The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awards grants to individuals and groups committed to fixing “inefficiencies” in higher education rather than hoping for change by throwing new gadgets at the problem. Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, talks about his vision for using technology to transform colleges and universities in these videos from The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Pundits have generally been positive about the new Microsoft Surface, but a new report from the ad network firm Chitika says the Apple iPad is still the king of the hill by a wide margin when it comes to Internet traffic. The firm’s new study shows that 91% of media tablet web traffic comes from iPad users, although it dropped more than three percentage points from a similar study the firm conducted in May.
The data for the survey comes from impressions on the Chitika ad network from June 4-10, 2012. Because the Apple totals were so large, the firm compared other devices to 100 iPad impressions and found the Samsung Galaxy was a distant second at 1.94% of the web traffic. The Barnes & Noble Nook was fifth overall, accounting for 0.85% of the traffic, a performance that allowed it to move ahead of the Amazon Kindle Fire.
However, Chitika predicts the share of web traffic will continue to decline for Apple as more devices, such as the Surface, come to market, just as it did in the smartphone market.
“The Apple iPhone started out as a highly differentiated product, yet over time, its competitors such as Motorola and Samsung using the Android OS have begun to eat away at their market share,” the ad firm told The Mac Observer. “Even though (Apple) still remains dominant, the disparity is not the same as it used to be and we believe the tablet market will follow a similar trend.”
At the same time, the OnCampus Research study, Student Watch 2012: Student Attitudes and Perceptions, reports that just 17% of the students it has surveyed even own a dedicated e-reading device and that 62% say they have no plans to buy one any time soon.
University powerhouses Harvard and MIT stirred the educational pot recently with the announcement of edX, a collaboration offering online courses from both schools at no charge (and with no credit). But another open-source course site opened last week with a lot less fanfare.
After about a year of beta testing, the National Training and Education Resource(NTER) was launched by the U.S. Department of Energy to offer web-based, interactive courses, completely free. While individuals can go directly to the site to take the self-paced courses, schools and instructors are welcome to use entire courses or selected portions, either alone or in customized mixes with other educational content, again at no charge. NTER even provides free authoring tools to aid instructors.
Right now the 28 courses are mostly on topics related to weatherization and insulation installation, and are intended as either supplementary training for people already working in energy and construction, or for students hoping to enter those fields.
Clearly, NTER’s offerings are hardly on a par with MIT and Harvard, yet its focus on specific training—with 3-D simulations and built-in performance assessments—may provide a useful model for applied higher education. Ultimately, NTER officials envision thousands of free online courses on topics in science, mathematics, engineering, and manufacturing industries.
Last January, an e-textbook pilot program was launched on five university campuses aimed at providing each with ways to access digital course materials and negotiate volume pricing deals designed to reduce costs to students and pay authors and publishers fairly. That program is now being expanded to at least 25 additional schools for the fall 2012 semester.
Through the pilot, each institution subsidizes the cost of the digital course materials, which are provided to students at no cost, with a print-on-demand version available for a $28 fee. The participating courses use McGraw-Hill Education e-books and digital learning materials, along with the Courseload reader and annotation software.
The program has also, in some cases, excluded the college store from the textbook equation.
“When students don’t need to shop at our stores for their books, they certainly don’t need us for school supplies and other items,” wrote Jon Kates, executive director of the University of Virginia Bookstores and Cavalier Computers, in the For What It’s Worth column in the March/April 2012 edition of The College Store magazine.
UVA was one of the first schools to take part in the pilot and will continue to look at the program this fall, so Kates has had a firsthand look at the program. He’s also being proactive and listed in the column a variety of ways his store is working to remain relevant on campus.
“This program/model is really about institutional licensing,” said Mark Nelson, chief information officer of the NACS and vice president of NACS Media Solutions. “There are a lot of challenges and shortcomings of institutional licensing models, but unless stores understand those better, it will be difficult for the industry to speak with sufficient credibility on the topic. Stores should work to get involved.”
Microsoft’s Surface tablet generated plenty of buzz, but it remains to be seen whether it will sink or swim. A good portion of the attention has centered on the Surface’s ability to compete with the Apple iPad. It seems as if every new device introduced is immediately proclaimed the iPad killer, and the new Microsoft gadget is no exception.
However, the Surface does appear to be a serious contender, with a neat smartcover that features a keyboard included in the purchase price. The device will also run the new Windows 8 operating system, which should attract many business clients already using the system in their office. In addition, the Surface has USB and micro-HDNI ports and a micro-SD card expansion slot, items critics have long wanted Apple to include.
The reviews have been generally positive, but questions remain. The tech press didn’t get a chance to test the new device and Microsoft was silent—perhaps intentionally so—on the availability of apps. The firm also failed to mention how much the Surface will cost, which is the biggest question yet to be answered.
In this video, Greg Harper, president and founder of Harpervision Associates Inc., talks to The Washington Post about how the Surface stacks up against the iPad.
Chegg, the Silicon Valley textbook rental company, started as an on-campus classified service listing everything from electronics to kung fu lessons to hamster sitting. But its most popular category was buying and selling textbooks.
The company founders noticed that and decided to try an experimental rental web site offering 2,000 textbooks to its users. It proved to be such a great success that now Chegg rents millions of textbooks each year and employs 150 people.
“We had raised $3 million and we had hired a great team and we were sitting on a problem that was still unsolved,” said founder Aayush Phumbhra in this FastCompany video series called “The Pivot” which looks at decisions that helped companies turn into successes. “The cost of textbooks was still very expensive and the market was just waiting to be disrupted.”
The message should be a powerful lesson for those in the textbook industry in general and collegiate retailers in particular, according to Mark Nelson, chief information officer of the National Association of College Stores and vice president of NACS Media Solutions.
“I think the idea behind how they recognized an opportunity and unmet need provides interesting insight into the minds of entrepreneurs and the types of folks who are trying to disrupt our industry,” he said. “Whether stores like it or not, our industry is viewed as one that is ‘ripe for disruption’ and we need to learn to think like these guys.”
Competency-based degree programs have been the domain of schools such as Western Governors University and for-profit online institutions. Now, the University of Wisconsin has entered the arena, launching the UW Flexible Degree, becoming the first publicly funded college to offer students such a program.
“We know now which features and benefits many adult students want,” UW Chancellor Ray Cross told eCampus News. “Our goal is to address these needs in a new way, but we can only achieve that goal by efficiently leveraging all the UW System’s resources in a truly collaborative fashion.”
The online program will allow students to take classes at their own pace and save money by cutting down on the time it takes to earn a degree. The program will focus on health care, manufacturing and engineering, and information technology and systems and offer associate, bachelor, and master degrees.
Coursework and assessment is supervised by UW faculty and academic staff. Students are able to earn college credit for knowledge already gained through the workplace or life experiences.
“What we are saying is, ‘I don’t care where you learn it. Can you prove it?’” Cross said. The pricing model is still under review and could include a per-course charge or a flat fee for six months that would allow students to complete as many classes as they are able.
The competency-based model should also provide incentive for the nearly 20% of Wisconsin residents who already have some postsecondary course credit to return to school. It is aimed at nontraditional students and individuals who are working while attending classes.
In addition, the office of the governor of Wisconsin has provided an online pamphlet describing the program in more detail.
