In 2018, the high-school graduation rate in Newburgh, New York, climbed to 78 percent, up from 66 percent just five years earlier. It was happy news for the tough-minded city about an hours drive north of Manhattan, known more in recent decades for its high rates of violent crime than the stately homes that line its parks and thoroughfares. About two thirds of the school districts 12,000 students are from low-income families, and nearly one in six are English language learners. Connecting more students to diplomas and productive postsecondary work or study was a critical goal for the district and the city as a whole.

Central to this success was Newburghs use of online credit-recovery classes.

For decades, high-school students who failed a required class were presented with two unappealing options: either repeat the course next year or during summer school. But in recent years, online credit recovery has emerged as a third way. Students who fail a course can enroll in a computer-based version of the class without waiting, quickly progress through required material, earn the missing credits, and, in some cases, improve their grade-point average. When implemented well, online credit-recovery classes can be a lifeline to struggling students, providing personalized learning experiences and a path to graduation. But these classes also may be vulnerable to abusenot only by students keen to post a positive outcome, but also by schools and districts eager to raise high-school graduation rates.

That was apparently the case in Newburgh, where an investigation by the local district attorneys office uncovered myriad abuses by educators that artificially inflated student performance, including changing grades, giving students unlimited opportunities to take identical tests and quizzes, and awarding credits to students who did not actually attend class. In response, the district has stopped offering online credit-recovery classes and launched its own investigation into the practice.

However, we understand instructional technology is not going anywhere, Superintendent Roberto Padilla recently said during a local school-board meeting. We need to give students opportunities, not take them away, but we need to partner with organizations that meet our needs. Well be looking for programs that provide tighter structures.

What actually happens during online credit-recovery courses? A look at recent headlines reveals reasons for concern. The flexibility of online credit-recovery programs can help educators meet students diverse needs, but it may also hamper efforts to ensure that coursework is rigorous. That may undermine students longer-term success.

An enticing solution

Between 2011 and 2017, the U.S. graduation rate rose to an all-time high of 85 percent from 79 percent. During that same period, average math and reading test scores on college-entrance exams and the National Assessment of Educational Progress remained flat. If more U.S. students are graduating but these same students on average are not showing increased academic achievement, something else must explain the phenomenon. Either the bar to graduate high school has been lowered, or schools are providing more supports in order to help more students meet the standard. How does the rapid rise of online credit-recovery programs fit into the picture?

The concept of credit recovery is not new: high-school students have long had the opportunity to retake a failed course. But in length and format, those makeup classes werent dramatically different from the initial course. That has changed in the past decade, as online programs taught with varying levels of adult supervision have proliferated and, in many cases, replaced the traditional model of credit recovery.

That change is largely attributable to the confluence of two forces, said John Watson, the founder of Evergreen Education Group, an education research and consulting company focused on digital learning. First, federal legislation starting with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 set clear incentives for high schools to boost graduation rates, because they faced punishing consequences if their rates were too low. In allowing struggling students to quickly make up courses, online credit recovery emerged as one enticing tool to keep more students on the path to graduation. Current law under the Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015 established some flexibility on that measure but also requires intervention at schools with graduation rates below 67 percent. The pressure to improve graduation rates seems unlikely to lessen anytime soon.

Second, through programs like the ConnectED initiative, federal agencies and private companies made a multibillion-dollar investment to improve broadband access and technology in schools and libraries nationwide. A vast and lucrative education-technology market emerged, offering digital products and programs that promised to provide students with more personalized instruction. At the same time, educators were exploring new types of lessons that did the same, trading top-down, lockstep curricula for more flexible models that could meet the changing needs of individual students from day to day.

Online credit-recovery programs have ridden the crest of all these trends, combining personalized learning and digital tools in response to a nationwide call to increase high-school graduation rates. Today, some 89 percent of high schools nationwide offer at least one credit-recovery course, and as many as 15 percent of all students take such a class, according to a U.S. Department of Education survey of school leaders in the 201415 school year.Such coursework is more prevalent at schools serving larger numbers of low-income students than those in wealthier communities (see Figure 1). The formats of those courses differ: 71 percent of schools offer courses online, 46 percent support blended courses that combine direct instruction with online work, and 42 percent provide traditional in-person classroom instruction.

The horse is out of the barn

Despite the widespread use of credit-recovery programs, remarkably little is known about how schools adopt and implement them and whether students are actually benefiting from their use. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Educations Institute of Education Sciences conducted a research review but was unable to draw any research-based conclusions about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of credit recovery programs. In the 2019 Building a Grad Nation report, researchers from Civic and the Johns Hopkins School of Education wrote that given the lack of comprehensive knowledge on the rigor of the most widely adopted credit recovery programs, it is difficult to understand the true impact of these courses.

Among researchers greatest concerns is that online credit-recovery courses lack rigor and are easy for students or educators to exploit. We dont know a lot about the rigor and what we do know seems to indicate that the rigor isnt all that stringent, said Matthew Atwell, a researcher at Civic who coauthored the report.

In a recent study, researchers Carolyn J. Heinrich and Jennifer Darling-Aduana examined online courses in the Milwaukee Public Schools. They found that by the 201617 school year, 40 percent of graduating seniors had completed at least one online course, the majority of which were taken for the purpose of credit recovery. The study found positive effects for online students on the number of credits earned and whether they graduated high school and enrolled in college. However, in a related study, they found mostly negative associations between online course taking and students math and reading test scores. The results suggest that on average, online course-taking is not . . . reflecting real learning, and some students may even be set back in their learning, the authors wrote.

