Jennifer Golbeck, a professor at the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies, has been talking about the privacy risks of Facebook data for years. As the recent scandal involving the massive amount of Facebook data leaked to the political advertising company Cambridge Analytica has raised awareness of the issues—and brought calls for change. Golbeck has plenty of suggestions for the social media giant, and she hopes the company will turn more often to researchers and privacy expe...
Apr 24, 2018•23 min
Angela Duckworth’s research on encouraging “grit” in students has been hailed as groundbreaking, popularized in bestselling books and TED talks. It has also been called racist, and some have criticized the work for essentially blaming students for their circumstances. Duckworth has faced the backlash by practicing a bit of grit herself. Take her reaction when a PhD candidate emailed her explaining that he was doing his dissertation about how the grit narrative ignored systemic barriers that may ...
Apr 20, 2018•14 min
The financial crisis of 2008 was tough for the country, but the real impact will hit colleges in the year 2026. It turns out the fiscal anxieties coincided with a dramatic birth dearth—a reduction in the number of children born, which means that the number of kids hitting traditional college age will drop almost 15 percent around 2026. That could amount to a crisis for colleges, unless they start planning now. That’s the argument of Nathan Grawe, an economics professor at Carleton College. He’s ...
Apr 17, 2018•22 min
The United States Government Accountability Office recently released a report confirming decades of anecdotal research saying, among other things, that Black male students who account for 15.5 percent of all public school kids, represented about 39 percent of students suspended from school. That is an overrepresentation of about 23 percentage points. This report also found that students with disabilities were disproportionately disciplined in public schools. To change this trend, some educators ...
Apr 10, 2018•28 min
In higher education, the number of computer science bachelor’s degrees follows boom-and-bust market trends in finance and technology—growing when times are good and plummeting when economies crash. And since 2010, computer science majors have again been on the incline, after a major drop off following the Dot-com bubble burst. But what have we learned from these patterns? And what can it tell us about the future? Mehran Sahami, professor and associate chair for education in the computer science ...
Apr 03, 2018•16 min
How do you close achievement gaps when all your students don’t start with the same opportunities? It’s a question of equity, a goal that is generally assumed to be one most educators want to achieve. Yet, these days the issue seems more complicated, as political debates frame equity policies as in conflict with ideals of fairness and tradition. Last month at the Aspen Institute’s States Leading for Equity event, North Dakota’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Kirsten Baesler, noted that in ...
Mar 27, 2018•20 min
Some educators tout the immersive power of VR technology, pointing to examples like an app that simulates what it was like to walk on either side of Germany’s Berlin Wall in the 1980s. But what does it mean to teach in an immersive format? What can this technology do that couldn't be done before? And how might it change a professor's approach to teaching, or should it? This month we sat down with two guests—Maya Georgieva, director of digital learning at The New School in New York City, and Rob ...
Mar 20, 2018•30 min
Does this sound familiar? An Ivy League-educated philanthropist, who built his wealth from a career in technology, decides to champion education as his next cause—under the belief that today’s schools are not adequately preparing the next generation for the future. We’re not talking about Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. Rather, meet Ted Dintersmith, who has spent nearly 20 years as a partner at Charles River Ventures, an early-stage investment firm. These days, he’s no longer spending time in com...
Mar 13, 2018•34 min
Lauren Herckis, an anthropologist and research faculty at Carnegie Mellon University, has been exploring the culture of teaching at colleges and what makes professors try new teaching practices or, in some cases, resist them.
Mar 06, 2018•22 min
What does it mean to report on education technology from a student lens? How does the tech-health discussion impact teachers in the classroom? What are virtual school lobbyists doing to impact the national discussion on school choice and accountability? NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz, joins the EdSurge OnAir Podcast to discuss her new book, “The Art of Screentime: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life,” and offer listeners some answers to challenging questions about the ever-evolvi...
Feb 27, 2018•24 min
In higher ed people often look to a few elite schools for big new ideas. But that might be changing. These days innovation seems just as likely to come from a state school, a small liberal arts college, or even some upstart from outside the traditional system. That’s the argument made by Bernard Bull, vice provost for curriculum and academic innovation at Concordia University Wisconsin. He’s also a blogger, and he runs a podcast of his own, called MoonshotEDU. He’s optimistic about what he sees ...
