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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education, Higher Education EdTech April 14, 2018

Higher Education Accreditation Is Broken – It’s Time to Fix It

Accreditation was designed to protect students by safeguarding higher education standards, but it’s no longer fit for purpose.

Today, the United States is home to low-quality for-profit colleges willing relieve students of their money in exchange for an education that costs as much, if not more, than a non-profit school. The education they provide is in some cases also inferior to other schools in part because of low academic standards but also because of poor management.

Accreditation used to work – and it can again. But it must be fixed.

What Is Accreditation?

Accreditation is given out by agencies in the federal government. These agencies began life within colleges as a way for institutions to establish wider standards. These agencies also opened communication between institutions to make it easy for students to transfer or graduate.

After accreditation agencies no longer suited their purpose within the community of schools, the federal government took them over to continue to standardize education but also to protect the government’s own investment in higher education, which began in earnest in the 1950s.

Today, accrediting agencies are responsible for two things:

Making sure students get a quality education
Making sure the quality of the college’s management is sufficient (fraud prevention, etc.)

Accreditation Agencies Aren’t Doing Their Job

Yet, accreditation agencies are not doing their job in part. This is in large part because the government doesn’t supply the money needed to do it.

Even though the accrediting agencies are supposed to be working for the federal government, they still need money from colleges.

The system as it stands today works in a way where accrediting agencies are responsible to the government but receive funding from colleges in the form of fees that aren’t tied to colleges’ performance.

With a small budget, lack of staff, and the ability for one lawsuit to wipe out a third of the money available for oversight, accreditation is no longer up to the task of providing both quality standards of education and management.

The result has been rampant and glaring cases of fraud and the rise of diploma mills. The case of Corinthian Colleges, which was found to harbor massive academic and financial fraud, is only one example of these failures.

We Must Fix Accreditation to Improve Education and Prevent Fraud

Fixing accreditation won’t be easy. According to Antoinette Flores, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, accreditors will need to set minimum fees to ensure it is well funded, increase fees for colleges for poor performers to pay for the additional oversight required, and need additional legal protection from lawsuits.

Indeed, accreditation is broken, but just as before, it can evolve to meet the changing needs of students and schools.

Matthew Lynch published in Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech, Higher Education, Higher Education EdTech February 22, 2018

Student Outcomes Is the Only Metric That Matters in EdTech

EdTech companies use lots of metrics to measure the success of their products. Profits, number of products sold, and market share are among the ways that EdTech firms use to determine whether a product has been successful. But none of these metrics are as important as one thing—student outcomes.

In most industries, companies are primarily focused on profits. In EdTech, you have to do business with schools or universities. These institutions don’t operate like traditional businesses. Working with non-profit institutions requires a different mindset than the corporate world.

The goal of education is to teach students, not to make money. That means when designing an EdTech product, the only metric that companies need to look at is student outcomes. Student outcomes are the first thing schools will want to hear about when purchasing an EdTech product. If you can show that your product will deliver the results they want, other factors won’t matter.

EdTech companies that put student outcomes at the center of their product will not only impress schools, they’re more likely to make big sales. Like in any other industry, trends move fast in education. If school districts or universities see neighboring districts or competing institutions doing something that works, they’re going to want it too.

Too many companies get into the EdTech business thinking they can focus on student outcomes while also squeezing every last penny out of customers and cutting costs. These companies would be wiser to focus solely on student outcomes and let the money work itself out. A truly great EdTech product sells itself.

Of course, there’s another reason student outcomes matter so much. EdTech companies, by entering into the world of education, have a responsibility to students. Although the goal of any business is typically to make the biggest profits possible, EdTech companies must operate within a world not driven by profits. By choosing to go into this industry, companies also must accept the responsibility of working to improve outcomes for students.

So yes, while EdTech companies need to be profitable to stay afloat, money cannot be the sole driving factor behind an EdTech firm. Student outcomes should be the only way that we measure the success of an EdTech company, and student outcomes should be the only metric that matters to EdTech entrepreneurs.

