IBL News

Category: Views

  • A Billionaire Will Cover the Cost of Coursera’s Illinois Data Science Master’s Degree for His Employees

    A Billionaire Will Cover the Cost of Coursera’s Illinois Data Science Master’s Degree for His Employees

    Marie I. Rose | IBL News

    AI-software provider C3.ai, a company owned by billionaire Tom Siebel, has started to offer employees a fully paid tuition for the Master of Computer Science in Data Science (MCS-DS) from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, available on Coursera for $21,000.  

    Those who complete the degree will get three more career incentives: a $25,000 cash bonus, a 15% salary increase, and a stock option equity award.

    “In this new economy where people are talking about digital transformation; for companies to stay at the top of their game they need to have state-of-the-art continuing education programs,” said Siebel, who got a degree in Computer Science –although residentially – at the same university.

    In 2007, Thomas Siebel, 66, pledged $1000 million to support science and engineering at this institution. Currently, CEO at C3.ai, Siebel, with a fortune of $2.9 billion, is a former salesman who became a billionaire after creating and selling Siebel Systems to rival Oracle in 2006 for $5.8 billion. C3.ai is valued at $2.1 billion.

    In addition to this degree, C3.ai employees, 330 in total today, already have free access to other Coursera courses and Specializations in AI, IoT, clouding computing, and advanced computing.

    “This model of stackable learning will become standard as more companies realize the value of providing a variety of flexible learning pathways for employees to acquire critical skills,” stated Leah Belsky, VP of Enterprise at Coursera.

    “We believe that more and more companies will move in this direction in the future. C3.ai is showing real foresight, and they are putting an incredible amount of employee support behind that foresight,” said Rashid Bashir, Dean of The Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois. “New modes of delivering professional education are crucial to both companies like C3.ai and to universities like Illinois.”

    The Coursera-based MCS degree was launched in 2016. Nearly 700 hundred students are enrolled in the program. The acceptance rate is 30%.

    Illinois’ Department of Computer Science is consistently ranked as one of the top computer science programs in the world. In 2018, it was ranked #5 on the U.S. News and World Report list of Best Computer Science Schools.

    Thomas Siebel, in the picture, shows a clear vision: “At C3.ai, we are assembling a team of inquisitive self-learners, motivated and properly trained to solve some of the world’s most challenging technology problems. This program further enables our employees’ success by encouraging them to further develop their computer science and AI expertise at one of the world’s leading universities.”

    Siebel’s educational offering to employees is probably the most generous one within corporate America, beyond  Starbucks‘, which covers a portion of the tuition for those who earn online B.A.’s from Arizona State University, and Walmart‘s incentive of $1,500 cash bonuses to some workers who finish degrees at three subsidized schools.

    He claimed in Forbes that “the money his company will spend on employee degrees and cash bonuses are a drop in the bucket when you consider how much we spend on human capital.” When you add in other benefits and travel, he says each employee already costs the company more than $350,000 a year. “If someone is increasing their skills, advancing their career, setting themselves up for multiple promotions, providing better service for their customers, in that context the amount we’re spending on this benefit is nothing.”

  • An Institution Prepares Students for Jobs which Won’t Be Automatized

    An Institution Prepares Students for Jobs which Won’t Be Automatized

    Mikel Amigot | IBL News (Boston)

    Job automation has already started. Stats indicate that 10% of American jobs will be automated in 2019. An upsetting forecast indicates that up to 73 million U.S. jobs will be automated by 2030.

    But there is hope. First: nearly 2 million new non-routine jobs which machines cannot easily perform are being created every year in the United States. Second: an increasing number of colleges and universities understand the challenge and are starting to prepare students who demand jobs which won’t be automated.

    Foundry College is one of them. Its Founder, Dr. Stephen Kosslyn, addressed the issue yesterday during the Eduventures Summit in Boston with a physician example. “Diagnosis of illness will soon be accomplished well by machines. But sitting with the family to discuss treatment options will be difficult to automate.”