Feb 20, 2018•21 min
Social media feeds are lighting up with hashtags such as #WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe and #BlackPantherLive celebrating the release of a Hollywood adaptation of the groundbreaking comic series, Black Panther. Educators are also getting into the fandom, seizing on opportunities the film creates to teach students about empowerment, culture and even the importance of learning science and engineering. Netia McCray, is one of the educators using the Black Panther film as an educational opportunity. She...
Feb 13, 2018•16 min
How do we crack a problem that has existed for decades? Jobs in science, technology, engineering & mathematics (STEM) jobs are projected to grow 17 percent between 2014 and 2024; non-STEM jobs are expected to rise only 12 percent. Even so, minorities, women and people with disabilities are still severely underrepresented in STEM-related fields. And if innovation springs from looking at problems from a very different perspective, then coaxing people who bring diverse perspectives should becom...
Feb 09, 2018•1 hr 5 min
College professors don’t often talk to each other about the intricacies of their teaching practices, and it often seems a mystery to scholars what goes on in other people’s courses. Bonni Stachowiak has created a forum to spread those stories and techniques with her long-running podcast, Teaching in Higher Ed. Stachowiak says she is still growing as a teacher herself, as director of teaching excellence and digital pedagogy at Vanguard University of Southern California, and her sense of curiosity...
Feb 06, 2018•24 min
Larry Singer is a CEO, but not the smug type, who’s likely to engage you in a long-winded conversation about himself, while you sip on your drink and wait for someone more interesting to come along. Singer is different. Last week he pitched EdSurge a story about his nonprofit, Open Up Resources, but, after our conversation, we found a story about a struggling innovator. He, like many of our podcast listeners, is a person who wants to do well, but also do good. In this podcast, we talk about his ...
Jan 30, 2018•24 min
Many colleges these days are experimenting with short-form online degrees to try to reach new audiences and offer new options, often at a lower cost. And new upstart providers are also getting into the mix, including coding bootcamps and startups like Udacity, which offers unaccredited nanodegrees. These trends raise a host of questions about the future of credentialing. To explore some of these questions, EdSurge recently held an hour-long video forum featuring two guests: Sean Gallagher, the f...
Jan 23, 2018•28 min
Humans living in abject poverty are warring over the few of resources they have left. There’s an energy crisis, and fossil fuels are in low supply. The weather has gone to extremes. This is the setting of Ernest Cline’s science-fiction novel, Ready Player One, where human civilization is in decline, and life in virtual reality beats any day in the real world. This page-turning novel (which is being turned into a film by Steven Spielberg) follows a geeky protagonist named Wade Watts as he underta...
Jan 16, 2018•30 min
When Michael Sorrell took over as president of Paul Quinn College in 2007, the place was nearly broke and faced a possible loss of accreditation. Sorrell wasn’t interested in following the usual playbook for running a college, so he took unusual steps right from the start. He cut the football program, for instance, and turned the playing field into an urban farm. It's part of a model of a "modern work college," which mixes work-readiness with expanding minds, and at a price that more students co...
Jan 09, 2018•24 min
As the old adage goes, time is what we want most but what we use worst. So how do we use it more effectively? That’s the driving theme in the newest book from Dan Pink, the speechwriter, TV producer and acclaimed author of bestsellers “Drive” and “To Sell is Human.” His latest book, “When,” draws on research from psychology, biology and economics to explore how timing impacts every aspect of our lives—including of course, how we teach and learn. For instance, what’s the best time to take a test?...
Jan 02, 2018•29 min
On this holiday week, we're rebroadcasting our most popular episode of 2017: Barbara Oakley, a professor of engineering at Oakland University, spends a lot of time these days thinking about how people learn. She’s taught more students than just about anyone else on the planet, as one of the instructors of one of the most popular online courses ever, which has had two million registered students over the several times it’s been offered. The title of the course, is Learning How to Learn. EdSurge r...
Dec 26, 2017•26 min
This year, Americans seem to be watching government processes closer than they have in the past. Every week, some policy maker, some legislative vote or confirmation hearing is trending on Twitter and Facebook. However, our guest today, Jeanne Allen, founder of the Center for Education Reform has been closely monitoring and evaluating education policy for over 30 years. She is no rookie. As a staunch education reformist, pushing the school choice movement forward, Allen is no friend to teachers ...
