by Kirk Kardashian Jul 02, 2020

Each spring, the entire first-year class at Tuck takes a significant step in their MBA journey, going from pure learners to learner-practitioners.

This development happens within the challenging-yet-safe environment of the First-Year Project (FYP), where teams of students work directly with a wide range of organizationsmultinational corporations, early-stage startups, and non-profit and governmental organizations, among otherson a host of real-world business issues of strategic importance.

This year, against the backdrop of a global public health crisis, 56 FYP teams forged ahead through video-conferencing and email communication, showing the resolve, creativity and flexibility of the students and their clients, half of whom are Tuck or Dartmouth alumni.

We could not be more proud of our teams, or more thankful to our client partners, says Becky Rice, the director of the FYP course. Clients stayed with us, even though many were experiencing significant disruption this spring. And teams excelledproviding significant and important insights and solutions. The 2020 FYP was challenging, but will better prepare Tuck students to be global business leaders, managing their organizations through times of ambiguity and adversity.

As usual, the FYPs in 2020 consulted with businesses across the spectrum of the economy. The largest percentage of clients were in the technology sector (18 percent), followed by food and beverage (16 percent), and a three-way tie between apparel/retail, athletics/sports/recreation, and nonprofit (11 percent). Clients also worked in biotech/health care, education, energy, finance, environment, and manufacturing.

Heres a closer look at three 2020 FYPs.

Just as Uber revolutionized the taxicab business by connecting passengers with independent drivers, NEXT is a startup doing something similar for the freight and drayage (trucking) industry. The company, which is based in California, has a digital platform and mobile app that allows truckers to connect with shippers, so the truckers can choose when and where to do deliveries, and also efficiently plan routes and the return of truck chassis. Theyre optimizing their platform so truckers spend less time waiting and can quickly go pickup their containers and do a couple of different runs in a day, explains Matt Ginsberg T21, a member of the NEXT FYP team at Tuck that included Haylle Reidy, Ned Scadden, Hugo Naulot, and Jocelyn Teece.

Currently, NEXT operates out of the Port of Los Angeles and Long Beach, with pilot programs at the Port of New York and New Jersey, but the company is looking to expand. Thats where the FYP came in. AJ Lee T13, the vice president of marketing at NEXT this spring, worked with the Tuck team to develop the key question: which ports should the company pursue next?

I knew, going to Tuck, that I wanted to pivot to more of a strategy-focused role. Taking my previous skillset and applying it to this strategic question was something I had really been looking forward to.

In the first phase of the work, the team examined a range of ports and ranked them based on various factors. With that aggregated scorecard for each port and its components, the team decided on a list that represented the best opportunities. In phase two, the team spoke with a number of third-party port personnel, to fine-tune the analysis and make sure that the situation on the ground lined up with the teams research. That helped the team establish strategies for sequencing and how to go-to-market.

As a legacy industry dealing with logistics, the freight and drayage market is extremely complicated. The team, therefore, had to learn it quickly from the ground up, understand the key challenges, and then shift to a problem-solving mindset. For Ginsberg, who had experience as an economic consultant in the IP field before Tuck, the NEXT project was the perfect opportunity to gain experience at a large startup and hone new skills.

I knew, going to Tuck, that I wanted to pivot to more of a strategy-focused role, he says. Taking my previous skillset and applying it to this strategic question was something I had really been looking forward to.

The International Center of Photography (ICP), based in New York City, is dedicated to the idea of concerned photography: using photographs to educate and change the world. It advances that mission through its museum and archive, exhibitions, education, and programming. Kate Duff D02 joined the organization as chief operating officer in the summer of 2019, and soon after heard from a Tuck alumnus about the FYP course. It immediately made sense to her. I knew that working with Tuck wouldintroduce fresh thinking into the organization and provide a nontraditional way to obtain strategy advice, she says.Plus, as a school ourselves, there is tremendous appeal in encouraging student work from all disciplines, from the creative to the more business-oriented.

During the fall, Duff and the Executive Director of ICP discussed two possible projects: developing a marketing and recruitment strategy for itsin-person,one-year certificate program, or researching whether to expand its online education offerings. They ultimately decided to pitch the second one. By early March, when the project began, that choice proved prescient. The coronavirus pandemic had changed the way people worked and learned, and it was clear than online education would be more appropriate than ever. Still, Duff wasnt assuming it would be a good fit for ICP, so the key question for the Tuck FYP team was this: Should ICP expand its online education program in the next two years? We wanted to explore how to expand our online program, and do it in a way that would allow ICP to preserve its sense of community and brand, Duff says.

