The Best in EdTech—Last Year and Next

Kevin Hogan Well, happy New Year 2025 upon us. Laura Ascione, editorial director for eCampus News, with me here on our very special end of the year or first of the year. Podcast looking at the topics and trends that drove our coverage at eCampus last year and. Hopefully we can take a sneak peek into what we think are gonna be the hot topics in 2025. I'm Kevin Hogan, content director for eCampus news. You're with. Glad you found us. And Laura, as always, great to talk to you. Laura Ascione Yeah, happy to be here. Kevin Hogan Once again, always kind of fun to look. Back over the course of the past 12 months to see a lot of the, you know, the trends and things that are happening in higher Ed and you know, of course we have our E school news channel which looks at K12. Gonna have to say though that the changes. The topics, the progress, the challenges that higher education continues to grapple with. Are even more severe than I think. On the K12 side, and I think we've been able to kind of hit those topics over the course of the year. You agree with that? Laura Ascione I do agree, yeah. Kevin Hogan And so and as with most things in in 2024, we can't start a conversation without mentioning AI, and that is talking about both opportunities and challenges. The technology really has. Disturbed every aspect of higher education and it is reflected in in our coverage, wouldn't you say? Laura Ascione Absolutely, yeah. I think we are, and we covered this in our discussions about K12 as. I think we're moving from the 2023 era where we're worried about cheating, academic dishonesty. And and how people are using AI at a basic level to now really embracing more advanced uses of it. Not just for teaching and learning, but we're also putting a focus on students needing these skills as they leave their higher education programs, knowing that they're going to need some AI familiarity and then also the ability to continue to learn AI skills if they hope to be competitive and also be good job candidates. I was in an education session and the presenter talked about how AI itself is really changing some job industries, and we touched on accounting specifically right AI. May replace a lot of. An accountant does. Can it replace everything? No, but when you have accounting programs in institutions and you have accounting students, how do you meet the changing needs of that industry? Do you educate those students and how do you structure that program to account for the changes that AI is going to bring? To that industry and still produce. Highly skilled, competent graduates who can confidently go into that field and and work with AI. And I think that was such an interesting point to make and it really just struck me, you know, just just how much institutions are are going to have to reevaluate some of. And kind of change. Change things up to meet industry needs. Kevin Hogan Yeah. When I look back at, you know, our monthly podcast eCampus News, I mean at least. Seven of the 12 have to do with AI and not necessarily about. Some of the interesting things when it comes to the recruitment and the retention of students and how AI can improve the way in which. You find institutions can find and match with the right students and keep them interested in their in, you know, in their course of study. And then as you mentioned, just help them once they get out the door on the other side, not something that maybe is as. Interesting or as sexy as say you know. Like plagiarism and students. And like in the in the classroom side but the back office changes can have a positive effect as much as it is in the classroom, of course. What does take that center stage is the truly disruptive use. My favorite TikTok Trend is one of the students recording each other while a professor is giving a lecture. And the students sitting behind another kid who's. Recording the lecture and he can see the their screen is the AI are taking the notes and then the professor proceeds to freak out. On the fact. But is that cheating? I mean, that's the that's the question the professor. That's the way we've always done it, the thwade saying. You know, don't do that. And the students like why? I mean, it really is a whole sea change. In the way the dynamics in the classroom. Laura Ascione Yeah. I mean, isn't that just innovation, right? We're finding new uses for things and and new ways to meet needs. And as somebody who. Had much anxiety about missing a single important point in any lecture from probably late elementary school. Up through college. It would have been nice to have had something to take notes for me, just to allay some of my fears about missing a single bit of information. So I applaud that that student. Kevin Hogan And the whole, you know, the fear and the hype cycle of this versus the reality I think is starting to kind of take hold as well. I I have to beta testers here are currently in university and have had the opportunity to kind of take a look at their papers which. Completely bowled me over in terms of the quantity and quality of research that has to go into these sort of things and the idea that they can just plop something into an LLM. And you know it will churn out this perfectly good university paper. It's it's just not happening. I mean, like, let's let's let's be real about this. If you're doing a paper on Othello, the Claude or Chat GPT will give you these sparks. I'm dating myself now, but like you know, the Cliff notes. Or the SparkNotes obviously machine generated versus what? That student's ingenuity and. Work. Has gone into it. Laura Ascione I agree and and I think that's one of the things a lot of educators are starting to point out now is that your students have their unique voices. Know. They sound like you know where their strengths are, and I think there's a discernible difference between somebody. Who? Let's think of an LLM. Like a modern day thesaurus, if you will. Right I could. I could use a thesaurus and really sound a lot more intelligent than I am. How different is that from plugging something into an LLM to make it sound more polished? But is it a word, a phrase? A? Or is it my entire essay? And I think that as we, you know, as