Through classroom observations and interviews with students and teachers, the study uncovered several potential explanations for the uneven learning gains, such as disengaged students using Google to copy and paste answers to assignments and limited interaction between students and teachers. If the students were already struggling in a traditional classroom, most likely theyre going to need more help, not less, Heinrich said in an interview.

A 2016 study by the American Institutes for Research compared student performance in online and in-person credit-recovery classes for Algebra I among a group of 1,200 high-school freshmen in Chicago. Two thirds of online students passed the class, compared to three quarters of in-person students. Online students also were more likely to describe the course as difficult and scored lower on an end-of-course test than students assigned to a traditional face-to-face classroom. However, their longer-term outcomes were similar: they earned comparable grades in subsequent math classes, and about 47 percent of students from each group earned their diplomas on time.

For most kids that fail courses, who are probably at risk in a number of different ways . . . an online course, in the absence of really phenomenal technological advances, is probably not enough to help them regain content that they havent gotten, Jessica Heppen, the studys lead author, said in an interview. So I do have a lot of concerns about the widespread use of online courses for credit recovery with so many unanswered questions.

Still, Heppen acknowledged that online credit recovery, now used in most high schools, is unlikely to go away soon. I always say, the horse is out of the barn. This is happening anyway and so I dont think theres a way to kind of pull back on it, but I do think it makes sense to exercise some caution and to think about individual kids and their needs.

Edgenuitys website touts a graduation rate that nearly quadrupled at Dearborn Magnet High School but fails to mention that the school graduates fewer than 10 students a year.

A booming market

Most online credit-recovery courses are developed, maintained, and sold to districts by private for-profit companies. Two of the largest vendors are Apex Learning, which is used in nearly 2,000 school districts, and Edgenuity, in 8 of the nations 10 largest districts. Districts typically pay about $250 for each student who accesses the online courses, though costs vary significantly among vendors based on the size of the district.

The process by which districts vet potential providers of online courses varies. In some cases, districts form committees to review the online courses. In other instances, the process is much less formal. For example, Houston Independent School District had several students from across the district try out different courses across different platforms, said Maria Bonilla, the districts virtual-instruction program manager. The students selected Apex as the one they preferred over the other ones.

Other districts essentially take a trial-and-error approach, contracting with a company until concerns about rigor, quality, or cost prompt them to go shopping for a new provider. In Memphis, Tennessee, Shelby County Schools has gone through three or four vendors since 2008, according to Vinson Thompson, the director of online learning.

Such informality extends to the regulatory level as well: on the whole, state leaders have set few standards for online credit-recovery companies to meet. An analysis last year from the Education Commission of the States found that relatively few states have adopted state-level credit-recovery policies, including definitions of and mechanisms for regulating credit recovery. And a Slate investigation in 2017 found that while many state education departments have started to review online education providers, few bar districts from using companies that dont meet their standards.

With minimal state guidelines and a limited research base, many districts choosing among online course providers are left to rely on the information provided by the companies themselves. That can be a problem for districts that dont know what to look for, said Christine Voelker, the K12 program director for Quality Matters, a nonprofit organization that reviews online courses.

There are providers who have marketing teams and theyre good at what they do, she said. They might have flashy content, and things that will wow you and things that are very much eye candy. If youre not knowledgeable about what you are looking for, youre going to fall into that trap of saying, this is a really cool-looking course, but it might not be hitting those learning objectives that you want your students to hit.

Indeed, reviewing some of the vendors marketing materials reveals claims that, at best, lack context, and at worst, appear designed to mislead. One promotional video on Edgenuitys website touts a graduation rate that nearly quadrupled at Dearborn Magnet High School in Michigan in the four years that its courses were implemented. Not mentioned is the fact that Dearborn Magnet is a small alternative school that graduates fewer than 10 students each year. Or that the graduation rate has since swung wildly up and down even as the school continues to use Edgenuity.

For that particular school, that was something to celebrate, said Deborah Rayow, a vice president of Edgenuity, when asked about Dearborn Magnet. While the companys website does feature independent research studies of some of its other digital products, those focused on its credit-recovery programs were conducted internally and often provide little explanation of methodology.

A grand-jury investigation focused on the Newburgh Free Academy found systemic failure, including grade changing and manipulation of attendance records.

Implementation matters

The vendor chosen by school districts is just one of several factors that affect students experiences in online credit-recovery courses. How teachers interact with and support online credit-recovery courses has major effects on student success, as do district and state policies that dictate the grading and oversight of such classes.

Indeed, the resources that schools put in place to support online learning may have a much greater impact on students success than the particular vendor a school chooses. For starters, teachers need technical training on how to use the online platform. They need to have strategies to keep kids engaged and ensure students are actually doing the work instead of using an Internet search engine to look up and copy the answers. And schools need to keep class sizes manageable so that teachers can provide individualized feedback and support. In the Milwaukee study, for example, researchers observed teachers struggling to manage large groups of students, saw scant substantive interaction between teachers and students, and noted that students were frequently distracted by their cell phones or other websites.