How do you think EdTech companies can strive for better student outcomes? Do you think we need more focus on student outcomes in EdTech?

Matthew Lynch published in Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech, Higher Education, Higher Education EdTech February 12, 2018

How to Create Your Own Classroom Edtech Tools

You know you need to get on board with using educational technology in your classroom. But you’re having trouble finding just the right app to meet the needs of your students. Sometimes, it can seem like the implementation of new edtech tools drains the valuable time that it’s supposed to save.

If that’s the case, have you considered creating edtech tools of your own?

You may think you don’t have enough time or expertise, but building edtech for your own students is easier than you think.

Here are some ways to get started.

Learn Relevant Technical Skills

Never tried coding or UX design? Do you think it’s too hard to learn? Think again! You can pick up coding skills for free at sites like Codecademy, or take a tutorial on computer programming at Khan Academy. Share your knowledge with others and take advantage of the expertise of your colleagues, too.

Collaborate With Edtech Companies

These companies are eager to serve the needs of educators, but they are limited in their understanding of tools that teachers would be most likely to use. Many entrepreneurs, although they have ample technical expertise, have not spent enough time in classrooms to have a practical understanding of the day-to-day life of a classroom. For this reason, they constantly seek input and feedback from teachers. Partnerships with edtech companies can provide helpful connections while you build your entrepreneurial and technical skill.

Work With Other Teachers

In 2015, a group of teachers at a charter school called KIPP Bay Area created an app that customized Khan Academy playlists by aligning them with MAP assessments and with the Eureka Math curriculum. Because of their collaboration, these teachers were able to identify a need within their teaching community and pool their expertise to create a solution. Powerful things happen when teachers work together to solve problems.

Pilot a Program

Once you have acquired the skills and the connections and identified a problem in your school or district, it’s time to start a pilot program. Whether it’s an app to facilitate the flipped/blended learning process or a tool to easily aggregate assessment data, get your colleagues on board with testing it in their classrooms. Make sure you track and document the effect of your pilot on student achievement and learning. You may be amazed at what you are able to accomplish.

Teacher-created tech tools are well within your reach, effectively putting you in the driver’s seat of edtech in your own classroom.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech Startups & Businesses, Education Leadership, Higher Education EdTech January 29, 2018

What District Leaders Want from Companies at Conferences

If you are surrounded by your company banner, brochures, products and boxes full of swag, you are probably packing up for an education conference. Armed with the best of what you have to offer, your goal is to sell to district leaders – the administrators who make the decisions for their districts.

What do district leaders want from companies at conferences? Let’s start with these four tips.

Be ready with specific answers

Knowing your product price and hidden costs give district leaders what they want from companies at conferences. While it’s critical that you send company representatives with educational experience to a conference, you also need someone who can accurately quote prices.

Offer extended opportunities for networking

District leaders find themselves working long days, often 10 or 12 hours in length, sometimes longer. Many times administrators make decisions in isolation while hoping that they have enough information to choose well.

Address the pain points felt by district leaders by offering creative ways to network, even if your company isn’t large enough to host the heavy appetizers or dessert bar being held later at the conference.

You can do this by connecting district leaders with each other. Introduce district leaders to other leaders already using your product; they’ll do the rest.

Solve problems

Many of the administrators in district leadership have seen education trends come and go – and sometimes come back. They are attending the conference to find solutions for overcoming obstacles.

Administrators have reported feeling as though companies at conferences talk at them rather than listen to their challenges. First listen carefully and then show how your product solves problems and is innovative enough to stay the course. District leaders making an investment in your company’s product will be held accountable by their communities back home.

The other thing you can do is live up to expectations. Make sure your product can do all you say it can do.

Let them play

District leaders love to play just as much as the students they serve. Offer opportunities to engage with your edtech. The administrators will walk away with a better understanding of what your product does and how users respond to it. They’ll remember interacting with your product far longer than they will remember listening to a spiel.

