The disruptions in the job market caused by COVID-19 mean colleges and employers will need to rethink the relationship between the workplace and the classroom. That’s according to Michelle Weise, who makes the case in her new book, Long Life Learning.

Forgetting is a feature, not a bug. That's one of the surprising truths about how the brain works in the new book "Grasp: The Science Transforming How We Learn." We talk with the book's co-author, Sanjay Sarma, a professor and the vice president for open learning at MIT.

Some colleges were committed to doing as much in-person teaching and activities as possible this semester, even during this health crisis. While other colleges decided early on to focus attention online and pretty much shutter campus for now. For our series finale of the Pandemic Campus Diaries series, we ask: which decision was the right one for students and professors?

How can educators make their teaching more inclusive? For perspective and advice, we recently talked with José Vilson, co-founder and executive director of #EduColor, a nonprofit advocacy group dedicated to issues of race and social justice in education and author of “This Is Not A Test: A New Narrative on Race, Class, and Education."

This week's guest, John Warner, has just released a timely book with fresh arguments on how to frame this larger question of who should pay for higher education -- and even how we should think about college’s place in American life. The book is called “Sustainable. Resilient. Free.: The Future of Public Higher Education.”

Residencies are the new trend in teacher education. What are they teaching about race? Victoria Thiesen-Homer, a postdoctoral research fellow at Arizona State University’s School of Social Transformation, embedded herself in a no-excuses and a progressive residency school for her new book, “Learning to Connect: Relationships, Race, and Teacher Education."

This stressful and disrupted semester is leading professors to rethink how they teach, and helping students learn about themselves. But are there things that will stick even after the health emergency ends? Hear views from six campuses on the latest installment of our Pandemic Campus Diaries series.

Other than their parents and caregivers, children spend more time with their teachers and school staff than with almost any other adults. So when something is wrong or seems off, educators are often the first to notice. As a result, educators end up detecting a significant number of child-abuse cases each year. But with the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, these situations where trouble might be noticed have disappeared overnight. To get a sense of where this issue stands seven months into the pandemic, EdSurge connected with Bart Klika, chief research and strategy officer at Prevent Child Abuse America

Today is Election Day in the U.S. And for this installment of our Pandemic Campus Diaries series, we are focusing on how the election and social unrest have been playing out on campuses during this pandemic semester. Students seem to be voting this election season like never before. But some professors are struggling to hold productive discussions of political issues in this polarized time.

Students these days are distracted. Devices and social-media notifications constantly beckon, and in this time of COVID-19 and widespread remote instruction, the distractions have multiplied. So what are educators to do? EdSurge connected with James Lang, author of the new book "Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It."

This week we’re focusing on who is disappearing from higher education due to the pandemic, and what professors are doing to try to keep students going in these challenging times. It's kind of a mystery story because it's incredibly difficult to determine who is missing when the people involved don't even see each other in the real world, and everyone is so focused on their own socially isolated bubbles.

Research shows young citizens are motivated to vote. But they don’t always make it to the polls. Why not? To find out, we interviewed Sunshine Hillygus, political scientist and co-author of the new book “Making Young Voters.” She shares surprising insights about what kind of K-12 and higher education actually influences youth voting behavior. Hint: It’s not civics class.

What is studying like this semester when teaching is strained by safety measures like plexiglass barriers and masks in classrooms and online classes taught by so many professors who are new to the format and clearly struggling to figure out what works. Are students learning?

Scientists around the country have been teaming up with band educators to test what is and isn’t safe when it comes to music education, and what kind of protective gear or PPE works. We talk to a musician who has worked in so-called clean rooms to measure just what particles come out of various musical instruments.

Getting the balance between safety and openness right is a continuous challenge during the pandemic. And much has clearly been lost in terms of social interaction this fall. Can colleges find a way to stay open and offer meaningful extracurricular activities?

At this point the Zoom call has almost come to define learning and working in the age of COVID-19. A few months ago, people began realizing that all these video calls were making them tired—exhausted even—more so than a day of in-person class or all-day meetings. The phenomena even has a name: Zoom fatigue. And it’s backed by some pretty interesting brain science.

Classes are back in session at colleges around the country. Well something like college classes are happening. But in this fall semester like no other, with a pandemic reshaping so many facets of our lives, can colleges pull off effective teaching that’s also safe? And if they can, does it feel like college?

Howard Gardner has made a long and influential career exploring the mind and how to think about it. This month Gardner came out with a different kind of book, one where he looks inward. It’s a memoir called A Synthesizing Mind. He argues that we need to encourage more synthesizing thinkers in this challenging moment of polarization and pandemic.

