Monday, December 15, 2014

MOOCs are Finding their Space

Only two or three years ago, MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) were being touted as the vehicle that would revolutionize higher education. So far, they aren't doing that and you don't hear it as much any more.

But yet, MOOCs are still being offered on a "massive" scale, with institutions like Harvard, MIT Stamford and Georgia Tech offering them and in the case of Georgia, offering an entire masters program with MOOCs. The interesting thing is MOOCs are finding their niche. And that niche is not in replacing the traditional face-to-face educational model.

In some cases, they are supplementing the traditional model. For example, they are replacing textbooks in certain courses. They are also being used to help with training teachers, including high school teachers. And they are being used for industrial training, with one major provider focusing solely on that area.

Much has been made by the detractors that 90% of MOOC students do not finish the courses. But that's an overrated statistic. To flip it around, 10% of them do, 10% of 3000 students amounts to a sizeable course. Some of the students who register never start, because there is no financial barrier. For the rest, there is a variety of reasons why students don't finish, many of which do not mean they didn't have a meaningful and potentially useful experience. Maybe they studied just the material that interested them. Maybe they didn't want to work through assignments and exams. Maybe they didn't need or want a certificate and just wanted the learning experience. Learning for the sake of learning is not a bad thing. The students who did finish are the ones who really wanted to learn. Those who attended the lectures are the ones who really wanted to be there. That's not a bad thing either.

For a great article on MOOCs, click here.

 

Tuesday, December 09, 2014

Top Ten Tech Trends by Juniper Research


It's that time of year. Juniper Research has released its list of top ten tech trends for 2015 with the following release:

1: Securing Your Data: The Time for Encryption, Tokenisation & Biometric Authentication
In the wake of a number of high profile security breaches, cloud service providers need to regain trust (at both the enterprise and consumer level). Thus, we expect to see an increasing array of companies investing in encryption and tokenisation solutions as a means of reducing the risk of data loss or theft during 2015.
As with tokenisation, biometrics are increasingly perceived as a key way to enhance end-user identification and transactional authentication, across an array of technologies. In mobile, the combination of Apple Pay with Touch ID is perhaps the most high-profile example, but we envisage that markets where the mobile device is already used for personal authentication (such as Scandinavia and the Baltic states) will rapidly incorporate biometrics as an additional factor. The technology is also entering the card space: biometric technology developer IDEX has recently agreed to provide fingerprint sensor technology to Card Tech for incorporation into a digital card.
The Top 10 Tech Trends whitepaper also has more detail on the following topics:
2. Wrist Wearables Smarten Up, and Know Their Limits
3. 2015 – The Year of NFC (At Last!)
4. All About the Data!
5. Leading Retailers to Facilitate Cryptocurrency Payment
6. Attack of the Drones
7. Consumers Take Control of their Own (Digital) Health
8. Budget Phablets, Smartphones Go Global
9. Location Based Services Move Indoors
10. Deep Linking to Become Standard Across Apps