The online MBA comes of age. You’d think that of all the academic pursuits, business school would remain most immune to online learning. Beyond studies, MBA programs offer up-and-coming C-suiters access to the graduate-level schmoozing that could come in handy later on. Nevertheless, the online MBA program is growing, Delta Sky Magazine’s Kevin Featherly reports. What they lack in post-exam cordials with the professor, they make up for in a more diverse, more experienced student body, say advocates. “In ground-based programs, you’re connected to a more local audience,” the dean of the University of Bridgeport’s Ernest C. Trefz School of Business tells Delta. “In the online program, you’re interacting with business professionals from around the world.” But not everything is so encouraging. A professor at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina tells Mr. Featherly how surprised he was “when a course designer suggested he use a cartoon character to illustrate a hard-core economics principle.”
Also see:
From DSC: Consider this. Steve Jobs lived by the philosophy of cannibalizing Apple’s own business, as he held that Apple needed to cannibalize itself or someone else would do it for them. And here’s the key thing to consider: Apple is the largest company in the world, based on market cap (505.92B as of this morning) and market value.
The point is, we in higher ed can’t be afraid of change. We must change. It’s time for moreTrimtab Groupswithin higher education.
It’s tempting to think that social learning is about technology — after all, social media platforms and the Web 2.0 technologies that enable them are virtually inseparable. But as our recent overview (Social Learning: Empowering employees to learn from one another) points out, social learning is different: more about people than technology. Specifically, social learning is about people sharing knowledge to learn from and with one another. Technology might be involved, or it might not. A more important characteristic is that it provides learners the ability to pull the information they need, when and where they need it. That’s the ideal “teachable moment” and when learning can be most valuable and productive.
This “pull” way of learning is quite a departure from traditional learning and development (L&D) offerings that push learning out via classes, eLearning, or other types of training events. But it directly reflects the way people get information in general today, thanks to the Web and the proliferation of ways to access it from anywhere, anytime.
…
Rather than focusing solely on creating and pushing content to learners, L&D is having to figure out how to enable and encourage the free-flowing exchange of information among learners.
But do the numbers of students in college really tell us that we’re on our way to living in a less educated country? Not at all. The official higher-education enrollment figures fail to capture a shift in how more of us are locating educational opportunities every day in short spurts, online or face to face, and for hundreds of dollars or at no cost.
…
At a time when the economy is changing at a rapid pace, education has truly become a lifelong pursuit—not just for your own edification, but by necessity. And in a hyper-connected, wireless, mobile world, learning happens everywhere, at anytime. We can’t expect to go to college at 18, graduate at 22, and then remain employed for the next 40-plus years with that foundation of knowledge alone.
Added later on:
What’s the social learning buzz about?— from blog.commelius.com Excerpt: . No. 1 way to support your global workforce with learning technology is…embracing social learning.
When is Big Learning Data too Big?— from Learning TRENDS by Elliott Masie
Excerpt from Update #822:
1) An interesting question arose in our conversations about Big Learning Data:
When is Big Learning Data too Big?
The question is framed around the ability of an individual or an organization to process really large amounts of data. Can a learning designer or even a learner, “handle” really large amounts of data? When is someone (or even an organization) handicapped by the size, scope and variety of data that is available to reflect learning patterns and outcomes? When do we want a tight summary vs. when we want to see a scattergram of many data points?
As we grow the size, volume and variety of Big Learning Data elements – we will also need to respect the ability (or challenge) of people to process the data. A parent may hear that their kid is a B- in mathematics – and want a lot more data. But, the same parent does not want 1,000 data elements covering 500 sub-competencies. The goal is to find a way to reflect Big Learning Data to an individual in a fashion that enables them to make better sense of the process – and have a “Continuum” that they can move to get more or less data as a situational choice.
