By Mitrankur (Mit) Majumdar, vice president and regional head—services, Americas, Infosys.
Mitrankur (Mit) Majumdar
Education has been caught between the tectonic plates of digital technologies and the once-in-a-century pandemic. The industry has been forced to transition to a virtual engagement model that it was unprepared for. But even before the pandemic, the advent of Massive Open Online Courses was driving growth in higher education and reskilling with enrolment in traditional postsecondary institutions declining.
Massive generational changes in technological and workplace trends are changing the definition of education itself transforming it into a multi-dimensional and pervasive opportunity, open to people of all ages and socioeconomic strata. The definition of the ‘student’ is also changing, who now expects anytime, anywhere, and lifelong learning.
Leave legacy behind
In this new paradigm, outmoded approaches to teaching and learning just don’t support the new demands and changed expectations. Even educational institutions that use technology, utilize legacy systems that work in a monolithic fashion and don’t support the new age learner’s journey. They are difficult to integrate with modern Software-as-a-Service applications required for the learning solutions of today and expensive to operate.
A vast majority of students are digital natives, which means they expect hyper-personal, imaginative, and on-demand learning experiences that are frictionless. While higher education institutions scrambled to ensure resilience with Zoom user accounts during the pandemic, that comes nowhere close to the user experience that students have come to expect. They are communication platforms and not Education communication platforms.
Another key element is the existence of complex relational databases that make it difficult to obtain the desired data that can be used for competitive advantage. Students generate data at every touchpoint and technology allows the education institution to map this data and create a genome of each student. This provides a 360-degree, unified view of the student by employing data and analytics helping in personalized inputs to drive necessary interventions for student success.
Response from Caroline Allams, co-founder and CEO, Natterhub.
Caroline Allams
The COVID pandemic has fundamentally changed our relationship with education technology. New tools and resources that might have taken years to reach schools were, by necessity, developed and released in a matter of months. But while education technology has played a vital role in helping teachers continue to do their jobs, the pandemic has also highlighted the undeniable necessity of a human element.
Even the most sophisticated, cutting-edge edtech tool on the market is just that – a tool. It’s only in the hands of a teacher that these tools can have any sort of meaningful impact on the development of young minds.
While children are very capable of understanding how technology functions, they can often struggle with the impact screen use has on their emotional wellbeing. According to a report by YoungMinds, 90% of school leaders have reported an increase in the number of students experiencing anxiety or stress over the last five years. The most common causes include exam stress, and the pressures of maintaining the kind of ‘perfect’ lifestyle children see reflected on social media; something which has only become more prevalent as pupils spend increasing amounts of time online in lockdown.
Finding a way for children to navigate the digital landscape is crucial if we are to have any chance of keeping children safe online. This was true even before COVID-19, of course, but the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have accelerated the process. While edtech resources can help pupils to grasp the mechanics of online safety – from creating strong passwords to reporting inappropriate content – it’s only when guided by a teacher that pupils can have the kind of experiential learning they need to internalise these lessons. Children might not understand that an online avatar isn’t always trustworthy, but they’re all familiar with the story of the Big Bad Wolf dressing up as Grandma to trick Little Red Riding Hood.
The essential role of the teacher is even more apparent when we apply edtech resources to more traditional subjects in the curriculum. For example, while online resources can help a child to work through the steps of a maths problem, they do so with a one-size-fits-all approach. By contrast, a teacher working closely with a child can adapt their pedagogy – by phrasing the problem differently, or focusing on a particular sticking point – in order to give that child the confidence they need to work out the answer independently.
We should also consider the emotional role that teachers play as ‘trusted adults’ in pupils’ lives – providing them with comfort and support throughout their school lives. Teachers are often the first to notice subtle changes in a child’s behaviour or attitude; the first warning signs that they need help with something troubling them. In a recent poll by the Daily Mirror, more than 70% of children aged 5-16 said that prolonged absences from school had had a damaging effect on their mental health, with many saying that they missed their teachers as much as they missed their friends.
