Category: Editorial

The Future of Tech In Independent and International Schools

Stephen Bilboe

By Stephen Bilboe, sales and marketing director, WCBS.

The pandemic has hit all aspects of education; in the past year we’ve seen about 30 UK independent schools close their doors permanently as a direct result of COVID-19. Many schools have had to give discounts on their fees, revenue from boarding and trips has been halted, and income has ultimately taken a hit.

Schools that have been the worst affected are typically smaller schools that have been struggling with admissions and reduced student numbers for a while. With school fees having risen by 3% and 4% on average over the last decade, an independent education is out of reach for many middle-class families. Therefore, for those schools that have struggled to successfully widen their catchment net – in some cases the hit to income has been the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

With the move to remote learning the market has had to really focus on their value proposition; delivering value to parents and education to students, which on the whole, the schools have done brilliantly.

Adapting fast to protect reputation

When a parent is being charged thousands in fees, schools have had to deliver outstanding levels of teaching to warrant such an ask, especially when delivering to their students remotely, at home and not on campus.

All schools have had to shift to online learning and live lessons, and have adapted well to remote learning. The standard has been remarkable within Independent and International schools, where the stakes and expectation is even higher, what with the ask of fees.

Because of the reduction on fee income the pandemic has forced Independent schools to focus on their admissions process even more. Without the luxury of open days, they can’t just rely on a good telephone manner, a beautiful prospectus and families walking through the school gate. Schools in our market now have to firmly position and differentiate themselves to compete so that they’re attractive to parents and make sure that pupil numbers are coming through.

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Grubhub and Transact Partner To Offer Universities Expanded Off-Campus Meal Spending Programs For Students

Transact Campus

Transact, a payment solutions for a connected campus, and Grubhub, a leading food-ordering and delivery marketplace nationwide, announced today a partnership to extend Grubhub’s restaurant network to Transact’s CampusCash program. The partnership enables more student spending off campus, allowing universities to better adapt to hybrid learning environments and increase availability for contactless meal delivery and payment options.

Transact serves 12 million customers annually at more than 1,300 universities across the country. The Transact CampusCash program enables students on campuses using Transact’s mobile-centric campus technology to use their student ID cards for cashless payments at university-approved off-campus merchants. Grubhub’s robust network of more than 300,000 restaurants is now included in Transact’s off-campus merchant program. This partnership will allow students to use their university-branded CampusCash account while they are away from campus, even visiting family and friends across the country.

“Universities had to quickly adapt technologies to keep operations running smoothly over the last 18 months as they pivoted to hybrid learning and contactless dining experiences,” said Brian Madigan, vice president of campus and corporate partners at Grubhub. “We’re excited to partner with Transact to help university partners stay nimble with continued flexible meal models and expand the off-campus dining options available to students, while driving orders to local restaurants in their communities.”

“We’re always looking for ways to increase the value of student ID cards, and partnering with Grubhub to provide students with additional off-campus dining options makes the cards even more indispensable,” said Erica Bass, vice president of product management at Transact. “By giving students more cashless options to choose from, we’re doubling down on our efforts to provide a superior dining and overall campus experience.”

Campuses with an existing Transact off-campus merchant program can easily add Grubhub as an off-campus merchant to their existing program to give students more dining options. Matt Camino, director of the PacificCard at the University of the Pacific, said, “Our experience adding Grubhub to our off-campus flex tender program has been seamless. We added Grubhub to fill a gap for students who do not have transportation off campus readily available. Our students are excited about the additional food options and delivery services. With students returning to campus fully, I’m looking forward to the positive impact that the Grubhub and CampusCash off-campus program partnership will provide.”

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Infosec Institute and Midwestern Higher Education Compact Bring Leading Cyber Education Resources To Higher Education

Infosec Logo

Infosec Institute, a cybersecurity education company, announces it has partnered with the Midwestern Higher Education Compact (MHEC) to bring market-leading cyber education solutions to colleges and universities within its 12 member states, as well as members of the New England Board of Higher Education (NEBHE), Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE).

MHEC is statutorily-created in its member states and dedicated to strengthening postsecondary education through cost-savings initiatives and policy solutions informed by research and the expertise of regional leaders. Through partnerships with solution providers like Infosec, MHEC helps save colleges and universities millions of dollars annually.