The Tuck ICP team consisted of T21s Kate Balderston, Ethan Dobbs, Dylan Guss, Kwabena (KB) Nimo, and Elisabeth Sum. Balderston, an art history major in college, joined the project because she had been a part of the New York City art world and it was a community she wanted to support. The team members came from a variety of backgrounds, but they coalesced under the goal of making this project a learning experience, rather than a chance to polish skills they already had.

Every meeting was structuredand theyserved as trueconsultants for us, framing the problem,distilling therightquestions, and delivering a useful report with competitorbenchmarksand recommendations.

The students established workstreams for surveys, stakeholder interviews, and market research, dividing up the tasks according to the team members interests and experience. Balderston worked on the survey workstream, pairing up with a team member who had done survey analysis before Tuck. She was also the client manager, acting as the liaison between the team and ICP to set up and run meetings and make sure the team-client relationship was strong. For this, Balderston drew on her business development experience at a branding firm prior to Tuck.

During the course of the project, it was clear to Duff that the students work would be extremely helpful to ICP. They were very professional and productive, she says. Every meeting was structuredand theyserved as trueconsultants for us, framing the problem,distilling therightquestions, and delivering a useful report with competitorbenchmarksand recommendations.

Balderston and Dobbs enjoyed the project so much, they decided to keep working for ICP after it ended. Balderston is doing some volunteer work for the organization before her official summer internship begins at another employer, and Dobbs is doing his internship for ICP. This project reminded me how much I do love the art world, Balderston says. It definitely opened my eyes to the business challenges in the arts and non-profits.

Ecolab is a global leader in water, hygiene, and infection prevention solutions and services. Part of its business provides chemicals to oil refineries so their equipment doesnt get contaminated by the various types of crude oil they process. Over the decades in this business, Ecolab has collected data that can predict the stability and risk of mixing crude oils from different locations. The company has baked this data into its proprietary software platform CrudeFlex Digital. The key question for the Tuck FYP was how to best position this platform in the next 12 months.

This project is about one of our most important new products launched last year in our division, says Flora Tian T19, a financial analysis manager at Ecolab who worked with the Tuck team this spring. The team was composed of T21s Travis Fei, Soichiro Ochiai, Tiago Lemos Franciscone da Rosa, Louis Liu, and Henry Zuo.

The team collaborated with Tian and others at Ecolab to divide the main question into four sub-questions: which monetization models to use, how to prepare the organization to operate on this model, how to measure and track the success of the innovation, and what are the potential risks.

Fei chose this project because of its complexity and challenge, and to have a chance to apply lessons from courses such as Management Communications, Client Project Management, and Advanced Management Communications. In those courses Fei learned how to execute a project from end to end, how to present a slide deck, and how to facilitate a meeting with an agenda, among other things. I didnt realize how important those skills are until we put them into practice in the FYP, he says.

He also learned the power of the Tuck network. This project concerned a very technical product in an industry he and his team were not familiar with. But we had a large expertise pool we could draw on, so we interviewed a lot of Tuck alumni who are experts in oil and gas, and digital platforms. They were all very nice and helped us a lot, he says.

Luke Wegner, the vice president of finance for Ecolab Downstream, came away impressed by the teams work. The students only worked on this project for a short two months between their other courses, he says, but they produced so many great insights with many case studies and best practices that our organization can learn from.

See more here:
First-Year Projects Provide Expert-Level Consulting to a Range of Organizations - Tuck School

With schools, preschool centers, and family childcare programs across the state closed in response to COVID-19, public media outlet WGBH in Boston is partnering with theMassachusetts Department of Early Education and Careto launch theFamily Activity Initiative, a series of weekly activity resources featuring a carefully curated collection of videos to watch, free online educational games and apps to play, and non-digital hands-on activities for young children.

Public media outlets across the country are playing an integral role in supporting educators, parents and caregivers with educational resources during these challenging times, said Jon Abbott, president and CEO of WGBH. As parents and caregivers of young children take the lead in supporting their childs learning, we are partnering with the state to make trusted educational resources available for every family across the Commonwealth.

