Brent A. Anders's Blog, page 3

Interview with AI Professor Armen Kherlopian

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an important reality that everyone, especially instructors at all levels needs to fully understand and realize. I highly recommend this short interview with Dr. Kherlopian (AI researcher and professor at the American University of Armenia) as we address different aspects of instructing with AI and ensuring that students understand and use AI in order to be prepared for to be ready for the current job market. AI literacy is a real thing and is quickly becom...

Top 7 Predictions (Trends) for 2022 in Higher Education

Online learning Will Continue to Grow Globally. This should be obvious to all, but some universities and other educational institutions have yet to fully invest in the power and ongoing development of online education. The ongoing growth is best expressed in a Global Market Insite (GMI) report stating “E-Learning Market size surpassed USD 250 billion in 2020 and is anticipated to grow at an exponential CAGR [Compound Annual Growth Rate] of over 21% between 2021 and 2027. The advent of se...

What MrBeast Can Teach Academia

The world-famous YouTube sensation MrBeast (no period, no space), whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, has a lot to teach academia with regards to making great videos that people want to actually watch. Just in case you don’t know, MrBeast creates a variety of different types of videos, has over 59 million subscribers, over 300 videos, and is an international YouTube sensation (Alexander, 2021; YouTube, 2021). By identifying the ways MrBeast makes his videos, we in academia (K-12 as well as highe...

How to Look Great and Make a Great Video

Whether you are a professor, student, employee, or employer, looking good on video is an important skill that we must all learn in order to communicate effectively and professionally. The accompanying video below breaks down how to look your best while making a highly professional video. Key components covered are audio, lighting, and framing. An important take-away to understand is that the message presented is always more than just what is said since professional communication is about both ve...

Blockchain, Cryptocurrency (like Bitcoin), and Higher Education

Many in academia do not know about or fully understand what blockchain and cryptocurrencies are or why they are even important. This is a major issue that needs to be fully realized and addressed as soon as possible. Blockchain and cryptocurrencies offer unparalleled possibilities and are extremely important to higher education for three main reasons: academic relevancy, procedural evolution, and potential monetary solvency. 

At the very least, the following two main terms need to be understo...

Top 7 Higher Education Trends (Predictions) for 2021

1) Video: Video is of course, a necessity to maximize student engagement and interaction. Live video conferencing software such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet will continue to be used. More higher education institutions will begin to understand that it isn’t just important to use online video, but it is vital to use it well. Simply replicating the face-to-face time with live online video is not professional online instruction and instead is a better definition of emergency remote lear...

Holiday Gift Guide for Teachers, Professors, & Instructors

This list helps address the upcoming holidays by providing some great gift ideas specifically for teachers, professors, or instructors in general. Each gift on the list (compiled by talking to several different teachers, professors, and instructors) is useful, highly rated, and ranges in price from $10 to $100 (but no higher) to help address all budgets. Everyone in academia has worked extra hard this year so they deserve some awesome holiday gifts and a very Merry Christmas time.

1. Webcam:...

Professionalizing Professors

Should professors be professional instructors? As a life-long learner as well as someone who has spent many years taking college courses and as someone with a Ph.D. in education (focusing on adult education and online instruction) this is something of keen interest to me and of vital importance to the future of higher education. I’ve asked this question to professors at universities and colleges throughout the United States and even a few outside of the United States. I am always surprised when ...

Why Students SHOULD Show Their Face During Video Discussions

Although the following article contains more detail, a video of this article was also created and available through YouTube (embedded below):

In addition to addressing issues of academic integrity, there are four very important reasons why all students should show their face during video discussion.

Reason 1

Showing video of one’s self greatly helps everyone understand you better. Multiple research dealing with learning, human/social interaction and communication, as well as exper...

Transitioning from Emergency Remote Learning to Professional Online Instruction

In order to transition from Emergency Remote Learning, we must first have a shared understanding of what that means. Emergency remote learning is a quick attempt by instructional institutions to continue to provide live instruction as close as possible to how instruction was provided in the face-to-face classroom. For a majority of emergency remote learning implementations, this was done by solely using a web-conferencing tool such as Zoom. So, if there were 30 students in the face-to-face class...