vision/possibilities

The Free Two-Year College Movement — A Special/Mini Feature from evoLLLution.com (where the LLL stands for lifelong learning)

Excerpt:

Given the importance of postsecondary credentials to succeeding in today’s labor market, access to and completion of two- and four-year degrees has become a high priority for higher education leaders, government officials and employers. In 2014, Tennessee launched the Tennessee Promise, which granted Tennesseans tuition-free access to two-year colleges in the state. Oregon, in 2015, passed a similar piece of legislation and President Obama made America’s College Promise—a national roll-out of this style of program—a hallmark of his State of the Union address.

While the program goes to great lengths to create unprecedented levels of access to higher education, the focus must turn to how colleges will manage life in this new reality and how the higher education marketplace will have to shift to adjust to this new level of access. This Feature focuses on those elements of the free two-year college movement.

From DSC:
From the original Kalamazoo Promise (which was generously/graciously put forth by a group of anonymous donors), many such “promise” programs have been developed — affecting programs all the way up to President Obama’s development of America’s College Promise.

Colleges and universities would be wise to keep this potential trend on their radars, while preparing plans for what they would do if this trend picks up steam.

Reflections on “Harvard Business School Intros HBX Live Virtual Classroom” [Kelly]

On 08/26/2015, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, digital video, education technology, emerging technologies, experimentation, future of higher education, global / globalization, higher education, ideas, innovation, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, multimedia, new business models, online learning, social learning / networks, student-related, teaching online, technologies for your home, technology (general), telecommunications, telepresence, television, user experience (UX), using teams, videoconferencing, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, webinars, by Daniel Christian

HBX Intros HBX Live Virtual Classroom — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpt:

Harvard Business School‘s HBX digital learning initiative today launched a virtual classroom designed to reproduce the intimacy and synchronous interaction of the case method in a digital environment. With HBX Live, students from around the world can log in concurrently to participate in an interactive discussion in real time, guided by an HBS professor.

Built to mimic the amphitheater-style seating of an HBS classroom, the HBX Live Studio features a high-resolution video wall that can display up to 60 participants. Additional students can audit sessions via an observer model. An array of stationary and roaming cameras capture the action, allowing viewers to see both the professor and fellow students.

HBX Live’s virtual amphitheater
(PRNewsFoto/Harvard Business School)

Also see HBX Live in Action.

I think that this type of setup could also be integrated with a face-to-face classroom as well (given the right facilities). The HBX Live concept fits right into a piece of my vision entitled, “Learning from the Living [Class] Room.”

Several words/phrases comes to mind:

Convenience. I don’t have to travel to another city, state, country. That type of convenience and flexibility is the basis of why many learners take online-based courses in the first place.
Global — learning from people of different cultures, races, backgrounds, life experiences.
The opportunities are there to increase one‘s cultural awareness.
HBX Live is innovative; in fact, Harvard is upping it’s innovation game yet again — showing a firm grasp/display of understanding that they realize that the landscape of higher education is changing and that institutions of traditional higher education need to adapt.
Harvard is willing to experiment and to identify new ways to leverage technologies — taking advantage of the affordances that various technologies offer.

BTW, note how the use of teams is a requirement here.

Also see:

Harvard Business School really has created the classroom of the future — from fortune.com by John A. Byrne

Excerpt:

Anand, meantime, faces the images of 60 students portrayed on a curved screen in front of him, a high-resolution video wall composed of more than 6.2 million pixels that mimics the amphitheater-style seating of a class HBS tiered classroom

Start the School Year by “Awakening Your Dreamers” — from edutopia.org by Suzie Boss

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

When your students return to the classroom this fall, how many will bring along the interests, talents, and dreams that inspired or delighted them over the summer months? Will they see any connection between school assignments and their own passions?

Bernajean Porter (@bernajeanporter), a longtime advocate of digital storytelling and engaged learning, has a suggestion to get the year off to a good start: “What if your first project was about getting to know the hopes and dreams and talents of your kids?” By investing time to build a positive classroom culture, while also introducing project-based learning practices, you’ll set the stage for more meaningful inquiry experiences all year long.

Imagination Plus Research
Porter has developed and field-tested a classroom resource called, I-imagine: Taking MY Place in the World that guides students on a multimedia journey into their own future. After a series of guided writing and reflection exercises, students eventually produce “vision videos” in which they star as protagonists of the lives they are living, 20 years into the future.

From DSC:
Along these lines of trying to figure out what one’s passions, gifts, and talents are — as well as seeing the needs of the world around us — I recently read a book entitled, “Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good.” One of the key questions from that book is:

Knowing what you know about yourself and the world, having read what you’ve read, having seen what you’ve seen, what are you going to do?

Here are some of my notes from that book, in case you know of someone who is trying to ascertain their purpose in this world…someone who is trying to find out more about their calling. It’s a good book, prompting deep reflection.

Should You Buy the Hype? An Inside Look at the Virtual Reality Landscape — from singularityhub.com by Howie Leibach

Excerpts:

Consequently in 2014, less than two years after the Kickstarter, Facebook acquired Oculus for $2.2 billion dollars, and in doing so legitimized the VR industry overnight.

“We’re making a long-term bet that immersive, virtual and augmented reality will become part of people’s daily life,” said Zuckerberg.

With his track record for sniffing out “what’s next” and a distribution network of 1+ billion people, many have been quick to infer VR has a very bright future. Some analysts are already predicting VR will generate $30 billion in revenue by 2020, and many of Zuckerberg’s Silicon Valley counterparts haven’t hesitated to make similar predictions.