The resources in theFamily Activity Initiativewill be drawn from popular WGBH and PBS KIDS brands, such asArthur(health and emotions),Curious George,PEEP and the Big Wide World, Gracie and Friends,andtheRuff Ruffman Show(STEM) for preschoolers, andMolly of Denali(English Language Arts), andPlum Landing(environmental science). The activities will be highly accessible, require low/no cost, minimal materials or preparation, and will give families reasons to learn and explore indoors and out, offer strategies for talking through fears and anxieties, provide fun games that build math skills and much more. The resources will be offered in both English and Spanish and will be geared toward children from birth to age 8. Both WGBH and partner station WGBY, part of New England Public Media serving western Massachusetts, will help raise awareness about this initiative among families via a variety of social media platforms.

The Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care is proud to partner with WGBH to support parents in continuing early learning during this time, said Early Education and Care Commissioner Samantha Aigner-Treworgy. Families with young children face a particular set of challenges right now. Our goal is to support them with easy-to-use, age-appropriate tools to ensure that our youngest citizens are still learning during this critical period of their lives.

Major funding for theFamily Activity Initiativeis being provided by a generous grant from the PNC Foundation.

TheFamily Activity Initiativeis a shining example of how our state comes together to provide essential support to our communities, in innovative ways, said Jon Bernstein, PNC Bank regional president in Boston. While children and families are home together, it is critical that families have resources and support to create a rich learning environment for their children. We are committed to ensuring all children develop a love oflearning that lasts a lifetime.

Each week, families will be invited to visit the WGBH Distance Learning Center where they can access that weeks activities. Families will be encouraged to complete as many activities as possible during a weeks time and then be eligible to enter a weekly random drawing for prizes that include books as well as gift cards for essential items donated by Walmart and Stop & Shop. The Distance Learning Center will also offer a collection of resources for parents and caregivers of infants and toddlers, including short-form videos, tips and strategies, and developmentally appropriate, easy-to-do activities, drawn from materials developed by WGBH and The Basics.

To reach families that do not have internet access, WGBH will work with theCoordinated Family and Community Engagement (CFCE) grantees, a network of close to 90 programs providing services to some 350 cities and towns throughout the Commonwealth.Each CFCE will distribute theFamily Activitypackets in their community in collaboration with their local community-based partners, such as food pantries, Head Start, drop and go food distribution sites, and shelters.

While there is no shortage of information or online resources, many families are struggling to determine what resources best meet the needs of their child. For families with limited access to the internet, this challenge can be overwhelming, said Seeta Pai, executive director of education at WGBH. TheFamily Activity Initiativeis designed to offer high-quality, turnkey educational activities parents can feel good about and children will enjoy doing.

Earlier this spring, WGBH announced a partnership with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to provide students in grades 6-12 distance learning opportunities on broadcast television (WGBHs WORLD Channel), to complement programming for young children available on the WGBH Kids 24/7 channel. This ensures students learning at home continue to have access to educational programs, regardless of their access to broadband internet.The broadcast programming is in addition to other resources from WGBH Education, includingPBS LearningMedia, a free online service of thousands of compelling educational resources, aligned to state standards and contextualized for educational use in grades PreK-12, and theWGBH Distance Learning Centerwhich makes these PBS LearningMedia resources more accessible to families, as well as educators, to support students PreK-12.

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WGBH Partners With Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care to Launch Family Activity Initiative - Lynn Journal

The restrictions imposed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing people to rely on technology to go about their business while staying indoors.

Be it education, healthcare or other services, technology-driven solutions are coming handy to beat the lockdown blues.

The use of technology is catching up fast among the educational institutions. Considered as an education hub, Tirupati has many institutions of national repute such as the IIT and the IISER, apart from half a dozen of universities.

The trend face-to-face lessons is losing ground as all educational institutions have been closed since months, and the online education has taken it place. No only the big institutions, even schools have taken to the technology route to continue classes.

Many schools are using digital platforms in both offline and online modelive classes or recorded lessons which help the students to learn from the comforts of their homes. The schools are opting for online or offline modes, depending on various factors such as mobility of teachers and internet bandwidth at students location.

However, the online education has its own challenges. Even as online education is inevitable amid the pandemic, concentrating on lessons in this format is difficult for primary level students. The methodology needs to be reinvented to suit the need of the students, says N. Satyanarayana Raju, Director of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavans Sri Venkateswara Vidyalaya.

