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The potential of cloud-based education marketplaces [Christian]

On 03/27/2012, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, content development, aggregation, repositories, convergence, corporate / business world, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, emerging technologies, homeschooling/homeschoolers, innovation, internet, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, marketing/social marketing, mirroring and/or multiple devices, reinvent, social learning / networks, staying relevant, streams of content, technologies for your home, trends, TVs, by Daniel Christian

The potential of cloud-based education marketplaces — from evoLLLution.com (LifeLong Learning) by Daniel Christian; PDF-based version here

Excerpt:

Such organizations are being impacted by a variety of emerging technologies and trends – two of which I want to highlight here are:

  • Online-based marketplaces – as hosted on “the cloud”
  • The convergence of the television, telephone, and the computer

One of the powerful things that the Internet provides is online-based marketplaces. Such exchanges connect buyers with sellers and vice versa. You see this occurring with offerings like Craig’s List, e-Bay, PaperBackSwap.com, and others.

 

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Education 2.0 isn’t coming. It’s here. And the way you’re educated will be changed forever. [Balter]

On 03/26/2012, in accreditation, assessment, career development, change, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new media literacies, reinvent, social learning / networks, staying relevant, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Education 2.0 isn’t coming. It’s here. And the way you’re educated will be changed forever. — from bostinno.com by Dave Balter

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Sometime in late 2010, I sat down with angel investor Josh Abramowitz in NYC.  I asked him to invest in Smarterer, a business whose purpose was to validate people’s digital, social and technical skills.  What I encountered for the next hour wasn’t someone merely evaluating my specific business concept – it was an attack on the entire higher education system.

Josh argued that our higher education system was on the verge of crumbling.  Not because there weren’t marvelous educators or exceptional institutions, but because colleges and universities were charging exorbitant sums that weren’t equal to the return.  Our educators were burying our students with tremendous debt. But increasingly sophisticated learning and credentialing opportunities were emerging online, and they were free or nearly free.  And this disparity would lead to a full-fledged education revolution, he predicted.

…

What the Universities need to know is that what’s coming for education is something like the shift the music industry failed to see until it was too late.  Things will never be the same again.  Instead of griping about how hard it will be to tap their endowments to pay for education, they should be thinking about how to take advantage of the changes.

To save their universities, here’s the three-pronged ecosystem that every University Leader should start thinking about…

Also see:

smarterer.com -- show what you know

 

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Student-loan debt tops $1 trillion [Mitchell and Jackson-Randall]

On 03/22/2012, in budgets, business side of he, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, leadership, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, reinvent, staying relevant, student-related, surviving, trends, United States, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Student-loan debt tops $1 trillion — from WSJ.com by Josh Mitchell and Maya Jackson-Randall

Excerpt:

The amount Americans owe on student loans is far higher than earlier estimates and could lead some consumers to postpone buying homes, potentially slowing the housing recovery, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

Total student debt outstanding appears to have surpassed $1 trillion late last year, said officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency created in the wake of the financial crisis. That would be roughly 16% higher than an estimate earlier this year by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

From DSC:
Phrases/words that come to my mind include (which many readers of this blog and my archived website will instantly recognize:

  • Reinventing ourselves
  • Staying relevant /addressing our customers’ needs
  • Innovation
  • Strategy
  • Leadership
  • Vision
  • The business side of higher ed / new business models
  • Game-changing environment
  • Disruption
  • Dangers of the status quo
  • Student-related
  • Future of higher education
  • The Walmart of Education
  • Learning from the Living Room

Addendum on 3/23/12:

 

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Wait, isn’t this the old normal? [Kiley]

On 03/21/2012, in budgets, business side of he, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, United States, by Daniel Christian
Wait, isn’t this the old normal? — from InsideHigherEd.com by Kevin Kiley
Big tuition hikes at elite private institutions contradict the notion that colleges are focusing on reining in sticker price to make education affordable.
Excerpt:

The justification for the large increases at publics has been the need to maintain quality in the face of state appropriations cuts, an excuse private universities don’t have. For many privates, other revenue sources, including endowment returns and private giving, are back to where they were before the recession. And almost half the presidents of private doctoral universities surveyed recently by Inside Higher Ed said their institutions could make additional spending cuts without hurting quality, meaning there is little imperative for increases.

For this reason, the presidents of several private institutions have taken some measures to control costs. “Somewhere out there is a line, on the other side of which we become unaffordable. We haven’t crossed it yet, but we know we’re getting closer to it,” McCardell said. Total cost of attendance at some liberal arts colleges, including tuition, room, and board, is more than $50,000 a year.