“Educational institutions are often lucrative targets for cybercrime because of the massive amounts of personal data they store for faculty, staff and students,” said Jack Koziol, Infosec CEO and founder. “We look forward to empowering midwestern higher education faculty and staff with the knowledge and skills to stay cyber secure at work, school and home with our market-leading security awareness and training platform, Infosec IQ.”

The new partnership brings more than 2,000 Infosec IQ security awareness and training resources to 47 states.

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Are Schools Equipped Enough For Online Classes?

Shannon Flynn

Shannon Flynn is a freelance blogger who covers education technologies, cybersecurity and IoT topics. You can follow Shannon on Muck Rack or Medium to read more of her articles.

Prior to COVID-19, a mere 34% of schools were offering fully online classes and only 2% of American students were participating in them. However, during the pandemic, 69% of parents said that their kids were receiving hybrid or fully online instruction.

This massive shift to online education happened within a matter of weeks at many schools while others made the transition in just a few days. The rapid adjustment left thousands of teachers struggling to create virtual lesson plans, as most schools were ill-equipped for such a sudden, drastic change.

Now, more than a year has passed and some teachers still feel unprepared for the coming school year.

The Virtual Dilemma

Online classes have come with their fair share of benefits, including personalized instruction, flexible learning schedules and increased access to Advanced Placement classes, electives and more. However, many teachers received little to no training in regard to teaching online classes, so students aren’t able to reap all of these amazing benefits.

A lack of training also means that teachers don’t have the tools or knowledge to create online lesson plans and deliver material in an engaging way. Subsequently, students are bound to struggle to comprehend and remember the material. Ultimately, their letter grades and ACT and SAT scores will reflect this disconnect.

Many students lack access to computers and the internet at home, too. This disparity is most common among minority populations and low-income families. Last year, 7% to 8% of households with students had little to no access to computers or the internet, making remote learning impossible for millions of kids. While educators are working to improve access by providing free laptops and hotspots, they have a long way to go before everyone has an equal opportunity to receive a virtual education.

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Transact Releases New Emergency Hotline Capabilities As Colleges Prepare To Welcome Students Back To Campus

Transact CampusTransact, the leader in innovative credential and payment solutions for a connected campus, today announced the release of a new mobile feature that gives college students emergency hotline and suicide prevention information at their fingertips. This addition to Transact’s mobile credential platform comes at a time when the majority of college students are reporting mental and emotional trauma stemming from the Covid-19 pandemic.

“Over the last few years, there has been a steady increase in utilization and demand for campus counseling services,2 and this year, 73% of college presidents identified mental health as a pressing issue, said Nancy Langer, CEO, Transact. “We know from working closely with university leaders around the country that student health and wellbeing are of the utmost concern as campuses prepare for the start of the 2021-2022 academic year. We designed this technology to be part of the support system for students and school leaders. Our easy-to-implement tool allows students to access emergency contact information directly from the student ID credential on their smartphone.”

The emergency hotline and suicide prevention contact capability is available immediately to all existing Transact Campus Mobile ID customers through a simple system update. Transact’s mobile platform allows university administrators to push updates to student IDs without the expensive process of reprinting and redistributing IDs. Users will also have the ability to customize their students’ IDs to include national, state, local and/or school-specific hotline information. Many states are moving to require this information on student ID cards.

“We hope the ease and accessibility of this feature will help keep college campuses safer and save student lives,” Langer continued. Statistics show that services, such as the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, are effective in reducing emotional distress and suicidality. These services help divert callers from unnecessary law enforcement, emergency and hospital services.

This potentially life-saving capability strengthens Transact’s robust and secure mobile-centric campus platform. Thanks to integrations with the nation’s primary smart phone wallets, campuses that use Transact’s contactless student ID credentials are incredibly secure and accessible with a tap.

“We recognize that this is the future for all colleges and universities, and we will continue to provide revolutionary technology to support campus goals and improve student experiences,” Langer added.

For more information or to schedule a demonstration of Transact’s campus solutions, visit www.transactcampus.com.

Avoiding Post-COVID EdTech Failure

Al Kingsley

By Al Kingsley, CEO, NetSupport.

