Example slides/excerpts:
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One example — of several great slides — regarding the old vs. the new paradigm:
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From DSC:
Re: one of the bullet points on the last slide — i.e. “Faculty work as part of instructional team” — here’s my take on what that team increasingly needs to look like in order to engage our students and to compete:
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http://chapter01.wormworldsaga.com/
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Also see:
From DSC:
First of all, my thanks to Mr. Joseph Byerwalter for this resource/link. I haven’t read this story; however I was intrigued by the user interface design here and it made me think of some related items/topics here:
I would have loved to see some more multimedia integrated into Daniel Lieske’s fabulous artwork — sound effects/audio/music and/or the capability of hearing the author read the story. Also, perhaps some interactivity may or may not add something here. In any case, this is a piece of the type of thing that I believe we will see much more of on devices like the iPad — as well as on Internet-connected televisions:
Incredibly-powerful, interactive, multimedia-based
methods of relaying one’s story or message.
Also, such endeavors open up a slew of potential future opportunities for our students (artists, musicians, sound engineers, writers, programmers, interface designers, user experience experts, etc.) — as well as chances to practice their creativity today.
5 e-book trends that will change the future of publishing — from Mashable’s Business Section by Philip Ruppel
(Philip Ruppel is the President of McGraw-Hill Professional, a leading global publisher of print and electronic content and services for the business, scientific, technical, and medical communities)
1. Enhanced E-Books Are Coming and Will Only Get Better
2. The Device War Is Nearly Over
3. The $9.99 E-Book Won’t Last Forever
4. The Contextual Upsell Will be a Business Model to Watch
5. Publishers Will Be More Important Than Ever
From DSC:
I have it that higher education has reached the point where we need teams of specialists to create and deliver the content. (This is probably also true for K-12 as well.) If we want to engage the (already developing) new type of student these days, things have become far too complex for one person to do it all anymore.
Often, for complex endeavors, we need teams of people.
To be fair…given that we use textbooks created by publishers, I suppose that we already employ teams of people to a significant extent…but it is not enough…at least not yet. This point was brought home to me again while reviewing the article, Online Education: Budgets, Leadership Changes Drive Restructuring by David Nagel. David states that “the vast majority of online program managers claimed in a recent survey that faculty resistance is a significant hindrance to the expansion of their online education programs.”
This should not come as a surprise for several reasons (at least):
1) Faculty may not have taken a course online themselves yet. They may not have personally experienced this manner of teaching and learning. They may not have seen how effective it can be (if it’s done well and properly).
2) Secondly, it must be very difficult to invite other people to the table or to let others bring their chairs up to the table.
3) Thirdly, and more of my focus here, is that learning how to teach online is a new ball game — requiring a variety of skills and interests — of which few have all of the skills and interests involved and none have all of the necessary time required. Teaching an effective online course requires a great deal of time and work to understand what’s possible in that particular teaching and learning environment, and which tools to use when, and to pull together the resources needed to create effective, engaging, multimedia-based online-based materials for the first time. Heck, we instructional technologists struggle to keep up here, and it’s but one piece of the puzzle.
The problem is, with this new environment, a whole new set of skills are necessary, as captured in this graphic I created a while back:
In citing why restructurings are so prevalent, the following caught my eye:
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Now that “coordination of instructional resources” probably covers a variety of needs, requirements, and goals. But one of those goals/needs, at least in my mind and based upon my experience, is the need to create a team of specialists.
No longer can we expect to be able to put everything on the plate of one person. Because rare will that faculty member be who has the all the new prerequisite interests and abilities and software and hardware. And if they are that good, they won’t have the time to do it all anyway.
The world changed, colleges missed it — from edreformer.com by Tom Vander Ark
A bunch of colleges are going out of business, only they don’t know it. They pretend that trimming costs and jacking tuition is a solution. They haven’t come to terms with a world where anyone can learn anything almost anywhere for free or cheap. Art Levine, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, sees three major change forces: new competition, a convergence of knowledge producers, and changing demographics.
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To Art’s list of three big change forces, add shrinking government support, the press for more accountability, and emerging technology…the next few decades will be marked by a lumpy move to competency-based learning…instant information and the ability to learn anything anywhere.
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The shift to personal digital learning is on. Some colleges get that. Others will seek bailouts until they go out of business. Working adults are getting smart on their own terms.
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From DSC:
Time will tell if Tom’s assertions are too harsh here, but personally, I think he’s right.
I have it that:
Specifically, I have it that we should be experimenting with:
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ASU partners with Pearson to expand online learning services — from PRWeb.com
Partnership will enhance the online student experience and reach new students
Arizona State University (ASU) and Pearson today announced an innovative partnership to develop new technology and management services to support ASU’s online students. The agreement will equip ASU with various capabilities designed to maximize learning outcomes through student engagement and retention, as well as increase overall course offerings. It will enable the university to reach potential students around the country who are not served by brick and mortar or other online institutions.
“When it comes to learning online, there is a direct correlation between quality services and student success,” said Philip Regier, Executive Vice Provost and Dean of ASU Online. “The reality is that learning online is very demanding and most students already have family and work responsibilities. The more support they receive, the better their learning outcomes and overall experience will be.”