John Watson of the Evergreen Education Group said in most cases, the biggest determining factor is the quality of the student-teacher relationship.

There is also tremendous variation in what district and state credit-recovery policies, standards, and regulations look likeif they exist at all. That makes it nearly impossible to know just what instruction looks like in practice from high school to high school. Some programs are condensed face-to-face classes, others are completely online, and still others are blended, in which students work in a computer lab with support from a certified teacher. In some districts, courses are graded on a pass/fail basis, while in others students can earn scores up to 100 percent. Some districts cap the number of credit-recovery courses a student can time at one time, while others dont. Some districts require students take paper-and-pencil assessments proctored by a teacher, while others allow testing to be completed at home on a computer.Some online classes are used to make up parts of a course, while others are designed as a wholesale replacement.

This variation is by design. One of the main appeals of credit-recovery programs is their flexibility and adaptability. Particularly when using online platforms, students can move through the course at their own pace and can skip large sections if they do well enough on a pre-assessment. Teachers and administrators are typically given wide latitude in deciding, for example, how many attempts students are given to pass a quiz and what score is needed to pass.

But this key strength can present a vulnerability. Credit recovery, including online programs, has been at the center of several scandals in recent years.

In Newburgh, a former teacher and coach lodged complaints with the local district attorneys office and state education department in 2017, alleging massive problems with chronic absenteeism and manipulation of student-athlete records at the districts high school, the Newburgh Free Academy. A resultant investigation culminated in a damning 89-page report by a grand jury that a local judge released to the public in April 2019, detailing major misuse by district staff of two software programs: Apex, the online credit-recovery course software, and Infinite Campus, which was used to track attendance.

In precise detail, the report documented the ways teachers and administrators at district high schools misused the Apex credit-recovery software to boost graduation rates artificially. The grand jury found that between 2016 and 2018, dozens of teachers overseeing the program made a total of more than 1,000 grade overrides to scored assessments. One teacher had altered students grades 325 times and some grades had been changed nearly five months after a test was taken. Students were allowed an unlimited number of opportunities to retake tests and quizzes. In a large number of cases, students had completed the online courses in an unusually short amount of time: one student completed the course in 18 minutes. And dozens of students earned course credit despite not meeting attendance requirements.

By design, Apex can be customized by educators, just as they customize traditional classroom instruction to fit student needs, according to Apex Learnings chief executive officer, Cheryl Vedoe. She said that almost every feature of an online program can be turned on or off by the course administrator.

When theyre teaching the traditional material, teachers every day make those judgment calls, when theyre grading student work and theyre giving students the opportunity to make things up, she said. You know, teachers as professionals do that every day with a more traditional curriculum.

The Newburgh report, however, stated that testimony from teachers revealed blind administration of a program of learning that ultimately served as a disservice to the students most in need of it . . . but which nonetheless serve the Newburgh Free Academys interests in increased graduation rates. The motivation to continue to operate the program in such a way is therefore clear.

A spokesperson for the Newburgh school district declined to comment for this story, citing an ongoing investigation by the New York State Education Department. But the district has shared details of its response through public meetings, including a detailed presentation in April that notes it suspended its use of Apex and is designing a second chance evening school for students who need credit-recovery options.

So much we dont know

Its important not to conflate the abuse of credit recovery that occurred in Newburgh with well-intentioned efforts that may or may not actually help students. But the Newburgh example demonstrates the many ways online credit-recovery programs may function without academic integrity and ultimately undermine, rather than support, learning.

In recent years, dispatches from North Carolina, Florida, San Diego, and Washington, D.C.to name a fewhave described programs operated with little oversight and few safeguards to ensure students are being properly graded and awarded credit. Some states are starting to take action: the North Carolina State Board of Education, for example, is requiring all districts to develop clear policies for credit recovery.

Tougher still is the question of academic quality. The proliferation of online credit recovery is a logical development given the incentives that are baked in to current education policies. The era of accountability that No Child Left Behind ushered inand that the Every Student Succeeds Act has continued to a lesser extentplaced tremendous pressure on districts to raise graduation rates, or face consequences. At the same time, states have mostly failed to put in place the kind of oversight and regulations that would ensure rigor and quality are not sacrificed in the pursuit of higher graduation rates. The result is that states are incentivizing districts to boost graduation rates while placing a great deal of trust in districts and private vendors to preserve rigor and quality in the process.

There are potential tools to ensure rigor that states and districts could explore. Three states, for example, require students to pass an objective, external exam to recover credit for a course: Georgia, Louisiana, and New York. But most leave it to districts to set policies around vetting, adopting, and implementing credit-recovery courses.

States also could expand their use of end-of-course exams, which require students to show they have mastered certain knowledge and skills in required subjects. While far from universal, such exams have been used in 32 states and the District of Columbia since they first appeared in the 1990s, and are intended to serve as an external yardstick for specific coursework, helping to set and uphold academic standards.

An August 2019 study by Adam Tyner and Matthew Larsen found end-of-course exams generally positively correlated with high-school graduation rates. The exams can be deployed without stakes but with their results publicly reported so as to tamp down on grade inflation or abuse of credit-recovery programs, the authors wrote.

