11 New Books We Recommend This Week | Book Review - New York Times

Follow on Twitter as @GregoryCowles

Suggested reading from critics and editors at The New York Times by Gregory Cowles, Senior Editor, Books.

Crime and punishment are everywhere in this week’s recommended titles, from Patrick Radden Keefe’s “Say Nothing” (the true account of a 1972 murder in Northern Ireland) to Don Winslow’s “The Border” (the last novel in his trilogy about the drug trade) to Andrew G. McCabe’s “The Threat” (a memoir about the F.B.I. by its former deputy director). Post-Oscars, we also recommend a film critic’s take on Hollywood’s sexual subtexts; and post-democracy (kidding! I hope!) we suggest some histories to offer perspective — a look at how the Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson turned segregation into federal policy, a celebration of black women who smashed boundaries, a study of American political polarization and its consequences.

If you get quite enough of that elsewhere thank you, and turn to reading precisely to escape the noise and the chaos, well, we hear you. And we quietly urge you to pick up Jane Brox’s book “Silence,” which considers the uses and abuses of enforced quiet from monasteries to prisons.

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Source: New York Time 

Online Degree In AI: What Does It Mean To Employers | Opinions - Analytics India Magazine

Srishti Deoras, currently works as Sr. Content Strategist for Analytics India Magazine observes, The developments in the field of data science and artificial intelligence are evolving at a rapid pace, and to keep up with the technological developments, professionals often resort to upskilling. 

But there are so many questions that come on the way — full time or part time, online or offline, short duration or long duration, private or government institutes, among several others. While we have earlier covered an article on how professionals like to prefer full-time courses over part-time, it is often debated as to what companies prefer.

There was a very interesting Twitter conversation in December last year, where a project manager from Google tweeted about someone who would not want to hire a person who is online educated in machine learning. It led to a thread of heated conversation on whether the statement made sense or not. 

While many believed that a strong educational background such as a degree in computer science, engineering or statistics is a must, others were of an opinion that these skills were acquired on the basis of practical engagements and not just attaining a degree.

What Do Companies Prefer — An Academic Or Online Degree? 
Many organisations that are looking for candidates in artificial intelligence roles at a senior level typically look for candidates that have a strong academic background in areas such as computer science or engineering from reputed universities such as MIT, IITs, Stanford and others...

Online Courses Are Offering Good Resources 
The institutes that are offering online courses is at an all-time high. MOOCs have become a trend these days and many renowned researchers such as Andrew Ng are opening their own AI institutes offering online courses for AI enthusiasts. In an earlier article, we had covered why business leaders should take this course, as it not only lays a better picture of the concepts but helps them make better judgements for better outcomes. The Deeplearning.ai “AI for Everyone” project by Ng is one of the best online resources for deep learning enthusiasts. There are courses from top tier institutions such as Stanford, MIT, Columbia and others that are available online.
 
There are several other courses offered by global platforms such as Coursera and Udacity aimed at strengthening the ML community. There are several institutes in India such as UpGrad, Great Learning, TalentSprint, Jigsaw Academy, Manipal ProLearn, and others that are offering online courses with industry-relevant training to get into the AI industry. We had done ranking courses and training programmes in AI here. 
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Source: Analytics India Magazine

The 21 New Skills You Can Now Learn on LinkedIn Learning | New Courses - LinkedIn Learning

Each week presents a new opportunity for you and your team to learn the skills necessary to take on the next big challenge, according to Paul Petrone, Editor - LinkedIn Learning.

Photo:  Learning Blog - LinkedIn Learning

And, at LinkedIn Learning, we want to do everything we can to help make that happen.

So, each week, we add to our 13,000+ course library. And this past week was no different, as we added 21 new courses covering everything from data science to project management to blitzscaling your startup.

