It’s true. Online learning courses can improve your critical thinking skills

Study International | April 06, 2020

Critical thinking in online learning is perhaps more crucial than critical thinking in a physical classroom. When learning online, students come across far more complex challenges that require novel solutions – often concerning technology and information. Critical thinking skills involve identifying flaws in people’s arguments or reasoning by weighing evidence and identifying misuse of information. These skills enable students to differentiate fake news from real reports, differentiating fact from opinion and understanding that they cannot take everything they read or hear at face value. Despite being such as pivotal skill, many employers report students’ thinking abilities leave much to be desired, suggesting a disconnect between the skills students graduate with from university and those needed in the workplace.

Spotlight

Overall, branding your e-learning courses is a crucial step in creating a professional and successful online learning experience for your learners.

Spotlight

Overall, branding your e-learning courses is a crucial step in creating a professional and successful online learning experience for your learners.

Related News

ONLINE EDUCATION

North Carolina’s Sampson Community College Selects YuJa Enterprise Video Platform to Enhance Teaching and Learning Sitewide

Businesswire | April 24, 2023

Sampson Community College, located in Clinton, North Carolina, has selected the YuJa Enterprise Video Platform to provide a comprehensive video and media creation, hosting, storage and distribution solution campuswide. YuJa will replace VidGrid, the institution’s former video enterprise learning platform, which is phasing out its education offering. The institution was seeking a video tool to record and edit lectures, as well as to create and embed quizzes in Moodle, its learning management system. In addition to user-friendly features that enable instructors to create engaging, interactive content, Sampson Community College will benefit from the ability to auto-caption, gradebook integration, visual analytics, and other features that help elevate teaching and learning. Institutional leaders also wanted a platform that provides support for their team and students. YuJa provides unlimited live support, training and a dedicated support staff for all users. “YuJa has worked with many former VidGrid customers to transition to a comprehensive video and media platform that can help create a rich learning environment for their students,” said Nathan Arora, Chief Business Officer at YuJa, Inc. “In addition to ongoing support, we provide an experienced implementation team to help create a seamless transition for instructors and students alike. We’re excited for Sampson Community College to experience all the features YuJa has to offer.” ABOUT YUJA, INC. YuJa is a leader in ed-tech solutions. Our platforms provide organizations of all sizes with the tools to educate, engage, inspire and collaborate. We serve learning enterprises within all sectors, including higher-ed, K-12, government, healthcare, non-profit and corporate. We have legal headquarters in Delaware with primary U.S. offices in Silicon Valley, California, and Canadian offices in Toronto. ABOUT SAMPSON COMMUNITY COLLEGE Located in Clinton, North Carolina, the mission of Sampson Community College is to provide accessible and affordable education, workforce training, and lifelong enrichment. This mission is accomplished through effective teaching, student support, public outreach, and partnering with others to improve the quality of life for the people of Sampson County. Sampson Community College is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Commission on Colleges to award the associate degree.

Read More

TALENT DEVELOPMENT

Clever Launches Multi-Factor Authentication to Help K-12 Schools Secure Sensitive Information With One Seamless Solution

PRnewswire | April 27, 2023

Clever, the platform powering digital learning for more than 75% of U.S. K-12 schools, today announced its new service, Clever MFA+. Designed to help districts facing a growing number of cybersecurity incidents in schools, Clever's new offering protects sensitive data by providing a dual layer of authentication that's easy for administrators and educators to use. "With the growing sophistication of hackers, we designed this tool to support the realities of schools today, offering busy teachers and staff peace of mind," said Mohit Gupta, Group Product Manager at Clever. "Clever MFA+ helps districts prevent malicious account access, meet insurance requirements, and ensure a safe and secure learning environment." In a recent Clever survey, one in four administrators said their district had experienced a hack, phishing incident, data breach, or other cyber attack in the past year. The impact, including cost and learning time lost to get systems running again, is high for K-12 education – on average costing schools $1.6M per ransomware incident. Clever MFA+ serves as a holistic, all-in-one solution that helps districts easily secure access to critical applications: • Staff-and teacher-friendly factors: Clever MFA+ offers a variety of authentication options, including app tokens (TOTP), SMS codes, voice calls and hardware tokens, as well as biometric. • Clever MFA+ into familiar devices and apps: The solution covers Chromebooks and Windows devices, while integrating with Google Workspace, Azure, AD and ADFS and any additional apps available with SAML, OpenIDConnect, or OAuth2. • One, secure Clever login: This new offering means sensitive applications and devices can be protected behind one secure login and with one familiar, trusted single-sign on partner. "Our instructional programs all filter through Clever — and some of our most sensitive information is rostered into those programs. Having a second layer of protection is paramount," said Dylan Jones, Instructional Technology and Data Coordinator at Sunflower County Consolidated School District. "Clever MFA+ provides seamless protection for an app that all teachers and staff are used to and familiar with! We already do identity management, rostering, and the single sign-on Portal with Clever — so MFA just made sense." Clever MFA+ is now available with a low price per staff user per year, and schools benefit from free set-up and support to make adoption seamless and quick. To learn more about Clever MFA+, visit here. The Clever SSO portal for students remains free of charge. Districts can take advantage of built-in MFA functionality to secure the Clever Portal for users with admin access and the existing Clever Badges + Pin functionality to protect students' accounts today. About Clever Clever is on a mission to connect every student to a world of learning. More than 75% of U.S. K-12 schools now use Clever to power secure digital learning experiences. With our platform for schools and a network of leading application providers, we're committed to advance education with technology that works for students everywhere.