Its likely that many school districts are using credit recovery thoughtfully, with the necessary supports and resources in place to maximize student success and hold students accountable for their learning. But without additional information about how these programs are being adopted and implemented, theres just so much we dont know, Atwell, the Civic researcher, said.

As for the software companies, they say theres only so much they can do. Edgenuity and other vendors cant dictate the use of their materials any more than a publisher of a textbook could, said Rayow.

I think anyone who has been in school has been in classes where textbooks were used for good and where textbooks were used for not so good, she said. The same is true for digital education.

David Loewenberg is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.

Read more from the original source:
A Digital Path to a Diploma: Online credit-recovery classes are a lifelineand ripe for abuse - Education Next - EducationNext

GLOBAL

With the advent of the internet, the prospect of offering interactive educational online experiences started to be explored and, by the 1980s, the earliest virtual learning environments started to emerge. Moving forward to now, enrolments in online courses continue to grow by around 35% per annum as more and more higher education institutions deliver online degrees.

Industry and business also see the value in using online learning for training purposes and the online corporate market is experiencing healthy growth, which is expected to continue to grow by about 15% per year. Constant re-training and upskilling is essential in todays competitive marketplace.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges associated with online education is assuring parents, employers and students that the quality of what learners receive is just as good as that delivered in face-to-face mode. That challenge of course, is often compounded by the quality of what is actually offered and the ad hoc nature in which online education companies have sprung up.

What some of them are producing is very questionable and this affects more broadly how online learning is perceived.

While the stigma that was attached to online education in some countries and by some employers has almost disappeared and it is now largely accepted as being as credible as traditional face-to-face delivered degrees, there are still pockets of scepticism about the use of technologies in learning and the absence of a campus experience.

Earlier adopters such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom generally tend to view online degrees as being as good as those delivered face-to-face and thousands of students in those countries study online from undergraduate up to doctoral level. The trend universities in those locations are seeing is that more and more students are taking at least one course via online mode.

Todays reality is that students have to work to support themselves through university and the flexibility and convenience online offers is a huge bonus.

Education for all

Online learning options have made education more accessible and have gone some way to helping achieve the goal of education for all. Students can study from (almost) anywhere, at times that suit them and at their own pace. It also provides an amazing, sometimes overlooked opportunity of connecting students from different countries and cultures.

Still, it is important to acknowledge that learning via online delivery is not necessarily for everyone some students are better suited to face-to-face. Online demands, inter alia, student autonomy, self-direction and good time management.

Some students need the social, physical interaction with other students and with instructors. In the online learning environment, the teacher and learner are separated and how this is treated drives the success or failure of online learning.

There are many stakeholders in the online learning environment. These include the institutions that offer online education, the staff who teach the courses, the students enrolled in online study, the parents paying their childs fees, the prospective employers of graduates from online courses, the ministry or government and the broader society.

First and foremost, all these stakeholders want the online courses to meet certain standards, be quality assured and accredited and so be recognised nationally and internationally. It means having in place a supportive governmental policy environment.

Institutions that deliver online should have clearly spelt out quality assurance mechanisms in place for staff and students and make sure these are implemented. Staff who develop and deliver online must be appropriately qualified and supported professionally. Adequate resourcing and investment in technology that works must be available.

Lastly and just as importantly, there must be a guarantee that learners have access to support right through their learning journey, from admission up to graduation. The key is to develop ways for online students to feel as if they belong, they are connected, they can develop relationships even if they are virtual.

To support this, instructors need to proactively engage with students, get to know them and maintain contact throughout their study, as well as incorporate methods to motivate and encourage them and foster student to student contact also. Unresponsive instructors are a significant factor in students not continuing with their online studies.

An interconnected support scheme

The whole process can be summed up as an interconnected support scheme where the students do the learning, the instructor provides the learning materials and supports the students learning process, the higher education institution makes available the infrastructure and systems for the instructors delivering the courses to the students and the ministry authority or government that oversees the accreditation of academic programmes provides an appropriate policy environment for all stakeholders engaged in online education.

Technology has brought great advantages to the online teaching-learning environment. It has changed how we do teaching and learning and opened up the world of learning and opportunity to those who would not have had such opportunity without it.

However, for online education to be successful there has to be commitment and support by governments, institutions, academics and learners. An absolute necessity is providing quality education. That means well-resourced institutions, well-qualified and motivated staff, good and continuous quality assurance mechanisms and supportive leadership.

Nita Temmerman (PhD) is a former university pro vice-chancellor (academic) and executive dean of the faculty of education at the University of Southern Queensland, Australia. She is currently visiting professor to Ho Chi Minh City Open University and Papua New Guinea University of Technology, academic reviewer at the University of Queensland, Australia, as well as invited specialist with the Hong Kong Council for Accreditation of Academic and Vocational Qualifications, invited external reviewer with Oman Academic Accreditation Authority, and a published author.

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The quality of online higher education must be assured - University World News

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, U.S. The Grain Elevator and Processing Society (GEAPS) and Kansas State University (KSU) are offering online courses focusing on inspections, quality management systems, maintenance, safety and flour milling. The five courses will run from Oct. 29 through Dec. 3, and registration closes Oct. 23.

The GEAPS 522: FGIS Grain Inspection Orientation was developed by the U.S. Department of Agricultures Federal Grain Inspection Service in conjunction with GEAPS and KSU. It introduces the basics of grain inspections, provides a history of inspection and an overview of general techniques.