The Course Hacker
The last and perhaps most speculative role of the future online instructor will be the person who digs deep into the data that will be available from next generation learning systems to target specific learning interventions to specific students — at scale. The idea of the Course Hacker is based on the emerging role of the Growth Hacker at high-growth web businesses. Mining data from web traffic, social media, email campaigns, etc., the Growth Hacker is constantly iterating a web product or marketing campaign to seek rapid growth in users or revenue. Adapted to online education, the Course Hacker would be a faculty member with strong technical and statistical skills who would study data about which course assets were being used and by whom, which students worked more quickly or slowly, which questions caused the most problems on a quiz, who were the most socially active students in the course, who were the lurkers but getting high marks, etc. Armed with those deep insights, they would be continually adapting course content, providing support and remedial help to targeted students, creating incentives to motivate people past critical blocks in the course, etc.
What do the ethical models look like? How are these models deployed rapidly — at the speed of technology? How are these models refined with time? We distilled the group discussions into a series of topics, including student awareness (or lack of awareness) of analytics, future algorithmic science, and the future of learning analytics as defined by business practices, student and faculty access to the data, and a redefinition of failure.
The arguments put forward here often take the form of rhetorical questions; the methodological purpose in presenting the argument in this way is to frame how ethical questioning might guide future developments.
In this article, you will take a look at how HTML5 may play a major role in the future of the eLearning industry, and delve into the ultimate list of HTML5 eLearning authoring tools available today. So, if you’ve been looking to make the transition to an HTML5 eLearning Authoring tool, you are in the right place!
This app was developed by a fellow ADE Jay Anderson. It uses iBeacon technology to sense how close you are to different pieces of art related to the 14 Stations of the Cross in a church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. The app has three different settings: meditation for children, meditation for adults, and the comments of the artists. Great use of the iBeacon technology.
Real revenues Coursera took one year to hit $1 million on revenues from certification, 3 months to hit $2 million (Feb 14) and now report $4 million (Apr 14), that’s $2 million in the following two months. Impressive compound growth. This has been achieved through their Coursera certificate track, which, at $30-$100 per course, has seen an average 1.2% conversion rate double up to the current average of 2.4%, giving them $4 mlllion, driven by demand from employers. Note this last observation – ‘driven by employers’.
From DSC: Donald is right on the mark here: MOOCs continue to experiment, morph, innovate. They appear to have found a solid source of revenue with their certifications. Also, as Donald emphasizes, this growth is driven by employers. I’d encourage you to read his posting, as he points out several other innovations in what Coursera is doing.
It makes me wonder…
Are institutions of traditional higher education experimenting, morphing, innovating enough? .
Are we modeling for our students what they will need to do — at least at points — in their careers? (i.e. pivoting, failing/trying again, adapting, experimenting, innovating)
We can’t always hit home runs. We need to be able to fail/try again and create a culture that rewards innovation.
Last thought here:
When connected/smart TV’s get worked out,
MOOCs could add/leverage that type of
platform for some powerful, global
learning (24 x 7 x 365)…helping people reinvent
themselves at extremely attractive prices.
In many ways, the reasons corporate universities have expanded are some of the same reasons that MOOCs are becoming so popular, especially for a growing crop of non-traditional learners: the courses provide a way for learners to get the personalized education they need to succeed in their job and advance their career, and both students and employers are finding that traditional colleges and universities are not satisfactorily preparing graduates to enter the workforce.
Recently in corporate universities, the dominant model of education has started to change. Moving away from instructor-led training and traditional computer-based training, companies are starting to transition toward more connected digital learning environments, including MOOCs. One of the biggest stories of the past year was the announcement in November that multinational steel manufacturing company Tenaris would partner with MOOC provider edX to expand the firm’s training and education offerings to its 27,000 employees worldwide. Under the agreement, Tenaris can both develop MOOCs on the edX platform and license courses developed by others.
MOOCs can provide several advantages for corporate universities…
A somewhat-related posting from Debbie Morrison over at the Online Learning Insights blog:
IT under pressure: McKinsey Global Survey results — from mckinsey.com by Naufal Khan and Johnson Sikes Recognition of IT’s strategic importance is growing, but so is dissatisfaction with its effectiveness, according to our eighth annual survey on business and technology strategy.