We’re doing something different on the podcast this week, and throughout this semester. We’ve enlisted professors and students at 6 colleges, and we’ve asked them to share audio diaries of college life in this unprecedented time. On this first installment of the series: Why this is not just about inconveniences of plexiglass barriers in classrooms and masked teaching. The stakes for this semester are high, and so are tensions.

Large employers like Walmart and Chipotle are spending more time, money and effort investing in training programs to prepare workers for what they see as the jobs of the future—at least they were before COVID-19 hit. On this week’s podcast, we hear from Rachel Carlson, CEO and co-founder of Guild Education, a company working to set up these education programs.

First-year teachers already face many challenges. The job is unpredictable, and for newcomers, that can be intimidating. Over the summer, EdSurge interview teachers whose first years were interrupted by COVID-19 last spring. On today’s podcast, we hear from three of the teachers we spoke to about the highs, the lows and the lessons learned from their first year teaching—face-to-face and from a distance.

On this episode we look at what colleges can do to keep students on track even during the health and economic crisis of the global pandemic. We recorded this conversation live at the LearningMan virtual conference hosted by Arizona State University last month.

The college textbook publishing industry is offering colleges a new kind of deal: Order digital course materials in bulk at a discounted rate, then pass the savings on to students, who are automatically billed for subscriptions to online versions of their textbooks. These arrangements, often called “inclusive access” programs, tend to stir up controversy—and sometimes even lawsuits—when colleges adopt them. On this episode of the EdSurge Podcast, we examine why that is.

Jamaal Bowman started his career as an elementary school teacher. Then he became a high school guidance counselor and dean of students. After that, he founded his own public middle school in the Bronx and served as its principal for 10 years. In what has been called a stunning upset, the progressive Bowman defeated a 16-term incumbent in the U.S. House of Representatives. On the heels of his victory, Bowman spoke with EdSurge about the perspective he hopes to bring to Congress, what it will take to reopen schools safely and the role of educators in addressing systemic racism in America.

When the pandemic hit, the traditional final exam just didn't seem to fit the moment for one physics professor. So she decided on a community-service project instead, and says it has made a more lasting impact on students than any blue book would have. She's one of several educators replacing final exams with "epic finales." (One even involved trained chickens.)

Information literacy has long been hard to teach—let’s face it, the landscape of online platforms changes so fast these days. And during this COVID-19 pandemic, it can seem harder than ever to sort out reliable information from falsehood, rumor and conspiracy. This week we're talking to two experts working to help educators and others sharpen their info literacy and critical thinking skills.

A new book, The Merit Myth, argues that selective colleges have become places that block social mobility, and instead “fast-track the elite to ever higher status.” One of its authors, Anthony Carnevale, makes the case for why higher education needs to be more accessible.

Zipporah Osei is a first-generation college student who wants to fill in knowledge gaps about navigating colleges for others like her. So she started an email newsletter called First Gen. The project can help educators and school and college leaders get a clearer picture of what the college experience is like for those who have no family experience with higher education.

In the 1960s and '70s, an experimental form of teaching made a big splash at colleges. It was called PSI, or the Personalized System of Instruction. And it's largely forgotten, says Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, author of a new book on the history of college teaching in America. Here's what today's colleges can learn from the fad.

The coronavirus pandemic is the latest example of why math literacy is key to daily life, as people struggle to understand health statistics and attempts to "flatten the curve." Our guest this week, Conrad Wolfram, says that the education system has done a terrible job preparing us to live in a world where number crunching is more important than ever. He has a new book out this week called The Math Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age. In it, he proposed a new way for schools to think about math education, and what even needs to be taught and why.

Parenting is a tough job in the best of circumstances. And if you’re anything like me, it’s been even harder in the age of COVID-19, with the new role of helping students go through their online classes. Now that we’re more involved, are we doing it right? Are we too permissive or too helicoptering? In short, what does that ideal balance of parental involvement actually look like?

Micheal Wesch is a rare professor who is a celebrity on YouTube. He’s made education videos that have gotten more than 10 million views, and Wired magazine once gave him an award for his innovative viral videos. He is also an award-winning classroom teacher. But he hates being on camera, and was initially reluctant to teach online. These days he's sharing his tips to help other professors work to better connect with students remotely.

As this chaotic and unexpected semester comes to a close, we wanted to know how well this online teaching went, and what it felt like from the instructor point of view. Was it as good? Did the students seem to learn as much? So for this week's podcast, we talk with two college professors who debrief about how the partially remote semester went.