Also see:
  • No diploma, no GED, no aid — from by Libby A. Nelson
    Excerpt:
    .
    WASHINGTON — Students who wanted to attend college, but didn’t have a high school diploma or GED, used to be able to get federal grants and loans through a back door: either take a basic skills test to prove their “ability to benefit” from a college education, or successfully complete six credits.
    .
    This year’s federal budget, in an effort to trim spending on Pell Grants, shut off both routes. As of July 1, newly enrolled students are required to have a high school diploma or GED in order to receive federal financial aid. College administrators say they worry the new policy will shut out older students seeking training to find a new job, immigrants, and students in states where money for basic adult education has been cut in budget crises.
    .
    Either those students will turn to riskier private loans, they say, or — more likely — they’ll just give up on pursuing higher education.

 

Staying Relevant

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How does this vision affect jobs/employment?

On 03/15/2012, in adjunct faculty, assessment, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, computer science, content development, aggregation, repositories, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, trends, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Yesterday, I introduced a vision that integrates a variety of trends and emerging technologies that I’ve been keeping an eye on.

 

Click this thumbnail image to access the larger image / vision

Today, I want to focus on what this means for jobs, employment, career development — especially as it relates to higher ed and the corporate world.

As the trends are pointing out, there will be teams of specialists — with a variety of skillsets required — and each of these team members will play a different role. Some of these positions are captured in the graphic immediately below:
(many for-profit schools already have that table set)

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Within higher ed, the extent to which this affects faculty members depends upon how these teams are formed. If faculty members don’t go along with this, institutions will likely reach out to adjunct faculty members — or contracted firms/help — to fill the gaps. Unless there are some other distinguishing factors, those institutions who don’t move towards a team-based approach will become irrelevant. It will be increasingly difficult for one person to develop the content that can compete with a team of specialists.  Also, organizations of excellence — who have higher initial development costs — will be able to spread these costs out over a global pool of students — resulting in a significantly cheaper alternative.  Organizations who don’t move in this direction may find that the pipelines coming into their institutions continue to get smaller.

There will be new jobs available — and changes to some existing jobs — as well, such as:

  • Virtual tutors
  • Virtual field trip guides (picture a person with some type of mobile device capturing a variety of places, events, talks, etc. in another country).
  • Curators
  • Technical support personnel specializing in building and supporting these platforms
  • Data analytics professionals
  • Artificial intelligence specialists
  • Specialized programmers
  • User interface designers
  • User experience designers
  • …and more

Roles may be altered for professors, teachers, and trainers. But teaching others how to discern quality information will likely continue to be important.

Employers may end up developing their own curriculum/cloud-based apps.  Apprentices, interns and prospective employees will be able to access these materials, with the understanding that they will be assessed at some point.

The web-based learner profiles will demonstrate where someone has been — and where they are currently at.

That’s it for now, but I will be jotting down further thoughts re: this vision from time to time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Items re: “Learning from the Living Room”

On 03/09/2012, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future of higher education, game-changing environment, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), Learning from the Living [Class] Room, marketplaces, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, online media, online tutoring, social learning / networks, student-related, technologies for your home, transmedia, trends, TVs, using teams, videoconferencing, virtual field trips, virtual K-12 schools, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, virtual tutoring, web-based collaboration, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Here are some items related to what I call “Learning from the Living Room” — a trend that continues to develop that involves:

  • Using high-end, personalized, multimedia-based, interactive, team-created content — packed with new reporting tools for better diagnostics/learning analytics — available via a cloud-based “education store”/marketplace/exchange
  • Web-accessible content that’s available 24x7x365
  • The power of social networks/learning
  • Riding the wave of the massive convergence of the computer, the telephone, and the television.

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Smarter TV: Living room as digital hub from Samsung and Microsoft to Apple and Google — from wired.com by Tim Carmody
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
  • In the future, the living room will replace the home office as most households’ home for the stationary personal computer. Instead of printers and mice and other corded accessories, networked appliances and post-PC machines share data with one another and with the cloud. Play and productivity both become decentered; gaming and entertainment might be on a tablet or a television, with recipes at the refrigerator, a shopping list for the smartphone, and an instructional video on the television set. All of these experiences will be coherent, continuous and contextual. And like the personal computer at the height of Pax Wintel, the living room will be a platform characterized by triumphant pluralism.“The thing about the living room is that it’s universal; everyone in the household uses it,” Samsung VP Eric Anderson told me at today’s event. “We know that we’re not going to capture every single member of the household. In my family, my wife and my daughter are Apple, me and my sons are Android,” he noted, pointing out that the majority of devices introduced today can interact with either mobile platform.

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The modern mechanics of app stores: today, tomorrow and connected TV — from guardian.co.uk by Dean Johnson

Excerpt:

What’s next for app stores?
It’s time for each platform to up its game – smart TVs are coming. The small and medium screen experience will shortly be translated to the bigger screen as connectivity and discoverability takes on even greater importance.