By giving district leaders what they want from companies at conferences, you’ll stand out above everyone else.

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Trending Topics December 29, 2017

Are Teachers Ready for Virtual Reality in the Classroom?

Virtual Reality (VR) has become a hot topic in education as of late with the arrival of many options for the technology in the video game world. Whether or not video games can teach children has been a long debate, but the addition of VR has possibly complicated or alleviated the situation further. According to a survey completed by GFK, 85 percent of teachers are ready to include VR in their classrooms. At the same time, 84 percent of teachers believe using VR could enhance the one thing that has seemed to be lost in classrooms in recent years: student motivation. These statistics come as no surprise considering how many students are so familiar with the technology, and two out of three teachers claim to be technology innovators for that very reason.

How Ready are Teachers and Classrooms?

Many teachers claim to be ready, but they might not see the amount of training and preparation it takes to use VR. Also, there is the concern of whether or not school districts can even afford the technology. So far, the cheapest route to go is headsets that work with Smartphones. However, with budget cuts across the board and technology that is already out of date being in classrooms, the concern of how to fund upgrading to this technology remains.

What is Currently Used and What Does Funding Look Like?

At current, most schools only make use of laptops, computer labs, iPads, and SmartBoards. Some of this technology has been provided by teachers themselves due to the lack of funds. Through this method, many applications have come into existence, and several successful start-up companies have been born. However, it is not fair to teachers to expect them to fund everything out of their own pockets much longer, especially as technology becomes more expensive and demanding in the classroom.

How Can VR be Used? What is the Hold Up?

There are many advantages to using VR in classrooms, though. Studies indicate that science and social studies classes would benefit from using VR the most because of the ability VR offers to simulate situations throughout history and in laboratories. For these simulations to occur, though, some technology programs currently available on the market need also to expand to meet the potential demand for these programs shortly. Even though students are ready for such technologies, and teachers crave having them in the classroom, current school curriculum just cannot seem to keep up with either situation. This is a shame considering the effect VR can have on students’ learning experiences and opportunities.

One Teacher’s Story

One teacher, in particular, Erin J. Merrill, has found a way to bring VR into her social studies classroom at the middle school where she teaches, though. She was able to find VR headsets on Amazon for as cheap as $10.00 each, which was helpful to find in a school that allows teachers to bring their own devices into the classroom. She also stated that each student does not have to have their VR headset as a group can share throughout a lesson. She requested students to use their on Smartphones to find 360-degree videos on YouTube and to download other applications found through Orbulus, Trench Experience VR, and Google Cardboard. Merrill foresees writing a grant in the future for a 360-degree camera of her own to have in the classroom for the sake of making her videos and experiences since students found the lesson plans revolving around VR to be so enlightening and eye-opening.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, due to the funding situations of most school districts that have previously been mentioned, most teachers who are ready to include VR in their classrooms will not have any other choice but to look into grant funding for such technology. Students are ready for it. Most teachers are ready for it. Therefore, the curriculum and budgeting in school districts should find a way to be ready for it, too.

Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education December 22, 2017

How Colleges Can Use Data Analytics to Improve Student Retention and Graduation Rates

Unlike K-12 schools, colleges and universities have not traditionally placed a huge focus on student retention and graduation. Students who couldn’t make it in college dropped out and colleges could easily fill their spot. But today’s higher education landscape is changing. There is more pressure on colleges and universities to keep students in school and ensure they graduate.

This has left colleges scrambling to find new ways they can better serve students. One method many schools are trying? Using data analytics to improve retention and graduation rates.

Data analytics can be used in a variety of ways. First, they can help colleges find patterns among students who are failing courses. Colleges can figure out whether there’s a particular subset of students that are more likely to fail. First generation college students, minorities, or female students may all be more likely to struggle in college. By determining if these groups are falling behind, colleges can figure out their next steps to help these students.