VR is still perhaps one or two years away from going mainstream, but more consumers are being exposed to it than ever before. Advancements in headset technology regularly make front page news on CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Business Insider and Wired. VR has even infiltrated the holy grail of pop-culture, prominently featured (and lampooned) on a recent episode of South Park.

But none of this VIP treatment matters if the product can’t sell. With the consumer Oculus Rift six to twelve months away, some are still on the fence, debating if they should buy the hype.

Realistically, many businesses don’t have time to wait and are already bracing for a future with VR in it. As executives scramble to invest in their own VR initiatives, many want to know what’s actually happening in the space.

Below are excerpts from Greenlight VR’s July Research Report, which investigate trends on the state of the industry, including VR growth, investments and opportunities.

Also see:

Which Way Next? A New Singularity Hub Channel to (Re)Imagine the Future — from singularityhub.com by Sveta McShane; also see all of the items on the Which Way Next? channel.

Reflections on “Can we interest you in teaching?” [Bruni] & “Teacher shortages spur a nationwide hiring scramble (credentials optional)” [Rich]

On 08/13/2015, in 21st century, Daniel S. Christian, education, education reform, future, K-12 related, leadership, strategy, teachers, teaching & learning, United States, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Can we interest you in teaching? — from nytimes.com by Frank Bruni; with thanks to Jim Lerman for his Scoop on this

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Teaching can’t compete.

When the economy improves and job prospects multiply, college students turn their attention elsewhere, to professions that promise more money, more independence, more respect.

That was one takeaway from a widely discussed story in The Times on Sunday by Motoko Rich, who charted teacher shortages so severe in certain areas of the country that teachers are being rushed into classrooms with dubious qualifications and before they’ve earned their teaching credentials.

It’s a sad, alarming state of affairs, and it proves that for all our lip service about improving the education of America’s children, we’ve failed to make teaching the draw that it should be, the honor that it must be. Nationally, enrollment in teacher preparation programs dropped by 30 percent between 2010 and 2014, as Rich reported.

To make matters worse, more than 40 percent of the people who do go into teaching exit the profession within five years.

Also see:

Teacher shortages spur a nationwide hiring scramble (credentials optional) — from nytimes.com by Motoko Rich
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
ROHNERT PARK, Calif. — In a stark about-face from just a few years ago, school districts have gone from handing out pink slips to scrambling to hire teachers. Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers. At the same time, a growing number of English-language learners are entering public schools, yet it is increasingly difficult to find bilingual teachers. So schools are looking for applicants everywhere they can — whether out of state or out of country — and wooing candidates earlier and quicker.
…
In California, the number of people entering teacher preparation programs dropped by more than 55 percent from 2008 to 2012, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. Nationally, the drop was 30 percent from 2010 to 2014, according to federal data. Alternative programs like Teach for America, which will place about 4,000 teachers in schools across the country this fall, have also experienced recruitment problems.

From DSC:
Teaching is very difficult. If you doubt that statement, you probably haven’t taught in a while (or ever). Finding ways to engage 25-35+ students at once — while trying to provide a personalized, customized learning experience for each learner — is no small task.

I’m grateful for the solid teachers I had growing up. We need solid teachers. This is our future – no matter what nation that we’re talking about. Yet, as the article mentions for those of us in the United States, “It’s a sad, alarming state of affairs, and it proves that for all our lip service about improving the education of America’s children, we’ve failed to make teaching the draw that it should be, the honor that it must be.”

This is a major shot across the bow. We need action. We need to listen to the teachers/administrators/reformers out there now, and we need to listen to — and address in concrete fashions — the former teachers who have left the profession. Why did they leave? What would they recommend changing? After listening, we need to take action.

But even as I write this, I get a glimpse of the immensity and difficulty of the task. For example, who has solid ideas? What are solid ideas? Which direction should we go in? How will we get enough people on board with the proposed changes?

I’m grateful for all of those folks out there who are working to address this situation. Who work day after day to implement positive reforms and address these concerns — who are helping prepare our students for the future they will inherit. To those folks, I say thank you and may you come across reasons to be encouraged today.

“The whole point of things like curricula and classroom instruction, for example, is to prepare students for what they need to know tomorrow, not what yesterday’s students needed to know today.”

Source

What might our learning ecosystems look like by 2025? [Christian]

On 07/31/2015, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, active learning, adult learning, analytics, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), blended learning, business side of he, career development, changing business models, collaboration, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, digital storytelling, disruption, distance education, education, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, expectations, experimentation, formal learning, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), IBM, ideas, informal learning, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learner profiles, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, liberal arts, lifelong learning, marketplaces, mobile learning, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, online media, online tutoring, pace of change, participation, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, reinvent, second screen apps, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, staying relevant, streams of content, student-related, surviving, technologies for your home, technology (general), telepresence, television, training / L&D, transmedia, trends, universities, user experience (UX), using teams, videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

This posting can also be seen out at evoLLLution.com (where LLL stands for lifelong learning):

From DSC:
What might our learning ecosystems look like by 2025?

In the future, learning “channels” will offer more choice, more control. They will be far more sophisticated than what we have today.

That said, what the most important aspects of online course design end up being 10 years from now depends upon what types of “channels” I think there will be and what might be offered via those channels. By channels, I mean forms, methods, and avenues of learning that a person could pursue and use. In 2015, some example channels might be:

Attending a community college, a college or a university to obtain a degree
Obtaining informal learning during an internship
Using social media such as Twitter or LinkedIn
Reading blogs, books, periodicals, etc.