Google and Apple will further interweave themselves into our daily lives as iOS and Android seamlessly combine our smartphones and tablets with our new smartTVs. Electronic Program Guides (EPGs) and the programmes themselves will suggest related content, from apps to music to film to books. This must all be presented in an approachable, then browsable manner to encourage additional discovery.

The quest for the perfect meta-data will become increasingly important and voice commands will need to deliver the best search results with the minimum of fuss. This time next year, the battle of the app stores will be fought on the move, on the desktop and on the living room wall.

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Samsung Launches Smart TVs With Gestures, Voice Control — from by Douglas Perry

Excerpt:

A Kinect-like feature is made possible via camera and microphone integration that comes standard with the LED ES7500, LED ES8000 and Plasma E8000 models. According to Samsung, consumers can launch apps such as Facebook or YouTube, or search the web via voice commands. Waving the hand will move the cursor and select links. The TVs integrate a Samsung dual-core processor as well as a new Webkit-based web browser to improve overall performance. The high-end 7500 and 8000 TVs ship with a remote with an integrated touchscreen. A wireless keyboard that is compatible with Samsung’s TVs as well as the Galaxy Tab tablet is sold as an option.

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New TV experiences through companion apps — from moxie pulse

.

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When Ivory Towers Fall: The Emerging Education Marketplace [Frey]

On 03/08/2012, in cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future of higher education, game-changing environment, innovation, marketplaces, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, reinvent, staying relevant, by Daniel Christian

When Ivory Towers Fall: The Emerging Education Marketplace — from The World Future Society by Thomas Frey

Excerpt:

Throughout history, education has been formed around the concept of “place.”  Build fancy buildings, attract world-renowned scholars, and you have a college or university.  This model works well in a culture based on teaching. Over the coming years, with our hyper-connected world, we will be shifting to a learning model.  While “place” will still matter, it will matter differently. Teaching requires experts; learning only requires coaches.  The two primary variables of time and money will drive the new education marketplace, and the four primary trend lines will involve…

Addendum 3/9/12:

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College presidents say $10,000 degrees available now [Hamilton]

On 03/07/2012, in change, changing business models, community colleges, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future of higher education, higher education, innovation, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, student-related, United States, universities, by Daniel Christian

College presidents say $10,000 degrees available now — from texastribune.org by Reeve Hamilton

Excerpt:

Called “The Evolving Role of University Systems in Higher Education,” today’s panel mostly focused on efforts to lower the cost of college. It was moderated by Texas A&M System Chancellor John Sharp and featured Heldenfels, Texas Higher Education Commissioner Raymund Paredes, and two pairs of university and community college leaders actively collaborating: Texas A&M-San Antonio President Maria Ferrar and Alamo Colleges Chancellor Bruce Leslie, and Texas A&M-Commerce President Dan Jones and South Texas College’s Chief Academic Officer Juan Mejia.

Leslie said that Perry’s push has led to an increased emphasis on cooperation between community colleges and four-year universities. The result, he said, is a degree that meets Perry’s target — and is even less expensive. At Texas A&M-San Antonio, Ferrar said, a bachelor’s in information technology with an emphasis on cyber security will cost about $9,700.

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Instruction for masses knocks down campus walls [Lewin]

On 03/05/2012, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, convergence, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, faculty/staff, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, innovation, internet, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, online learning, by Daniel Christian

Instruction for masses knocks down campus walls -- from the New York Times by Tamar Lewin

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Udemy’s Faculty Project nabs 50,000 students and an Ivy league professor [Lawler]

On 03/05/2012, in dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, faculty/staff, innovation, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, open courseware and systems, by Daniel Christian

Udemy’s Faculty Project nabs 50,000 students and an Ivy league professor — from gigaom.com by Ryan Lawler

Excerpt:

About six weeks ago, educational video startup Udemy launched its Faculty Project, a nonprofit program for distributing streaming university curriculum online. Early results have been pretty successful, with more than 50,000 students signing up for the program. But that’s not all: the Faculty Project is also bringing on ever more prestigious faculty, with its first Ivy League professor soon coming on board.

In contrast to Udemy’s for-profit platform, which enables teachers to create online courses and charges for access to them, the Faculty Project is a free offering that is designed to connect students from around the world with university faculty for high-quality courses online.

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[From DSC: Is this a piece of the future?] Unified opens an online university for social media marketers [Anthony Ha]

On 03/02/2012, in accreditation, career development, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future of higher education, game-changing environment, innovation, marketing/social marketing, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, professional development, real-world assignments, reinvent, social media, staying relevant, strategy, by Daniel Christian

Unified opens an online university for social media marketers — from TechCruch.com by Anthony Ha

 

unifiedsocial.com

Services > Unified University

The social media landscape is complex and constantly evolving, leaving top global brands and agencies with the challenge of staying on top of the latest trends and best practices. Unified University is a first of its kind – an all-encompassing training, continuing education and certification program, complete with access to the industry leading best practices knowledge base. Unified University is designed to help marketing and agency executives become experts and internal thought leaders on social strategies, platform insights, earned media measurement, and more.

