IBL News

Category: Platforms | Tech

  • Another Zoom Challenger: Engageli Capitalizes on Video Conferencing Limitations

    Another Zoom Challenger: Engageli Capitalizes on Video Conferencing Limitations

    IBL News | New York

    Coursera’s Co-Founder and CEO of Insitro Daphne Koller and her husband, computer scientist Dan Avida launched this month Engageli, an online learning platform that tries to give an answer to Zoom video conferencing limitation for higher ed.

    This Silicon Valley startup company started a few months ago, raised $14.5 million in seed funding. In addition to Koller and Avida, investors include RM, Emerge Education, Alex Balkanski–general partner at Benchmark Capital–Lip-Bu Tan–CEO of Cadence Design Systems–and Rob Cohen–former president of 2U.

    The story is similar to ClassEDU, recently started by the co-founders of Blackboard with $16 million in funding. The two companies want to replicate the social feeling of being in a classroom while adding live data about student engagement on a browser-based tool. However, Engageli is designed from the ground up to work on any browser, and ClassEDU is built on top of Zoom. Engageli’s users won’t have to download an app to access class.

    Engageli features students seated at different virtual tables, in groups of up to 10, assigned by instructors. Students can see, hear, and chat with one another, along with the teacher. But they cannot do so with students at other tables. Students raise their hands and are given permission to speak. A color-coded circle overlaid on each student indicates how engaged he or she is.

    Instructors can add questions to any presentation slide and stream videos directly on the platform.

    “For anyone who’s used Zoom or Google Meet or Microsoft Teams, Engageli doesn’t take long to learn,” said Dan Avida, CEO of Engageli.

    Engageli–which currently has 20 full-time staff–is now introducing the platform through a pilot program with a small set of universities considered to be early adopters. Pricing has not been disclosed yet.

    • Press Release of the launch 

  • Coursera Extends Its Free Access to Universities Worldwide

    Coursera Extends Its Free Access to Universities Worldwide

    IBL News | New York

    Coursera.org announced this week that it is continuing in the long-term its Coursera for Campus offer of free courses for universities, along with other functionalities.

    This offer – part of the Campus Response Initiative – started in March in the midst of the pandemic closure. Since then, Coursera has attracted 3,700 universities, serving more than 2.4 million students who have enrolled in 21.4 million courses.

    The learning company has set three offerings:

    • The Student plan gives every university student free access to unlimited Guided Projects for hands-on learning and one course annually. They will also have access to the online help center.
    • The Basic plan provides up to 20,000 free student licenses to every university. Every license includes access to unlimited Guided Projects and one course annually. This long-term free offering includes basic plagiarism deterrence features and access to the online help center.
    • The Institution plan provides unlimited Guided Projects and unlimited course enrollments for each student license. It also enables universities to author, grade, and manage for-credit online learning programs with enhanced academic integrity.

    Upgraded features of Coursera for Campus will enable universities to deliver credit-bearing online learning with academic integrity features.

    The Mountain View, California-based company, with a catalog of 4,200 courses, explained: “Faculty can now administer secure, high-stakes exams and detect plagiarism in assignments on Coursera for Campus. It supports online proctoring with integrations like ProctorU and allows exams to be timed and scheduled. Over the next few months, Coursera will enhance exam security with third-party ID verification tools. For assignments, integrations with tools like Turnitin auto-detect plagiarism for both students and graders. Students can check their Similarity Score before submitting an assignment. Faculty can view all suspected and confirmed plagiarism incidents in Gradebooks. The platform also supports plagiarism deterrence by disabling URL sharing and copying of peer reviews.”

    “Question Banks make it easy to author rigorous, custom assessments at scale. Faculty can create assessments with any combination of auto-graded multiple choice and manually-graded essay questions. They can privately author questions and randomize them based on learning objective and difficulty level. This feature will roll out widely by the end of the year.”

    In addition, Coursera for Campus offered universities authoring and administrative tools and LMS integrations. They can build custom courses, hands-on projects, assessments, and even embed Zoom recordings with Live2Coursera. Strategies and resources for effective online teaching are also available on the Coursera Teaching Center.

     

    Live2Coursera Launched as a Zoom App

    On the other hand, Coursera announced this week its Live2Coursera app availability at the Zoom marketplace. Instructors can enable the Live2Coursera Zapp to record, share, and upload their Zoom lectures to Coursera.

    https://youtu.be/LmZdDTZRMps

  • Two Stanford Lecturers and Comedians Create a Course About Bringing Humor into the Workplace

    Two Stanford Lecturers and Comedians Create a Course About Bringing Humor into the Workplace

    IBL News | New York

    Two lecturers from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and comediants have created on edX.org the “Remotely Humorous” course in collaboration with comedians who have written for The Onion, Comedy Central, and Funny or Die.