In 2025, there will likely be new and powerful channels for learning that will be enabled by innovative forms of communications along with new software, hardware, technologies, and other advancements. For examples, one could easily imagine:

That the trajectory of deep learning and artificial intelligence will continue, opening up new methods of how we might learn in the future
That augmented and virtual reality will allow for mobile learning to the Nth degree
That the trend of Competency Based Education (CBE) and microcredentials may be catapulted into the mainstream via the use of big data-related affordances

Due to time and space limitations, I’ll focus here on the more formal learning channels that will likely be available online in 2025. In that environment, I think we’ll continue to see different needs and demands – thus we’ll still need a menu of options. However, the learning menu of 2025 will be more personalized, powerful, responsive, sophisticated, flexible, granular, modularized, and mobile.

Highly responsive, career-focused track

One part of the menu of options will focus on addressing the demand for more career-focused information and learning that is available online (24×7). Even in 2015, with the U.S. government saying that 40% of today’s workers now have ‘contingent’ jobs and others saying that percentage will continue climbing to 50% or more, people will be forced to learn quickly in order to stay marketable. Also, the 1/2 lives of information may not last very long, especially if we continue on our current trajectory of exponential change (vs. linear change).

However, keeping up with that pace of change is currently proving to be out of reach for most institutions of higher education, especially given the current state of accreditation and governance structures throughout higher education as well as how our current teaching and learning environment is set up (i.e., the use of credit hours, 4 year degrees, etc.). By 2025, accreditation will have been forced to change to allow for alternative forms of learning and for methods of obtaining credentials. Organizations that offer channels with a more vocational bent to them will need to be extremely responsive, as they attempt to offer up-to-date, highly-relevant information that will immediately help people be more employable and marketable. Being nimble will be the name of the game in this arena. Streams of content will be especially important here. There may not be enough time to merit creating formal, sophisticated courses on many career-focused topics.

With streams of content, the key value provided by institutions will be to curate the most relevant, effective, reliable, up-to-date content…so one doesn’t have to drink from the Internet’s firehose of information. Such streams of content will also offer constant potential, game-changing scenarios and will provide a pulse check on a variety of trends that could affect an industry. Social-based learning will be key here, as learners contribute to each other’s learning. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) will need to be knowledgeable facilitators of learning; but given the pace of change, true experts will be rare indeed.

Microcredentials, nanodegrees, competency-based education, and learning from one’s living room will be standard channels in 2025. Each person may have a web-based learner profile by then and the use of big data will keep that profile up-to-date regarding what any given individual has been learning about and what skills they have mastered.

For example, even currently in 2015, a company called StackUp creates their StackUp Report to add to one’s resume or grades, asserting that their services can give “employers and schools new metrics to evaluate your passion, interests, and intellectual curiosity.” Stackup captures, categorizes, and scores everything you read and study online. So they can track your engagement on a given website, for example, and then score the time spent doing so. This type of information can then provide insights into the time you spend learning.

Project teams and employers could create digital playlists that prospective employees or contractors will have to advance through; and such teams and employers will be watching to see how the learners perform in proving their competencies.

However, not all learning will be in the fast lane and many people won’t want all of their learning to be constantly in the high gears. In fact, the same learner could be pursuing avenues in multiple tracks, traveling through their learning-related journeys at multiple speeds.

The more traditional liberal arts track

To address these varied learning preferences, another part of the menu will focus on channels that don’t need to change as frequently. The focus here won’t be on quickly-moving streams of content, but the course designers in this track can take a bit more time to offer far more sophisticated options and activities that people will enjoy going through.

Along these lines, some areas of the liberal arts* will fit in nicely here.

*Speaking of the liberal arts, a brief but important tangent needs to be addressed, for strategic purposes. While the following statement will likely be highly controversial, I’m going to say it anyway. Online learning could be the very thing that saves the liberal arts.

Why do I say this? Because as the price of higher education continues to increase, the dynamics and expectations of learners continue to change. As the prices continue to increase, so do peoples’ expectations and perspectives. So it may turn out that people are willing to pay a dollar range that ends up being a fraction of today’s prices. But such greatly reduced prices won’t likely be available in face-to-face environments, as offering these types of learning environment is expensive. However, such discounted prices can and could be offered via online-based environments. So, much to the chagrin of many in academia, online learning could be the very thing that provides the type of learning, growth, and some of the experiences that liberal arts programs have been about for centuries. Online learning can offer a lifelong supply of the liberal arts.

But I digress…
By 2025, a Subject Matter Expert (SME) will be able to offer excellent, engaging courses chocked full of the use of:

Engaging story/narrative
Powerful collaboration and communication tools
Sophisticated tracking and reporting
Personalized learning, tech-enabled scaffolding, and digital learning playlists
Game elements or even, in some cases, multiplayer games
Highly interactive digital videos with built-in learning activities
Transmedia-based outlets and channels
Mobile-based learning using AR, VR, real-world assignments, objects, and events
…and more.

However, such courses won’t be able to be created by one person. Their sophistication will require a team of specialists – and likely a list of vendors, algorithms, and/or open source-based tools – to design and deliver this type of learning track.

Final reflections

The marketplaces involving education-related content and technologies will likely look different. There could be marketplaces for algorithms as well as for very granular learning modules. In fact, it could be that modularization will be huge by 2025, allowing digital learning playlists to be built by an SME, a Provost, and/or a Dean (in addition to the aforementioned employer or project team). Any assistance that may be required by a learner will be provided either via technology (likely via an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled resource) and/or via a SME.