As the pandemic ends and new innovations are brought more fully into the traditional classroom, we should consider how they can be used to teach children the abstract but crucial citizenship skills such as kindness, empathy, and resilience. These are the skills that will stand them in good stead not just in school but throughout their lives, both online and offline.
Kivuto, a provider of digital solutions for the education industry, announces the availability of Minitab Statistical Software: Cloud App/Windows Desktop from OnTheHub.
The launch of the newest version of Minitab Statistical Software now allows users to make better, faster, and easier data driven decisions anywhere with the power of the cloud. Users can securely access the most powerful statistical software in the market from anywhere – whether working from home or the office – to analyze data and share insights with lightning speed thanks to new cloud capabilities. More than 4,000 colleges and universities worldwide use Minitab software to make teaching and learning statistics easy.
OnTheHub is Kivuto’s open online marketplace for academic discounts on software, eBooks, and other digital resources. A top source of student savings, OnTheHub allows students, faculty, and other academic stakeholders to acquire software at a fraction of retail price and saves schools the cost of licensing that software themselves.
Jeffrey T. Slovin, chief executive officer of Minitab, said. “For nearly 50 years, Minitab has been committed to its roots in the academic community by providing best-in-class statistical software. As this market continues to evolve, Minitab is uniquely positioned to meet the needs of academic institutions. Now, with Minitab available on the cloud, administrators, professors and students alike can access Minitab anywhere, anytime and from any device to support all instructional models.”
“Minitab is the market leader in data analysis and data transformation solutions and is the gold standard solution offered by educational institutions worldwide,” said Mark McKenzie, CEO at Kivuto. “We have been offering Minitab to academic institutions through OnTheHub over 20 years and know the latest version will be well-received by the academic community.
For more information on Minitab Statistical Software for the academic community, visit https://onthehub.com/minitab/.
About Minitab
For nearly 50 years, Minitab has helped organizations drive cost containment, enhance quality, boost customer satisfaction and increase effectiveness through its proprietary solutions. Thousands of businesses and institutions worldwide use Minitab Statistical Software, Minitab Connect, Salford Predictive Modeler, Minitab Workspace, Minitab Engage, and Quality Trainer to uncover flaws and opportunities in their processes and address them. Minitab Solutions Analytics is Minitab’s proprietary integrated approach to providing software and services that enable organizations to make better decisions that drive business excellence.
About Kivuto
Kivuto has been transforming the way schools distribute digital resources to students and faculty for more than 20 years. Today, Kivuto streamlines the management and delivery of academic software, eTextbooks, cloud licenses, and all other types of digital resources for educational institutions. For more information, visit https://kivuto.com/.
Luxer One, the technology leader in smart locker solutions, announced today the successful implementation of a modular locker system for use with the student library at Cosumnes River College. With this installation, Cosumnes River College (CRC) becomes the first college in the Los Rios Community College District to benefit from Luxer One’s safe, no-contact method of picking up library materials.
Conveniently located in the Business and Social Science building, these smart locker systems will be available for to students and staff Monday thru Friday (7:30 am- 6 pm).
Management of a user base this broad is made possible because of Luxer Ones integrates seamlessly with CRC’s library management system (LMS) to provide in-depth tracking on every item that is exchanged via smart locker.
Students can request materials via the library’s website, prompting librarians to check items out of inventory and place them into the lockers for pick up. Once placed in the locker, students receive a notification directly to their phone along with a pickup code. This code enables students to unlock their textbooks or other library materials, completing the contactless pickup process.
Modern Campus, a modern learner engagement platform, announces the acquisition of nuCloud, a leading provider of highly customizable interactive campus maps and virtual tour solutions for colleges and universities. The acquisition reinforces Modern Campus’ vision to revolutionize the student experience and deliver what today’s modern learner demands: a massively personalized learner-to-earner journey.
Founded in 2008, nuCloud provides a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based application that enables higher education institutions to build rich, eye-catching interactive maps and virtual tours that make it easy for students to experience the campus of their choice in a unique way. NuCloud customers will benefit from the integration of nuCloud within the Modern Campus personalization engine, and the expansion of capabilities provided by Modern Campus Omni CMS, the only purpose-built content management system (CMS) for higher education.