Colleges can also use data analytics to find the courses that are most challenging for students. It may be a particular department, professor, or type of course that is causing a disproportionate number of students to fail and ultimately drop out.

Keeping data on individual students can also help target struggling students. Data analytics can reveal exactly what students struggle with. This can be accomplished by tagging assignment types or course types and measuring where a student performs the worst.

Sharing this data with students and professors can also be a powerful tool for improving outcomes. Once it’s clear what a student, or a group of students, is struggling with, interventions can be used. Professors who find that many students fail a particular course may offer more tutoring or additional resources. Students who learn that they struggle with a particular skill, such as writing, can seek out help with that specific skill.

Now that more colleges and universities are working harder to retain students and increase graduation rates, it’s time to start looking for the best ways to do this. Data analytics will bring colleges into the 21^st century and allow them to better target and serve students who are at risk of failing or even dropping out of school altogether.

How does your institution use data analytics to target students and increase achievement? Do you think data analytics are a necessary tool?

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Trending Topics December 1, 2017

Five Ways to Leverage Wearable Technology in the Classroom

There is no doubt that technology both improves and complicates education. Technology can turn education into a more interactive, global experience, though it also raises new issues regarding classroom management and student misuse of class time. However, with guidance and dedication, teachers can implement wearable technology to help students engage with lessons on a deeper, more intrinsic level. Here are 5 ways educators can leverage wearable technology to enhance student engagement.

1. Fitness Trackers

Fitness trackers, like FitBit or the Adidas Zone, can help students take ownership of their physical education and health classes. Instead of running a mile only once a week, students can monitor their daily fitness growth and progress over the term of the class. Physical education teachers can assign fitness homework and have access to monitoring, track the students as they make and reach health and fitness goals, and adjust their classes to accommodate the students’ changing fitness levels. This can make fitness goals and tests less competitive since physical competition can be intimidating for some students. On the other hand, students who are motivated by competition can enter into small-group competitions through their fitness trackers.

2. Virtual Reality

History, civics, and language teachers can make instruction true-to-life through the use of virtual reality headsets in their classrooms. Virtual reality allows users to feel immersed in another place or experience, an invaluable asset for students learning about foreign cultures, cities, or ancient empires. Teachers can lead virtual tours through the cities and events they’re teaching about, instead of relying on pictures, posters, and slideshows. Students can move from reading about a country to viewing its geography on a map, to walking the streets of its cities using virtual reality headgear.

3. Smart Watches

Smartwatches are a great way to enhance student-teacher communication and help students hold themselves accountable. Smartwatches increase students’ ability to self-monitor and self-regulate their learning experiences. Smartwatches can be synced to a user’s phone or tablet and can increase communication between teachers and students. Students can send questions to a teacher remotely (if they’re too shy to ask aloud), schedule and receive reminders about school work, or be used as an alarm or remote.

4. GoPro and Video Recorders

GoPro is just one of several portable, wearable video recorders on the market. They can be used by teachers to record lessons and in-class experiences to be used by students who are absent or unable to attend traditional school, or they can be used to enhance the learning environment. GoPro allows the student to take the driver’s seat in exploring the world around them as it relates to the curriculum of a class, especially in journalism, communication, and television production classes.

5. Google Glass

Google Glasses are perhaps the pinnacle of wearable technology. They take all the capabilities of a phone or tablet and wrap them around a student’s head in a pair of glasses. They are equipped with 4G and wireless internet technology, meaning that students can use them for both classroom input as well as output. Teachers can communicate with students, watch a student’s process (and not just the final result) in doing work through the Google Glass’ camera, and communicate with them in real-time, even when the students are at home. Google Glass is also hands-free, meaning it won’t interfere with the students’ other in-class tasks.

While these wearable technologies have creative uses in the regular education classroom, there are also a lot of exciting implications for special education students as well. Students with autism, for example, who may have difficulty communicating may find comfort in constant access to technology – like the Google Glass or smart watches – that allow them to view and communicate from behind a comfortable distance. These technologies also allow students to demonstrate their learning and understanding in deeper, more practical ways than traditional standardized tests or pen-and-paper responses.

