Online Education Blog

Why America's Education Isn't Worth the Money

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 21:08:11 +0000

America spends a lot of money on education, and the announcement of the 2013 budget plan is no exception. With a projected $1.7 billion increase from last year’s education spending plan, the U.S. government will continue to have the priciest school spending on the globe, outranking every other country in price-per-student costs. From specialized classes for lagging students to sophisticated technology in kindergarten classes, the U.S. government is committed to spending whatever it takes to give kids a top-notch education.

But despite this spending, American students just don’t seem to be measuring up. Outscored by nations who spend far less, public school students in the U.S. don’t seem to be making any headway. Test scores, graduation rates, and general student achievement have all stagnated in America since the 1970s, and ACT scores have begun to decline. So when American students fail to achieve year after year, the question arises: Exactly what is that money doing for America’s education?

Can Tech Save Education?

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:34:46 +0000

Click to see the graphic!

Apple recently announced three new applications that will effectively revolutionize education around the world: iBooks 2, iBooks Author, and a new and updated iTunes U. For America, the world's largest economy, this means great things -- especially considering that the country's current educational practices are in deep water. Of 30 developed nations around the world, the United States ranks 25th in math and 21st in science: a disparity that has politicians and educators baffled. Every 26 seconds a student drops out of high school in the States, but there is hope.

Studies from places like Maine and Ohio have shown that technology can save education. Students who have access to iPads and laptops in their classrooms perform substantially better than their peers without this technology, and with Apple's new platform for spreading free education to its products the real question we should be all be asking is: Can Apple save education?

This graphic attempts to answer that question.

Facebook and Grades

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:02:10 +0000

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Facebook has taken a beating in the media over the last few years for what three studies have found to be the dire toll it takes on the academic lives of students. The most frequently cited of these studies, from Ohio State University in 2009, found that Facebook users often had GPAs up to one full point lower than non-users. The publication of this study caused a brief media whirlwind, as outlets from MSNBC to Time published stories on the study with sensational headlines, drawing dramatic conclusions.

But it turns out that none of these studies of Facebook's impact on academics, including the OSU study, has been rigorous enough to draw the conclusions that the media has drawn. The OSU study, for instance, surveyed just 219 students - a relatively small sample size. The other two studies used comparable samples. Further, these studies used simplistic models of what it meant to actually 'visit Facebook,' usually just looking at overall time spent on the site per day. The results were significant, sure, and as the first studies in a very new field, they were doing the good work of breaking new ground. But the bad reputation with the media and educators that the studies lent to Facebook use was, in all likelihood, incommensurate with its actual effects on grades. And, worse, there has been no study that contradicts this data at all - until now.

Leading social media researcher Reynold Junco has published a new study on how Facebook affects grades, and it's the most thorough study to date on the topic. Using a sample size of more than two thousand university students, and employing a complex model of Facebook use which broke it down into the individual activities performed on the site, Dr. Junco found that the claim of Facebook's hampering of grades is partially true - but very, very, partially, and even insignificantly. If you use Facebook for many hours a day, a tiny drop in GPA can occur. But very few people can or will use it often enough to make that difference. The real story is that there are bigger effects depending on how you use Facebook - both for good, and for bad. Posting status updates, for example, predicts grades negatively. But checking up on friends and sharing links with others actually positively predicted grades. Yes, you heard that right - Facebook may actually be good for grades, depending on how you use it. Dr. Junco collaborated with us on this infographic, the very first to present this game-changing data.

Textbook Shakedown

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:03:17 +0000

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Though the exorbitant cost of textbooks has become a staple of any discussion about the costs of college, it's a shame that this is now simply taken as a matter of course. "Yeah, textbooks are expensive," students say, "but there's nothing we can do about it." Unfortunately, that is exactly the position textbook companies want to keep students in - feeling that they're powerless to change the way the system works. For decades, students really have been in that position. Because of the way publishers have kept professors in the dark about prices, students were unable to exert any power of consumer choice - all while publishers jacked up prices (a staggering 186% since 1986). With plenty of new options, however, including e-books, book rentals, open books, and online book sellers, students are finally taking some of the power back. None of these solutions is perfect, but by using a combination of them - and with the helpful restructuring the government is imposing to keep publishers in check - students can shrewdly save a few hundred bucks each year. And in college, that's big.