We will likely either have moved away from using Learning Management Systems (LMSs) or those LMSs will allow for access to far larger, integrated learning ecosystems.

Functionality wise, collaboration tools will still be important, but they might be mind-blowing to us living in 2015. For example, holographic-based communications could easily be commonplace by 2025. Where tools like IBM’s Watson, Microsoft’s Cortana, Google’s Deepmind, and Apple’s Siri end up in our future learning ecosystems is hard to tell, but will likely be there. New forms of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) such as Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) will likely be mainstream by 2025.

While the exact menu of learning options is unclear, what is clear is that change is here today and will likely be here tomorrow. Those willing to experiment, to adapt, and to change have a far greater likelihood of surviving and thriving in our future learning ecosystems.

Are these some of the phenomenon that will sink higher education if we don’t address them? [Christian]

On 07/16/2015, in business, business side of he, change, changing business models, colleges, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, experimentation, higher education, leadership, new business models, reinvent, staying relevant, strategy, surviving, universities, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
The phenomenon I’m thinking about are:

We in higher education are so peer-oriented that we don’t lead. That is, if our peers would do X, then we could do X. But if they aren’t doing it, we can’t or shouldn’t do it either. As Barnds says in his article below, “We continue to play a game of chicken as we wait for a so-called peer to do what we need to do.”
We are so peer-oriented that we don’t see that if we don’t lead and care far less about what our peers are doing, we risk being in a situation where we’re simply shifting chairs around, and doing so aboard the Titanic.
Why do I say Titanic? Because if we don’t address the growing chasm between what the corporate world wants/expects and what learners/families expect, we risk creating a void that WILL BE filled by another completely new system or systems. There WILL BE disruption if we don’t address the gaps. People will find other routes.
Folks in leadership positions within higher education have no choice but to deal with risk. If you don’t do anything, you are courting an enormous amount of risk. You are running a very dangerous experiment and your institution will likely be a shadow of what it once was (if it’s even able to remain open at all in the future). But if you change something — such as lowering the price of obtaining a degree — you also face risk. So risk comes with the job; there’s no escaping it. But just don’t make the mistake of thinking there’s no risk in pursuing the status quo.

The Best Pricing Model: Transparency — from insidehighered.com by W. Kent Barnds

Excerpts:

The current funding model for higher education is broken and we can only blame ourselves for creating a norm of bargain basement pricing for those families in the know, opaque business models and unexplained annual increases based more on competitors’ current price tag rather than our actual campus needs. We continue to play a game of chicken as we wait for a so-called peer to do what we need to do.
…
There are significant risks involved in changing how we discuss pricing, cost and value. Private colleges, as tuition-dependent institutions, are hesitant to try something new, especially if all of our peers stick with the currently murky language and approaches to cost and price.
…
As an industry, we need to work at getting it right for our students, which includes lowering actual costs for students and maintaining sufficient revenue to deliver on our mission.
…
Further, colleges need to clearly describe their business model to their campus constituents, students and parents of current students and delineate how the annual operation is funded. Finally, leaders need to acknowledge that percentage increases in tuition costs cannot continue in perpetuity. At some point we will price ourselves out of the market and into bankruptcy.
…
Seldom is there a clear statement that all students will pay at least $XXXX less to attend the next year. I realize this is pretty tricky — saying that the education offered is less expensive than the previous year — but this is exactly what’s missing and why many of the efforts so far seem to miss the mark.

Don’t get Ubered: Be an instigator of digital disruption [Zetlin]

On 07/15/2015, in business, corporate / business world, disruption, innovation, IT in HE, leadership, strategy, vision/possibilities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Don’t get Ubered: Be an instigator of digital disruption — from by Minda Zetlin

Excerpts (emphasis DSC):

It’s a common complaint from business leaders: IT takes too long to give us what we need. Not only is creating impatience in business leaders bad for a CIO’s reputation, it also leads to growth in “shadow” or “rogue” IT, as frustrated business leaders seek a more immediate solution. The answer is for IT to speed up its work, but that’s a tall order for many, who already feel they’re moving as fast as they can and then some.

In an interview with The Enterprisers Project, Emmet B. Keeffe, CEO of the software visualization company iRise, explains how technology leaders can and must speed up their projects.

…

Keeffe: Don’t settle for a seat at the table. Every CIO faces his or her own challenges, but one thing we’ve been hearing for something like a decade is business and IT alignment and getting a seat at the table. But at this stage of the game, when software and the Internet define most businesses to their users, being at the table isn’t enough. CIOs need to be calling the business to the table, and presenting innovative ways to thrive.

Rise recently held a CIO event in New York, and though it wasn’t explicitly on the agenda, the one thing every participant talked about was disruption and the potential for startups to Uber them with a new digital business model, or for established competitors to beat them to a new digitally driven punch. They were focused on what was going on in the competitive landscape, figuring out how to act immediately on opportunity, and how to make sure their business leaders were listening.

So if there are any CIOs left out there still calling alignment a job well-done, my advice would be to keep pushing to a higher level, instigating strategic change rather than only falling in line with it.