    At least two skills are automation resistant: “Recognizing and responding to emotion when communicating and making decisions. And taking context into account when analyzing situations, creatively solving problems, and prioritizing goals,” Stephen Kosslyn said.

    Foundry College, which is focused on what’s difficult to automate, has listed five key underpinnings:

    • Critical thinking
    • Creative problem solving
    • Clear communication
    • Constructive personal interactions
    • Good judgment

    To pair these essential skills, this institution has reimagined a future-proof, two-year curriculum. On the first year, Foundry teaches:

    • Critical Analyses
    • Practical Problem Solving
    • Clear Communication
    • Learning at Work
    • Working with Others
    • Managing Yourself at Work

    On the second year:

    • Communicating and Conveying in Business
    • Navigating Work
    • Thinking with Software
    • Customer Service and Sales
    • Health Care Management
    • System and Service Management

     

  • View: A Model Involving Faculty for Course Design

    View: A Model Involving Faculty for Course Design

    Mikel Amigot | IBL News

    The course development process usually tends to be too complex. As instructional designers, we schedule too many milestones and we overcomplicate things.

    Two experts in the field shared their view at SUNY’s annual technology conference, CIT, which took part this May 29-31 in Purchase, New York.

    Learning designers Joseph Stabb and Theresa Guillard-Cook [in the picture] described SUNY Oswego’s four-step process for course development: 1) Agreement; 2) Kickoff Meeting; 3) Schedule Set Up; 4) Final Course Review.

    The second one is particularly critical. The most important questions in the meeting with professors are: “what is your vision and idea for your course? What would you like to do?” These obvious questions and answers are usually forgotten; consequently, the class becomes ineffective.

    “The most important statement in this meeting is: you are the subject matter expert,” said Joseph Stabb and Theresa Guillard-Cook.

    Regarding the third stage, a detailed development schedule with milestones and due dates is required. A template is necessary.

    A well-defined process, based on continuous collaboration where faculty feel supported, will meet educational standards and drive student outcomes.

  • Georgia Tech Will Deploy this Summer an Improved Version of its AI-Based Teacher Assistant

    Georgia Tech Will Deploy this Summer an Improved Version of its AI-Based Teacher Assistant

    Mikel Amigot | IBL News 

    A refined and revised version of Georgia Tech’s first AI-based teacher assistant will be introduced this summer as a way to enhance some of the syllabi at the school. This virtual agent, known as Jill Watson and developed by Professor Ashok Goel, will turn three years old.

    Yakut Gazi, Associate Dean of Learning Systems at Georgia Tech, highlighted during the 2019 Learning Impact Leadership Institute conference, last week in San Diego, the fact that her institution “is leading efforts in Artificial Intelligence’s development”. “Many students of the OMSC degree didn’t know that an AI agent was responding their questions until the end of the semester,” she added.

    Jill Watson is the result of the work of Prof. Goel [in the picture] with a team of graduate students in his Design & Intelligence Laboratory (DILAB). This team created this chatbot to answer routine, frequently asked questions in the forum for his online Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence (KBAI) class.

    The original intent was to free up time for the course TAs (Teacher Assistants), so they could concentrate on more creative and less repetitive tasks. But an expected outcome arose: more learner engagement. Before Jill Watson, students averaged 32 comments per semester; after Jill Watson, each student averaged 38 comments per semester.

    In the spring of 2016, once this AI-agent’s identity was revealed, the reaction was overwhelmingly positive.

    One student wanted to nominate Jill for the Outstanding TA award, and not one student complained.

    National news outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post ran stories on her. Ashok Goel gave a TEDxTalk on Jill, and he was invited by the Gates Foundation in January 2018 to participate in a brainstorming session on the future of AI in education.

    Georgia Tech’s motto is affordability, accessibility, and applicability, and Jill Watson can help human teachers deliver education at scale.