Textbooks of Tomorrow

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:45:31 +0000

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If you ask any college student how they feel about textbooks, he or she is likely to groan. A constant annoyance for most students, largely because of their hugely inflated prices, textbooks have been under a great deal of scrutiny in the media lately. A recent survey of college students conducted by the Student PIRGs found that 7 in 10 college students have passed on buying a textbook for financial reasons. When the prohibitive cost of crucial supplies is directly keeping students from learning, there is a problem. And many are starting to think that traditional textbooks' time as paradigmatic features of the institutional learning experience is almost up.

Luckily, and right on time, technology has swooped in with a highly desirable alternative. Digital textbooks, largely dismissed as a novelty only a handful of years ago, are roaring to the forefront of discourse on education, coinciding with the staggering ascent of Apple's iPad. 53% cheaper, on average, than new textbooks, e-textbooks don't just offer a price advantage; the new range of student experiences opened up by a digital textbook is simply enormous. Imagine charts and diagrams that come alive on the page - or the screen, as it were - and offer fully interactive options for exploration. Every illustration in a biology textbook can now be a video, of a tiger bounding through the jungle or an eagle swooping down upon its prey. All textbooks' associations with being dull and boring are dashed instantly. And this isn't the future; this is right now.

Of course, though the possibilities exist in the present, it's going to take some time before digital textbooks fully penetrate mainstream education. Other countries have already begun their promotion through legislation; South Korea, for instance, invested $2 billion last year to fully convert all of the country's textbooks to digital by 2015. An equally bold bill is being advocated in Florida right now to do much the same thing. But it is going to take large national measures before we can envision students walking around college campuses with nothing more than an iPad in their backpacks. Still, the students have spoken: the current model of textbooks is no longer meeting their needs. And when an industry fails to meet the needs of its consumers, that industry is forced to change.

Students Love Technology

Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:27:33 +0000

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By now, it's a universally known fact that college students are obsessed with technology. One need only walk onto a college campus anywhere in America to witness the throngs of students typing away on laptops, swiping through menus on tablets, and chatting merrily on smartphones. One need only walk into a lecture hall to see the ominous glow of 400 Apple logos and the entranced, lit-up faces of the students diligently clicking behind them. But even though the fact that students love technology may be obvious, this fact had not been studied in depth - before now. Recently, key surveys were performed to gauge students' tech use scientifically - and the results are amazing. Not because of how much students use tech - this we already knew - but because of how much students use tech to aid their educations.

The State of Education

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 00:04:30 +0000

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With the economy taking center stage in national discourse in the last several years, education has been cast out of the spotlight as one of our most pressing problems. But many believe that our economic woes have no chance of getting better unless our educational system is in tip-top shape. It is extremely disheartening, then, to discover that our primary and secondary school systems are some of the least effective in the industrialized world. We rank lower than dozens of countries in science and math proficiency, causing economic experts to argue that we'll have no chance for competitiveness in the future world economy that will be so heavily dictated by those fields. Further, though our teachers are some of the hardest and longest working, they're some of the worst paid- a devastating contradiction in which everyone loses. It's a system that is utterly backwards- and unless we do something to fix it, our country will be in desperate trouble.

How the Internet is Revolutionizing Education

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 19:12:39 +0000

Click to see the graphic!

Change is like water running over stones: give it enough time, and it will certainly sculpt and reform those stones into completely new objects. The Internet has swept the entire globe and has changed the way we think about social interaction, media, money, shopping... essentially, the way we think about life.

But most of all the Internet continues to change how we learn. It continues to reshape education just like water reshapes stones. Whereas once it was only possible to acquire niche knowledge by attending expensive universities lined with ivy, today more than 3 million people in the US alone get their education online. Today, millions and millions of people have access to free educational information that they can absorb at their own pace, on their own terms, and in ways that work best for them. The age of rote memorization, of learning “from the books”, is over. It's time to accept that the Internet has—and will continue—to change what education is.