The new courses now available on LinkedIn Learning are:
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Source: LinkedIn Learning (Blog)

Preparing Your TA for the Job | Teaching Careers - Faculty Focus

The Teaching Assistant (TA) job is typically filled by an upper-level university student or graduate student. It’s a job that requires one to play several different roles, recommends Katherine Senko, instructional designer with more than 15 years of experience designing courses for various industries. She holds a doctorate in Educational Leadership.

First and foremost, the TA is a student and must complete all responsibilities to maintain this status. Second, the TA has a responsibility to the hiring professor. To the professor, the TA is the assistant and must abide by the requirements set out by the professor. Third, the TA has a responsibility to the students in the class. The role here is that of teacher, tutor, and occasionally advisor.

How does your school prepare TA’s for each of these individual and important roles? Many schools simply run their TA’s through the hiring process and those whose grades in the subject area are high enough qualify for the position. Ideally, the hiring body also prepares the TA’s for each role they will serve, as the student, as the assistant, and as the teacher. But in most cases, the professor is solely responsible for preparing the student to also become a competent TA.

Advice for faculty
It is important for both the TA and the professor to clearly understand all three roles. It helps if the professor sets ground rules early in the semester. As a professor, be sure to plainly communicate your expectations and be open to hearing any concerns of the TA. Remember, the TA is first a student, second an assistant, and third a teacher...

Hiring a TA can mean a welcome relief of the administrative duties of the classroom, but it does require careful preparation and ongoing communication. Clearly establish your requirements early. Guide the TA on how to prepare a lesson. Show the TA what you are looking for in your grading techniques. Emphasize the key points throughout the semester. Communicate openly and frequently. Make TA training part of your own preparation and the process should flow smoothly.
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Source: Faculty Focus

Top Higher Ed IT Policy Issues, 2019 | EDUCAUSE Review

The EDUCAUSE Top 10 IT Issues continue to highlight information security and data privacy, and the same holds for the EDUCAUSE Policy Team's top higher education IT policy issues for 2019. Network neutrality returns for 2019, as well, with digital accessibility joining the list for this year.

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This year's Top 10 IT Issues highlight the ways in which institutions can orient the management and use of data to foster student success, explains Jarret Cummings, Senior Advisor for Policy and Government Relations at EDUCAUSE. 

This emphasis includes ensuring security and privacy as a cornerstone of the trust needed to realize the full potential of data-driven student success initiatives. Not coincidentally, security and privacy concerns currently dominate the national dialogue about IT policy. The question remains whether those concerns have reached the point that they can overcome barriers that have thus far prevented federal policy solutions. What doesn't happen on a major policy issue is often as important as what does, though, since it can set the stage for consensus to emerge. With that in mind, this year's top IT policy issues for higher education reflect two carryovers from 2018, as well as a new entry for 2019, all three of which are "continuing to evolve." (For more on these issues, please see "Looking Back and Looking Ahead: EDUCAUSE Policy Issues, 2018–2019" in the EDUCAUSE Review Policy Spotlight blog.)...

Conclusion 
Unexpected developments could elevate even more issues to this list. For example, while prospects for Higher Education Act (HEA) reauthorization currently appear dim, the Senate education committee that must ultimately craft a working compromise reached an unanticipated bipartisan breakthrough on K–12 policy in the recent past.
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Source: EDUCAUSE Review 

Kids’ brains may hold the secret to building better AI | Future Perfect - Vox.com

Kids can give programmers useful hints about directions for computer learning, psychologist Alison Gopnik, argues.

Photo: Javier Zarracina/Vox; Getty Images

The mathematician and computer science pioneer Alan Turing hit on a promising direction for artificial intelligence research way back in 1950. “Instead of trying to produce a program to simulate the adult mind,” he wrote, “why not rather try to produce one which simulates the child’s?”

Now AI researchers are finally putting Turing’s ideas into action. They’re realizing that by paying attention to how children process information, they can pick up valuable lessons about how to create machines that learn.

DARPA, the Defense Department’s advanced research agency, is embracing this approach. It recently invited proposals from interdisciplinary teams of computer scientists and developmental psychologists, which will work to create AI systems capable of learning the things babies learn in the first few years of life.

