As universities respond to the COVID-19 outbreak by closing campuses and shifting to online forms of distance learning, many institutions and educators are scrambling to develop online engagement plans. In this repost, Martin Weller (Professor of Education Technology at the Open University) brings together a number of useful for resources for anyone looking to develop online learning courses and questions why it has taken the current crisis for distance learning to be taken seriously.
Last week, we attended the highly anticipated Web Summit 2019 which took place in Lisbon. Web Summit is the largest annual tech event in the world, and was described by Forbes as “the best technology conference on the planet.” If you didn’t get chance to go, don’t worry - we’re sharing our top edtech takeaways with you in this blog post.
In the past, a good degree coupled with a certain amount of ambition would almost guarantee you a decent job in your chosen field. Anyone who’s graduated in the last decade or so will know that’s no longer the case. Both the jobs market and higher education is markedly more competitive - and more people are deciding to study than ever before.
Technology has impacted various industries and markets on a global scale, and advancements are still being introduced, changing the way we live, work and study. Higher education has undergone significant upgrades since the expansion of the eLearning trend, and it seems like things are going in the right direction.
Alternative models for learning, online courses and economic strains are just a handful of things turning the higher education sector into a hyper competitive playing field. In some ways, post-graduate education is facing an even larger set of challenges. Rising costs mean many people can no longer justify the expense, especially if they can gain expertise elsewhere.
Immersive technologies - including virtual reality and augmented reality - have the potential to revolutionise the way universities deliver course content, enabling learners to access spaces and engage with experiences that might otherwise be unavailable to them. This article explores how two institutions are harnessing the power of immersive technologies to aid research and make a positive impact on the wider community.
Student and alumni engagement is critical for creating a sense of community, both on campus and in other spheres - like online platforms, for instance. It is also important for university promotion; as well as academic acumen, prospective students are looking to “buy in” to an institution's culture and ethos. So what can universities do to embed a meaningful culture - one that makes students and staff feel connected to the institution long term?
What will the future of education look like? It’s the question on many an education professional’s lips, and in an uncertain political and economic climate such as ours, it isn’t always an easy one to answer. Of course, technology will play a large role in shaping the future of higher ed, as will socio-economic and political factors.
The future of education is a topic of interest for us and the many higher education professionals we speak with daily. With technology and the gig economy evolving as rapidly as they are, it’s difficult to predict what education will look like in 10 or 20 years time.