From DSC:
With the pace of technological innovation and the costs involved in creating engaging, interactive, multimedia-based materials, it seems that such pooling of resources is wise, efficient. That is why I’m a fan of consortiums and pooling resources. This type of thing also quickly brings TEAMS of people together.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announces $100 million Innovation Fund to invest in education initiatives globally — from businesswire.com
HMH Innovation Fund will help develop and bring to market groundbreaking new products for delivering individualized learning solutions and classroom technologies; company also investing an additional $300 million in broader technology initiatives over the next three years
BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Global education leader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today announced the formal creation of a $100 million fund to support innovative ideas for new products to promote and enhance student achievement, individualized learning and effective technology integration in the classroom. The HMH Innovation Fund will be aimed at supporting emerging education initiatives and programs, as well as accelerating new technology development with the goal of bringing to market and spurring adoption of innovative solutions that can play a critical role in transforming education.
California State University to license content from major college publishers — from TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home by Paul Biba
The Digital Marketplace, an initiative of the California State University Office of the Chancellor, announced plans today to launch a pilot to license digital course content from Bedford/Freeman/Worth, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
“Shellacking the For-Profits” — from InsideHigherEd.com by Jennifer Epstein
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats made it clear Wednesday that their examination of for-profit higher education has only just begun, and that they plan to pursue legislation aimed at reining what they see as the sector’s dishonest — if not fraudulent — practices.
At a hearing on the “student recruitment experience” at for-profit colleges that began Wednesday morning and carried on through the mid-afternoon, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, outlined plans to hold more hearings on the sector, to collect broad sets of information from for-profit colleges, and to begin drafting legislation aimed at cleaning up the sector.
“Education is too important for the future of this country,” he said. “Facing the budget problems we have in the next 10 years, we just can’t permit more and more of the taxpayers’ dollars that are supposed to go for education and quality education … to be going to pay shareholders or private investors.”
From DSC:
Coming from a corporate background, I’m thinking this morning in terms of market share. If those of us in the more “traditional” institutions of higher ed were smart, we’d take this as major opportunity. The for-profits made a big mistake here — sacrificing integrity and reputation for building up their revenues; very bad move. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who once said something like, “Glass, china, and reputation, are easily crack’d, and never well mended.”
The for-profits here seemed to have taken their cues from the casino we call Wall Street. Yet another example of cold-heartedness. This is an opportunity for those institutions of higher ed to take the legitimate, effective items of what was/is working for the for-profits and implement them with integrity instead…for example, implementing the use of teams.
Also relevant:
Reaching the last technology holdouts at the front of the classroom — from the Chronicle by Jeff Young
Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard U., helped write the Department of Education’s new National Educational Technology Plan, which challenges educators to leverage modern technology to create engaging learning experiences for students.
Every semester a lot of professors’ lectures are essentially reruns because many instructors are too busy to upgrade their classroom methods.
That frustrates Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University, who argues that clinging to outdated teaching practices amounts to educational malpractice.
“If you were going to see a doctor and the doctor said, ‘I’ve been really busy since I got out of medical school, and so I’m going to treat you with the techniques I learned back then,’ you’d be rightly incensed,” he told me recently. “Yet there are a lot of faculty who say with a straight face, ‘I don’t need to change my teaching,’ as if nothing has been learned about teaching since they had been prepared to do it—if they’ve ever been prepared to.”
And poor teaching can have serious consequences, he says, when students fall behind or drop out because of sleep-inducing lectures. Colleges have tried several approaches over the years to spur teaching innovation. But among instructors across the nation, holdouts clearly remain.
From DSC:
A major part of me agrees wholeheartedly with this. If a group of people are in control at an institution, those persons are responsible for the performance of the institution. So if faculty have the control at an institution, they are responsible for the results of that institution.They must take the steps to keep innovating, adapting, and must never be content w/ the status quo. (And actually, this is the case whether they are in control or not.)
Yet…another part of me struggles with loading everything on the faculty member. While I agree that we all need to keep growing, innovating, and updating our courses, I think that we are asking faculty to do too much here. They can’t keep up and neither can the instructional technologists. Few, if any, people have all the required skills nowadays. The bar has risen too high.
We need TEAMS of specialists…and that’s why the for-profit, online universities are kicking the tails of everyone else. They utilize teams to build and deliver their content.
(Michael Jordan, as good as he was, wasn’t able to beat a solid team of players. It wasn’t until he got support from other members of his own team that the Bulls went on to win multiple championships.)
From DSC:
Here’s an article that gets at the use of TEAMS of specialists:
Outsourced Ed: Colleges Hire Companies to Build Their Online Courses — from The Chronicle by Marc Parry
From Spring 2010
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From DSC:
Most certainly, not everything that Thomas Frey says will take place…but I’ll bet you he’s right on a number of accounts. Whether he’s right or not, the potential scenarios he brings up ought to give us pause to reflect on ways to respond to these situations…on ways to spot and take advantage of the various opportunities that arise (which will only happen to those organizations who are alert and looking for them).
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