“First impressions count. Colleges and universities have mere moments to capture the imagination of prospective students. Seeing a rich, immersive experience on the web site, enabling them to ‘walk’ the campus and imagine the possibilities in a personalized way, drives high engagement and enrollment,” said Peter DeVries, president and chief operating officer of Modern Campus. “This acquisition is just one example of our commitment to customer success and enhancing the student experience with massively personalized digital engagement. It illustrates our deep expertise in higher education and provides another proof point for how we intend to expand our platform’s capabilities.”
NuCloud brings the campus environment to life with rich maps and virtual tours, making it easy for students to experience and find their way around a campus. Colleges and universities using the newly integrated solution will experience benefits including:
Eye-catching illustrations: nuCloud allows users multiple illustration styles without constraints of a specific angle or perspective.
Easy-to-use interactive software: Completely customizable layouts, themes, map markers, functionality, design, layers and more.
Enhanced images attract visitors and improve student experiences: Interactive maps blend seamlessly with a current website design in a way that enhances the site to support marketing efforts.
“Visiting a campus to evaluate whether it’s ‘right for me’ as a student is exceptionally difficult in a virtual environment, and a prospective student’s digital experience must be exceptional,” said Nick Catto, chief information officer and co-founder of nuCloud. “The acquisition by Modern Campus and integration of our solutions into Omni CMS is the perfect outcome for our company, allowing us to provide the industry’s leading interactive map tool to the portion of Modern Campus’ 550-plus customers who haven’t yet been introduced to these capabilities.”
Both Nick Catto and Todd James, chief financial officer and co-founder of nuCloud, will join Modern Campus, and continue to lead customer engagements and Omni CMS Campus Map product innovation.
The only way a school system can truly excel is if the three main components are working in harmony, and each is holding up their end; after all, the triangle is the strongest geometric shape.
If the teacher, student, and parent are all working together, the results will be outstanding. Once this “triangle of trust” has been established, the potential to grow continues to grow even stronger.
The Role of Teachers
While the teacher’s primary focus and responsibility is the students, it would be a mistake for a teacher to define his/her role in such narrow terms. For teachers to help students reach their potential, a healthy relationship with the parents is beneficial, and frequently the critical ingredient that will enhance the student’s chances of success.
Teachers need to share their goals with the parents so they can work in tandem to achieve them. And they need to reach out to parents early in the year before there are problems. This outreach sends the message to the parents that the teacher cares about the students, and lays the foundation for future communication with parents.
The Role of Students
Students must accept that they are ultimately responsible for their education. No one can force them to do anything. It is up to the parents and teachers to support and encourage, not to carry the child’s load. Some students tend to put the adults in their lives against each other, but once they see that there is communication between parents and teachers, they will feel supported and most likely perform better.
The Role of Parents
Together with teachers, parents serve as the base of the triangle, securely supporting the student. Parents must feel comfortable enough to contact their child’s teacher if there is a concern. And at times, they will be called upon to become even more proactive in their children’s education, serving other functions as well to ensure that that their children derive maximum benefit from the education being provided by the school.
Hybrid Education Model
The Learning Triangle, while always essential, has become even more critical in the world redefined by COVID-19. As a result of the ongoing pandemic, most schools across the country seem to be looking at another year of distance learning, while a few brave school systems have declared their students will return to in-person school.
Still, others are working hard to offer students a mix of the two by creating a hybrid learning model. That’s an arrangement where students attend school a few days each week and engage in distance learning on the other days.
Both face-to-face and online learning have their benefits and weaknesses. The goal of hybrid learning is to combine the two formats to create a singular learning experience without weak spots.
If done correctly, a hybrid learning scenario can be beneficial for everyone involved. Aside from the importance of in-person learning for kids, the opportunity to develop social and emotional skills, get physical exercise, and have access to mental health support, regular meals, internet access, and counseling; another significant benefit of the hybrid model is the long-awaited socialization the kids will get.
Although “blended courses and “hybrid courses” are used interchangeably, there is an essential difference.
A blended course involves face-to-face class sessions accompanied by online materials and activities – primarily a “blend” of both live and online learning. A fundamental component of a blended course is that these online materials are not intended to “replace” face-to-face class time; instead, they are meant to be supplemental.