Read More

TALENT DEVELOPMENT

PowerSchool Introduces International Localization Framework to Support Growing Global Customer Base

Businesswire | March 28, 2023

PowerSchool the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America, today announced it is in later stage development of localization features for customers to use in their regions developed under PowerSchool’s proprietary international framework. The upcoming release enables out of box support for right-to-left language support and Arabic translation capabilities in three of its Unified Operations solutions, including Unified Operations PowerSchool SIS, Unified Operations PowerSchool Enrollment Express, and Unified Operations PowerSchool Ecollect Forms, as well as its learning management system (LMS), PowerSchool Unified Classroom® Schoology Learning. “This international framework is critical for delivering our world-class solutions to our extensive and growing international customer base,” said Tony Kender, Chief Revenue Officer at PowerSchool. “PowerSchool will continue to prioritize providing our global customers with the tools they need to support their students and improve learning outcomes.” This framework supports localization of a user’s experience (such as right-to-left language support) to empower international educational institutions to deliver tailored instruction to the more than 50 million students in more than 90 countries PowerSchool serves. Additional toolkits will be made available to support localization for other regions and languages for the growing number of students, educators, and families using PowerSchool solutions to achieve their desired learning outcomes worldwide. In the near term, the right-to-left and Arabic language translation toolkit will empower more educators around the world with timesaving, centralized access to the tools they need to deliver tailored instruction, elevate data utilization, and foster family engagement. “As PowerSchool expands globally, including across the UAE, it is important for us to offer right-to-left language support and Arabic translation capabilities,” said Robert Speed, Vice President International Sales at PowerSchool. “With more than 313 million people speaking Arabic around the world, these language supports ensure more educators, students, and families can benefit from the digital transformation of education.” The new language support provides users with multiple benefits including: • Helping educators, students, and families who read right-to-left interact and learn in a more familiar and accessible way. • Providing the opportunity for students to develop collaboration skills in their primary language. • Eliminating manual translation tasks for both educators and students, which can interfere with the learning process. • Ensuring educational institutions support equity and access to a larger proportion of their students and families. PowerSchool customers can also utilize the self-service Language Toolkit feature within PowerSchool SIS, Enrollment Express, and Ecollect Forms to load additional Arabic translations as well as other languages that can be leveraged by any partners across the globe to localize to their regional needs. For Schoology Learning users, PowerSchool directly provides right-to-left language support and Arabic translation capabilities. The right-to-left language support and Arabic translation capabilities will be fully available to PowerSchool customers in late 2023. About PowerSchool PowerSchool is the leading provider of cloud-based software for K-12 education in North America. Its mission is to power the education ecosystem with unified technology that helps educators and students realize their full potential, in their way. PowerSchool connects students, teachers, administrators, and parents, with the shared goal of improving student outcomes. From the office to the classroom to the home, it helps schools and districts efficiently manage state reporting and related compliance, special education, finance, human resources, talent, registration, attendance, funding, learning, instruction, grading, assessments and analytics in one unified platform. PowerSchool supports over 50 million students globally and more than 15,000 customers, including over 90 of the top 100 districts by student enrollment in the United States, and sells solutions in over 90 countries.

Read More