    • Georgia Tech: Jill Watson’s Terrific Twos

  • UBx, University at Buffalo’s Continuing Education Open edX-Based Platform, Expands with New Courses

    UBx, University at Buffalo’s Continuing Education Open edX-Based Platform, Expands with New Courses

    Marie I. Rose | IBL News (Purchase, NY)

    UBx, University at Buffalo’s learning platform for continuing and professional education, plans to issue seven new courses this year, after the recent launch of the “Empowering Yourself in a Post-Truth World” and “Introduction to ArcGIS Pro” classes. These courses, now in development, will cover areas such as Jupyter Notebooks, Writing College Essays, Faculty Development, and Robot Safety.

    UBx is one of the first nationwide Open edX-based platforms on professional development at the university level. “We use this LMS for online learning where departments are able to generate and keep most of the revenue,”  explained Jay Stockslader, Director of Continuing Education at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University at Buffalo [in the picture above].

    Jay Stockslader, with years in experience in continuing ed, presented its initiative last Thursday at SUNY’s CIT2019 conference throughout a talk titled “Emerging Technologies and Digital Strategies”.

    The platform, integrated with the University at Buffalo’s payment portal, has been conceived for non-credit bearing courses, although some scholars at the SUNY system are considering using it as a testing ground for future credit classes.

     

  • Canadian Educator Heather Payne Says that Tenure Should Be Abolished

    Canadian Educator Heather Payne Says that Tenure Should Be Abolished

    John G. Paul | IBL News

    One hour after delivering the keynote address of the day, Heather Payne, speaker and entrepreneur, tweeted: “Just told a room full of tenured professors that tenure is dumb and should be abolished and lived to tell the tale. Thanks for having me, State University of New York!”.

    Heather Payne’s post was a rightful summary of an energetic conference that shocked many professors gathered in the auditorium of SUNY’s Purchase College in New York, yesterday during the second day of the CIT2019 event.

    This young Canadian educator, founder and CEO of the HackerYou coding bootcamp, and named one the top innovators in North America, delivered a one-hour talk featured as “Starting from scratch. How higher ed needs to change its contract with its students”.

    The main thesis was that “college isn’t designed for students”. Collectively, 44 million Americans owe $1.5 trillion in student loans. Besides, as she highlighted, there is a mental health crisis, with many students experiencing episodes of overwhelming anxiety. The university system has its origins in Medieval Europe, where the instruction was based on delivering lectures, and main teaching subjects were arts, law, theology and medicine.

    “Higher education needs to be fully redesigned,” claimed Heather Payne [in the picture], before explaining how new colleges should function.

    In addition to eliminating stadiums, as a metaphor of sports programs, Mrs. Heather stated that tenure should be eliminated, along with the research job. “No tenure. And professors should do no research”.

    “Tenure is job protection that none of the rest of us have access to, nor is it something any of us should want for our society. It removes the incentive to improve and keeps professors in jobs they should move on from”.

    “We want professors to spend their energy coaching, mentoring and guiding the leaders of tomorrow. Research in higher ed has been nothing but a distraction at most schools, taking away from the student experience”.

    She proposed no tuition payment upfront and an income sharing agreement with students when they land their first job after graduating from college. This model is being implemented in her 30-employees, Toronto-based start-up, which teaches 9-week long web coding-related programs, helping learners transition from low paying jobs to $50k+ ones.

     

     

  • NY University System Will Focus on Increasing its Online Presence

    NY University System Will Focus on Increasing its Online Presence

    John G. Paul | IBL News (Purchase, NY)

    SUNY, the State of New York University System, will heavily focus on increasing its online offer, by scaling its main programs to 1,000 students in three years. It will also target post-traditional learners, not only in New York but also out of the state and internationally. The goal is also “to bring back the 40,000 New York residents who are going to non-NY online institutions”. 

    Tod A. Laursen, Senior Vice Chancellor and Provost, unfolded all of these remarks on Wednesday during the opening keynote of the CIT 2019 conference in Purchase, New York — a gathering of 400 educators and technologists within the SUNY system.

    This plan will be implemented throughout multiple phases, until its launch in the Fall of 2020. Part of the strategy will be the data initiative, based on moving towards predictive data analytics.