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
More and more executives are acknowledging the strategic value of IT to their businesses beyond merely cutting costs.But as they focus on and invest in the function’s ability to enable productivity, business efficiency, and product and service innovation, respondents are also homing in on the shortcomings many IT organizations suffer. Among the most substantial challenges are demonstrating effective leadership and finding, developing, and retaining IT talent.
These are among the key findings from our most recent survey on business technology, which asked executives from all functions about their companies’ priorities for, spending on, and satisfaction with IT. Overall, respondents are more negative about IT performance than they were in 2012 and, notably, IT executives judge their own effectiveness more harshly than their business counterparts do. Compared with executives from the business side, they are more than twice as likely to suggest replacing IT management as the best remedy.
From DSC: It seems to me that an organization or team can’t expect to extract significant value from someone or something that they haven’t cultivated. That is, a sports team shouldn’t expect a player who has sat on the bench most of the year to come in and light the world on fire. That player needs actual time playing in the games/matches/meets/etc. They need experience. They need practice in developing strategy as well as some experiments — to find out what’s working and what’s not.
IT organizations are key these days; and becoming more important in leading the organizations that they function in. It is short-sighted not to develop IT employees in both technical and business-related skills. As our world is increasingly being impacted by technological advances (occurring at exponential — not linear — trajectories), those companies who have leadership from the technical sides of the house should do quite well in the future.
Key items to work on:
Creating tighter integrations with the rest of the business/organization; get more IT-based reps into situations where they can pull up chairs at more business-oriented tables/discussions/projects (product development/R&D, sales, marketing, customer service, other); affect the culture of the organization so that they can actually lead the organization
Understanding the changing landscapes and what opportunities might exist as a result of those changing landscapes
Ability to develop potential scenarios and form responses to those scenarios
Stop thinking about cutting costs, start using your skills/knowledge to develop new income streams, new products, and new markets! Stop seeing IT departments as cost centers, but rather key revenue generators!
Moving more visionaries and those with the ability to persuade/sell into the IT organization
Create/give IT staff more chances to get in the game!
Regarding the graphic below:
IT-based personnel should be kicking out a lot more new, innovative products and services. That’s where their new/additional value should come from. But that doesn’t seem to be happening.
Why is that? Is the rest of the business so used to looking at IT in certain ways? Does IT have a seat at the senior-most level/table? Are folks in the business listening or even approaching IT for their input? Are some cultural changes necessary?
What: CIOs are taking on more and more responsibilities, and while technology matters, leadership makes all the difference. Why: Tech trends come and go, but the challenge of bridging the gap between IT and the business—and demonstrating how IT can deliver real value—remain the heart of the job. More: Read Confessions of a Successful CIO, set for March 2014 release.
By the way, all of this is true within the world of higher education as well. Consider, for example, the need for IT/technical leadership in the worlds of online learning, blended learning, distance education, as well as in creating new revenue streams based upon technologies and the affordances that these technologies provide.
Improving student outcomes through an institutional approach that strategically leverages technology
Establishing a partnership between IT leadership and institutional leadership to develop a collective understanding of what information technology can deliver
Assisting faculty with the instructional integration of information technology
Developing an IT staffing and organizational model to accommodate the changing IT environment and facilitate openness and agility
Using analytics to help drive critical institutional outcomes
Changing IT funding models to sustain core service, support innovation, and facilitate growth
Addressing access demand and the wireless and device explosion
Sourcing technologies and services at scale to reduce costs (via cloud, greater centralization of institutional IT services and systems, cross-institutional collaborations, and so forth)
Determining the role of online learning and developing a strategy for that role
Implementing risk management and information security practices to protect institutional IT resources/data and respond to regulatory compliance mandates*
Developing an enterprise IT architecture that can respond to changing conditions and new opportunities*
Brian Chapman led an introductory talk with his views on Learning Ecosystems and what they are.
…
What Brian hinted at, yet what jumped out at me when he showed Xerox’s Learning Ecosystem example, was that the Learning Ecosystem can (and should) encompass ALL of the tools of the workplace where people collaborate, find information, communicate.
…
This assumption that trainers need a “special” environment is where folks are going wrong.