Should colleges be giving students a partial refund on tuition since their campuses were forced to shift teaching online for the COVID-19 pandemic? Students around the country say yes because they say that online is not as good as what they signed up for. But is college just like any other service, like dry cleaning or going to a restaurant? What are students paying for, and what are colleges really selling?

You've probably heard of the "10,000-hour rule" popularized by author Malcolm Gladwell, which says that it takes that much practice to gain mastery of a complex subject area. The professor who Gladwell cites as the basis of that rule, Anders Ericsson, says things are a bit more complicated than the popular author explained.

In this time of pandemic, when schools and colleges have shifted teaching online to slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus, more and more teachers find themselves making videos for their students, and more students are turning to educational videos online. So for this week’s podcast, we decided to reach out to one of the masters of making educational videos, John Green, for his advice and thoughts on education during this unprecedented time.

Today we’re talking to two students facing financial challenges, as part of our series about how COVID-19 is impacting education. One is an undergrad struggling to balance his studies and a precarious financial situation at home, and the other is a grad student with six-figure debt with a surprisingly upbeat view of his situation.

There's a new global effort called Corona Diaries. This simple but elegant website invites visitors to record a short audio clip answering one of three prompts: How was your day? How has your life changed? Or What’s troubling you right now? Even though people could talk about any aspect of their lives during COVID-19, a large percentage of the clips come from either parents struggling to homeschool their kids while schools are closed, or educators trying to make sense of this time.

The largest library in the world is the U.S. Library of Congress, and each year it invites one teacher to serve as a Teacher in Residence. This year that's Jen Reidel, and she's been at the Library of Congress researching, writing and seeking out primary sources that K-12 teachers across the country could use in their classroom lessons. Here's what she's learned.

One house in Massachusetts is suddenly brimming with remote learning. With seven family members all trying to keep their studies going while their schools or colleges are closed, it's an accidental experiment about how different students are reacting to emergency remote instruction.

Today we’re looking at what K-12 schools could look like after social distancing is over and people reassess what they want from our school systems. To do that we talked with Simon Rodberg, who has been the principal of a charter school in DC, and is the author of a forthcoming book from ACSD called "What If I’m Wrong? and Other Key Questions for Decisive School Leadership."

Last fall, EdSurge wrote about a specialized preschool program in Ohio for kids who have experienced severe trauma. These are kids who depend on wraparound services such as meals, transportation and mental health services. So when the coronavirus hit and Ohio's governor closed schools, this program had to scramble to come up with a plan: How would they ensure their kids got fed? Would they have to stop counseling sessions? Would the TIP kids slip further behind?

With college campuses across the country shut-down due to COVID-19, teaching has suddenly moved online. For many students and instructors, this is the first time they've done online learning. So how is it going? We talked with students and professors to hear what their experiences look and feel like so far.

The new realities of the COVID-19 pandemic are starting to set in this week, as schools across the country have closed and shifted to online learning. This week on the podcast, EdSurge spoke with Christine Elgersma, a senior editor of social media and learning resources at the nonprofit Common Sense Media. As both a parent and a former teacher, Elgersma understands just how much is being asked of educators and families right now. She offers some actionable advice for teachers and parents looking to better support their children—and themselves.

We’ve been doing a lot of coverage this month of schools and colleges closing and shifting online to try to finish out their semesters amid this pandemic. And of course, libraries that are being forced to shut their doors are trying to shift online too. To get a sense of what the widespread closure of libraries could mean, and hear some creative ways libraries are reaching out digitally, I connected yesterday with Jessamyn West, an educational technologist who runs the librarian.net blog and is author of "Without a Net: Librarians Bridging the Digital Divide."

Every day, a new batch of colleges announces that in-person classes are closed and teaching will shift online to try to halt the spread of the coronavirus COVID-19. So EdSurge asked our teaching advice columnist, Bonni Stachowiak, to offer a quick primer for teaching online. We also talk to her about a debate that has been going on among long-time online teaching experts about whether it’s a good or a bad thing for online learning that there’s this crisis forcing so many to try this mode of instruction.

Even though SXSWedu was cancelled, we pressed on with our planned session—recorded remotely rather than in person. We talk to researchers and students confronting how algorithms are being applied in educational settings.

On this bonus episode of the EdSurge Podcast we’re talking about the youngest victims of the opioid crisis. They’re preschoolers whose parents or caregivers misuse pain killers, or have moved on to addictions to heroin or other street drugs as a result. One expert called these kids “America’s lost children.” Of course educators haven’t given up on these kids. But teaching them brings unique challenges. EdSurge reporter Emily Tate talks about one program making a difference.