Faculty Focus

HIGHER ED TEACHING STRATEGIES FROM MAGNA PUBLICATIONS

Turnitin Acquires LightSide Labs to Support Formative Feedback on Student Writing

Turnitin, the leaders in originality checking and online grading, today announced the company has reached a definitive agreement to acquire LightSide Labs, an online service that uses machine learning to provide real-time, automated feedback on student writing. The agreement will allow Turnitin to integrate its leading originality checking and online grading features with LightSide Labs’ innovative approach to providing high quality feedback to students across the writing process. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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EdTech startup SlideDog launches Live Sharing and Audience Engagement Platform

SlideDog´s latest version empowers presenters, teachers and professors to reach out to the audience on their mobile phones, laptops and tablets.

Any presenter or lecturer will tell you that their audience spends just as much time playing with their mobiles and tablets as they are following the presentation. The team behind SlideDog sees this as a new and exciting channel to engage and interact with the audience in ways that will change presentations forever.

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Open-education Partners Hope to Save Students $10 million by 2015

Taking aim at the high cost of commercial textbooks, Rice University-based publisher OpenStax College today announced a partnership with open-education pioneer Lumen Learning that is projected to save students $10 million over the next two years by facilitating the adoption of free, online textbooks by colleges and universities.

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Babson Study: Over 7.1 Million Higher Ed Students Learning Online

The 2013 Survey of Online Learning conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group reveals the number of higher education students taking at least one online course has now surpassed 7.1 million. The 6.1 percent growth rate, although the lowest for a decade, still represents over 400,000 additional students taking at least one online course.

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Cengage Learning Implements Adaptive Learning Technology Through Partnership with Knewton

Cengage Learning, a leading educational content, software and services company, today announced a partnership with leading adaptive learning company, Knewton. Through this agreement, Cengage Learning will implement Knewton’s application programming interface (API) into select higher education products to provide personalized learning pathways for students and predictive analytics for instructors. Expected to launch in Fall 2015, the technology will be integrated into Cengage Learning’s digital MindTap platform for products in Management and Sociology disciplines.

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Rubrics Assessment Capability Saves Faculty Time and Enables Institutions to Aggregate Direct Evidence of Student Learning

ExamSoft, the leading provider of intelligent embedded assessment solutions, today announced a new rubrics assessment platform available for the 2014 Spring Semester. The new solution, which is currently in limited release to clients, is an easy-to-use tool for capturing assessment data on subjective student work such as essays, OSCEs, papers, presentations, and class participation. The addition of rubrics to ExamSoft’s entire suite of software, will provide clients a consolidated and comprehensive picture of each student’s performance, regardless of the assessment type or delivery method.

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New Survey: College Faculty Increasingly Use Social Media for Teaching and in Professional, Personal lives

A new report from the Babson Survey Research Group and Pearson finds that college faculty members have become sophisticated consumers of social media, matching different sites to their varying personal, professional, and teaching needs — yet obstacles to wider adoption still remain. The survey results will be presented during Pearson’s “Social Media for Teaching and Learning” event today in Boston at The Museum of Science from 8:30 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

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McGraw-Hill Education and Magna Publications Launch Magna Campus to Support Faculty Development in Higher Education

Professional development in the higher education industry is becoming increasingly important as shifts in student demographics, pedagogy and classroom technology usage mean that faculty require a new generation of training tools. To help educators respond effectively to these challenges, McGraw-Hill Education today announced the launch of Magna Campus, the first professional development product created through the collaboration between Magna Publications and the McGraw-Hill Learning Institute, the company’s professional development unit designed to help faculty navigate new and emerging educational technologies.

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