. We must endeavor to fully understand the needs of people with disabilities and expand that to a truly inclusive learning experience. That means providing anytime, anywhere access to learning, expanding the availability of courses to all students regardless of location, fostering faculty and student engagement, and making online learning more accessible to students with disabilities.

I’m proud Blackboard is at the forefront of working with institutions to provide technology and services that focus on the learner and improve student outcomes. We hope these GAAD sessions help us open more doors for students and expand educational opportunity for everyone, wherever they are, whatever their needs, and however they learn.

The post Join us in Recognizing Global Accessibility Awareness Day appeared first on Blackboard Blog.

Join us in Recognizing Global Accessibility Awareness Day original post at Blackboard Blog

Introducing the First Diversity Scholarship for BbWorld18 + DevCon

At Blackboard, we celebrate diversity and inclusion. By working together with a variety of perspectives, we make better decisions and build better products.

But how do we learn from each other? Our annual user conference, BbWorld18 + DevCon, July 16 – 19 in Orlando, Fla., is a great opportunity to share ideas and be inspired by our peers. Our varied backgrounds and experiences are vital in that learning process. However, we know that not everyone has the same opportunities to attend. That’s why want to afford people from underrepresented groups the opportunity to participate in the community.

To that end, we are delighted to announce our first-ever Diversity Scholarship to attend BbWorld18 + DevCon. We want to enable you to bring back new ideas and perspectives and elevate your professional development. Come learn with us as we celebrate our contributions in STEM and Educational Technology and take the opportunity to bring that back into your own community!

We hope you will nominate yourself, or someone you know that deserves this chance at an all-expenses paid trip to BbWorld18 + DevCon. For more information, please visit: https://bbworld.com/bbworld/diversity-and-inclusion-scholarship/

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The Role of Today’s Trainer

The other day I was at Costco about to buy something. But before I made the purchase, I got online to do some research….right there in the store. I learned enough to make an informed decision. In fact, I was so “informed” that I was able to provide some assistance to another shopper. Despite all of that, I’m no expert on the product, but I am expert enough to meet my own needs.

And this is the world our learners live in, as well. As they have a learning need, they can access what they need when they need it because technology has changed the role of today’s trainer (or at least part of it).

At the start of my career in training, most of the content required to learn wasn’t always easily obtained. Thus it did require some research, meetings with subject matter experts, and a formal training plan to build and deliver training. Otherwise, those on the other end wouldn’t be able to access what they needed.

Today, a lot of that has changed. With the Internet, we have access to all sorts of information. And we can get it at the time we need it. Gone are the days for much of the formal training we used to build. They took too long to build and deliver. And often were hard to maintain.

Does it mean there’s no need for trainers? No! But it does mean the role is a bit different.

I like to think the new trainer has two areas of focus to ensure the training mission is complete:

• Structured training
• Convenient training

The Role of the Structured Trainer

I see this as more of the traditional role of trainer where you meet with content owners, understand their needs, and put together a training plan. It’s designed to create a specific learning experience to meet a specific goal.

There’s a lot of value in a formal training process. A well-designed training plan can speed up the time to learn and mitigate potential issues. For example, many people have access to content, but it doesn’t mean the content is vetted or compliant with the organization’s needs.

On top of that, compliance and regulatory training often has to have specific content and be delivered a certain way. In those cases, the structure is important.

The Role of the Convenient Trainer

This is where most people are. They have needs, they research them, and then do something with what they’ve learned. Does it means they’ve become experts? No. But it does mean they’ve gotten enough to do what they need to do.

So what’s your role in this world?

• Curate content. Just because we can find information doesn’t mean it’s always relevant. And it takes time to find it. The trainer is a conduit to the content expert. Curate important information and make it easily available to those who need it.
• Build a network of learners. A community is built around a shared interest and desire to grow in expertise. Find ways to connect learners so they can communicate, share, and learn from each other.
• Keep it informal. This is usually where it breaks down. Organizations (and trainers) want structure and control. Thus, it’s hard to let things flow without imposing a bunch of organizational mumbo jumbo.

There’s a place for formal, structured training (see above) and there’s a place to keep it more organic. Organic allows people to choose the content that best serves their needs.

The two roles aren’t an either-or proposition. It’s not one way over the other. It’s just the reality that formal training doesn’t always have to be the plan. And a good training initiative builds on the informal aspects of learning and sees its trainers as part community managers who bring content and people together.

