Extending the boundaries of learning: A challenge for IT in Higher Education: A Q&A with Lev Gonick — from CampusTechnology.com by Mary Grush

Excerpts:

“In just one generation there has been the most radical transformation of access to learning ever in human history,” Lev Gonick points out.

But among the major developments that we can look back on at this point is a significant challenge to the traditional postsecondary education model–an entrenched model that has almost always been exclusively faculty centric. We, as the leaders of IT initiatives in higher education, have given rise to a conversation on our college campuses about the meaning of student centered learning and active learning. We are a significant part of that reframing–this is enormously important as we think about IT’s continuing role.

But we are now on the threshold of a very different set of institutional configurations and new learning experience opportunities, and ultimately we will see a reconfiguration of the meaning of learning as enabled by the IT world.

 

Northern Arizona wins regional accreditor’s approval for personalized learning program– from nextgenlearning.org by Nancy Millichap

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

It’s all systems go, at last: Northern Arizona University, one of the ten institutions presently developing breakthrough degree programs with NGLC support, recently got the green light to start enrolling students in their Personalized Learning program. The Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (HLC), NAU’s regional accreditor, approved their application to offer a competency-based degree program that moves away from the credit hour standard to use an approach referred to as “direct assessment” instead. In this approach, students receive credit related not to their presence in a real or virtual classroom for a specified period of time but instead to their successful completion of assessments that show they have mastered clearly defined competencies or are able to perform specific, predetermined tasks. HLC has created a pilot group of four institutions now approved to offer a competency-based degree program: NAU, the University of Wisconsin Colleges (a system of two-year campuses), the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and Capella University.

 

The management revolution that’s already happening — from forbes.com by Steve Denning

From DSC:
Note how the following excerpts might also apply to higher education in the future (emphasis DSC):

Then globalization and the Internet changed everything. Customers suddenly had real choices, access to instant reliable information and the ability to communicate with each other. Power in the marketplace shifted from seller to buyer. Customers started insisting on “better, cheaper, quicker and smaller,” along with “more convenient, reliable and personalized.” Continuous, even transformational, innovation have become requirements for survival.

Initially mature products and firms were wiped out by upstarts that offered cheap substitutes to their products, first capturing low-end customers, and gradually moving upmarket to pick off higher-end customers.

Even as hierarchical bureaucracy was failing in the private sector, its practices were infecting government, non-profits, education and health. “Reforms” here usually involved stricter implementation of hierarchical bureaucracy rather than a shift towards more productive management practices. As a result, performance was pushed even further from the frontier of what is possible. Since the public is coming to expect responsiveness from these sectors similar to that of the private sector, satisfaction steadily declined.

Their virtue lies in the creative energy with which they are pioneering new ways of adding value.

 

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Heads up Jony Ive! You need to see this brilliant concept for the Apple TV! Superb work by Sam Beckett!

BrilliantTVConceptBySamBeckett-May2013

 

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From DSC:
Now picture this from the educational standpoint — and what MOOCs could morph into.  The foundation for some serious learning power (from the living room) seems to be developing!

Streams of content/learning channels/cloud-based applications that each of us can create and make available.

Voice recognition, learning analytics, machine-to-machine communications, transmedia and more!  Wow!

 

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The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

 

 

How to get a job — by Thomas L. Friedman

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Underneath the huge drop in demand that drove unemployment up to 9 percent during the recession, there’s been an important shift in the education-to-work model in America. Anyone who’s been looking for a job knows what I mean. It is best summed up by the mantra from the Harvard education expert Tony Wagner that the world doesn’t care anymore what you know; all it cares “is what you can do with what you know.” And since jobs are evolving so quickly, with so many new tools, a bachelor’s degree is no longer considered an adequate proxy by employers for your ability to do a particular job — and, therefore, be hired. So, more employers are designing their own tests to measure applicants’ skills. And they increasingly don’t care how those skills were acquired: home schooling, an online university, a massive open online course, or Yale. They just want to know one thing: Can you add value?

People get rejected for jobs for two main reasons, said Sharef. One, “you’re not showing the employer how you will help them add value,” and, two, “you don’t know what you want, and it comes through because you have not learned the skills that are needed.” The most successful job candidates, she added, are “inventors and solution-finders,” who are relentlessly “entrepreneurial” because they understand that many employers today don’t care about your résumé, degree or how you got your knowledge, but only what you can do and what you can continuously reinvent yourself to do.