To the developmental psychologist Alison Gopnik, this approach is the obvious way to go. She explains why in an essay titled “AIs Versus Four-Year-Olds,” which appears in the new anthology Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI. Noting that preschoolers can learn things even the most sophisticated AIs can’t, Gopnik argues that studying kids can give programmers useful hints about directions for computer learning.  

I was drawn to Gopnik’s essay not only because of the catchy title, but also because she and I both majored in philosophy at McGill University (three decades apart), and because her piece is one of only three in the book written by women. The fact that women represent 12 percent of contributions to the anthology mirrors the gender imbalance in the machine-learning community at large, where only 12 percent of the leading researchers are female, according to Wired.

Gender may go some way toward explaining why it’s taken computer scientists nearly 70 years to act on Turing’s ideas about the importance of children in AI research. Kids have traditionally been considered the domain of women.

I spoke to Gopnik about how her research on children has been perceived by male scientists and how that may finally be changing to the benefit of AI research. A transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, follows.

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Additional resources

What do babies think? - Alison Gopnik

Source: Vox.com and TED-Ed Channel (YouTube)

Online Courses Are Cost Effective but Detrimental to Learning, Researchers Find | Education - Pacific Standard

Multitasking can be damaging to your brain, and online students are bearing the brunt, according to James McWilliams, Pacific Standard contributing writer, professor at Texas State University.

Record numbers of students are taking online classes.
Photo: Faustin Tuyambaze/Unsplash

For more and more of today's university students, screen time is competing with seat time. According to the most recent statistics (from 2016–17), 33 percent of college students take at least one online class, 17.6 percent mix online and in-class coursework, and 15.4 percent exclusively take online classes. Each statistic represents an increase over the year prior, a trend that has continued since 2011. Advocates of online education are quick to celebrate this increase, but the rise of screen time in higher education may harbor some detrimental consequences.

Online courses have obvious benefits: They cut costs and are popular with working students seeking scheduling flexibility. At a number of campuses they also increase educational access. The Orlando Sentinel reports, for example, that the University of Central Florida, a school with an extensive online catalog, can serve 66,000 students due to that catalog as opposed to the 40,000 its physical campus can accommodate. Thomas Cavanagh, UCF vice provost for digital learning, explains that demand for online offerings is at an ever-increasing level. "Students," he says, "are clearly voting with their behaviors."

But the educational benefits of online courses are less clear. A Brookings Institution report found that students taking online courses "perform substantially worse than students in traditional in-person courses and that experience in these online courses impact performance in future classes and likelihood of dropping out of college as well." The New York Times opinions page editorialized in 2013 that the "online revolution" was "distressing," threatening as it does to "shortchange the most vulnerable students."

A new study out of Kent State suggests a specific reason for the problems plaguing online coursework: multitasking. In a survey of 452 undergraduates at public universities in the American Midwest, researchers confirmed "significantly greater multitasking behavior in online versus face-to-face courses." Students enrolled online reported higher rates of texting, emailing, checking in with online social networks, watching videos—none of these activities related to class—while also playing video games and listening to music.

The study's lead author, Andrew Lepp, was inspired to explore the topic of online-course multitasking when he witnessed a student taking a biology class in his library basement while streaming a Netflix video...

Speaking to journalists at a January of 2019 meeting of the Education Writers Association, Spiros Protopsaltis, a professor at George Mason University, told the audience, "The interaction between a student and an instructor is an intrinsic part of the educational process." Could it be that the "intrinsic" element in that "educational process" is the pressure in most face-to-face classrooms to put the phone away and pay attention? And if so, might the so-called great disrupter of higher education—the "online revolution"—disrupt itself from within?
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Source: Pacific Standard  

How is Online Learning Mightier than Traditional Learning 2019? | Education - Cape Cod Today

Matt Floate,Contributing author says, Freedom from "chalk and talk"...