In the GEAPS 530: Quality Management Systems for Bulk Materials Handling Operations participants learn about quality management systems and how to use them in agricultural storage environments. This course provides strategies for integrating systems into normal business activities and teaches how to create food safety plans and develop quality management systems. After completing the course, participants should be able to do a basic quality analysis of facility operations and identify points where physical quality or economics are impacted.

The GEAPS 540: Entry Level Safety lectures identify the main risks of working in the industry, discuss precautions and emphasize the need to learn and follow company and facility safety and health policies. This course is a great resource for new grain industry workers, and serves a refresher for more experienced employees.

The GEAPS 554: Equipment Maintenance I course teaches safe function, monitoring, adjustments, maintenance and repair of equipment used in grain facility operations. Lectures cover the parts, components and troubleshooting of common elevator equipment. They also address maintenance methodology, dust suppression and collection, power drive transmissions, screw conveyors and bin sweeps.

The GEAPS: 630 Quality Control, Quality Assurance Practices in Flour Milling course focuses on the quality control and quality assurance principles of milling, including milling process quality, flour analysis, sampling and additives. Participants will learn methods to quantitatively analyze both flour quality and mill performance. The tools and techniques introduced in this course will enable better and more efficient communication between the milling operative and the quality control/quality assurance department.

GEAPS 530, 540 and 630 are all required for base credentials from GEAPS and KSU. Learn more about the credential program on the GEAPS website.

Courses cost $700 for GEAPS members and $965 for non-members. Courses can be completed any time over the five-week schedule, and each offering should take approximately 10 hours to complete. Companies can save up to 20% on blocks of registrations with the volume discount program. For more information about the courses or the GEAPS/KSU Distance Education Program, visit the GEAPS website.

The rest is here:
GEAPS, KSU to host online grain education sessions - World Grain

Online education is here to stay and there are good reasons why.

Brilliance is what the online education business model has brought our way.

If youre tempted to think e-learning is a sham, think again. Especially with the ever-climbing revenue accrued on a monthly/yearly basis. As of today, E-learnings current market value is over $190 billion and by 2025, the latest study by Global Market Insights estimates the market value to grow to over $300 billion.

Why is This So?

Its not that people dont want to learn; traditional learning systems are just too expensive!

Hence, the current surge in demand for cost-effective training and learning in all sectors, and at an individualized pace too.

Besides, in each sector, the amount of relevant content continues to rise making it increasingly difficult to keep tabs on it in physical libraries or stores. Keeping it in electronic media is an ingenious way of managing these vast resources and disseminating them in real-time across user interfaces.

The Use of Cloud-Based Platforms

Cloud-based learning platforms are increasingly being adopted in the online education business.

This is helpful and is one of the core reasons the market continues to rise at an impressive rate. These cloud-based platforms provide flexibility in the storage, accessibility and processing of content by users.

Major reasons for which users increasingly patronize cloud learning platform are data backup, cost-effectiveness and the security it affords. All of this is backed by the ease of content delivery which cloud technology offers!

As more young people get used to the advent of mobile platforms and the Internet, it only makes sense to utilize the cloud to help them easily access content and compare with other content on the net (instead of opening several books just to get certain information).

Smartphone users, with the aid of recent apps, can gain insight into several different topics in real-time, and up-to-date universities are developing their own mobile-based applications for their students. This way, learners can log in to the student portal, enabling them to gain access to even missed lectures. You see, learning is no longer about how hard you can work, but how smart you can work.

In corporate sectors, some of the major mobile applications in use are Udemy, DesignJot, and BoostHQ.

An Overview of the E-Learning Market (and the Factors Propelling It)

The impressive growth in the usage of technology in academic institutions across the globe has propelled the e-learning market forward. For instance, it makes it easier to pay someone to do my homework, especially if I have other pressing responsibilities.

The academic sector accounted for over 50 per cent of the global e-learning industry share in 2018; and with the surge in awareness about education and the adoption of modern solutions in universities and colleges, the literacy rate continues to grow.

Lots of education centers provide digitized platforms for learning and interaction which offer deeper and clearer insights into all academic courses, and this does wonders in terms of depth of understanding of students, and further impacts on their societal input. Its also pretty liberating for teachers, who are able to, with time limits and distractions eliminated whilst teaching a virtual audience, teach in more practical terms while employing the aid of interactive media such as pictures and videos.

Online Education in the Corporate World

Corporate sectors are also beginning to get the hang of the use of online educational materials to train their employees, further boosting market capital. It has been discovered that when employees are trained at their own pace, there is higher productivity.

Wrapping Up

E-learning has come to stay. Knowing how it works, and employing it in your favor is one of the smart things to do in this century.

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Online Education: The Future is Today - Legal Reader

The Kansas City, Kan., Police Department Hiring Event is 11:30 a.m to 12:45 p.m. Sept 27 in room 125 of the Resiliency Center. For more information, call 684-2227 or e-mail usarmy.sfl-tap.leavenworth@mail.mil.

The Soldier for Life - Transition Assistance Program will host HIGHER Education Workshops from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 1-2 and Dec. 10-11 in room 131 of the Resiliency Center. For more information, call 684-2227 or e-mail usarmy.sfl-tap.leavenworth@mail.mil.