we know our students and we know what they sound like it, it will become easier. To to be able to distinguish. This is clearly from most of this, if not all of this is is from AI. But also is it a bad thing if we're using AI to continually educate ourselves about how to sound more? Polished I don't. I think that's a question that's up for debate because it is, as a lot of people say, I mean a one-on-one tutoring, personalization, personalized learning. Is it bad if you're trying to better your your abilities? I think that's also where honesty comes in and and again, rubrics around knowing when to use it when not to use it, when to cite it, how much to use. Kevin Hogan And is that not the mission of higher education to begin with is to prepare these students for life in whatever the real world is gonna be, even if we don't know exactly what that real world. Laura Ascione Absolutely. Excellent point. Kevin Hogan Yeah, I I think another thing that has really made things. Disruptive in the. It's just that the students and the effect that the pandemic had on them in their teenage years and in their, you know, in their education space and the expectation they have now going in, you know, the idea of using canvas or the idea of using, you know any. Of platforms. Where, anytime, anywhere in air quotes learning, which was maybe a marketing slogan or maybe a nice theory before COVID. These students expect that now that has to be part of the infrastructure and that's that's being reflected, I think in a lot of our our coverage where the institutions that are successful are the ones that are catering to this hyperflex or this idea of curriculum in the cloud. Laura Ascione Absolutely. And yeah, I think it really speaks to how students are kind of driving this focus on the student experience and and their return on. I mean we talk about ROI a lot, but I also love the term. Return on education because what are they getting back? What they're investing are they, like you said, able to access things anytime, anywhere. There. Is the campus meeting their needs? I think particularly as the. Quote UN quote traditional student over the years has morphed from somebody who enters a four year program right from high. Finishes in four years and then goes on to to begin their career. That is morphed into somebody who may have personal or family obligations, maybe working part time, maybe working full time. Might start, pause and then finish. You know, not within four or six years. And I think the I I think it really is on the institutions to meet these needs, because I I don't think they are outrageously demanding needs at all. Think that need for flexibility and connectivity is really crucial, especially given the way that our world is structured now. Kevin Hogan Yeah. Now looking into your crystal ball, let's look a little bit into the future here in 2025. Lots of uncertainty when it comes to the Department of Education and various political aspects of. Where our industry is going, but any thoughts on what you think will be what our top line coverage will? Robbie. Laura Ascione Yeah, I know there's a lot of discussion about student loans, so we'll have to to see where that falls and by, you know, by association, I think accessibility and and just the idea of of the increasingly. Burdensome cost of a higher education. I think that's something we'll have to look at. There's also been talk about changes in accreditation and looking at that, I think that can have and I don't want to speak too in too much detail because again, we don't know, but changing oversights and accreditations really has a lot of far reaching. Impacts. So we'll kind of. To see where that goes as well. Kevin Hogan Yeah. Would you sneak in micro credentialing into that as well as a lot of CTE and and certification sort of programs maybe usurping the traditional? Arc. Skin. Laura Ascione Yeah. And I think that also at the K12 level and I think especially at the higher education level, yeah, I think particularly as we, you know, going back again to the cost of a higher education and you know a lot of people are realizing there is a. Affordable and more immediate path. To what I want to do, and that enables me to support myself, to support my family and to really jump start my career and then continue accumulating these certifications and going through these training programs. So it's evident to employers that my industry knowledge and learning is continuing is improving. I think that's. I think we're gonna continue to see more of that and I think a lot of employers now are are really looking to those micro credentials and those digital credentials and really considering them a lot more trustworthy and reliable than they did, say, 10 years ago. And that's that's something that I've heard kind of across the board and and I think that's a really positive change because you know, in a lot of cases you don't necessarily need a four year degree for something. But I think there is still a stigma around that and I think eradicating that stigma as well. Again, I mean, do you want a lawyer who is? You know, gone through a lot of. Do you want a Doctor Who has not gone through a lot of schooling? No, but there are many industries where you know micro credentials and certification programs are. Meeting the needs of employers. Kevin Hogan I agree and with our coverage of edgy cause and other events at tech events in the higher Ed, space certainly seems to be something that's gonna be filling our plates in the months going forward. As always, a pleasure to talk to you, Laura. Really appreciate the work that you do and the covers that we can put together for our readers and our listeners and look forward to banging it out over the next few months for 2025. So happy holidays. Talk to you later today. Laura Ascione Sounds great. Kevin. Kevin Hogan That's all we have for this episode of Innovations in Education. Be sure to come back to eCampus news for more episodes and sign up and subscribe to our podcast on our monthly series. Also, be sure to check out the website. Got plenty of resources. That I think will help you in the execution of your job on campus. Once again, thanks for listening. Is Kevin Hogan at eCampus news?