 

Online learning has spread the wings of education and freed it from the ‘chalk and board’ environment of the traditional classrooms. In the recent decade, the academic realm is experiencing an internet revolution that indicates an enormous market for e-learning...

Online Education proves beneficial for the Teachers 
Online training programs are helping the teachers advancing their skills in curriculum implementation, education systems, policy, and leadership. The e-learning system can help them develop new skills in their students, with the help of interdisciplinary approaches and technology.

E-learning tools give them clear-cut feedback on how a student is engaging with the material.

Online programs also help the teachers creating a course shell like the following:

• Give assessments to the students
• Alert students of the due dates of the assignments
• Deliver access to lecture notes, worksheet, practice tests, and other study material
• Keep and give access to a drop box to the online class takers to submit assignments
• Return the students their graded assignments incorporated instructor’s feedback

The Flexibility of scheduling an online class 
Many working students cannot go to university daily taking leave from office. E-learning is the only option without hampering their education trapped in the machinery work schedule. For them, online classes are the oasis in the desert that can contribute a lot in shining in their career.

The benefit of pursuing online learning is the flexibility and freedom in scheduling the classes without any problem. In traditional education, you have to attend the classes according to the institute’s schedule.

Some have also criticized the approach of traditional teaching because of the discomfort of the inferior students. The one-on-one teaching method of online learning brings comfort in teacher-student interaction.

Another thing, students registering their names for availing online education are mainly doing a job. Juggling up between job and study at a corresponding time puts a toll on them. That is why; they leave no stone unturned to take ‘pay someone to take my online class’ service. They can pay some experts to take online classes as their proxy.
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Source: Cape Cod Today

Cassava launches digital learning platform | Business - Chronicle

LISTED technology firm, Cassava Smartech Zimbabwe, has launched AkelloEdutech, a digital learning platform that offers education and learning resources for learners of all age groups.
 

Photo: Cassava Smartech

Speaking at the launch of the platform in Harare on Wednesday, Cassava Smartech chief executive officer, Mr Eddie Chibi, said the new product, which will incorporate RuzivoExtramarks, Akello Books (coming soon), Akello Courses and Muzinda Hub, would harness technology to change and enhance the way students learn, offer unparalleled access to education materials, and compliment existing learning methods and systems...

“RuzivoExtramarks is an integrated learning and school management platform that offers schools a one-stop-shop for online learning and school management. Using well-illustrated, animated and interactive Cambridge and local content, RuzivoExtramarks makes the learning process for primary and secondary scholars easy and enjoyable,” said Mr Mashingaidze.

“The platform provides both academic and non-academic content from internationally recognised publishers across the globe. We have partnered with some of largest content aggregators and distributors, and so far there are over 260 000 titles on Akello books,” Mr Mashingaidze said.
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Source: Chronicle 

eLearning Provider eThink Education Offers Moodle and Totara Training in New eThink Academy | PR Web

eThink Education expands their Moodle and Totara training offerings to the public with eThink Academy, allowing users to choose from a variety of LMS training courses regardless of current LMS provider.

eThink Education, a full-service eLearning solution provider for the open-source Moodle and Totara Learning Management Systems, has expanded their training and product offerings with the launch of eThink Academy. Regardless of current eLearning provider, eThink Academy offers LMS training courses and packages to any eLearning manager, L&D professional, or LMS administrator.

eThink Education has long offered Moodle and Totara training to their client base, contracted institutions and organizations whom enjoy a fully-managed LMS support model for the open-source Moodle and Totara Learn platforms. This includes cloud-hosting, consultation, implementation, integration, consultation, management, and unlimited LMS support.

However, with the launch of eThink Academy, eThink has now expanded their training offerings and opened them to the general public. Now, any educator or learning professional - eThink client or not - can purchase and utilize eThink’s eLearning trainings to help them maximize the functionality, design, and effectiveness of their LMS and find solutions to meet their specific eLearning needs.

To learn more about eThink Academy and the training offerings available, please visit our eThink Academy page or contact eThink for more information.

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Source: PR Web