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From DSC:

So how about it? Are the students coming out of K-12 and higher ed prepared for this changing workplace? If not, how can we better prepare them? It seems to me we should require that each student create their own business — and help them build it before they graduate.  It doesn’t matter if that business makes any money at all.  What matters is the learning/experiences that the students would gain.

Also, to folks in the corporate world, help us get students to the places you need them to be — and stop expecting the”purple unicorns” to show up at your doorstep.  Adjust your expectations and aim for a higher purpose than pleasing the shareholder/Wall Street.

I’m grateful for the following comments on this blog from Professor William K.S. Wang from earlier today:

I have published three articles on the unbundling of higher education (the first in 1975; most are available through an internet search): “The Unbundling of Higher Education,” 1975 Duke Law Journal 53. “The Dismantling of Higher Education,” published in two parts in 29 Improving College and… Read more University Teaching 55 (1981) and 29 Improving College and University Teaching 115 (1981) “The Restructuring of Legal Education Along Functional Lines,” 17 Journal of Contemporary Legal Issues 331 (2008)(discusses legal education, but applies to higher education generally); abstract below

THE RESTRUCTURING OF LEGAL EDUCATION, by William K.S. Wang

ABSTRACT

Currently, law schools tie together five quite distinct services in one package, offered to a limited number of students. These five functions are: (1) impartation of knowledge, (2)counseling/placement, (3) credentialing (awarding grades and degrees), (4) coercion, and (5) club membership. Students do not have the opportunity to pay for just the services they want, or to buy each of the five services from different providers.

This article proposes an “unbundled” system in which the five services presently performed by law schools would be rendered by many different kinds of organizations, each specializing in only one function or an aspect of one function. Unbundling of legal education along functional lines would substantially increase student options and dramatically increase competition and innovation by service providers. This offers the hope of making available more individualized and better instruction and giving students remarkable freedom of choice as to courses, schedules, work-pace, instructional media, place of residence, and site of learning. Most importantly, this improved education would be available on an “open admissions” basis at much lower cost to many more individuals throughout the nation, or even the world.

In order to explain how to restructure the existing law school system, this article will discuss the five educational services presently performed by law schools, the disadvantages of tying these services together, a hypothetical unbundled world of legal education, the advantages of the unbundled system, answers to some possible objections to the system, and some recent developments in the use of technology and distance learning in law schools.

The main theme of this article is the advantage of unbundling. A more modest sub-theme is the benefit of use of technology and distance learning.

 

Also see:

  • Unbundling. . . and Reinforcing the Hierarchy? — from insidehighered.com by Margaret Andrews
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  • Foundations of Strategy, Part 3: Technology — from insidehighered.com by Margaret Andrews
    Excerpt:
    Interestingly, this was predicted awhile back, in a 1981 article titled “The Dismantling of Higher Education,” by William K.S. Wang (Improving College and University Teaching, Volume 29, Number 2, Spring 1981, pages 55-69).  In the article, Wang discusses five primary services performed by traditional universities – imparting information, counseling, credentialing, coercion, and club membership – and how they are currently performed by traditional universities. . . and how they might be replaced.  Here is a brief synopsis of Wang’s idea:

 

DismantlingofHE-ProfWang

 

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Also relevant/see:

  • Video and the learning playlist — from TrainingIndustry.com by Kaliym Islam
    Excerpt:
    You sign up for a course in order learn something new. The first half of the course contains background and overview information that is of no value to you. The next 25% goes over topics that you already know, while the next 15% finally provides you with the information or practice that you were looking for. But, the final 10% of the course simply recaps everything that was already covered. While you do derive some value from the experience, it comes at the expense of time wasted on the 85% of the course that didn’t.

    Imagine how the learning experience would be different if there was an environment that allowed you to preview and extract small or “micro” learning objects from any course or curriculum that existed within that learning ecosystem.

 


From DSC:
More choice. More control.  That’s one piece of the puzzle — i.e. where higher education is heading.

 

DanielChristian-The-unbundling-of-higher-education

 


Open learning pioneer heads west  — from insidehighered.com by Doug Lederman

Excerpt:

Since long before the advent of massive open online courses, Candace Thille’s project to fuse learning science with open educational delivery, developed at Carnegie Mellon University, has been heralded as one of higher education’s most significant and promising developments.