Upcoming Entrepreneur Workshops are from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 3-4 and Dec. 12-13 in room 131 of the Resiliency Center. The workshop explains the basics of developing a business plan, legal and financial aspects of business ownership, advantages and disadvantages of purchasing a franchise, help available and how to overcome stress. To reserve a seat, call 684-2227 or e-mail usarmy.sfl-tap.leavenworth@mail.mil.

The Department of Labor Career exploration and planning track workshop is 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 9-10 and Dec. 17-18 in room 131 of the Resiliency Center. The workshop helps build a personalized career development assessment of occupational interests and abilities, and participants will learn to use self-sustaining tools to narrow their career focus by establishing achievable career goals and self-development strategies. For more information or to sign up, call 684-2227 or e-mail usarmy.sfl-tap.leavenworth@mail.mil.

The Soldier for Life - Transition Assistance Programs Advanced Linkedin Seminar is 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 15 in room 131 of the Resiliency Center. Attendees will learn how to best use the advanced components of LinkedIn. Attendees must have a LinkedIn profile and a basic knowledge of the site. For more information, help establishing a profile or to reserve a seat, call 684-2227. Space is limited.

The Soldier for Life-Transition Assistance Program Career Skills Program Day is 11 a.m. to 1p.m. Oct. 16 in room 125 of the Resiliency Center. The career skills program allows transitioning soldiers who are in the last six months of active-duty service to intern or earn a certification before they transition from service. For more information contact the CSPinstallation administrator in room 275 of the Resiliency Center, call 684-8999 or e-mail usarmy.sfl-tap.leavenworth@mail.mil.

Soldier For Life - Transition Assistance Program workshops are mandatory for all military personnel transitioning from active-duty service. The workshops are also available to spouses of transitioning military on a space-available basis. TAPworkshops are five days from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day. Upcoming workshops are Oct. 21-25, Oct. 28 through Nov. 1, Nov. 18-22 and Dec. 2-6 at the Resiliency Center. For more information, call 684-2227 or e-mail usarmy.sfl-tap.leavenworth@mail.mil.

The Army Community Service Field Grade Spouse Seminar Putting the Pieces Together is 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 26 at the Resiliency Center, 600 Thomas Ave. The seminar will provide up-to-date information, possible expectations, opportunities and resources. For more information or to register, call 684-2800 or e-mail fgspouseseminar@gmail.com.

The Hiring Our Heroes corporate fellowship Program information briefs are conducted weekly at noon on Mondays in room 277 of the Resiliency Center. Completed application packets are due Nov. 1 for the next cohort that begins Jan. 13, 2020. The CFP places service members within 180 days or less left on active duty into a 12-week fellowship program. The program provides mid- to upper-level corporate experience, credentialing education and career skills training. Selection for this program is competitive, but placement rates average more than 80 percent per cohort. For more information, go to https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/corporate-fellowship-program-0 or call 684-8999.

The Soldier for Life - Transition Assistance Program offers a monthly Federal Application Seminar on submitting applications using the USAJobs website. The Civilian Personnel Advisory Center will provide instruction. The seminar covers navigating the USAJobs portal and preparing a resum to apply for government employment. Classes are 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 17 and Nov. 14 in room 131 of the Resiliency Center. For information, call 684-2227 or e-mail usarmy.sfl-tap.leavenworth@mail.mil.

The Soldier for Life - Transition Assistance Programs career and education fair is 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Nov. 5 at the Frontier Conference Center. The fair is open to all active duty, guard, reserve, retirees, veterans, family members and DoD civilians. For more information, call 684-2227 or e-mail usarmy.sfl-tap.leavenworth@mail.mil.

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Education and Employment - News - SJ News Online - St. John, KS - St. John News Online

South Carolina is one step closer to having a school resource officer in every school.

The state Department of Education announced Thursdaythat it has received funding from the Legislature to pay for 205 officers in districts across the state.

A spokesperson for the department said every district, including the South Carolina Public Charter School District and the Charter Institute at Erskine, received funding for between one and four officers depending on the need.

Once those officers are in place, the state will have fewer than 300 schools without a full-time officer, though spokesperson Ryan Brown said that number is misleading because it includes elementary and middle schools that share a building. Brown said about half of the remaining schools have a part-time officer.

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The remaining schools also includeelementary schools in Greenville County Schools, where the district does not intend on stationing full-time officers because the district uses a zone patrol model. For zone patrols, the district pays off-duty officers employed by local law enforcement to regularly patrol two to three schools at random times.

The Greenville County school district is in the process of determining where it will assign its new officers.

This story will be updated. Check back formore.

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SC is assigning 205 more school resource officers. Here's how it will work out in Upstate - Greenville News

Earlier this week, the VOICES conference featured two days of talks from science educators and communicators who use music to share ideas about science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).

VOICES (which stands for Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song) took place entirely online, which allowed participants from all over the world to present talks about their own unique methods of using songs or music to talk about science.

The virtual online VOICES conference highlighted the variety of ways that science educators and ... [+] communicators are using music to talk about science. Here, Lewis Hou shows his Science Ceilidh project.