Technology may offer certain temptations to students – Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are easy to use for personal, non-academic reasons – and may at times make it harder for teachers to monitor their students, but the potential benefits of wearable technology far outweigh these hypothetical challenges. Wearable technology can make education more accessible, meaningful, and engaging for students of all abilities and interests.

Matthew Lynch published in Digital & Mobile Technology, Education Leadership, Teachers November 30, 2017

5 Ways to Improve Your District’s Digital Leadership

Educators are counting on your digital leadership and your support to help everyone embrace edtech. Here are five ways you can help them embrace digital technology.

1. Recognize Concerns

Change doesn’t come easy for everyone, especially in the digital technology space. Educators stress about their ability to fully implement technology in the classroom and their workspace – even after decades of classroom technology. Nine out of ten teachers will agree that ed tech is here to stay, and yet only 40% of teachers report being prepared to implement it competently and confidently.

Worries about digital footprints, security, and privacy, or something else, can slow the adoption process unless you intervene.

2. Walk the Talk

Get your human resources department to help you set the expectations for digital leadership. Write job descriptions that require the use of current technologies.

Next, provide professional development to make sure that employees have the digital skills you need, and then evaluate every employee on how well they have met the digital expectations of their job descriptions.

3. Celebrate the Early Adopters

Teachers and administrators who are fearless in embracing new trends often lead their peers. Identify these influencers right away, celebrate their successes, and place them in a position of digital leadership.

Early adopters of new technologies can lead their peers in the right direction; these leaders often make excellent technology coaches.

4. Allow Time for Transition

Learning new ways to incorporate digital technology in your district takes time. Just as students learn at varying rates, your district employees will learn at different rates as well. Teachers, for example, need opportunities to thoughtfully engage with the technologies used for instruction, communication, and collaboration.

5. Create a Culture Based on Change

Adding digital technology to an already full plate for district employees doesn’t create change; it foments resentment because it comes across as one more thing to do. Instead, encourage a real metamorphosis of your culture. Changing the culture of your organization allows you to change the way everyone thinks and works collaborates. Technology allows educators to create a synergy that doesn’t exist within the isolated classroom.

By setting edtech expectations early on and providing adequate support, your district’s digital leadership can create a new culture of digital use and citizenship.

Matthew Lynch published in Early Childhood & K-12 EdTech, Higher Education, Higher Education EdTech November 14, 2017

8 Apps, Tools, and Resources That Will Improve Your Memory

Some aspects of human memory are still largely misunderstood. However, we do know that aging affects our ability to remember. We also know that concentration and memory are linked.

We know that memory is not just a “thing” that we all have. There are three steps in the process of storing and recalling a memory: the first is registering and encoding the experience or action, the second is storing and retaining what was registered, and the third is retrieving the information.

When we cannot remember something, it could be one of three things has occurred: you might not have encoded the experience effectively, you were distracted when encoding, or you’re just having difficulty retrieving it.

Fortunately, there are exercises, activities, and strategies we can practice to work out our brains to improve the memory process. Particularly, to better remember something, spend more time learning about and doing the actual activity. This will allow neurotransmitters to make connections repeatedly, thus making the specific brain network more engrained in the mind.

There are apps, tools, and other resources for the specific purpose of training the brain and improving the memory. We have put together a list of some of the best of these here.

Lumosity – $11.99+

Based on the science of neuroplasticity, though facing some bad press, Lumosity is one of the most highly recommended apps for working out the brain and is currently used by 85 million people. Since challenges and rewards improve memory, this app is excellent for training the brain and working out one’s memory.

Virginia Tech Online Study Skills Workshops

Virginia Tech outlines the connection between memory and concentration on this page of their website. They also present a few activities to challenge the reader, as well as tips on how to concentrate, study, and recall information better. It’s not an app that you can play daily, but it provides critical advice on improving all the phases of memory and concentration.