Consider this: in 1971 the famous Open University (OU) in England opened its doors for enrollment. OU is especially well-known for their open admissions policy, which is blind to a prospective student's previous academic records. In other words, you aren't judged by your grades when considered for enrollment at OU—if you're hungry for knowledge, why should you be denied the opportunity to learn based on your academic history? You shouldn't, and now OU has approximately 250,000 students, effectively dwarfing all other colleges in the UK. And guess what? It offers most of its classes online.

67% of colleges today are unable to meet demand for online college courses, which says a lot about what students actually value when it comes to learning. More and more people are beginning to realize that learning at your own pace is the most effective way to retain information. Too often are students discouraged or crushed by institutional standards that force them to learn in ways that are uncomfortable and just not right for them. This is probably why the University of Phoenix, a for-profit online university, has over 500,000 students, making it the largest in the US.

Learning is a life-long endeavor and online education incarnates this age-old ideology quite flawlessly. Today nearly half of all online students are 26 years or older. But what about tomorrow?

Is Social Media Ruining Students?

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 22:46:56 +0000

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While people celebrate the fact that vast WiFi networks cover every college campus in America, many are concerned that much of the bandwidth is being hogged by students on Facebook and Twitter. That fact is that nearly every college student uses social media, but the effect this has had on them has been an issue of heated debate. Some argue that Facebook turns students into addicts too glued to their News Feeds to study. Others claim that it's a valuable resource that enriches the college experience. Is social media destroying students, or making their lives better? The answer is not so simple.

While the answer is not simple we can break it up into a few questions to better understand social media’s effects. The first question is “Does it affect student’s grades?” Well, that actually depends on the social media source and how it is used. Studies actually show that classes that use twitter typically have up to half a grade point higher scores. It is also directly tied to students collaborating online with 75% saying that they would engage in online collaboration. But unsurprisingly those that try and study while using Facebook are actually hurting their grades. In fact those that multitask between Facebook and studying have 20% lower grades. What is interesting is that 79% of students surveyed don’t believe this statistic.

The second questions we need to answer is “How will using social media effect your college life experience?” A couple data points yield some insight. One, we know that Facebook users make far less money while in college. Fully 85% of Facebook users worked less than 5hrs a week as compared to the 80% of non-Facebook users that worked over 16hrs a week. Money isn’t everything, but surviving on ramen noodles isn’t the best way to live! However, many people associate the quality of college life to the ways that they were involved with their schools. Studies show that Facebook users are twice as likely to be involved in campus activities. All work and no Facebook, just might make you a dull student. Which brings us to our next topic: Self-Esteem.

The third question we must answer is “What effect does social media have on the emotional health of students?” As it turns out social media really does make people feel connected with a 20% experiencing a feeling of social connectedness among Facebook users, furthermore they were twice as likely to feel “Popular”. But it is also true that 48% of students think they are sadder than their Facebook friends. This wouldn’t be troubling except that we know from other studies that 25% of college students show serious depression in their status updates.

Even after addressing some of the key questions about social media the results are mixed. Hopefully after reading this as a student you will be able to see the pros and cons of spending your hours using social media.

Should a contractor pursue a construction management degree?

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 17:43:00 +0000

While experience on the job in construction is helpful, it rarely prepares someone to become a good contractor. Because construction is a business it deals with costing, buying, cash flow, financing, ect. In order to become a good contractor you need to strike a balance between the construction expertise needed to get the job done with good business sense to manage your workers and cash flow.

Construction management is incredibly helpful for aspiring contractors because it teaches the kinds of things that you can’t learn on the job as a construction worker. The degree will prepare you to do good project control and development as well as teach you the basics of value analysis and financial management. Learning these types of things will often make the difference between a profitable contracting company and a contractor just making ends meet. Nowadays construction management degrees include coursework on computers so that a contractor can use them as tools for estimating, planning, scheduling, and communicating effectively with customers and potential customers.

If you get your construction management degree it also looks good if you choose to target mid-sized to large companies. Mid-sized companies especially are looking for professionally trained contractors that can deliver within budget and on time because they typically don’t have a lot of extra money to spare. As a contractor if you share with your client that you are formally educated in building codes and standards, inspection procedures, and accounting they are far more likely to trust your advice, and believe your estimate.

Ultimately there is no real disadvantage for a contractor to learn more about management and business. And if for some reason you need to shut down your contracting business the degree will make you much more attractive to possible future employers.