Dec 19, 2017•21 min
Art Markman is an expert on what makes people tick. The psychology professor at UT Austin has also become a popular voice working to translate research from the lab into advice for a general audience. In his writings and podcasting, he’s tackled questions big and small, from commenting on the recent wave of mass shootings—to weighing in on why people like cat videos so much. And he’s full of surprising findings. Markman recently talked with EdSurge about how his insights can help educators. He m...
Dec 12, 2017•24 min
What does it really mean to prepare students for a future in coding careers? Clive Thompson, a freelance writer for Wired and The New York Times magazine, thinks the reality is not as rosy as many people think. In a popular Wired article titled, The Next Big Blue-Collar Job is Coding, Thompson criticizes pop culture and some writers, like himself, for overly romanticizing the notion of the ‘lone genius coder’—the Mark Zuckerbergs and Mr. Robots of the world—saying that’s not what every coder loo...
Dec 05, 2017•24 min
For Terik Tidwell, teaching kids to code is not about algorithms or apps—it’s about economic mobility. Tidwell is director of STEM innovation at Johnson C. Smith University, an historically-black college situated in the heart of Charlotte, NC. The city is marked by contradiction: On one hand, the place is booming, home to the headquarters of Bank of America and an emerging start-up scene. But a recent analysis scored Charlotte worst for economic mobility in a survey of the nation’s 50 largest ci...
Nov 28, 2017•24 min
When all the stuffing, sauces, hams, turkeys, and pies are out of the oven, there is often a moment of peace during the holiday season where families sit around the dinner table and remember what they are grateful for. This year, we gathered with a community of educators during EdSurge’s Tech Leader Circle at the MakerDepot in Totowa, New Jersey to pause and have a similar moment of reflection. For this EdSurge OnAir holiday special, we cut through the noise of the 3D printers to ask educators, ...
Nov 21, 2017•11 min
It’s a pivotal time for artificial intelligence in higher education. More instructors are experimenting with adaptive-learning systems in their classrooms. College advising systems are trying to use predictive analytics to increase student retention. And the infusion of algorithms is leading to questions—ethical questions and practical questions and philosophical questions—about how far higher education should go in bringing in artificial intelligence, and who decides what the algorithms should ...
Nov 14, 2017•39 min
By the time John Deasy resigned his post as superintendent of the L.A. school district, he had become a polarizing figure. In an article in The New York Times covering his resignation, Steve Barr, founder of Green Dot charter schools, put it this way: "The bitterness that had developed between Mr. Deasy and his critics impeded healthy discussion." Barr went on to ask “can we actually move forward without the extremes dominating the debate?” This year Mr. Deasy is moving forward. And he’s trying ...
Nov 07, 2017•23 min
Large classes pose tough challenges for instructors and colleges. After all, how do you craft a meaningful experience for 250 people (or more)? Rachel Davenport, a senior lecturer at Texas State University, has taught so many large classes that she jokes she has trouble readjusting to a small seminar room. She has been recognized with several awards for hear teaching, and students regularly sing her praises (she was named “Best Professor at Texas State University” in 2013 by readers of Study Bre...
Oct 31, 2017•24 min
Silicon Valley tech giants have made their stance clear on a number of political and social issues this year. Recently, Microsoft president Brad Smith went so far as to offer to pay legal fees for any employee who faces deportation after President Trump announced the end to the deferred action for childhood arrival program, better known as DACA. Teachers’ unions have also planted their flag both by condemning white nationalists in Charlottesville and the decision to end DACA. However, leaders in...
Oct 24, 2017•27 min
A decade ago professors complained of a growing “epidemic” in education: Wikipedia. Students were citing it in papers, while educators largely laughed it off as inaccurate and saw their students as lazy, or worse. As one writing instructor posted to an e-mail list in 2005: “Am I being a stick-in-the-mud for for being horrified by students’ use of this source?” How things have changed. Today, a growing number of professors have embraced Wikipedia as a teaching tool. They’re still not asking stude...
Oct 17, 2017•22 min