Think back to all those brilliantly publicized great EdTech ideas of the past that have miserably failed. It’s quite possible you’ve lived through one, two, or more. I’ve been in the education and tech business for about 30 years, and have seen everything—from lavish laptop programs to superior software concepts launch with fanfare only to end up being scrapped. They were written about in our most popular magazines and showcased at the education trade shows, but they didn’t last more than a few years.

Why?

As a student of EdTech history, I believe I know. It’s part of the reason for writing My Secret #EdTech Diary. Many of those well-meaning, inventively inspiring EdTech solutions–most of which were based on a device, or specific software–vanished because there was little forethought. There was inadequate thought given to training, professional development, maintenance, upkeep, upgrades, support, setting expectations, and then securing the funds needed to sustain them.

Historical perspective about EdTech launches that failed

These historic EdTech launches were initially expensive not only to develop but to be deployed, used, and ultimately dropped. Think about the cost of a district laptop initiative. The cost is staggering, but it needs more than just money.

Historically, laptop deployment plans were very political, too. They had to be sold to more than just directors of technology; they needed to be endorsed by entire communities, which ultimately funded them. Looking back, it’s easy to see that the plans would never endure through breakdowns, leadership changes, curriculum transformations, and lack of use. EdTech like this was doomed from the beginning, because it couldn’t be sustained beyond the purchase of shiny devices.

So, why look back?

Looking back at our mistakes is vital. It is also simple to do and can help us to avoid future failures. Especially now, post COVID, when we have the opportunity to be educationally innovative, and more relevant and intentional with our products. If we’ve learned anything by looking back, it is that we were unprepared for a situation like the pandemic.

I’d like to say again, we have so much technology available to us and yet for many we were unprepared. How did that happen? There’s a spotlight on education and technology right now and an opportunity to rethink and reshape how we utilize EdTech and how it can best underpin amazing teaching and learning. The positive outlook for EdTech companies is that they can help provide the change needed, and to do it for more than a few most economically fortunate, but rather for everyone around the globe. That will require more than simple, shiny-device thinking. We need to use what we’ve learned from the distant as well as the recent past.

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Leveraging Technology-Enabled Instruction To Improve Student Outcomes

Dr. Bill Daggett

By Dr. Bill Daggett, founder, International Center for Leadership in Education and Successful Practices Network.

The first full school year of remote, in-person, or hybrid model of instruction during the COVID-19 era is finally behind us. Now that the dust is settling on that tumultuous time for students, teachers, parents, and administrators, we need to reflect and dissect the cases of perseverance and success and how they came about so that we can be ready to grapple with the challenges that we will surely meet going forward. Indeed, there are many lessons to be learned from the past year, but possibly the most critical is the need for school systems in every community to have a plan to deliver technology-enabled instruction to students.

Leveraging technology to improve student outcomes is not a new concept but it is a practice typically done in isolation and at the maximum comfort level of the teacher. Many instructors to this day reject the full capabilities of what advanced technologies can provide in favor of a twentieth-century model of manual computing and labor because that is “how it has always been done.” In reality, new and innovative technologies, coupled with the ability to digitize and deliver content remotely, has expanded the capabilities of teachers to personalize instruction based upon a student’s interest, learning style, aptitude, and countless other factors because no two kids are the same. In essence, the traditional paradigm has been flipped from “students go to school to learn” to “learning goes to students wherever they are.”

A May 2020 study examining the impact of school closures on student learning demonstrated that students in schools using technology-enabled instruction, in this case a reading software that helps teachers differentiate instruction for student in grades 2-12–Achieve3000 Literacy, continued to attain similar levels of reading growth during school closures as they had earlier in the year.

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40% of High School Students Will Lose Interest In A College After A Poor Website Experience

Laptop, Woman, Education, Study, YoungU.S.-based high school students say the website is their most influential resource when conducting college research, and 40% will lose interest in a college or university if the website is frustrating or disappointing.

This, according to “Personal Connection: How to Maximize Enrollment, Retention and Re-Engagement, a research paper developed by Modern Campus, the industry’s leading “student first” modern learner engagement platform.

The research comes from Ruffalo Noel Levitz’s E-Expectations Trend Report, an annual survey of high school students exploring their behaviors and experiences as they research prospective colleges. The 2021 edition highlights the rising importance of personalization in engaging prospective students—and the need for colleges and universities to stand out in the increasingly competitive postsecondary marketplace.

