EdSurge Podcast

Two years ago the metaverse was getting all the buzz in education circles (and hardly anyone was talking about AI). We checked back in with two educators at the forefront of building a virtual realm for education to see where they see things going now that the hype has faded.

The biggest reason to use VR in education is to tap into a student’s emotional response through immersive experiences, argues Maya Georgieva, director of The New School’s Innovation Center and a leading voice about where VR is headed. Hear her insights in this new interview. Find more details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-05-how-vr-can-be-an-empathy-machine-for-education

There’s a growing movement to drop letter grades in favor of new systems that focus on mastery of material rather than chasing points. But opponents worry about losing rigor. A new book hopes to start a national conversation about the issue. More details and show notes at: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-04-02-is-it-time-for-a-national-conversation-about-eliminating-letter-grades

Social studies has been ‘deprioritized’ for decades, in favor of STEM fields, according to some educators. Could AI essay grading help improve the quality of civics and social studies education in schools?

There are key junctures in education that are especially important for helping students feel they belong in school or college. And new research points to better ways to strengthen student-teacher relationships and a sense of belonging, argues Greg Walton, a psychology professor at Stanford University. See show notes and partial transcript at EdSurge: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2024-03-19-what-new-research-says-about-fostering-a-sense-of-belonging-in-classrooms

There’s growing skepticism of higher education, complete with popular memes on social media that “college is a scam.” Experts in policy and marketing have some suggestions on how to counter that narrative.

A longtime educator worries that the raging culture wars in education create toxic environments that hurt academic learning. He’s started a podcast that brings together people with deeply different views on issues that are most dividing school communities these days and uses depolarizing techniques to try to model repairing such breaches.

Could virtual reality be the key to teaching indigenous ways of knowing to a broad population of students? Jared Ten Brink, a doctoral student in education, is trying to record and teach some key practices of his tribal elders using VR video.

In part two of our podcast series Doubting College, which explores the growing skepticism of higher ed, we talk to students and counselors at a public high school about how students are thinking through their choices after graduation.

A recent study ranked the top professions that are likely to be disrupted by ChatGPT and other new AI technologies, and most of them require college degrees. How does higher ed need to change what it teaches to respond?

Did the education theories that drive today’s schools and teaching practices get off track and do they need a reset — one that gets back to earlier days of oral storytelling? That was the argument of philosopher Kieran Egan, whose educational writings have recently gotten attention.

It can be harder than ever for teachers to manage their relationships with parents, even though digital tools make interactions more frequent. This week’s EdSurge podcast looks at why.

There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their own concerns, and in some cases fear, around ChatGPT and other generative AI?

Holding student attention may be harder than ever. Even if educators make students put away their smartphones, internet-connected devices have changed the way people relate to others and made it harder for people to be present, argues a Georgetown University professor.

Experts have described this as a 'golden age' of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators, policymakers and any lifelong learner gain from these new insights? This is a rebroadcast of one of our most popular episodes of 2023.

What were the biggest surprises and trends in education in 2023? Hear from five EdSurge reporters as they give their highlights and analysis and also talk about what they’re digging into in the coming year.

“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a teacher, edtech consultant and professor about making small regular improvements. This episode originally ran this summer.

Paul LeBlanc grew Southern New Hampshire University to an online education powerhouse with more than 200,000 students. This month he announced that he’ll step down as president after the academic year, and he talks to EdSurge about online education, about how he responds to critics who worry that the university has borrowed too much from for-profit universities, and about why his next project involves rethinking teaching with AI.

When the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel started a fellowship 13 years ago that pays young people $100,000 each to not go to college for two years, it made a splash and drew criticism. These days that sort of skepticism of college is far more mainstream. We dive into the history and impact of the program on the first episode of our new podcast series about changing public views of higher ed, called Doubting College.

Students these days are under constant watch with digital tools — whether it’s friends posting pictures on social media, or learning management systems sending parents alerts about missed assignments. And that can make it hard for students to learn to solve their own problems, argues Devorah Heitner, an author who advises schools on social media issues.