Parental support, he says, would go a long way in retaining childrens attention on classes in online mode. Even some organisations offering private tuitions have started online classes. The colleges and universities are preferring webinars to seminars.

The healthcare sector is also relying on technology more than before. As the denizens are hesitant to see doctors in the out-patient wings owing to the fears of contracting the infection, doctors are reaching out to patients in the virtual mode.

The technology is playing a vital role in creating awareness on various ailments and preacautionary measures.

Senior physician P. Krishna Prasanthi, who regularly conducts diabetes awareness programmes, has now started live sessions.

Our recent webinar on diabetes self-care evoked a good response. I am now inspired to conduct more such programmes online, says Dr. Prasanthi, who is the former president of IMA, Tirupati.

As a religious centre, Tirupati is also witnessing social and religious organisations conducting online sessions on Bhagavad Gita, Divya Prabandham and slokas.

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Technology comes in handy to beat lockdown blues - The Hindu

With the social inequity in online education coming to the fore due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centre has proposed long-term measures to bridge the divide, including plans to distribute laptops or tablets to 40% of all college and university students over the next five years, and to equip all government schools with information and communication technology.

In a presentation to the Finance Commission on Monday, the School Education department also estimated it would need to spend upto 1 lakh per school for sanitisation and quarantine measures in preparation for the safe reopening of schools that have been shut due to the pandemic. The measures would include ensuring basic water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities, safe drinking water, availability of alcohol rub/sanitiser, disinfectant, cleaning material and equipment for temperature checking.

Opinion | Can online learning replace the school classroom?

Funds for these measures are being provided under the composite grant for schools, ranging between 25,000 for small schools with less than 100 students and 1 lakh for schools with over a thousand students, according to the presentation to the Commision. In order for government schools to be reopened, funds will also be provided for awareness and community mobilisation to sensitise parents, students and local leaders, as well as a sum of 1,000 per teacher to encourage them to function as first-level counsellors, disseminate basic information about COVID-19 and provide digital/online/mobile education.

For the 3.1 lakh government schools above upper primary level who do not have ICT facilities, the Centre proposes a budget of 55,840 crore to equip them with such facilities.

For college and university students, the promotion of online education, which has become more urgent due to the pandemic, will be two-fold. On the one hand, the Human Resource Development Ministry proposes to spend 2,306 crore on developing and translating digital course content and resources over the next five years.

On the other, it intends to provide laptops and tablets to 4.06 crore students that is, 40% of the projected student population by 2026, at a total cost of 60,900 crore. The largest chunk of 1.5 crore students are to receive devices in the next financial year 2021-22. An average cost of 15,000 has been assumed per device. The Centre and States are to share the cost of making devices available, in a 60:40 ratio, according to the presentation to the Finance Commission.

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Centre to focus on online education - The Hindu

Illustration: Rahul Awasthi Education technology companies are seeing unprecedented investor interest as a direct result of the increased digitisation of education amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Online live tutoring platform Vedantu has held talks to close a $100 million financing round, led by US investor Coatue Management, valuing the live online tutoring service at $600 million, multiple people in the know said.

This comes close on the heels of Silicon Valley investor and analyst Mary Meekers Bond Capital backing Byjus at a $10.5 billion valuation. If the investment in Vedantu goes through, its valuation will double from the previous funding round, which was led by Tiger Global and WestBridge Capital last year.

New York-based Coatue is a known technology investor, having backed Uber, Meituan Dianping and Doordash globally, along with bets on Swiggy and Rebel Foods in India.

Illustration: Rahul Awasthi The heightened interest shown by risk investors to pump in fresh funds at steep valuations contrasts with demand cratering at many cash-guzzling Indian consumer internet businesses as their revenues slumped amid the virus outbreak.

A crush of startups have laid off staff and cut salaries as they anticipate funding to dry up due to the wider uncertainty in the economy. The online education space, though, has become a relatively secure bet, investors said.

Finally, Indian VCs have found a sector that has real revenues and high gross margins. The excitement around it is justified, said an investor who has reviewed multiple companies in the segment. However, the valuations are way ahead of reality and are likely to cause some real concerns in future. VCs who manage to sell secondary shares along the way will see good returns, the investor, who did not wish to be named, said.

Though valuations remain high, the fear of missing out has made investors back ed-tech platforms, even as there are expected corrections in later funding rounds.

These businesses are real and will be ok...the valuations will get to a certain level and then stagnate as the next set of investors will demand real Ebitda, the investor added.

