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On March 30, the uphill battle education publishers McGraw-Hill and Cengage have been fighting to complete a merger got a little steeper. The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ruled that the companies’ proposal to sell off a number of their current holdings was not sufficient to maintain competition. As a result, the CMA did not extend their blessing for the merger to move ahead.

Earlier in March, two members of the U.S. House Antitrust Subcommittee, Chairman David Cicilline of Rhode Island and Commerce Chair Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, wrote a letter to the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division asking for increased scrutiny over the deal.

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As edtech and eLearning technologies have gone from a novelty to commonplace in education systems around the world, their use has been plagued by a common question: do they work as effectively as traditional instruction? While the question is far too broad to be useful to anyone, a group of researchers recently took a mostly unexplored approach. They wanted to see how learners with different working memory capabilities learned in an online context. What’s more, they identified numerous functions of online modules—such as learning time, repetition of material, and quiz performance—to see if it correlated with working memory.

While the research has intrinsic merits, the authors also believe their findings can be used to help design eLearning features to be more effective and more personalized for all learners. If educators can identify a learners’ working memory capabilities simply through how they learn online, then they can both adapt future online learning content and in-person instruction to better suit each student.

“Predicting Visiospatial and Verbal Working Memory by Individual Differences in E-Learning Activities” was authored by a team of researchers from Umea University and Linnaeus University in Sweden and Hypocampus, a Swedish eLearning developer. It was published in Frontiers in Education on March 17.

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Study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.00022/full?utm_source=F-NTF&utm_medium=EMLX&utm_campaign=PRD_FEOPS_20170000_ARTICLE

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As coronavirus-related school closures continue to effect education systems around the world, an increasing amount of educators are doing their best to keep their courses going online. In this effort, teachers have coalesced on Twitter around the hashtag #instructionalcontinuity. Many often hear and repeat that, when it comes to online learning, fostering interpersonal interaction is one of the biggest challenges.

But what, exactly, does that term mean? And what’s the best way of going about boosting interpersonal interaction in an online class? Bloomsburg University Professor Scott Mehall tackles this issue in a recent scholarly article. “Purposeful Interpersonal Interaction in Online Learning: What Is It and How Is It Measured?” was published in the latest version of Online Learning, the official journal of the Online Learning Consortium.

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Latest issue of Online Learning: https://olj.onlinelearningconsortium.org/index.php/olj/issue/viewIssue/114/36

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In the early months of 2020, coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, surged in China and surrounding countries, leading to large-scale school closings. The virus has since spread around the world and has arrived in the U.S.

On March 11, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic. No one knows how far, wide, and long coronavirus will spread. While young people—especially children—tend to handle the virus far more effectively than older patients, closing public institutions like schools where many people mingle on a daily basis has been seen by some as an effective way to combat the spread of the illness.

We reached out to a handful of remote learning experts, schools, and edtech developers to get their advice on how best to deal with extended coronavirus closures. This post marks the first in a series of three.

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The academic publisher and edtech provider Wiley announced an ambitious move in digital publishing on March 2. In collaboration with Jisc and U.K. universities, the company has agreed to a four-year deal that will allow researchers to publish their work online in Wiley journals with an open access license at no cost to themselves.

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In the early weeks of 2020, coronavirus has spread around the world. As the death toll from the respiratory virus has surpassed 2,500, numerous regions and cities have restricted travel, discouraged public gatherings, or put lockdowns in place. While many have been forced to cancel their plans as a result, a growing number of schools, businesses, and organizations have sought to conduct business and education as usual using technology and eLearning applications.

This episode is also available in podcast form on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, and Stitcher. It is also available as a video on YouTube.

eLearningInside.com

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Email: contact@elearninginside.com