    The instructors, Naomi Bagdonas —a media and strategy consultant, and author of Humor, Seriously— and Connor Diemand-Yauman, co-CEO of the nonprofit Merit America– explore the importance of workplace humor through a behavioral science lens.

    The three skills-building course includes a highly entertaining series of video lectures and assessments that elaborate on the importance of bringing laughter into the workplace and the right ways to deploy it. The duration of the class is for two months, and it costs $200.

    Diemand-Yauman explained: “Humor can make teams more bonded and effective, and help leaders are more authentic and trustworthy. And it’s especially relevant now. The shift to remote work, he points out, have left many people feeling particularly isolated and lonely.”

    On her hand, Naomi Bagdonas added: “Unlike most other online courses, it’s heavily based on activities; so you can take it with your team and do the activities together. It’s almost like an intensive culture boot camp—just with slightly fewer trust falls.”  

    The first course in the program focuses on reigniting your sense of humor at work and learning comedy techniques from the pros.  The second course is about understanding the cultural enablers of humor in an organization. The third course focuses on making a fundamental shift in your teams and organizations to get humor to stick.

     

  • edX Launches a $10M Scholarship Campaign for Learners Impacted by COVID

    edX Launches a $10M Scholarship Campaign for Learners Impacted by COVID

    IBL News | New York

    Online learning platform edX launched this month a campaign program named Access for All, in order to financially support low-income learners impacted by COVID-19 in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and India.

    The edX organization set the goal of raising $10 million for this program over the next three years.

    The first scholarship of the Access for All campaign has been funded with $1 million by the Macquarie Group. It covers 100% of the cost of an edX course, including the newly MicroBachelors Programs.

    Over 15,000 learners showed their interest in this scholarship in the first 24 hours of launch.

    “We will feel the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy and higher education reverberate for years to come, and this scholarship campaign will be instrumental in empowering learners everywhere to reach their full potential and change the world,” explained edX representatives in a blog-post.

  • Moodle Reports 165,000 Using Its Software, and Announces Improvements on Usability

    Moodle Reports 165,000 Using Its Software, and Announces Improvements on Usability

    IBL News | New York

    Moodle has reported that there are over 165,000 learning websites around the world built using its open-source software. The platform was launched 18 years ago.

    Sander, the Manager of the Product team at Moodle HQ, explained in a blog-post interview that “Moodle is now a leader in privacy compliance for open source projects and even amongst other commercial competitors”.

    In her view, beyond compliance, improvements on the code also extend into the look and feel, accessibility, LTI implementation, and standards, such as Open Badges.

    Moodle HQ teams are preparing the next product release, Moodle 4.0, scheduled for November 2021. It will include the enhancement of overall student and teacher experience.

    In addition, engineers in Australia headquarters are working on Moodle Workplace, the corporate version of the platform launched in 2019. The upcoming release will add a multi-tenancy feature.

    Currently, Moodle offers three MOOCs with certificates: Learn Moodle 3.9 Basic, Moodle Teaching Basic, and Moodle Admin Basics.

     

  • Udacity Expands Its Partnership with AT&T by Issuing a Scholarship Program for 1,000 Students

    Udacity Expands Its Partnership with AT&T by Issuing a Scholarship Program for 1,000 Students

    IBL News | New York

    Udacity extended its partnership with AT&T formed in 2014 with the launch of Georgia Tech’s OMSCS, the Online Master of Science in Computer Science that was a fundamental shift in higher education.

    Mountain View, California-based Udacity and giant AT&T extended agreement – announced this week – points out to provide support to underserved communities by offering 1,000 Nanodegree licenses, a $1 million investment.

    This scholarship aims to increase education, skill-building, and career readiness opportunities in these communities.

    Around 5,400 of AT&T’s employees have completed Udacity Nanodegree programs to date.

    “This initiative demonstrates our commitment to driving social equality in underserved communities by addressing an educational opportunity that provides families a path to economic stability,” said Mylayna Albright, AVP Corporate Social Responsibility, AT&T.

    Earlier this year, AT&T pledged to invest an additional $10 million in 2020 to create economic opportunities and foster upward mobility for Black communities and communities who face social inequities and higher unemployment rates.

    Currently, Udacity has launched 10 scholarship programs, awarding 22,000 students. At least six sponsors have participated in the program: Google, AT&T, Lyft, Microsoft, Bertelsman, and Accenture.

  • The ‘Introduction to Linux’ Course on edX.org Surpasses One Million Enrollments

    The ‘Introduction to Linux’ Course on edX.org Surpasses One Million Enrollments

    IBL News | New York

    The Introduction to Linux training course on edX.org, currently in its sixth edition, has surpassed a milestone of one million enrollments, according to The Linux Foundation.

    This 14-week, introductory course helps students develop a working knowledge of Linux using both the graphical interface and command-line across the major Linux distribution families.

    The course is free, but to obtain a verified certificate learners must pay $199. This online class remains open for new enrollments.