Sensing huge opportunity

Vedantu, which recently invested $2 million in online doubt solving platform Instasolv, said the number of subscribers on its platform grew to 1.1 million, with revenues increasing by 80%. The company is hoping Instasolv will help it push further into Tier 3 and Tier 4 cities.

We have seen a 5X growth on our platform every month," a spokesperson for Vedantu said in a statement, without commenting on any likely investment from Coatue. Coatue did not respond to ETs email till press-time Monday.

Illustration: Rahul Awasthi The high subscriber base of companies such as Vedantu is what is attracting a slug of capital into the sector.

Covid-19 has accelerated an already ongoing shift to digital education. The number of ed-tech users has doubled in the last four months and the sector has at least gained a year in its evolution. Eager investors looking for green shoots in an otherwise battered economy are being drawn to ed-tech, which is counter-cyclical in the current climate," said another venture investor, who did not want to be quoted by name as he is not authorised to speak to the media.

The overall K12 segment, or Kindergarten to Class 12, is worth $13 billion and is growing at 10% each year, with ed-tech capturing just 4% of that market with $500 million in revenues, indicating the potential opportunity, Sequoia Capital's Tejeshwi Sharma tweeted recently.

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Coatue in talks to invest around $100M in Vedantu, valuation likely to double to $600M - ETtech.com

Tony Bates says one of the things that will come out of the shift to online learning during the pandemic is a rethinking of that first-year, large lecture class experience.

The pandemic may have forced classes in grade schools and post-secondary institutions online, but we need a bigger shift in teaching methods to create the best learning environment for students, says an expert in online education.

"We have good models from past experience how to teach well fully online, but we don't have those models about what's best done face-to-face and what's best online," said Tony Bates, who is a research associate at Contact North and senior advisor at the G. Raymond Chang School of Continuing Education at Ryerson University.

Bates, who has authored a dozen books on the importance of technology in higher education, explained that educational institutions will have to offer a very clear value proposition for in-person classes, now that the majority of students have had some experience with online learning.

"I think the big question is going to be, 'Why get on the bus and come to campus, what are you offering that's so special that can't be done online?'" he explained.

Bates spoke with Spark host Nora Young about what he thinks the higher education experience will look like when students return to class in September, and how online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic might change how we think of education.

Here is part of their conversation.

What do you think the higher education experience is going to look like for students in Canada this fall?

I suspect it's going to be a lot better in September than it was in the spring for most students.

What's happening now is most institutions are working like mad to get that expertise out to their instructors, to get them better prepared for online instruction. The problem is, most faculty have had no training in online learning. One thing we know is that moving face-to-face teaching online isn't the best way to go. There's all kinds of problems for students, such as cognitive overload, giving the students too much information too quickly. You really have to start redesigning differently, and particularly to enable students to be more active in their learning.

Some have made the argument that what happened at all levels of education during this pandemic was not online learning but emergency remote teaching. So what has to happen in the fall to make the transition to effective online teaching?

I think the real answer is redesign of courses. I think that will come from experience, from instructors learning what doesn't work so well online and what does work online.

I think one of the things that will come out of this in the long run will be a rethinking of that first-year, large lecture class experience. It's going to be very hard to shift that model it's an 800-year-old model. But I think faculty will find that they can use video much better than using it for talking heads, for instance. They can use it to demonstrate things, they can get students to make videos to show how they're applying their learning in real-world situations.

Do you have a sense of what the students want, though? Do they want that blended learning? What I remember from post-secondary is that the social, interpersonal stuff was a hugely important part of not just my social life, but my intellectual development.

I don't see why, in the long run, we shouldn't be able to offer everything, so students can study in any way they wanted. The important thing is the learning outcome should be the same, the exam should be the same, but the students can get there through different routes, different ways of learning.

The demographics are on the side of online learning. We're seeing a flattening at the moment and I think it'll be a decline among the numbers of students coming out of high school, purely for demographic reasons. And we're going to see increased pressure for lifelong learning, because of people changing their jobs frequently. So I think the universities are going to have to restructure somewhat to accommodate these changes in demographics.

Going back sevenor eight years, there was a lot of excitement about MOOCs massive open online courses but the promise of moving everything online kind of fizzled. What did we learn from the MOOC experience in this new situation?

I think the real value of MOOCs is in the informal learning space.