Personal Zen – Free

This app is clinically proven to reduce stress and anxiety by playing a game. Through retraining your brain to think more positively, the reduction of anxiety and stress allows you to focus more on the events and experiences around you. Thus, it stands to reason that you can register experiences and encode the information more firmly for retrieval at a later date.

Edgewood College Website

On their website, Edgewood College has a few pages of tips for students on how to better memorize information and improve memory. Some of the tips and activities include organizing and ordering information, the “Funnel Approach,” and organizing through meaning and association. The website is accessible to the public and offers great tips and exercises that can help anyone improve their ability to memorize and remember.

Eidetic – $4.99

Since our ability to recall information, experiences, and actions is connected to how we originally registered the information and to the repetition of the information or action, this app is excellent for helping us remember certain personal items. It provides context and meaning as you can enter your own information you’d like to remember, such as names, numbers, quotes, notes, etc. It reminds you to test yourself and spaces these tests out over time to help you retain the info in your long-term memory.

Memory Improvement Tips Website

It may seem unsuspecting, but this website provides a variety of tips, activities, games, and exercises to help improve your memory. You can choose the subject and type of activity you want to practice from a variety of free options. It’s a comprehensive website that is accessible to all.

Fit Brains Trainer – $4.99+

This award-winning app trains your brain in a variety of ways through a variety of games and challenges. Designed by neuroscientists, Fit Brains Trainer stimulates the mind while providing a fun experience. It claims to be the only training program that trains your cognitive skills including memory, attention, speed, and emotional intelligence.

The Memory Page

This basic blog-style website is more than it might first appear. There are tons of apps that purport to improve brain and memory power. However, there are so many other aspects involved in preventing the decline in memory and cognition. This website provides lots of information and several other resources regarding methods to improve and maintain cognitive abilities, especially memory. From ways to boost brain power to foods and herbs that improve memory, this website is an all-around helpful resource.

Did we miss any?

Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education November 13, 2017

Ready to Study Abroad?: The Top European Universities in 2018

Studying abroad next year and keen to make the most of your experience? Are you choosing to study in Europe? If so, read on. We combed the QS University Rankings for 2018 to find the best universities in Europe to study at next year.

1. University of Cambridge

Cambridge is one of the oldest universities in the world and has produced some of the most essential scientists in history from Sir Isaac Newton to Stephen Hawking.

If you’re looking for a university dedicated to innovation, research, and specialist subjects, Cambridge is your best bet.

2. Imperial College London

Are you a future scientist hoping to gain international experience? Imperial College London is the #4 university in Europe and #8 in the world.

Imperial is different from any other university in the UK because of its commitment to the scientific community and its multidisciplinary approach to teaching and research.

Moreover, Imperial is based in South Kensington, a center of culture in the heart of London. The campus provides international students with an incredible experience with access to the world’s top researchers on campus and some of the most incredible museums, theaters, and galleries on their doorstep.

3. ETH Zurich- Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

ETH Zurich embodies the values of Switzerland itself: intellectual freedom, entrepreneurial spirit, global responsibility, and an open mind.

In other words, ETH Zurich is home to the future pioneers of the future scientific community. Not convinced? Nobel laureate Albert Einstein called this university home.

4. Delft University of Technology

Based a stone’s throw from the international center The Hague and an hour from Amsterdam, Delft University of Technology is establishing itself as an important STEM university not only in Europe but across the world.

The university features one of the largest university campuses in the world and includes a new media center, aerodynamics and propulsion lab, and typically Dutch parks and cycle paths for students to enjoy.

5. University of Copenhagen

The University of Copenhagen is known for its research capacity – and it’s one of the best places to study.

The university partners with global research groups and private sector companies for a multi-dimensional experience. It’s also welcoming of international students, who are 10% of the total full-time student population.

Do you have your sights set on any of these top European universities in 2018? Where will you go? Let us know in the comments below.