Do we need a new alternative credential marketplace?

Reported by Education Dive, with more and more career education programs rolling out, states and national organizations are trying to put together guides to help their residents navigate the value and outcomes of these disparate offerings.

Employers are going to fund free college in Washington state.

Reported by Education Dive, the Workforce Education Investment Act will provide free tuition at public institutions for students from families making $50,000 or less a year, as well as invest in computer science and health care programming and student service resources at those same public institutions.

Should higher ed double down on certificate programs?

Reported by Education Dive, a new Strada-Lumina study shows that adults with a non-degree certificate report a 50% higher annual median income ($45,000) than those with no credentials (at $30,000).

What can higher ed learn from lean engineering principles?

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, Dr. Jitendra Singh at Minnesota State University Moorhead is bringing the lean engineering principles he learned from his healthcare career to improving their online programs.

What will quantum computing mean for higher education?

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, IBM has already created their commercial quantum computing prototype in the IBM Q System One, promising a future where big data calculations can be conducted thousands of times faster than today, among other technological innovations.

How can data mining help surface helpful student feedback?

Reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Lisa Elfring from the University of Arizona works with her Institutional Research department to take the feedback from her student evaluations and turn them into positive- and negative-word clouds. This allows her to quickly spot trends and the most commonly used words and subjects, and get an immediate at-a-glance understanding of common pain points and pluses.

Could a student’s psychological challenges be seen as an admittance factor?

Reported by Inside Higher Ed, New College at Florida was allegedly red-flagging applications from students who mentioned psychological challenges in their admissions essays for further review, and they are conducting an outside investigation.

Carnegie Mellon University has launched brand-new learning engineering tools and a community around them.

Reported by EdSurge, Carnegie Mellon’s OpenSimon Toolkit is designed to help professors theorize new learning innovations, test their efficacy, and then share/scale the learning with the rest of higher ed - with hopes that by opening up these software tools, that all of us will be able to learn and adopt new best practice pedagogy faster.

Will instructional software kill print textbooks?

Reported by EdSurge, in Bill and Melinda Gates’ annual letter, they claimed that “textbooks are becoming obsolete” due to instructional software that is quickly replacing them.