“Modern learners think and act like consumers, so it’s critical for colleges and universities to build websites, social media presences and outreach strategies that address their needs and interests,” said Peter DeVries, president and chief operating officer of Modern Campus. “Those that do will thrive. We know this because we see it in our customers every day—on average they grow annual revenue by 19% and enrollments by 14%.”

Like any customer in any industry, prospective students conducting their college research are primarily trying to understand how the institutions they are considering match their needs and expectations.

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Lessons To Learn From K-12 Remote Study

Profile photo of Dan Hawthorne, Ph.D.
Dan Hawthorne

By Dan Hawthorne, Ph.D., director of industrial-organizational psychology, PAIRIN.

We’re starting to emerge from our pandemic-induced hibernation, and as we do so it’s important to look back on the past year and learn from our experiences – good and bad. In different ways, every organization had to adapt to the pandemic, whether it was moving to remote-work, accelerating digital-first initiatives, or in the case of education, shutting down schools and creating virtual classrooms.

Without in-person teaching, students have been left to create their own education path. For some this may have been a blessing, allowing them to move ahead (or look backwards) to best suit their education needs, but for others, the lack of guidance and instruction has been a hindrance. In a virtual setting it’s all too easy to hide behind the mute button, remain off video, and even complete other tasks while the class moves on.

Although we’re beginning to see the return to normalcy, there are several key takeaways we can learn from the shortcomings of remote K-12 education.

Remote Learning Shortcomings

For the most part, experts agree that remote learning was not very successful, especially for

younger students and those from lower socioeconomic statuses. Learning losses for K-12 students were examined early in the summer of 2020, and predictions were made to determine the shortcomings caused by remote learning in place of in-person study. Three scenarios were examined, including return to in-person education in Fall 2020, Jan 2021 and Fall 2021. In all three scenarios learning losses were anticipated, ranging from a three to four month loss if students received average remote learning, to a seven to eleven month loss with low quality remote instruction.

Other studies unearthed similar results. In Fall 2020, NWEA conducted Measure of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments for 4.4 million US students from ages 8-14 in the US. The study found that students had slid in progress compared to previous years, and using 2019 as a benchmark, discovered that while students performed similarly for reading-based assessments, they dropped 5-10 percentile points in math skills. These results led to the conclusion that more students were falling behind compared to previous years.

Although remote learning is better than no learning at all, young students are in a delicate stage of life where they need to grasp more than just math, science and reading skills, but also inter-personal skills to develop healthy relationships. Remote learning does not provide the same type of space and environment to speak with peers, navigate social relationships, and better understand non-verbal cues such as body language and facial expressions. This lack of human exposure not only leads to under-developed social skills, but can also impact mental health.

Additional studies were undertaken during remote learning to determine the mental state and well-being of K-12 students. One report identified that 46% of teachers had seen an increase in students’ mental health issues, citing that they were expressing anxiety and depression far more often than before the pandemic. While this may be tied to external factors, the inability to escape home-life and independently create relationships and experiences certainly played a large role.

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Modern Campus Acquires Presence, Leading Campus Engagement and Learning Platform

Modern Campus announces the acquisition of Presence, a campus engagement and learning platform for higher education institutions. The acquisition extends Modern Campus’s learning partners to more than 1,400 colleges and universities across North America and enables each to serve their students with a massively personalized experience throughout the “learner to earner” journey.

With a practical approach to impacting student engagement, Presence helps higher education institutions increase student engagement to power retention, graduation rates and workforce readiness. A data-focused student engagement, learning and retention platform for student affairs divisions, Presence enables higher education institutions to:

Manage and automate processes: Simplify complicated and inconsistent practices by standardizing how involvement opportunities are structured and advertised. Integrated in one platform, users can improve both operational workflows and student accessibility.

Engage more students: Meet students where they are and simplify how they find involvement opportunities to ensure effective advertisement, quick access and more direct engagement. Remove barriers to involvement, including every student with automatic profiles.

Track and collect engagement data: Measure participation both qualitatively and quantitatively. Utilize scalable data collection through mobile devices and collect survey and assessment data in a single tool.
Assess behaviors and trends: Make data-driven decisions to increase engagement, ensure retention and boost graduation rates. Synced live with student information system data, users can identify trends, compare effectiveness and identify under-involved students.

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