Keynote speaker Edmund Adjapong spoke about Hip-Hop Based Education, and the methods success in engaging students with educational topics by having them engage and participate than forcing Hip-Hop into the curriculum. As an example, he talked more about the Science Genius rap battles, first held in New York City. The format is a friendly competition, in which students are judged not only on their performance and lyrical skills, but also on the scientific quality of their lyrics. Adjapong said that theyve seen students who previously showed little interest in science suddenly start researching topics outside of the mandatory curriculum just to make their rap more interesting and scientific.

In other talks during the two-day online event, speakers covered a broad range of topics. Bioacoustician Sara Niksic spoke about making music inspired by whale song, Shashi Kant Pandey logged in from India to share his mathematical poetry, and Jerry Appell showed how he had created educational songs aimed at adults rather than children.

Despite the broad range of artistic styles, scientific fields and educational levels, there were some recurring themes among the talks. Speakers largely agreed that the best way for scientists to teach with music is to keep people engaged with entertaining music, and that it was not useful to try to cram too much information in a song.

Interspersed between talks about different methods of engaging people with science through music, the audience was treated to a playlist of science songs from a wide range of YouTube videos. From A Capella Sciences Evo-Devo (set to the tune of Despacito) to Oort Kuijpers S.T.E.M. rap and Monty Harpers catchy Science Frontier these videos covered some of the variety in themes and formats of science music.

One section of the conference included several speakers who use their musical skills for community science outreach. Here, Helen Arney sang one of the science-themed songs that shes taken to various events in the UK. On the same panel, Benji Jones and Liesbeth Tip spoke about a choir they launched in Edinburgh a few years ago. The Harmony Choir started as a scientific experiment: to study the effect of participating in a community choir on mental health. Even though the project was due to end after a few months in 2017, the choir is still going strong, because the participants didnt want the project to stop after the research was finished.

This years virtual conference was the third year the event took place. Ive been impressed with the talent of this years presenters, says conference organizer Tiffany Getty. Their wide range of perspectives clearly shows that people in STEM are very open to the idea of collaborating with the arts.

Getty is a high school chemistry teacher as well as a PhD student in education at Wilkes University, and she adds that she would perhaps have liked to see more VOICES attendees who work in primary or secondary education. But perhaps the start of the new school year is too hectic for teachers to make time for additional meetings - even those that take place entirely online and include music in almost every talk.

Disclaimer: Although I was not involved in organising the VOICES conference, I have been involved in VOICES workshops in previous years, and was previously familiar with several of the speakers and organisers.

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From Hip-Hop To Harmony, Music Has A Place In Science Education - Forbes

Textualizing the American incarceration experience is a difficult task. How is one to put into language the absurd cruelty of its vision, the oppressiveness of its architecture, the inhumanity of its owners, the vacuity of its violence? We all know our mass incarceration trivia: Texas currently imprisons over 250,000 people, the United States is the undisputed international champion of depositing people behind bars, currently almost 2.3 million, and so on.

Quantitative trivia can obscure an understanding of mass incarceration for what it really is: the deliberate, conscious outcome of policies designed by the ruling class to conquer minorities, particularly Latinx, immigrant and black communities. A forceful reassertion of elite power against the destabilizing social movements of the 60s.

A byproduct of this move toward incarceration is that millions have been forcibly deprived of their right to an education, a gap that remains largely unaddressed by public universities.

In The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander claims that mass incarceration embodies the evolved form of 20th century Jim Crow laws. Americas racial caste system originating in slavery never ended; it merely assumed a new face.

Once youre labeled a felon, the old forms of discrimination employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, educational opportunities, food stamps and other public benefits, exclusion from jury service are suddenly legal, Alexander wrote.

The violence of being branded as a felon is often compounded by the startling lack of educational resources within prisons. Underresourced libraries, censored reading lists, lack of vocational and college courses and similar methods of depriving access to knowledge persist, defuncting prison education programs.

Yet, all prisoners have is time. Time combined with real opportunities for learning generates unbounded human potential. Hidden deep within the inmate population are incredible scholars, poets, community leaders, welders and gardeners waiting to emerge if only given the opportunity to learn.

In 2017, some UT-Austin faculty founded the Texas Prison Education Initiative. The program represents the first organized, interdepartmental effort to offer prisoners a college experience that exceeds a one-off course. The initiative sends volunteer UT-Austin professors to teach prisoners college-level courses, such as introductory sociology and rhetoric classes. Taught through UT-Extension, prisoners accrue transferable college course credit they can utilize upon release. Its vision is to provide free, high-quality university education for the incarcerated.

We try to make the classroom feel like a classroom doing things like calling students students, not inmates, said Sarah Brayne, UT sociology assistant professor and director of Texas Prison Education Initiative. Theyve been out of school for a long time, and many have had alienating educational experiences, so really fostering their identity as a student and being very affirming about that stuff is really important.

Understandably, the program is a huge time commitment professors physically drive to the prisons, which could be an hour-long drive, and parcel out their own time preparing the class, lecturing, grading and so on for an entire semester. Its selfless, virtuous work.

The administrative functions of running the course, such as registration or processing grades, are done through UT-Extension, a program that charges the intiative $125 per student. With hundreds of students, administrative costs accumulate not even including books, dictionaries and journals. Because affordability precedes accessibility, the initiative fundraises from the general public to free the prisoners from having to pay out of pocket.