Beyond Active Learning: Transformation of the Learning Space — from educause.edu by Mark S. Valenti

Excerpt:

The past decade has seen exciting developments in learning space design. All across the United States and around the world, across seemingly every discipline, there is interest in creating new, active, project-based learning spaces. Technology-rich and student-centric, the new learning spaces are often flexible in size and arrangement and are a significant departure from the lecture hall of yesterday. These developments are not the result of any one factor but are occurring as the result of changes in student demographics, technology advances, and economic pressures on higher education and as the result of increasing demands from employers. The nature of work today is inherently team-based and collaborative, often virtual, and geographically distant. Companies are seeking creative, collaborative employees who have an exploratory mindset. Employers seek graduates who can be more immediately productive in today’s fast-paced economy. Colleges and universities around the country are responding by creating flexible, multimodal, and authentic learning experiences. It’s a complex ecosystem of education—and it’s evolving right before our eyes. What an amazing time to be in education and to be a part of the transformation of the learning space!

…

The next generation of learning spaces will take all the characteristics of an active learning environment—flexibility, collaboration, team-based, project-based—and add the capability of creating and making. Project teams will be both interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary and will likely need access to a broad array of technologies. High-speed networks, video-based collaboration, high-resolution visualization, and 3-D printing are but a few of the digital tools that will find their way into the learning space.

Figure 1. The T-Shaped Professional

Credit: Developed by IBM (Jim Spohrer, IBM Labs) and Michigan State University and
modified on March 16, 2015. Reprinted with permission.

CMU’s active learning classrooms improve STEM students’ learning — from cmich.edu; with thanks to Krista Spahr for this item
Environments support collaborative conversation, development of real-world skills

Excerpt:

The active learning difference
Through state-of-the-art technology, students spend their class time in active learning classrooms collaborating on assignments and solving problems rather than listening to lectures. Faculty become coaches and guides instigating thoughtful discussions and debates. Often, students watch faculty members’ online lectures before each class session begins.

Studies have shown that active learning classrooms and their settings allow students to learn up to three times more and retain greater knowledge, strengthen student-faculty relationships and improve student performance. Active learning also is proven to increase the likelihood that students in STEM disciplines will continue in those programs and removes the gap between the success of male and female students.

…

The flipped classroom can be associated with more collaborative, experiential, constructivist learning. “Faculty become coaches and guides instigating thoughtful discussions and debates. Often, students watch faculty members’ online lectures before each class session begins.”

6 Secrets of Active Learning Classroom Design — from campustechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
While the basic elements of active learning classrooms are well known, no one-size-fits-all template exists. Here’s how to achieve the custom fit your school needs.

Excerpt:

4 Questions to Guide Classroom Design
By next year, the University of Oklahoma will have nearly a dozen active learning spaces, up from one in 2012. Every single classroom looks different from the others, and that’s by design. Chris Kobza, manager of IT learning spaces, and Erin Wolfe, director of strategic initiatives, have honed their process down to four simple questions:

What’s the vision?
What’s the focus?
How flexible?
What’s the budget?

The process starts when they sit down with the person or people who want to redo a room to find out what they envision — is it maximum technology or maximum flexibility? “It’s a real casual conversation but you can learn enough about what their expectations for the space are, what the expectations for their faculty are, what they hope the students get out of the space,” said Kobza.

Reasons and Research – Why Schools Need Collaborative Learning Spaces — from emergingedtech.com by Kelly Walsh
There are Many Reasons Why Flexible, Active Learning Classrooms Should be Widely Adopted

Excerpt:

The power of Active Learning: “Many of today’s learners favor active, participatory, experiential learning—the learning style they exhibit in their personal lives. But their behavior may not match their self-expressed learning preferences when sitting in a large lecture hall with chairs bolted to the floor.”

Kelly references the
Learning Spaces compilation out at Educause:

From DSC:
Don’t like the phrase “active learning?” I’m compiling a list of other words/phrases/thoughts that one can use:

Collaborating on assignments and solving problems
Collaborative learning
Actively engaged learning
Peer instruction
Thinking out loud with one another
Constructionist / constructivist learning
Developing real-world skills such as problem solving, critical thinking, negotiating, and teamwork
Students have the opportunity to work in groups, solve complex problems and be creative
Emphasis on small-group activities
Immersed in discussion
Flexible in size and arrangement
Experiences and opportunities to better understand the material
Students are extremely engaged in what they are doing, and their thinking is being refined.
Creating and making; creativity
Effective interactions of small groups of people within communal spaces
Putting the focus on students doing the work of learning
Increased motivation via more hands-on opportunities
Sharing / exchanging ideas
Participatory

‘The shift is changing the way teachers plan, present lessons and share information. Students no longer need to all do the same thing to learn about a topic. This change is enhancing the quality of work teachers are receiving back from students, and is creating an environment where students are involved in the creation (versus consumption) of content that aids their learning. “A major change comes in the direct instruction piece. As teachers, we’re moving from simply giving information and offering a passive learning experience, to serving as a facilitator and guiding student inquiries. This method is allowing them to be active participants in their own education,” said Alder Creek Middle School teacher Vicki Decker. (Source)

Addendum on 7/17/15:

Designing Active Learning Classrooms — from dbctle.erau.edu; with thanks to Tim Holt out at holtthink.tumblr.com for the original posting that led me to this resource
Excerpt:
Active Learning Classrooms (also known as Active Learning Spaces or Learning Studios) are classrooms or other physical spaces designed with active learning in mind. In particular they are student-centered rather than instructor-centered. Students often sit in groups instead of rows to support collaborative learning, and some classrooms even have movable tables or desks. Students also sometimes have their own computers or tablets, and there may be multiple displays around the classroom, since students are not facing in one direction. Researchers have found that active learning classrooms have positive influences on student learning and engagement. Below are videos, examples, research studies, and assessment instruments related to active learning spaces.