Through Unified University’s comprehensive training program, a social team can get certified on the Unified Social Operating Platform and learn about the latest advances in social advertising. Certification ensures that a team is up to date on the latest options within the social web, including the benefits of advertising across social ecosystems including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon and more.

Teams learn that brands may require very different strategies to ultimately achieve similar results. Unified University assures that teams know how to strategically represent brands across all social options while delivering high quality results and maximum ROI.

From DSC:
Is this a part of the future? If higher ed doesn’t respond more forcefully, I’d say so.

Along these lines, from page 408 of the Steve Jobs book:

One of Job’s business rules was to never be afraid of cannibalizing yourself. “If you can’t cannibalize yourself, someone else will,” he said.

Innovate. Reinvent. Staying relevant. This goes for the accreditation agencies as well.

 Also see:

 

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Staying Relevant

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Is this where we want to spend a trillion $$?! What about if we invested it in high-end online-learning systems instead?!

On 03/01/2012, in budgets, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, online learning, personalized/customized learning, strategy, United States, by Daniel Christian

Pentagon: You know what’s cool? A trillion-dollar fighter — from  cnet.com by D. Terdiman

From DSC:
Cool? Seriously?! Is this where we want to spend a trillion $$?  On more instruments of death?  Geez…

Instead, I wonder what the United States could contribute to the world by building multimedia-based, high-end, interactive, engaging, personalized/customized, online-based learning materials that are expensive to build, but inexpensive to access?
.
Also see:

Cap and gown learning on a shoestring budget — from timeshighereducation.co.uk by Jon Marcus

Excerpt:

With novel credentials being developed and employers seeing the value of low-cost study based on open courseware, Jon Marcus asks if the bricks-and-mortar elite will end up on the wrong side of history

 

Cap and gown learning on a shoestring budget

Credit: Paul Bateman
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This is exactly what I was getting at with “The Forthcoming Walmart of Education”

On 02/29/2012, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, disruption, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, face-to-face, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, innovation, interactivity, learner profiles, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, lifelong learning, mobile learning, multimedia, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, open courseware and systems, personalized/customized learning, reinvent, staying relevant, teaching & learning, using teams, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
This is exactly what I was getting at with The Forthcoming Walmart of Education (2008) and it points out, again, that innovation is much faster and stronger in the online world than it is in the face-to-face world. The tools being developed to engage, track, diagnose, and adapt continue to be developed. What may have once been poo-pooed continues to pick up steam. (Christensen, Johnson, & Horn are right on track.) The trend will be towards more team-based endeavors that can be made available at a greatly reduced price. They will be multimedia-based, highly-interactive, and state-of-the-art (technically and pedagogically).

Treating Higher Ed’s ‘Cost Disease’ With Supersize Online Courses — from The Chronicle by Marc Parry

Excerpt (with emphasis from DSC):

Professors should move away from designing foundational courses in statistics, biology, or other core subjects on the basis of “intuition,” she argues. Instead, she wants faculty to work with her team to put out the education equivalent of Super Bowl ads: expensively built online course materials, cheaply available to the masses.

“We’re seeing failure rates in these large introductory courses that are not acceptable to anybody,” Ms. Thille says. “There has to be a better way to get more students—irrespective of where they start—to be able to successfully complete.”

Her approach brings together faculty subject experts, learning researchers, and software engineers [from DSC — a TEAM-based approach] to build open online courses grounded in the science of how people learn. The resulting systems provide immediate feedback to students and tailor content to their skills. As students work through online modules outside class, the software builds profiles on them, just as Netflix does for customers. Faculty consult that data to figure out how to spend in-person class time.

From DSC:
Such learner profiles will most likely reside in the cloud and eventually standards will be established to insert new data into these profiles. The access to view/edit these profiles will be controlled by the individual learners (hopefully!).  What if learners could selectively grant corporations access to this type of profile as their new resume?

For items concerning team-based approaches, see this recording (June 2009) as well as this collection of items.

For items concerning consortia and pooling resources, see here and here.

 

 

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Some more items concerning the massive convergence that we’re in the midst of…

On 02/20/2012, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, architecture, convergence, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, technologies for your home, television, trends, TVs, by Daniel Christian

Congress passes bill opening up TV spectrum to next-gen WiFi networks
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TV Next Conference

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Taylor Morris' Interactive Homes -- Feb 2012

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Trends for 2012: Five marketplace realities and how private higher education must manage them [Lawlor]

On 02/17/2012, in assessment, budgets, business side of he, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, expectations, higher education, marketplaces, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, reinvent, staying relevant, student-related, trends, by Daniel Christian

Lawlor's Trends for 2012

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