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The Role of Today’s Trainer original post at The Rapid E-Learning Blog

Benefits of eLearning Compared to Instructor Led Training [ILT]

Technology is evolving at a faster rate today than it did 20 years ago. With this, the traditional skill set for the common worker is facing obsoletion. People are striving to study more to complete for education. They must compete to get better jobs so they can earn more. Today, technology-based jobs are taking over employment. This need has helped facilitate the development of online training courses and options for delivering the training. While some companies have yet to embrace the benefits of eLearning, there is evidence that modern eLearning technologies are taking over the delivery for higher education and employee training. Here are some of the benefits of eLearning.

eLearning Flexibility

Not everyone can afford taking time from their life or their desk at work to attend a regularly scheduled class in a classroom. Furthermore, some situations require learners to take the course and study at their own pace. With eLearning, learners can take training in their own language and at a time that is convenient for them or their employer. These are just some of the aspects of eLearning flexibility. This flexibility enhances the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) of professionals around the world. Learning can be conducted anywhere, anytime, and for the busiest of people.

Consistency of eLearning

The human aspect of interacting with other people when learning new concepts cannot be underestimated. However, it is a well-known fact that people make mistakes. Human error is a factor to consider. Even if there isn’t necessarily any mistakes or errors, an instructor will not teach the exact same way, using the exact same words or methods for each different class. With eLearning, each learner is consistently given the exact same online training. Learning Management Systems (LMSs) can help achieve this consistency by delivering the same training material and experiences to every learner, every time. This simply means that the learning objectives of learners can be consistently matched against compliance and completion.

Updated Materials

Some industries, such as technology, medicine, and energy, keep evolving. This is typically due to ongoing research or regulation. Therefore, concepts that had been taught as benchmark truth only a few weeks ago could become outdated in a very short period of time. If the training material is not kept up to date, professionals in the company, country, or even the world would be learning and operating on outdated or possibly obsolete information. eLearning is a technology that can be the link between current information and learners. This ensures that the everyone has the opportunity to have current and relevant information regarding their job, skill, regulation, or technology. Additionally, it creates the opportunity for refresher courses with updated material. This is great if the need for continuous training and communication is required.

eLearning is Cost Efficient

Cost efficiency is relative and in this context, we are comparing it to Instructor Led Training. The cost of having several human instructors standing in a classroom teaching 10 to 30 students at a time to deliver knowledge can also be very time consuming. In addition to the cost for a physical classroom and facilities, the time required to teach students can be enormous. Furthermore, imagine if you had new company policies or production methods and needed to train 10,000 employees. Now only that, but you have to train them by the end of the quarter. This would be extremely difficult to do with Instructor Led Training (ILT). However, eLearning makes it possible to pass on knowledge quickly, efficiently, and to as many people as needed. In some instances, you could train all 10,000 employees in just a single day.

Conclusion – Benefits of eLearning

From these examples, it is clear that there are many Benefits of eLearning compared to Instructor Led Training. eLearning technology is very flexible and can be implemented to suit any company’s training needs. It also helps keep the training consistent for the students or employees taking it. eLearning is easy to update using a Learning Management System (LMS) and extremely cost efficient compared to traditional Instructor Led Classroom Training. It is no surprise that more organizations are implementing eLearning technology.

Do you have any additional Benefits of eLearning that YOU would like to add? Give us your comments below:

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Hackboard 2.0 is Live

The Blackboard online hackathon is BACK for round 2! This year, we partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to issue a fun and unique challenge: solve a problem in education using Blackboard Learn’s REST APIs and the Amazon AI Framework.

Artificial Intelligence is a wide-ranging and trendy term, and its applications are both vast and compelling. The underlying technologies of AI are an important addition to a powerful educational platform. Entries into this year’s Hackboard could range from chatbots that help answer users’ questions, to analysis tools that help identify students at risk, or perhaps content analysis tools. The only limit is your imagination!

This year we will award four prizes:

• best overall application, which will be awarded the Kroner Cup, named for George Kroner, a Developer Community pioneer
• best instructor application
• best student application
• best application developed by an individual or team of university student developers.

Each winner will receive an Amazon Technology prize package valued at $500!

The judging panel is comprised of software architects from both companies. From AWS, there’s Srini Margasahayam, Manager Solutions Architecture, and Leo Zhadanovsky, Principal Solutions Architect. From Blackboard, there is Reinhold Staudinger, Chief Architect, and Michel Courson, Principal Software Engineer.

Submissions will be judged on innovation, implementation, impact on teaching and learning, and overall presentation. Judging will take place from June 30—July 11. Winners will be announced on July 16 at Blackboard’s Developer Conference, DevCon – July 16-19 in Orlando Florida. But don’t worry—you don’t have to be present at the conference to win.

Hackboard 2.0 is live now and will run through June 29, 2018 at 5:00pm EDT. It is open to individuals and teams of up to five members. All entrants must reside in the US for the duration of the contest and be 18 years of age or older. A successful submission should include a demonstration video of no more than eight minutes and a link to a code repository, licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

If you have questions about Hackboard, or about the technologies therein, join us for Hackboard Office Hours on Monday, May 7, 2018 at 11:00 AM EDT. To view the details, find a team, or register, visit https://hackboard.devpost.com.

 

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Hackboard 2.0 is Live original post at Blackboard Blog