Friday, Thille essentially launched stage two of her research-based effort to expand the reach and improve the quality of technology-enabled education, with word that she (and at least part of her Open Learning Initiative) would move to Stanford University.

Thille and Stanford officials alike believe that by merging her experience in building high-quality, data-driven, open online courses with Stanford’s expertise in research on teaching and learning – notably its focus on how different types of students learn in differing environments – the university can become a center of research and practice in the efficacy of digital education.

Higher Ed in 2018 — from InsideHigherEd.com by Jeb Bush and Randy Best

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

Half a decade from now, almost all universities will offer their students the option of undertaking their coursework in high-demand degree programs online. However, online offerings will no longer be the competitive advantage they are today.

This unprecedented competition and the availability of many high-quality, low-priced options will have caused the tuition bubble to burst and the cost of attending college to tumble, putting even greater pressure on institutional budgets.

While the relative cost of instruction will have declined due to increased scale, the incomes of many professors providing online instruction will have risen sharply.  Some of these professors will have become the free agents of academe, with their courses widely accepted at both public and private universities around the world.

 

 

TheNextGenerationUniversity-May2013

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Excerpt:

As the nation struggles to find new ways to increase college access and completion rates while lowering costs, a handful of “Next Generation Universities” are embracing key strategies that make them models for national reform. The report The Next Generation University comes at a time when too many public universities are failing to respond to the nation’s higher education crisis. Rather than expanding enrollment and focusing limited dollars on the neediest of students, many institutions are instead restricting enrollments and encouraging the use of student-aid dollars on merit awards. But, according to the report, some schools are breaking the mold by boldly restructuring operating costs and creating clear, accelerated pathways for students.

Download the full report here.

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In addition to the report, see:

 

Also see:

  • What happens when 2 colleges become one — from chronicle.com by Ricardo Azziz
    Excerpt:
    Earlier this year, Moody’s Investors Service released its annual assessment of higher education in the United States, a report that viewed the sector’s short-term outlook as largely negative amid growing economic pressures. The analysts, however, applauded the efforts of a few states that were trying to merge or consolidate campuses because such efforts “foster operating efficiencies and reduce costs amid declining state support.”

Netflix CEO: ‘TV in the future will be like a giant iPad’ [Ligaya ]

Netflix CEO: ‘TV in the future will be like a giant iPad — from business.financialpost.com by Armina Ligaya

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Q: What do you think is going to happen over the next five or 10 years in internet video?

A: Well, you know, the fundamental thing is the internet has been getting faster. And now it’s video capable, which is really a last-five-years phenomenon. And, internet video will be very transformative across all societies for telemedicine, for online learning, for education. For communication of various sorts. And it brings, whether it’s person to person, or a recorded video like a movie or a TV show, to a person it will be very transformative.

And, TV in the future will be like a giant iPad. It will have a bunch of apps on it, each app will have a unique experience.

So we’re getting beyond just a stream of video, which is all broadcast technology can do, to really try to be innovative about the interaction.

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The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV

 

From DSC:
It seems that
The Walmart of Education has officially arrived — i.e. a 50%+ discount off normal prices!  A $7000 Masters in Computer Science! 

Are we going to see more partnerships/collaborations like this involving MOOC providers, more “traditional” institutions of Higher Education, as well as the corporate world?

Are we moving more towards the use of teams and consortia and pooling resources?

Are we witnessing the beginning of a more accessible infrastructure to support lifelong learning? 

Is AT&T going to hire the top performers?


Georgia Tech announces Massive Online Master’s Degree in Computer Science — from online.wsj.com
Institute teams with Udacity, AT&T to launch first-of-its-kind advanced degree program

Excerpt:

ATLANTA, May 14, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — The Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing announced today that it will offer the first professional Online Master of Science degree in computer science (OMS CS) that can be earned completely through the “massive online” format. The degree will be provided in collaboration with online education leader Udacity Inc. and AT&T.

All OMS CS course content will be delivered via the massive open online course (MOOC) format, with enhanced support services for students enrolled in the degree program. Those students also will pay a fraction of the cost of traditional on-campus master’s programs; total tuition for the program is initially expected to be below $7,000. A pilot program, partly supported by a generous gift from AT&T, will begin in the next academic year. Initial enrollment will be limited to a few hundred students recruited from AT&T and Georgia Tech corporate affiliates. Enrollment is expected to expand gradually over the next three years.