On the other hand, hybrid learning is intended to replace a portion of face-to-face class time. In the hybrid synchronous model, which will be employed in most schools, students interact online in real-time via Zoom or similar real-time meeting platforms. Hybrid learning will impact all three points on the entire Learning Triangle, in different and unique ways.
Leading a successful hybrid learning experience requires a different set of strategies than working strictly remotely or strictly face-to-face.
The adoption of online learning, already one of the fastest-growing trends in education, was drastically accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. Students everywhere, from first grade to college seniors, were forced to shift to virtual classrooms for their safety as well as their teachers’.
There are certainly many benefits of online education primarily the flexibility it affords. However, remote learning also presents new challenges, particularly with respect to data security, as well as “the digital divide.”
Regarding the former, cybersecurity issues begin with the hardware but certainly don’t end there. Learning from home is enticing for many, but any time personal devices are used to handle sensitive data, such as test scores and student information, they run the risk of exposing that information because those devices usually haven’t been configured and vetted as would a school-issued computer.
Contributing to these risks is that learning and implementing cybersecurity best practices, such as recognizing obvious phishing attempts, are still a work in progress for many schools and universities across the country.
Unfortunately, cybercriminals are well aware of these weaknesses and have been using the pandemic to exploit the most vulnerable targets. In fact, between July and August of 2020, when it became clear that the school year would go, on albeit remotely, the average number of weekly cyberattacks per educational facility in the US rose by 30% over the prior two months. As news headlines have revealed, many educational organizations were caught unprepared, with some school districts even having to temporarily cease operations to halt cyber incursions.
Although we are now collectively better prepared, new risks and attacks continue. There are many strategies that school administrators must employ to safeguard sensitive data, such as training all staff in cybersecurity best practices, including the usage of VPNs to connect to school networks from home. And the district or university IT teams must regularly update all school-issued devices to ensure they stay current with the latest firmware, utilizing strong admin passwords.
Besides cybersecurity, another important conversation around remote learning is that of “the digital divide,” which is the acknowledgment that the tools needed to thrive in an online classroom, such as high-functioning computers and Wi-Fi, are costly. Hence, many students from different socioeconomic backgrounds often don’t have access to all the tools they need to thrive in a virtual setting.
By Mitrankur (Mit) Majumdar, vice president, Americas, Infosys.
Mitrankur (Mit) Majumdar
With the ever-increasing threat landscape and hackers targeting all industries and services, cybersecurity incidents are on the rise across the globe. In fact, education sector accounts for almost 60% of the total enterprise malware attacks encountered.
A report from Privacy Rights Clearinghouse (PRC), a non-profit consumer education and advocacy organization, provides some indication of the extent of the problem. The PRC reports 788 data breaches have occurred in K-12 schools and institutions of higher education that led to 14,871,122 compromised records since 2005.
With the rise of technology use in schools, these figures are likely to only increase. Schools cannot ignore the need to plan for cyber threats in their emergency operations plans. The education sector is quite vulnerable to attack for a couple of reasons. One, security controls in the education sector are usually not as stringent as enterprises. This is despite the fact that there is valuable data of students, teachers and parents at stake, for attackers to access and misuse.
The number of K-12 and university students using online channels and mobile devices has been growing steadily in the last couple of years. Since the second quarter of 2020, though, the Covid-19 situation suddenly resulted in a massive spurt in online education. Schools and universities across the globe moved online, almost overnight.
This sudden shift to remote learning led to a number of challenges, given that neither teachers nor students are aware of possible data proliferation avenues and continuous encounters with malware resulting in significantly increased vulnerabilities. Raising cybersecurity awareness among the many actors of education sector became paramount. Security controls also needed to be implemented to strengthen the infrastructure against attacks. Security – be it network security, asset management, endpoint protection, data security or others – is still a primary concern in a digital classroom.