What I think will happen is that we'll have much more thoughtfulness about how we combine online and face-to-face learning for credit-based teaching, so that we get the best of both worlds. And that's not gonna be done through MOOCs, because they don't provide support that learners need to succeed in a full degree program over the three or four years. The numbers are too great to give that individual, personal support.

We're talking about the new "new normal," whether COVID has been an opportunity to fundamentally change some things we take for granted. Could these changes redefine what higher education is?

Yes and no. No, because there is a huge inertia in the system, there's all these structural barriers to radical change. Secondly, there are a lot of good things about, particularly, the university, that I wouldn't like to see change the freedom of inquiry for faculty, the ability of the instructor to be in charge of their own teaching, and so on.

What I do think is needed is much more faculty development, much more training in teaching, and far less emphasis on content presentation. The content is important you gotta know stuff in order to develop a skill but I think we need some changes in the balance between content delivery and skills. Students can get the content online now anywhere. What they need help with is that learner support.

Written by Olsy Sorokina. Interview produced by Kent Hoffman. Q&A has been edited for length and clarity. To hear the full conversation with Tony Bates, click the 'listen' button at the top of the page.

View original post here:
Classes are moving online, but teaching methods still need to catch up, says education expert - CBC.ca

By Katie Lannan

The University of Massachusetts will partner with a California-based university system to scale up its online educational programs with the goal of serving more adult learners, the schools announced Tuesday.

The partnership between UMass Online and Brandman University is expected to be finalized later this year. UMass officials said they are still working through its details.

The move comes amid the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, and UMass officials said millions of adults in Massachusetts and across the country will need flexible, high-quality and affordable online education alternatives as they seek to recover from economic dislocation.

The COVID crisis has actually put quite an emphasis on the need for this, UMass Online CEO Don Kilburn told the News Service. During the recession in 2008, 2009, programs for working adults fully online programs went up significantly, because people were trying to get those skills to get back in a competitive workforce. Now you have the double whammy of people not really wanting to get in their car and head to a campus necessarily.

Kilburn said the partnership will present adult learners both in Massachusetts and across the country with an ability "to actually get a degree in a program that was built for if you're a working adult," accommodating their needs and schedules.

Brandman is based in Irvine, California, and it was established by Chapman University in 1958 to educate active-service military personnel. Kilburn described it as one of the best, if not the best, colleges that is actually geared toward working adults.

Chapman University President Daniele Struppa described the partnership with UMass as "an ideal fit for Brandman's next step."

"Brandman is destined for national prominence as a leader in education for working adults, but it is increasingly clear that Chapman has taken it as far as we can," Struppa said in a statement. "The time has come for Brandman to expand its reach."

The arrangement will strengthen UMass Online's technology platform and support services, according to the university. Kilburn said the partnership does not carry a cost for UMass or the state.

Adults in underserved communities will be a key target group for the new partnership, according to a press release from UMass. The university cited a Strada Network survey that found most American adults 62% are concerned about unemployment, but that percentage is higher among African Americans (68%) and Latinos and Asian Americans (72%).

University of Massachusetts system president Marty Meehan used his 2019 state of the university address to announce plans to create a new online college focused on adult learners.

Quality, affordability and flexibility in higher education are needed more than ever to address the troubling lack of economic mobility, Meehan said in a statement Tuesday. Through this partnership, we will deliver for the citizens of the Commonwealth and for learners across the nation. Given the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the vivid impact of racial inequality, a venture that previously seemed important to us is now nothing less than essential.

The COVID-19 pandemic and associated social distancing requirements forced colleges and universities to move their traditional, in-person classes online to finish the spring semester, and many schools are now looking ahead to incorporate more online and remote learning into their fall plans.

All of us in higher education discovered how important distance learning is when the pandemic made on-campus classes impossible, Katherine Newman, the UMass systems chancellor of academic programs, said in a statement. But to scale up online education, we are going to need to do much more than translate our current curriculum to Zoom. We need to grow an affordable, flexible form of online education.

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University of Massachusetts scaling up online learning, partners with Californias Brandman University on adu - MassLive.com

BOSTON The University of Massachusetts and Chapman University System announced their intent to form an exclusive strategic partnership between UMass Online and Brandman University to expand educational opportunities for adult learners in Massachusetts and across the nation.