 

Massive (but not open) — from InsideHigherEd.com by Ry Rivard

Excerpt:

The Georgia Institute of Technology plans to offer a $7,000 online master’s degree to 10,000 new students over the next three years without hiring much more than a handful of new instructors.

Georgia Tech will work with AT&T and Udacity, the 15-month-old Silicon Valley-based company, to offer a new online master’s degree in computer science to students across the world at a sixth of the price of its current degree. The deal, announced Tuesday, is portrayed as a revolutionary attempt by a respected university, an education technology startup and a major corporate employer to drive down costs and expand higher education capacity.

 

Georgia Tech, Udacity to offer Master’s Degree — from edsurge.com

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

WHOA. Georgia Tech and Udacity today said that they would jointly offer an entirely online master’s degree in computer science with support from AT&T for less than $7,000, total.

That’s a game-changer.

40percentfreelancersby2020-quartz-april2013

 

Also, from Steve Wheeler’s

Etienne Wenger recently declared: ‘If any institutions are going to help learners with the real challenges they face…(they) will have to shift their focus from imparting curriculum to supporting the negotiation of productive identities through landscapes of practice’ (Wenger, 2010).

We live in uncertain times, where we cannot be sure how the economy is going to perform today, let alone predict what kind of jobs there will be for students when they graduate in a few years time. How can we prepare students for a world of work that doesn’t yet exist? How can we help learners to ready themselves for employment that is shifting like the sand, and where many of the jobs they will be applying for when they leave university probably don’t exist yet? It’s a conundrum many faculty and lecturers are wrestling with, and one which many others are ignoring in the hope that the problem will simply go away. Whether we are meerkats, looking out and anticipating the challenges, or ostriches burying our heads in the sand, the challenge remains, and it is growing stronger.

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Also see:

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401kworld-friedman-may2013

 

Also see:

  • The Nature of the Future: The Socialstructed World — from nextberlin.eu by Marina Gorbis, Institute for the Future
    Marina Gorbis, Executive Director of the Institute for the Future (iftf.org) discussed the evolution of communication and its consequences at NEXT13. She analyzed the perks and challenges of the new relationship-driven or “socialstructed” economy, stating that “humans and technology will team up”. Her new book ‘The Nature of the Future: Dispatches from the Socialstructed World’ was published in early 2013.  Watch her inspiring talk on April 23, 2013 at NEXT13.

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From DSC:
My best take on this at this point:

  • Give students more choice, more control of their learning
  • Help them discover their gifts, abilities, talents, passions
  • Help them develop their gifts, abilities, talents, passions
  • Provide content in as many ways as possible — and let the students work with what they prefer to work with
  • Implement story, emotion, creativity, and play as much as possible (providing plenty of chances for them to create what they want to create)
  • Utilize cross-disciplinary assignments and teams
  • Integrate real-world assignments/projects into the mix
  • Help them develop their own businesses while they are still in school — coach them along, provide mentors, relevant blogs/websites, etc.
  • Guide them as they create/develop their own “textbooks” and/or streams of content

 

From DSC: re: Adobe’s Project Context:
This is the type of hardware/software combination that I’ve been hoping for and envisioning! Excellent!

It appears to be the type of setup whereby students could quickly and easily collaborate with one another — in a face-to-face setting (and ideally in remote locations as well) — by not just displaying files but also being able to share files with one another.  Files can be sent up to the interactive, multi-touch displays as well as to an interactive table. So it’s not just displaying files, but actually sharing files and being able to collaboratively work on a project.

Eventually, I see this being able to be done in your living room.  What if MOOCs could integrate this type of web-based collaboration into their projects?

But for now, this is a HUGE step forward in this vision. Great work Adobe! This is innovative! Very helpful!

Example screenshots:

 

AdobeProjectContext-May2013

 

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AdobeProjectContext-1

 

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AdobeProjectContext-2

 

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Also see:

  • Adobe’s hardware experiments are more than just hobbies: Hands-on with Project Context – from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois
    Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
    At its MAX conference in Los Angeles [on 5/6/13], Adobe showed  quite a few products that will soon be available to its customers, but it also highlighted a number of hardware experiments, including Project Context, a totally re-imagined way for creating magazine layouts, as well as an advanced stylus and a ruler for touchscreens.

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project_context_screen_1

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