A somewhat related addendum:

50 alternatives to lecturing — from teachthought.com

Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling [Lasseter]

On 07/01/2015, in digital storytelling, leadership, media/film, multimedia, new media literacies, story, storytelling, technology (general), vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling — from medium.com by John Lasseter; with a shout out to The Digital Rocking Chair for the Scoop on this

Excerpts:

“People aren’t going to sit still for a feature-length cartoon. Are you nuts?”

But Walt was a visionary.

Walt saw beyond what people were used to. They were used to the short cartoon.

There’s a famous statement by Henry Ford that before the Model T if you asked people what they wanted, they would say, “A faster horse.”

My own partner at Pixar for 25 years, Steve Jobs, never liked market research. Never did market research for anything.

“It’s not the audience’s job to tell us what they want in the future, it’s for us to tell them what they want in the future.” — Steve Jobs

It was because people didn’t understand what the technology ***could*** do. — John Lasseter

I wanted to learn as much as I could.

The more you dig into the technology and the more you learn it, you are going to get ideas you would never have thought of without knowing your technology.

The goal was to make the technology invisible.

For the employment application for future jobs: Professional hoop jumpers need not apply!

This is a solid, wise question: “What should graduates look like in 10 years?” [Norris]

On 06/26/2015, in career development, curriculum, digital learning, education, education reform, future, global / globalization, ideas, K-12 related, languages and translation, new media literacies, student-related, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

What should graduates look like in 10 years? — from eschoolnews.com by Rachel Norris

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Superintendent Richard Carranza of San Francisco Unified School District and the board of education considered, for instance, that graduates will need to develop and manage their local, global, and digital identities, and be comfortable separating and switching between the three. Graduates will benefit from being bilingual or multilingual; a 2025 graduate must be technologically fluent as well as college and career ready, with the added challenge that many of those careers have yet to be created.

Community participants looked at trends and data to create a 2025 “Graduate Profile.” They also, in large and small groups, engaged creatively with each other, with research and with information gathered from field trip observations to design possible future learning environments.

Then they started a pilot program to begin to bring that vision to life — starting in first grade.

From DSC:
The article below relates well to this graphic from sparks & honey.

NOTE:
Higher education is included in this discussion. If we think that we’re not included — and the other forces continue that are putting the heat in higher ed’s kitchen — it’s highly likely that other forms and channels of learning will fill the voids and gaps in what people are looking for and are willing to pay for.

ExponentialNotLinearSparksNHoney-Spring2013

How the new economy is changing the workplace, part II — from workdesign.com by Bob Fox; also see part I and part III

Excerpts:

Change is a constant, but when the speed of change increases it becomes a much different animal. Incremental business improvements are much easier to manage, and are a necessary part of all businesses. We tend to think linearly, so disruptive change is the real risk. The challenge with disruptive change is that it is often unpredictable and it generally conflicts with the core competency of a business. What’s more, it can come from other industries.
…
While disruptive change and innovation are likely the cause, it’s the inability of most businesses to deal with or react to those challenges over time that’s the death knell. We think tomorrow will be just like today, and we don’t have the workspaces to effectively share, question, and iterate ideas and leverage innovation to sustain our organizations through tough challenges.

There is a widespread human tendency, with which we are all of us familiar, that can be simply expressed as the “kink” in the curve where the past meets the future. The exponential line of human technological progress, long driven by information and for the past generation by the power of the chip, is kinked. It is kinked, inevitably, at the present. — Nigel Cameron

If I had told you 15 years ago that in the future you would have a device that you could carry in your pocket where you can get your mail, make a video call, carry thousands of your favorite songs, take pictures and videos and share them, check the stock market in real time, get the latest headlines immediately, get directions instantly to wherever you wanted to go, make a dinner or hotel reservation, invite your friends and that all of it would be essentially free, you would have thought I was some kind of nut. But look at us now.

From DSC:
For institutions of higher education, we need to be able to experiment…to fail…to succeed….to iterate until we find out what’s working and what’s not working. We need more innovative cultures. We need more Trimtab Groups.

For K-12 and higher education, we need to teach our kids how to run their own businesses…as it’s highly likely they will be a part of the contingent workforce at some point(s) in their lifetimes.

TheTrimtabInHigherEducation-DanielChristian

Also related/see:

The Digital Vortex, where disruption is constant and innovation rules — from blogs.cisco.com by Joseph Bradley
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Given the breakneck pace of technology change, business leaders can be forgiven for feeling as if they are living in a vortex. That’s because, in many ways, they are.In a real vortex, rotational forces draw everything to the center, where objects collide and combine in unpredictable ways. To me, that sounds like business as usual in the Internet of Everything (IoE) era.The Digital Vortex is the inevitable movement of industries toward a “digital center” in which business models, offerings, and value chains are digitized to the maximum extent possible. The result is “components” that can be readily combined to create new disruptions that blur the lines between industries.

The results help to clarify digital disruption and how business leaders view it. Here are some key findings:

Disruption Looms… Four of today’s top 10 incumbents (in terms of market share) in each industry will be displaced by digital disruption in the next five years. The threat extends not only to displacement of big companies, but also to the very existence of entire industries.
…As Executives “Wait and See.” Digital disruption has not received board-level attention in about 45 percent of companies (on average across industries). Moreover, 43 percent of companies either do not acknowledge the risk of digital disruption, or have not addressed it sufficiently. Nearly a third are taking a “wait and see” approach. Only 25 percent describe their response to digital disruption as proactive.
In the Digital Vortex, No Safe Haven. The industry that will experience the most digital disruption between now and 2020 is technology products and services. Pharmaceuticals, meanwhile, is likely to experience the least amount of digital disruption. However, all industries will see competitive upheavals as innovations become increasingly exponential.
Disrupt, or Be Disrupted. Based on their ranking and placement within the Digital Vortex, firms can evaluate the speed at which their industry will experience disruption. They then can choose to “disrupt themselves” or potentially be displaced by a new business model.