    Brian Digman, new CIO of SUNY, whose keynote was titled “Disruptive technology arrives”, insisted on the importance of data to predict the future. “Data is the new oil, but data wisdom is yet to be revealed,” said during his remarks at CIT 2019.

    In addition, Tod A. Laursen highlighted the growth of OERs (Open Educational Resources) on SUNY, saving $16 million in course material costs.

    See some of the slides below.

  • Illinois Shuts Down its Traditional MBA and Focuses into Online’s iMBA

    Illinois Shuts Down its Traditional MBA and Focuses into Online’s iMBA

    Marie I. Rose | IBL News

    The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will shift investments away from its residential MBA programs to focus on its rapidly growing online iMBA, which is delivered through Coursera.org at $22,000 (compared to traditional MBAs that can cost three or four times more.)

    The ending of this face-to-face program happens in an environment where several universities have scaled back or eliminated traditional MBA programs.

    The University of Illinois will allow current MBA students and those planning to start programs this year to finish.

    “The iMBA is the right format for the times – providing a powerful learning experience with anytime/anywhere accessibility at an affordable cost,” said Jeffrey Brown, Dean of Gies College of Business, in a statement. “Given the global reach and accessibility of this program, we are creating what I call the world’s MBA. With this and with our innovation in undergrad, specialized masters, and lifelong learning, we are playing to our competitive advantages and positioning ourselves for tremendous impact and steady growth. These moves will focus our investment in ways that will make us unquestionably one of a handful of the world’s very best and most innovative business schools.”

    Applications to the iMBA have nearly tripled – from 1,100 in 2016, when the program was launched, to a projected 3,200 in 2019.

    “The program is revolutionary in its delivery, stackable structure, concentrations, immersions, accessibility, and career-curated content. It combines the material in ways that professionals use it in the real world, not in traditional academic silos. iMBA students earn the same MBA that on-campus students have been earning for decades. At a total cost of less than $22,000, the program is designed to be affordable at a time when MBAs can easily cost $80,000 or more.”

    “Our iMBA is the most innovative, highest-value MBA of any kind anywhere in the world,” said Brown [in the picture]. “Because it is online and offered at an affordable cost, it creates access to high-quality, high-impact business education for larger numbers of talented people. It fulfills our land-grant mission and serves our state spectacularly well. At the same time, by being fully online, it extends and deepens our reach as a global player — ensuring a worldwide reach for our College and alumni network.”

    In addition to the iMBA, Gies College of Business will focus its investments on a suite of rapidly growing market-driven master’s programs, undergraduate education, and lifelong learning. Gies will seek to expand and add to its line-up of high-quality specialized masters degrees in fields such as accounting, finance, and technology management.

    Gies will also increase investments in its undergraduate programs. Last year, 99% of students were employed, continued their education, or entered volunteer service within three months of graduation. In addition, the College is offering an online business minor, which has experienced remarkable success and currently enrolls about 1,000 students.

    “With how quickly business and technology are changing, lifelong learning is another high-impact, high- growth field,” said Brown. “People need to keep up with business and technology changes in order to build careers and create value. We’ll be right there for them.”

    The College claims that “is honoring its commitment to current and incoming MBA students, ensuring they will have access to the same outstanding faculty, curriculum, action learning experiences, and career advising until they complete their degree. Recognizing that the announcement may impact some students’ decision about whether to attend Gies, the College extended the deadline for refunding deposits from June 3 to July 1 and also offered automatic admission into the iMBA as an option.”

    “The full-time and part-time residential MBA programs are excellent, as are the students and alumni of those programs,” said Brown. “Yet market demand for traditional formats is declining nationwide. Meanwhile, demand, as well as the needs of businesses and individuals, is growing in these other areas. We believe in innovating and staying ahead of trends in business education and on top of the needs of business and society.”

    The Gies College of Business College received a $150 million gift in 2017 from Chicago businessman Larry Gies and his wife, Beth Gies, who graduated there. 