Back to Classroom Concerns
With the rollout of the vaccine ramping up, conversations are beginning to percolate about what a return to the classroom will look like. While, physical health and safety concerns are certainly a number one priority, there needs to be enough thought given to the digital aspect as well. We need to consider the implications of hundreds of pupils bringing their laptops and other devices that may be infected with malware, viruses, and the like, back to their schools’ networks. If schools are not prepped properly, there could be some drastic cybersecurity implications.
Important priorities that need to be considered include:
The new offering provides school districts with a comprehensive identity management platform, allowing them to automatically provision core identity systems like Active Directory with the same level of automation and fidelity that they have come to expect from Clever and at a significantly lower cost than alternatives on the market today.
“More than ever, district leaders are counting on education technology to work smoothly, all day, every day. Sixty-five percent of districts nationwide have adopted Clever to make learning applications work seamlessly, and increasingly they have asked if we could bring that same power and ease to managing their core identity systems like Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and Google,” said Tyler Bosmeny, chief executive officer of Clever. “Now we can help districts connect both IT and curriculum systems quickly, securely, and at a fraction of the cost of alternatives with Clever IDM Enterprise.”
Clever IDM Enterprise delivers the following benefits:
Automation of repetitive manual processes: This new solution eliminates the delays and errors in account creation that are inevitable with manual processes, giving students faster access to the resources they need and reducing demands on overtaxed IT departments.
Data security and privacy: Clever IDM Enterprise helps districts protect student data and mitigate the risk of a data breach by automatically enforcing security policies across each application, protecting sensitive data, and closing security gaps from old user credentials and access rights.
Set up takes days – not months: The implementation of technology systems can be time-consuming and costly. For school districts who are rostered with Clever, onboarding Clever IDM Enterprise is quick and easy.
Fraction of the cost of other identity management solutions in the market: Because the Clever digital learning platform (including single sign-on, rostering, messaging, and analytics) is always free for districts, they have the option to add Clever IDM Enterprise in order to cover all of their identity management needs for a much lower price than that of other solutions.
“Clever and Identity Automation provide critical services for us, and this partnership is a gamechanger. A joint offering from these two market leaders can only provide immense benefit for all schools,” said Dustin Hardin, chief technology officer, Humble Independent School District in Humble, Texas.
“We have found a like-minded mission-driven partner in Clever,” said Jim Harold, chief executive officer of Identity Automation. “We look forward to helping more districts make technology work for them, not against—enabling them to focus their time and attention on what matters most: students.
Clever IDM Enterprise will be available for implementation in June. To learn more about the product, please visit www.cleveridmenterprise.com.
Response from Vikram Savkar, vice president and general manager of the medicine segment, Health Learning, Research & Practice at Wolters Kluwer.
Vikram Savkar
Our education systems have been forced to be incredibly nimble and quickly adapt in the face of the COVID pandemic. The initial focus of key stakeholders across the education ecosystem has been rapid response: making existing digital tools widely available to educational institutions who could only connect with their students remotely, and quickly developing short-term new solutions to plug critical gaps.
It’s now clear that virtual or hybrid learning is likely to continue in 2021 and be a permanent part of our education curricula, even once the pandemic has passed. As a community, we need to be asking how we transition from a rapid-response approach to digital learning towards scalable, sustainable digital learning platforms that empower hybrid learning models in order to improve upon, rather than temporarily replace, traditional education environments.
In medical education, for instance, during the pandemic we saw a rapid uptake of digital anatomy tools and digital textbook and assessment platforms that had existed for some time but were suddenly in broad demand. Faculty and students alike discovered during this disruption that these tools were not just adequate, but in fact highly effective. As a result, most medical schools have indicated that they will permanently rely on digital tools as a core part of their educational approach into the future.
For providers, therefore, the task is to address this rapidly growing demand by rethinking our approach to digital learning tools. Today’s technologies met a critical short-term need during the pandemic; but it is tomorrow’s technologies that must address a permanent shift in educational approach. Does this involve AI-based adaptivity? Social learning? Data visualization? Time will tell. But what is clear is that, given the inflection point that the pandemic is proving to be, it’s a time to leap forward, not consolidate.
Kivuto
The only way a school system can truly excel is if the three main components are working in harmony, and each is holding up their end; after all, the triangle is the strongest geometric shape.