Learning Spaces: The importance of having standards

On 06/11/2015, in A/V -- audio/visual, flipping -- inverted learning, IT in HE, leadership, learning spaces, smart classrooms, strategy, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

How to create an AV standards document — from campustechnology.com by Mike Tomei
Defining standards will help prevent audiovisual support headaches and keep your institution on the path to its strategic goals.

Excerpt:

Audiovisual technology is becoming increasingly complex and important in today’s classrooms. And with higher education IT departments being tasked with the design, installation and support of instructional AV systems — areas in which IT staff may or may not have expertise — it’s extremely important to develop, define and enforce AV system design/technical standards on campus.

The easiest way to do so is to create a comprehensive audiovisual design and technical standards document that can be referenced by all the parties involved with classroom AV installations. The goal of this document is to standardize AV installations across the institution, as well as streamline the design and construction process for these systems. A standards document will also help your IT department make progress toward the institution’s audiovisual strategic goals.
…
Many readers from state schools will recognize this scenario: A different audiovisual design consultant and systems integration firm are chosen for each project, based on the lowest bid. You end up with a revolving door of AV professionals installing equipment on your campus. They have very limited knowledge of your existing classroom systems, and what direction you’re trying to go in with new installations. This is a great reason to have an AV standards document written and ready to hand to these individuals at the beginning of a project.

…it’s all the more important to develop an audiovisual design/technical standards document that all parties can rely on.

Why campus infrastructure standards are so important — from blog.infocommblog.org by Greg Brown

Excerpt:

And here’s a excerpt from part one, to help set the scene: “Most colleges and universities have some assemblage of ‘classroom standards.’ Many of them are poorly thought out, incomplete, and not as effective as they could be….For the sake of discussion, I’m going to break standards down into four areas to make their respective advantages and disadvantages easier to illustrate. In actuality, what you have on campus will (ideally) be a mix of all four areas — a combination of four types — compiled as one under the bailiwick of ‘campus standards.’”

The next group of standards I want to talk about I’m calling campus infrastructure standards. What I am referring to here are your building infrastructure items. Where do you need power, conduit, or data? What type of lighting zones or switching do you expect in rooms? Is there a particular lighting system you use or a particular interface your control system requires? What do you need from the building systems in order to build the teaching space? Where do you need it?

Classroom standards: The good, bad, and ugly — from blog.infocommblog.org by Greg Brown

Excerpt (additional emphasis DSC):

In addition, consider some current hot topics like active learning and flipped classrooms — where those terms undoubtedly mean completely different things to everyone at the table — and it’s clear why the responsible campus will want to steal a march and spell out some teaching-space-design ground rules in advance.

…

The four areas I will divide standards into — again, just for the sake of illustration — I call: industry standards, campus infrastructure standards, classroom design standards, and classroom equipment preferences.

Classroom design standards: Spelling out ‘look and feel’ — from blog.infocommblog.org by Greg Brown

Excerpt:

For part three, let’s talk about what I am calling classroom design standards. These are the parts of classroom standards that speak most specifically to the “look and feel” of the teaching space. These are the guidelines that address types of equipment (in general terms), where those items should be located, and how they operate. Here we lay out the look and function of the room from the perspective of an end user. What does an instructor expect in the room and how are they are going to use it?

This information would typically include: How many projectors are there? Do you use monitors instead? What sort of writing surfaces, and how many? Is there a formal instructor’s lectern or console? Where is it? What sort of equipment will it be equipped with? What about podcasting or webcasting?

Also, see:

Revealing statistics highlight campus video boom — from ecampusnews.com by
Survey reveals video plays an increasingly large role in instruction.

Excerpt:

Using video for remote teaching/learning is now commonplace in higher education (66 percent), while flipped classrooms are becoming a widely used form of pedagogy (46 percent).

Seventy percent of institutions use webcasting for various purposes including teaching (47 percent), training (42 percent) and broadcasting live events (42 percent).

Alternatives to traditional higher education continue to develop:

Google partners with Udacity to launch Android development nanodegree — from techcrunch.com by Frederic Lardinois

Excerpt:

At its I/O developer conference in San Francisco, Google announced [on 5/28/15] that it has partnered with Udacity to launch a six-course Android development nanodegree.

The idea here is to help developers learn how to write apps for Google’s mobile operating system “the right way” up to the point where they could potentially be hired by Google itself.

Udemy alternatives for selling video courses online — from robcubbon.com

Excerpt:

Udemy is currently the leading online learning platform. Their top 10 instructors all made over $500,000 last year and the top earner makes over $8 million. I make $4000+ each month by selling courses on Udemy.

16 startups poised to disrupt the education market — from inc.com by Ilan Mochari
Colleges and universities are facing new competition for customers–students and their parents–from startups delivering similar goods (knowledge, credentials, prestige) more affordably and efficiently. Here’s a rundown of some of those startups.