This partnership, expected to be finalized later this year, will be launched as millions of adults in Massachusetts and across the U.S. need flexible, high-quality, and affordable online-education alternatives now and as they recover from the economic dislocation caused by COVID-19, which has disproportionately impacted communities of color.

Based in Irvine, Calif., Brandman was established in 1958 by Chapman University, a 159-year-old private institution in Orange, Calif. Originally founded to deliver high-quality education to active-service military, Brandman has evolved into a widely recognized leader in online education, with a strong record of serving veterans and a diverse range of adult learners.

The partnership will augment UMass Online, which now supports more than 25,000 students, strengthening its technology platform and student-support services tailored to adult learners.

As our state and national economies are rapidly shifting, we need to do more for adults who are already in the workplace and those who have been displaced to enhance their current skills and develop new ones, said UMass President Marty Meehan, who first announced plans to scale up online programs for adult learners last year. Quality, affordability, and flexibility in higher education are needed more than ever to address the troubling lack of economic mobility. Through this partnership, we will deliver for the citizens of the Commonwealth and for learners across the nation. Given the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and the vivid impact of racial inequality, a venture that previously seemed important to us is now nothing less than essential.

Meehan recently cited dramatic declines in the number of high-school graduates and employers need for a highly skilled workforce in announcing plans to scale up online programming at UMass. He also cited the troubling lack of economic mobility among African-Americans and Hispanics. The economic disruption caused by COVID-19 has accelerated these challenges, and the need for new online education programs that remove the obstacles adult learners often face is now even more urgent.

A key target group for the partnership will be adult learners in underserved communities. According to a Strada Network survey of 4,000 adults, most Americans (62%) are concerned about unemployment, but African-Americans are moreso (68%), and their Latinx and Asian counterparts are even more worried (72%). The same study indicated that 53% of adult learners prefer online education opportunities.

It is not a simple matter to accommodate adults who have to juggle children, jobs, elder care, and college attendance when the classes we offer are largely available during the work day, said Katherine Newman, chancellor of Academic Programs fior the UMass system. By far the best solution is to be found in rigorous, creative online education. All of us in higher education discovered how important distance learning is when the pandemic made on-campus classes impossible. But to scale up online education, we are going to need to do much more than translate our current curriculum to Zoom. We need to grow an affordable, flexible form of online education.

The rest is here:
UMass to Expand Online Educational Opportunities for Adults - Business West

SINGAPORE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Singapore-based HeyHi, an interactive online educational platform, has chosen Vonage (Nasdaq: VG), a global leader in cloud communications helping businesses accelerate their digital transformation, to power outstanding online classroom learning experiences to schools, learning centers, tuition centers and private tutors in Asia and North America.

HeyHis platform offers a fully interactive whiteboard with unlimited writing space and multiple screens, designed for interactive real-time, online learning. With an easy-to-use interface that simplifies the learning process using video, screen sharing, and instant messaging, it is compatible with any device and suitable for students of all ages.

Vonages Video APIs are embedded within HeyHis web application to facilitate and support its one-to-one online math tutoring platform - iMath as well as other one-to-many online classroom sessions. HeyHi has 10,000 customers, with 100,000 engagements over the last three months.

For the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, HeyHi is offering its online education solutions for free to support teachers, parents and students. With schools and educational institutions closed in most nations, teachers, tutors and students need a robust online educational platform to provide an effective learning environment.

Vonages Communications Services Platform allows developers to easily build innovative communication experiences - from SMS to voice to video and beyond - directly into their existing applications and devices. Embedding the Vonage Video APIs within HeyHis solutions enables enhanced communications between teachers and students.

In light of COVID-19, online educational platforms are more essential than ever. HeyHi provides flexible and uninterrupted educational services for continued learning; high-quality video and screen sharing services are critical to that. Vonages Video APIs can be easily integrated with our web application to deliver enhanced communications among our users, said Yueh Mei, Founder/CEO of HeyHi.

HeyHi is used by teachers in schools, learning centers, tuition centers and private tutors. This includes Singapore-based ProLearn Tuition Centers and KidsExcel, teachers from Ai Tong School and Paya Lebar Methodist Girls School, as well as tutors of Seriously Addictive Mathematics (S.A.M) in Thailand, New Zealand and Canada.

The World Economic Forum says over 1.2 billion children in 186 countries1 have been adversely impacted by school closures during COVID-19. At the same time there has been a significant rise in online learning tools and applications.