    The Linux Foundation offers two dozen free training courses on open source projects including Linux, Kubernetes, Hyperledger on edX.org.

    “One of our primary goals is to bring more talent into the open-source community, and offering free, high-quality training that is accessible to anyone who wants it is essential to achieving that goal,” said Linux Foundation Executive Director, Jim Zemlin.

    “Introduction to Linux has been a true blockbuster – it’s one of our top 10 most popular courses of all time,” said Anant Agarwal, edX Founder and CEO.

    The Linux Foundation has been a member of the edX Consortium since 2014.

     

  • Open edX & Learning Platforms | September – October 2020: NVIDIA, UT Austin, Arm, Coursera, Udacity…

    Open edX & Learning Platforms | September – October 2020: NVIDIA, UT Austin, Arm, Coursera, Udacity…

    [ Newsletter format  |  Click here to subscribe ]

    SEPTEMBER – OCTOBER 2020 – NEWSLETTER #31  |  Breaking news at IBL News  |  Noticias en Español

     

    edX | Open edX

    • An edX Report Features Key Skills and Opportunities for the “New Normal” in Business

    • NVIDIA Issues New Courses on Deep Learning and Recommender Systems

    • UT Austin Launches a Master’s Degree in Computer Science that It Doesn’t Require GRE

    • The University of Cambridge Offers a 30-Credit Program on ‘Writing for Performance’ on edX

    • Arm Offers a Free Course on Embedded Systems and IoT Devices at edX.org

     

    Coursera

    • Coursera Reports a Surge of 21 Million Learners Since Mid-March

    • Two New Entry-Level Certificate Programs on Sales Development and Data Analytics from Salesforce and IBM

    • Coursera Issues a Certificate Program on “Facebook Social Media Marketing” for Non-College Graduates

    • Coursera Expands in Latin American by Adding Three New University Partners

    • Coursera.org Will Allow Its Employees to Work from Home until January 2022

    • Coursera Expands Its Learning Products, Including Guided Projects, Paths, and Live Meetings

     

    Udacity

    • Udacity Will Award 1,000 Program Scholarships to the Black Community

     

    Learning Platforms

    • A Startup Company Raises $16M for User Interface that Adds LMS Capabilities to Zoom

    • OpenStax Will Increase Its Library to 90 Free Textbooks After Receiving New Grants

    • Lambda School Raises $74 Million with Its ‘Pay Tuition Later’ Model

    • Canvas LMS Will Provide Its Learning Platform to 13 U.S. States

     

    2020 Events 

    • Education Calendar  –  SEP  |  OCT  |  NOV  |  DEC  |  Conferences in Latin America & Spain

     

    This newsletter is created in collaboration with IBL Education, a New York City-based company specialized in AI and credential-driven learning platforms. Read the latest IBL Newsletter   |  Archive of Open edX Newsletters

  • An edX Report Features Key Skills and Opportunities for the “New Normal” in Business

    An edX Report Features Key Skills and Opportunities for the “New Normal” in Business

    IBL News | New York 

    edX.org released a free, 9-page business guide in PDF format featuring learning opportunities in times of a global pandemic.

    “The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated trends and upturned business-as-usual strategies and practices, and in a world that’s constantly changing, it’s normal to feel like you don’t have control over what happens next,” wrote Liz Joyce, Content Marketing Manager at edX. “One thing you can control? Your education.”

    The guide is intended for professionals seeking to jump into a new field, advancing their career o exploring a new topic. It mostly features learning opportunities at edX.

    For the “new normal” in business, edX lists ten key skills:

    • Inclusive and compassionate leadership
    • Strategy and business model development
    • Lean Six Sigma
    • Analytics
    • Digital marketing
    • Forecasting methodology
    • Logistics optimization
    • Managing remote teams
    • Modern Finance
    • Soft skills in communication, collaboration, etc.
  • Coursera Reports a Surge of 21 Million Learners Since Mid-March

    Coursera Reports a Surge of 21 Million Learners Since Mid-March

    IBL News | New York

    Coursera.org reported yesterday an unprecedented demand on its platform since mid-March, with a surge of 21 million learners and 50 million enrollments, a 353%  and 444% increase respectively over the same period last year. In addition, thousands of colleges and universities now offer Coursera to enrich their students’ learning experience.

    “What started as a short-term response to a crisis will result in a long-term digital transformation of higher education,” explained Jeff Maggioncalda, CEO at Coursera in a blog-post.

    To analyze the new ways of learning, The Mountain View, California-based company issued the “2020 Impact report”, a 26-page PDF document with Coursera’s view, along with industry trends.

    Jeff Maggioncalda wrote: “Students globally are seeking high-quality online learning options. Universities are ushering in a new era of digital transformation. Workers are learning job-relevant skills to stay competitive. Public health officials are training thousands of contact tracers at scale.”