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PayWhatYouWantBootcamp-Jan2015

New MOOC Platform Provides Free IT Certification Courses — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Ideo U

Yieldr Academy

Lessons Go Where

ClassDo

Udemy

C-Suite TV.com

Simon & Schuster to sell online courses taught by popular authors — from nytimes.com by Alexandra Alter; with thanks to Sidneyeve Matrix for her Tweet on this

Excerpt:

Simon & Schuster is making a push into paid online video, with a new website offering online courses from popular health, finance and self-help authors.

The cost of the first batch of online courses ranges from $25 to $85, and includes workbooks and access to live question-and-answer sessions with three authors: Dr. David B. Agus, the best-selling author of “The End of Illness”; Zhena Muzyka, who wrote the self-help book “Life by the Cup”; and Tosha Silver, the author of the spiritual advice book “Outrageous Openness.” The courses will be available on the authors’ individual websites and on the company’s new site, SimonSays.

.

The real revolution in online education isn’t MOOCs — from hbr.org by Michelle Weise

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Something is clearly wrong when only 11% of business leaders — compared to 96% of chief academic officers — believe that graduates have the requisite skills for the workforce. It’s therefore unlikely that business leaders are following closely what’s going on in higher education. Even the latest hoopla around massive open online courses (MOOCs) amounts to more of the same: academics designing courses that correspond with their own interests rather than the needs of the workforce, but now doing it online.

But there is a new wave of online competency-based learning providers that has absolutely nothing to do with offering free, massive, or open courses. In fact, they’re not even building courses per se, but creating a whole new architecture of learning that has serious implications for businesses and organizations around the world.

It’s called online competency-based education, and it’s going to revolutionize the workforce.
…
The key distinction is the modularization of learning.
…
Here’s why business leaders should care: the resulting stackable credential reveals identifiable skillsets and dispositions that mean something to an employer. As opposed to the black box of the diploma, competencies lead to a more transparent system that highlights student-learning outcomes.

Should your institution consider a nanodegree program? — from by Rebecca Lundberg
Students seeking to build technical skills and credentials are enrolling in nanodegree programs.

Anyone Can Be a Teacher at Skillshare, an Online School — from nytimes.com by Jonah Bromwich
Excerpt:
Skillshare is an online video platform that allows anyone to sign up and teach a class. The company has proved adept at recruiting experts to teach on its website. Aside from Ms. Orlean’s class on creative nonfiction, the website has a class on visual storytelling from the design maven Debbie Millman and a marketing course taught by the entrepreneur Seth Godin. At one point, it even offered screenwriting instruction from James Franco.

Canvas.net

worldacademy.tv

Addendum on 6/3/15:

Disrupting Higher Education — from Campus Technology
Can colleges and universities break out of traditional models and compete with the disruptive forces changing the nature of higher ed?

Excerpts:

Also, traditional colleges and universities have turned away from the growing population of “nonconsumers” who need workforce skills. Only one in five freshmen actually have that residential college experience that we tend to glorify, she said. Close to 71 percent of students are what we now call non-traditional students, but which are fast becoming the norm.

These kinds of students are “overserved” by those bundled services of traditional brick-and-mortar institutions, she said. Many feel underprepared for the workforce, and they’re looking for something different.

“Higher education institutions are now competing with organizations they have never even heard of,” Weise said. “These are organizations that are really getting at the inadequacies of the system…. things like coding boot camps, where you can pay $10,000 to $20,000, spend six to 12 weeks learning to code, and get recruited by places like Google or Facebook and start earning about six figures…. Your shot at getting a job is better than if you went to law school.

“This is just to emphasize that it’s not who you think you’re competing with,” she said.

Per Michelle Weise p. 8 pf 45

IBM-Affiliated Brooklyn School Graduates Its First Students Ahead of Schedule With Both High School & College STEM Degrees — from finance.yahoo.com and the PR Newswire
Young trailblazers pave way for national education model for tens of thousands of students

Excerpt:

BROOKLYN, N.Y., June 2, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — Six students from Brooklyn are graduating from P-TECH (Pathways in Technology Early College High School) two years early with both their high school diplomas and college degrees in computer systems technology, fast tracking through the nation’s first school that blends public high school, community college, and work experience into one.

Addendums on 7/1/15:

Boot camp classes may offer a peek at the future of higher ed — from cnbc.com by Bob Sullivan
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
Udacity has abandoned the idea of giving classes away to huge numbers of people in favor of “nanodegrees”—boot-camp style, short-term programs with a laser-like focus on preparing students for a career. Nanodegree subjects include Web developer, Android developer, iOS developer … you get the picture.

What you don’t get is a huge student loan debt. Udacity classes start at $1,200 for a six-month program. The fees have actually helped with online classes’ biggest problem: High dropout rates. Turns out, more people stick with classes if they have to pay for them.

Are small, private online courses the future of higher education in America? — from theweek.com by James Poulos
Excerpt:
Rather than trying to get universities to shape up, we should recognize that the SPOC (Small and Private Online Courses) model will flourish best outside the confines of today’s campus environment. In small, private forums, pioneers who want to pursue wisdom can find a radically alternate education — strikingly contemporary, yet deeply rooted in the ancient practice of conversational exegesis.

Addendum on 7/24/15:

HowZone Collaborative Learning Communities™
Connecting you with people from around the world who are passionate about the same topics as you.

What We Do:
HowZone connects people around topics of shared interest and gives them tools to help each other learn. Beginners get the foundational knowledge they need and experts get special ways to take their expertise as far as they want to go.

Addendums on 7/24/15 — with thanks to Thomas Frey for his posting mentioning these resources

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