The EdTech industry is booming in Asia. Market Research reported that APAC will be the fastest growing region for the Learning Management System market with a CAGR of over 19.75% from 2019-2027.2

"Vonage has been a worldwide leader in webRTC video solutions since the webRTC standard was established in 2012 and Vonages Communications Services Platform is powering the solutions of many of the world's leading educational services, like HeyHi," said Sunny Rao, Vonage Vice President and General Manager for the Asia Pacific region. We are delighted to support HeyHis educational services across Singapore, United States, Canada, Vietnam and Thailand. We recognize the immediate need for agile online educational platforms such as HeyHi that support home-based learning, benefiting both students and teachers.

Vonages Communications Services Platform has more than one million registered developers and offers a full suite of programmable voice, video, messaging, and email services to forward-thinking businesses throughout the Asia-Pacific market and worldwide. Through its partners, Vonages platform is at the center of many notable transformational projects in the region, and a de facto for startups.

To find out more about Vonage, visit http://www.vonage.com.

###

About Vonage

Vonage, (Nasdaq: VG) a global cloud communications leader, helps businesses accelerate their digital transformation. Vonage's Communications Services Platform is fully programmable and allows for the integration of Video, Voice, Chat, Messaging and Verification into existing products, workflows and systems. Vonage's fully programmable unified communications and contact center applications are built from the Vonage platform and enable companies to transform how they communicate and operate from the office or anywhere, providing enormous flexibility and ensuring business continuity.

Vonage Holdings Corp. is headquartered in New Jersey, with offices throughout the United States, Europe, Israel, Australia and Asia. To follow Vonage on Twitter, please visit http://www.twitter.com/vonage. To become a fan on Facebook, go to facebook.com/vonage. To subscribe on YouTube, visit youtube.com/vonage.

About HeyHi

HeyHi empowers online teaching with video conferencing for live communications and a powerful interactive whiteboard for collaboration. Communication and collaboration bring about engaged and meaningful learning in a live online environment. It is designed with deep pedagogy in mind by a team who collectively has more than 25 years of experience in teaching, curriculum planning, assessment and educational policy, and supported by a highly-skilled and rigorous tech team. Together, their passion to bring affordable and accessible education through live-online teaching propels the team to continuously iterate and make HeyHi better each day.

Visit HeyHi at http://www.heyhi.sg or follow HeyHi Facebook group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/639168979993925/) for latest updates and features.

1tps://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/04/coronavirus-education-global-covid19-online-digital-learning/

2tps://www.marketresearch.com/Inkwood-Research-v4104/Asia-Pacific-Learning-Management-System-12289424/

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HeyHi Selects Vonage to Power Global Online Education Platform - Business Wire

During the coronavirus pandemic, online learning came to the forefront for students of all ages.

While grammar schools, intermediate schools and high schools wont move to the web platform, colleges across the country realize they have to offer remote classes to stay competitive.

One online learning school called Coursera.org has been specializing in online education for years.

Coursera is a world-wide online learning platform founded in 2012 by Stanford professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller that offers massive open online courses, specializations and degrees.

Its not just another of the worlds run-of-the-mill online colleges. You will specialize in a particular field of your choice and once you graduate you will be ready to take on the world.

Right now, you can sign up for free and see what Coursera has to offer.

Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, specializations, and degrees in a variety of subjects, such as engineering, data science, machine learning, mathematics, business, computer science, digital marketing, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences and others.

And you can get a certified degree in a lot less time it takes at traditional colleges and universities.

According to Wikipedia, courses last approximately 4 to 10 weeks, with one to two hours of video lectures a week.

These courses provide quizzes, weekly exercises, peer-graded assignments, and sometimes a final project or exam. Courses are also provided on-demand, in which case users can take their time in completing the course with all of the material available at once. As of May 2015, Coursera offered 104 on-demand courses.

As of 2017, Coursera offered full masters degrees.

The cost you might ask? Well, you wont have to break the bank, compared to some traditional colleges and universities.

Coursera offers some free courses, but the cost of individual courses which last 4 to 6 weeks range in price from $29 to $99.

Specialized programs, which can last 4-6 months, are $39-$79 per month.

An online degree, which can take 1-3 years can range from $15,000 to $25,000, a steep discount from what private colleges and universities charge.

Click here to register now for free and explore all Coursera has to offer.

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Online learning is in and Coursera has been doing it for years with affordable college degrees - SILive.com