     

    RESOURCES

    • Illinois Gies College of Business: Gies Announces Strategic Shift

    • Forbes: Why Business Schools Are Shutting Down Their MBA Programs

    • IBL News: Master’s Degrees which Can Be Completed Online

    • IBL News: 45 MOOC-Based Master’s Degrees Worldwide

  • What’s Next for Coursera and FutureLearn? Insights Revealed at the EMOOCS Conference

    What’s Next for Coursera and FutureLearn? Insights Revealed at the EMOOCS Conference

    John G. Paul | IBL News

    Coursera, with fourteen MOOC-based degrees in its catalog, is seeing slow progress in this modality. “They are growing slower than we expected,” revealed Dil Sidhu, Chief Content Officer at Coursera, at the EMOOCS 2019 conference, which took place last week at the University of Naples Federico II, in Italy.

    Dil Sidhu, who started his work at Coursera at the beginning of this year, provided during his talk an interesting piece of data: “62 percent of those who take an online degree [in Coursera] started with a MOOC”. “MOOCs are the gateway to online degrees,” he stated. (See the graphic above).

    This executive provided a snapshot of what lies ahead for Coursera: “Inclusion of Behavioral Sciences to help learners succeed. Data analytics to help identify content and learners habits. Help partners succeed (…). Social impact: Coursera for refugees, veterans, and incarcerated populations”.

    During the same session at the University of Naples Federico II, Anant Agarwal, CEO at edX, and Simon Nelson, CEO at FutureLearn, stressed the impact of in-demand MOOCs on up-skilling and re-skilling employees as well as setting up lifelong learning habits.

    Simon Nelson, whose company received a recent investment of $64 million, announced that FutureLearn will invest money in creating high-quality content. So far the three big MOOC providers have not invested in content, relying instead on universities’ and industry partners’ offerings.

    The CEO of FutureLearn also disclosed that his organization is working, along with some other European MOOC providers such as France Universite Numerique (FUN) and Spanish Telefonica’s MiriadaX, in a common microcredential framework, recognized for credit by leading employers. This new credential will be provided after 100 to 150- hour classes. (See the screenshot below).

  • The New Standard LTI 1.3, which Allows Interoperability of Grades and Assignments, Excites the Industry

    The New Standard LTI 1.3, which Allows Interoperability of Grades and Assignments, Excites the Industry

    Mikel Amigot | IBL News (San Diego)

    The new standard of LTI 1.3 and LTI Advantage is here.

    These two open industry standards by IMS Global provide secure connections between learning platforms and the digital edtech ecosystem.

    On May 15, the IMS Global Learning Consortium, specializing in edtech interoperability, announced the availability of Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) version 1.3, a significant update to the core standard, along with three new services that comprise LTI Advantage.

    This technology, which enables interoperability of grades and assignments and other data transfer, was in the center of the conversation of those of us who attended the Learning Impact Leadership Institute this week in San Diego, around six hundred professionals in total.

    There are some early adopter LMS’s and portals achieving IMS certification, including Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, Sakai, Cengage, Tsugi, Kaltura, McGraw-Hill and VitalSource. They were all prominently featured during the conference [see the picture above].

    LTI Advantage, built on LTI 1.3, deep links and enhances the integration by provisioning usernames and roles, and exchanging the assignments and grades.

    During the conference several LTI Advantage bootcamp sessions took place.

    Participants saw demonstrations, were immersed about Caliper Analytics and proctoring specifications, and learned how to migrate LTI 1.x implementations to LTI Advantage.

    LTI has long been the gold standard in interoperability for edtech, enabling secure plug-and-play integration of learning systems.

    Dr. Charles Severance, who invented this tool, told IBL News that LTI 1.3 is making a real difference and LMSs without it could be out of the market.

    Many attendees showed their excitement around the new standards and mentioned the alignment between K12/Higher Education and the industry.

    An example was Terry O’Heron, Director of Operations at Penn State University, who highlighted how LTI and open standards expedited the integration process at his institution, which uses CanvasLMS.

     

     

    [IBL News was one of the three media sponsors of the 2019 Learning Impact Leadership Institute Conference]