This is why I have been hearing so much noise about LMSs and Talent Management Systems being “the ecosystem.’ No no no no no….
The eLearning Guild is hosting an important series of conversations this week at Ecosystem 2014. Learning solutions have been expanding way beyond traditional L&D outputs for years now, and learning professionals are working to figure out the best ways to strategize more robust recommendations that include performance support, informal learning, social learning, experiential learning, developmental programs and more. These strategies present a variety of challenges in terms of design, curation, and technology, and many of us are working on how to best bring everything together in support of performance and capability development.
…
Learning Ecosystem Defined
I appreciate that several of the speakers seem to converge on a definition of a learning ecosystem (or performance ecosystem) as a combination of people, content, process, and technology to enable learning. I also agree that a metaphor that suggests life and growth is important – we “grow” an ecosystem (more organic), we don’t “build” it (suggests something more technical).
Ecosystem
This year there is a second conference next to Learning solutions: Ecosystems 2014. It is more on a strategic level. You have to have a special upgrade in order to attend the sessions, build the guild was kind enough to allow me to party crash a session. The session I attended was about ecosystems and was presented by Lance Dublin. For him the term ecosystem was also new, so he took us on a journey to discover it with him. I got from it that an ecosystem is a living and ever changing thing that enables and facilitates learning. It should contain four elements: Process, people, Technology and content. So it is not an architecture (that is part of the ecosystem) but the whole thing. The reason we have to thing about this is the increasing speed of things, our old ways (LMS learning with courses) do not work anymore. We need something that delivers Performance at the speed of need. He gave s an impressive list of opportunities/changes, developments that should be part of an ecosystem: Mobile, Moocs, Cloud, social learning, serious games, Big data, personalization and much more. He also defined the goal of an ecosystem: Performance.
Learning performance analysis. Aligning the eco system with the business.
…
They had a lot more on the ecosystem, but I will keep that for later. I will end this session description with: You have to cultivate dynamic learners that can learn at the speed of change. Love that.
Additional thoughts from DSC: When I was looking to create some graphics for this Learning Ecosystems blog, I was searching for a graphic that attempted to illustrate interconnecting nodes. In my interpretation of a learning ecosystem, such nodes could be people, experiences, content, tools, processes, and other items that help us to learn and grow. I wanted the graphic to speak to something that was living…ever changing. So I used this:
But here’s another example of a potential graphic that I just ran across and modified a bit (per an item from Gerd Leonhard):
If Daniel Nadler is right, a generation of college graduates with well-paid positions as junior researchers and analysts in the banking industry should be worried about their jobs. Very worried.
Mr Nadler’s start-up, staffed with ex-Google engineers and backed partly by money from Google’s venture capital arm, is trying to put them out of work.
…
The threat to jobs stretches beyond the white-collar world. Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) also make possible more versatile robots capable of taking over many types of manual work. “It’s going to decimate jobs at the low end,” predicts Jerry Kaplan, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who teaches a class about AI at Stanford University. Like others working in the field, he says he is surprised by the speed at which the new technologies are moving out of the research labs.
From DSC: After readingthe above article— and seeing presentations about these trends (example) — I have some major questions to ask:
What changes do those of us working within higher education need to make due to these shifts? How should we modify our curricula? Which skills need to be reinforced/developed?
What changes do Learning & Development groups and Training Departments need to make within the corporate world?
How should we be developing our K-12 students to deal with such a volatile workplace?
What changes do adult learners need to make to stay marketable/employable? How can they reinvent themselves (and know what that reinvention should look like)?
How can each of us know if our job is next on the chopping block and if it is, what should we do about it?
Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates isn’t going to sugarcoat things: The increasing power of automation technology is going to put a lot of people out of work. Business Insider reports that Gates gave a talk at the American Enterprise Institute think tank in Washington, DC this week and said that both governments and businesses need to start preparing for a future where lots of people will be put out of work by software and robots.
S/he needs to be a knowledgeable expert in the relevant domain.
S/he needs to be a curator – but more than a curator.
S/he needs to able to pick out key resources and materials from the mass of material shared online. In other words s/he needs to be able to extract the “signal from the noise”.
