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Instructure is officially a publicly-traded company—again. Officials from the company, which makes the Canvas learning-management system used at many colleges and schools, rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange today, marking its IPO. It’s a return of the INST ticker symbol for the company, which first went public in 2015, but then … Read more
After a challenging and unique year of emergency remote learning, I recently spoke with a group of faculty members new to online teaching to learn more about their experiences. While no two educators ever face identical challenges, I heard the same refrains over and over. The first won’t come as a surprise to anyone: The … Read more
The pandemic inspired some professors to get creative in their teaching as they tried to move in-person courses online in engaging ways. At Stanford University, a popular large-lecture course used a giant video wall to let professors see as many of the course’s 250 students at once as possible and try to read the virtual … Read more
It’s not surprising that most higher education articles published since March 2020 begin by calling to mind that year’s unprecedented move to remote instruction and online learning—and with good reason. The world changed rapidly, and students and instructors adopted new tools and methods to pivot to online instruction virtually, and sometimes literally, overnight. As teaching … Read more
Let’s not do that again. Ask any university student, professor or administrator: no one wants to relive the past academic year. But probe a bit deeper, and exactly what they don’t want to repeat differs in subtle but important ways. And that means the challenge for higher ed administrators will be to put together campus … Read more
It was 2012, and online learning was suddenly booming. Courses at Stanford and at MIT were opened for free online to the masses, and the masses signed up—with some courses attracting more than 160,000 each. Amidst the hype, two competing entities were formed within a few weeks of each other: One of them was Coursera, … Read more
As the pandemic wanes, a chorus of commentators are offering predictions about what mark it will leave on higher education—with some forecasting colleges collapsing and others seeing increasing alliances with commercial partners. Most anticipate the growing centrality of online learning in university life. As a longtime proponent of online higher education, I thought I’d take … Read more
Spotty internet service makes remote learning hard for many college students. So does lacking reliable access to a computer. But even students who do have Wi-Fi and digital devices for schoolwork may not be able to fully participate in their courses if the technology they have is old, outdated or not powerful enough to handle … Read more
Just as the pandemic is loosening its grip and schools and colleges move back to in-person classes, new startups are offering video platforms they say do a better job for teaching than Zoom or other mass-market systems. One of the latest entrants is Engageli (pronounced, “engage-ly”), which a few months ago scored $14.5 million in … Read more