Texas Prison Education Initiative is doing the important and necessary work of trying to incrementally improve a fundamentally heartless institution. They are no substitute for a mass social movement capable of reforming incarceration as we know it, but nonetheless, they represent an important, concerted effort to minimize damage.

UT-Austin is the flagship school of a state that imprisons more people than any other. UT should increase education access for prisoners by using its endowment money to financially bankroll the program. This means paying all of its UT-Extension and course-related fees, subsidizing its expansion by paying professors to go teach classes and giving professors stipends for buying classroom materials such as books and notebooks.

Access to higher learning is a basic human right, meaning public universities like UT-Austin and other institutions that ostensibly celebrate the common ideal must unflinchingly defend the rights of those most dispossessed.

Lee is a sociology senior from Houston.

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UT should expand educational opportunities for Texas prisoners - UT The Daily Texan

GlobalOnline Program Management in Higher EducationMarket Growth (Status and Outlook) 2019-2024comprises of the basic insights that are associated to the global market. The report includes a comprehensive analysis of the presentOnline Program Management in Higher Educationmarket. It specifies the market size and also factors controlling the growth of the market. It will help the users to understand not only the market trends, but also the size, production, forecast trends, share, demand, sales, and many other aspects. It also includes key competition, market trends with forecast over the predicted years, anticipated growth rates.Detailed analysis of the competitive spectrum of this business vertical,constituting companies such as,IDesign, Online Education Services, Blackboard, Pearson, Wiley, 2U, Six Red Marbles,

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According to this study, over the next five years theOnline Program Management in Higher Educationmarket will register a xx% CAGR in terms of revenue, the global market size will reach US$ xx million by 2024, from US$ xx million in 2019. In particular, this report presents the global market share (sales and revenue) of key companies inOnline Program Management in Higher Educationbusiness.

Brief Coverage of The Market Report:

The report contains the detailed company profiles of a number of the significant market players that will maintain their activeness in predestined decades. The study delivers data about the company and its operations. This data will help to understand competitive threats and decide how to deal with them while performing against major competitors. The combination of primary and secondary sources are used to derive the primary factors driving and impacting growth market data and analytics. Competitive analysis of top manufacturers has covered their production, price, and revenue (value) and market share.

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Overall, for better comprehension, this report covers regional segment analysis, type, application, major manufacturers, industry chain analysis, competitive insights, and macroeconomic analysis. Next, it provides sales channel, analysis findings, and results. Moreover, the quantity of production, future demand, and required raw material are featured. The report also forecasts the proceeds that this industry would gather at the end of the projected duration from 2019 to 2024.

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In addition, this report discusses the key drivers influencing market growth, opportunities, the challenges and the risks faced by key manufacturers and the market as a whole. It also analyzes key emerging trends and their impact on present and future development.

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Tom is a staff writer at Top News Herald. He covers technology news and handles all the technical stuff for Top News Herald. Tom originally hails from the UK and went to Foyle College.

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Global Online Program Management in Higher Education Market 2019 By Demand drivers - IDesign, Blackboard, Pearson, Wiley - Top News Herald

BEIJING, Sept. 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ --TAL Education Group ("TAL" or the "Company") (TAL), a leading K-12 after-school tutoring services provider in China, today announcedthat it will release its unaudited financial results for the second quarter of fiscal year 2020 ended August 31, 2019, before the market opens on Thursday, October 24, 2019.

The Company will host a corresponding conference call and live webcast at 8:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time (8:00 p.m. Beijing Time) on Thursday, October 24, 2019.

The dial-in details for the live conference call are as follows:

- U.S. toll free:

+1-866-519-4004

- Hong Kong toll free:

800-906-601

- International toll:

+65-6713-5090

Conference ID:

4843779

A live and archived webcast of the conference call will be available on the Investor Relations section of TAL's website at https://ir.100tal.com/.

A telephone replay of the conference call will be available through 8:59 a.m. on November 1, 2019, U.S. Eastern Time (8:59 p.m. on November 1, 2019, Beijing Time).

The dial-in details for the replay are as follows:

- U.S. toll free:

+1-855-452-5696

- Hong Kong toll free:

800-963-117

- International toll:

+61-2-8199-0299

Conference ID:

4843779

AboutTAL Education GroupTAL Education Group is a leading K-12 after-school tutoring services provider in China. The acronym "TAL" stands for "Tomorrow Advancing Life", which reflects our vision to promote top learning opportunities for Chinese students through both high-quality teaching and content, as well as leading edge application of technology in the education experience. TAL Education Group offers comprehensive tutoring services to students from pre-school to the twelfth grade through three flexible class formats: small classes, personalized premium services, and online courses. Our tutoring services cover the core academic subjects in China's school curriculum as well as competence oriented programs. The Company's learning center network currently covers over 50 key cities in China.

We also operate http://www.jzb.com, a leading online education platform in China. Our ADSs trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "TAL".

For further information, please contact:

Echo YanInvestor Relations TAL Education GroupTel: +86 10 5292 6658Email: ir@100tal.com

Caroline StraathofIR InsideTel: +31 6 5462 4301Email: info@irinside.com

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tal-education-group-to-announce-second-quarter-of-fiscal-year-2020-financial-results-on-october-24-2019-300925747.html

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TAL Education Group to Announce Second Quarter of Fiscal Year 2020 Financial Results on October 24, 2019 - Yahoo Finance