S/he needs to be able to “join the dots” between resources – and show how one relates to the other.
S/he needs to be able to contextualize resources and make them relevant to the participants – drawing out the salient point(s) of the resources s/he shares.
S/he needs to be able to model good knowledge sharing skills.
S/he needs to “think small” – and create short manageable micro-learning activities.
S/he needs to “think social”- and how she can inspire and encourage short social learning experiences.
S/he needs to “think flexible” – and how she can support autonomy and choice in users’ participation.
I see MOOC as a dissemination model that offer a unique opportunity to integrate both—micro-learning and learning flows. It is an approach that – if done right – can integrate all aspects of the Pervasive Learning model – Formal, Informal and Social – popularized by Dan Pontefract in the book, Flat Army. I will discuss this in a later post. In this post, I am going to focus my attention on how micro-learning and learning flows can be an integral part of a MOOC and how this may benefit the corporate world.
But in the age of Facebook and Twitter, and now Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) like Yammer and Jive – where at the heart lies an activity stream that is used for a continuous stream of knowledge exchange, there is a place for a new learning framework – one that lies between the formal, instructionally designed course and the unstructured knowledge sharing of teams, groups and communities. We call this a Learning Flow.
A Learning Flow is a continuous steady stream of social micro-learning activities – accessible from the web and mobile devices
Let’s look at each of the elements of that sentence, that describe a Learning Flow
continuous – ongoing (ie no end date)
steady – daily (or probably more likely, weekdaily)
micro-learning – short – ie taking no longer than 15-20 minutes to undertake
activities – that involve reading (watching or listening to) something and doing something
social – that invite and encourage active participation and contribution
stream – that are organised and structured in the Flow in weekly themes
accessible from web and mobile devices – to ensure that learning can take place anywhere and at anytime
From DSC: Jane’s posting gets at what I’ve been trying to get at with the graphic below; and that is, we need to be consistently dipping our feet into streams of relevant content (i.e. relevant to our own learning ecosystems and what each of us needs to know to get and stay marketable).
Massive online open courses (MOOCs) are supposed to change the face of higher education. Early success, though, has been easier to find among corporations.
A University of Pennsylvania survey released late last year found that few students made it past the first online lecture. That’s been a constant criticism of MOOCs from educators: There’s a lack of proof that they work as well as traditional classroom methods. San Jose State University suspended a program it had initiated with MOOC provider Udacity after poor early results.
These stumbles in the education sector haven’t stopped corporations from finding a compelling reason to embrace MOOCs: Online courses trim a bill that runs to $130 billion annually for job training and certification, according to a report by Bersin, a unit of Deloitte Consulting.
From DSC: With the half lives of content shrinking, those organizations who are nimble, responsive to market demands, and can build/integrate new streams of content into their product offerings should prove to be successful. For example, if knowledge of 3D printing or big data is required, those organizations who can respond quickly to provide this information should do pretty well. If organizations like Coursera or Udacity can provide such content quicker, they could be the go-to players in the future — especially for lifelong learners.
Lastly, this article is a great example of why higher education & the corporate world should pay closer attention to what’s happening in each others’ worlds.
Reinvent the future –– an excellent presentation by Professor Steven Van Belleghem
From DSC: Though this presentation is aimed at the corporate world, there are NUMEROUS lessons here for those of us working within the world of higher education.
Sample slides:
From DSC: This type of presentation prompts me to ask why there isn’t more coursework being offered involving futurism…?
And within our current business offerings, are we applying enough emphasis on freelancing, entrepreneurship, innovation, and in pulse-checking a variety of landscapes?
Every middle-class job today is being pulled up, out or down faster than ever. That is, it either requires more skill or can be done by more people around the world or is being buried — made obsolete — faster than ever. Which is why the goal of education today, argues Wagner, should not be to make every child “college ready” but “innovation ready” — ready to add value to whatever they do.
So what should be the focus of education reform today?
…
We need to focus more on teaching the skill and will to learn and to make a difference and bring the three most powerful ingredients of intrinsic motivation into the classroom: play, passion and purpose.”
