Inter-Organizational Task Force on Online Learning: Recommendations| September 20, 2012
From DSC:
What caught my eye:
- The new “traditional” student: the adult learner
On 10/08/2012,
in higher education, innovation, leadership, online learning, policy,
by Daniel Christian
On 10/02/2012,
in accreditation, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, higher education, innovation,
by Daniel Christian
On 09/25/2012,
in cost of getting a degree, Daniel S. Christian, higher education, student-related,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC (with a thanks going out to Academic Impressions for the find/email on this):
I’ll bet many people don’t know that they would ultimately not pay the published “sticker price” for a degree. But how do we expect people who don’t eat and breathe this stuff to know that?!? It’s confusing enough for many of us who work within higher education!
Why do you have to be a financial aid wizard or a grants/scholarship researcher extraordinaire in order to understand what you will actually be paying in order to get your degree?
On 09/22/2012,
in colleges, education technology, higher education, innovation, universities,
by Daniel Christian
On 09/21/2012,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, business side of he, change, changing business models, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, internet, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, online learning, social learning / networks,
by Daniel Christian
![Higher education used to be on deck, but is now at bat. [Christian]](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/HigherEducationNowAtBat-DanielChristian1.jpg "HigherEducationNowAtBat--DanielChristian")
From DSC:
My way of thinking about what’s happening to higher education these days borrows from the sport of baseball: Higher education used to be on deck; but now, we’re at bat.
I’ve watched as the former power brokers throughout many other industries reluctantly got out of the dugout, nervously began their warm up on deck, and then timidly moved up to bat as well. They were trying to cling to the status quo. Which didn’t work. We’ve all seen the results. There are new power brokers in those industries now. (Which is I why I assert that there is danger in the status quo — our organizations need to always be at the work of reinventing ourselves.)
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If I had to pick the top 2 forces driving change throughout the higher education landscape, I would have to say the cost of obtaining a degree and technology-enabled innovation.
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Control is an illusion; people will find a way.
The items below reinforced my perspectives when I saw them this morning. They inspired me to create the above graphic, something I’ve been meaning to do for quite some time now.
- The internet is happening to education — from xedbook.com by George Siemens
“How did you go bankrupt?”
“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
– Hemingway
Excerpt:
Our thesis with xEducation is that the internet is happening to higher education and that successful universities of the future will be those that find ways to generate value for its many stakeholders that go beyond content provision and teaching. What exactly that value proposition is remains unclear. On the one hand, content and (recorded) lectures can easily be shared with limited costs. The internet scales content exceptionally well. The human, social, processes of learning don’t scale. Research doesn’t scale (yet). Regional and national economic value generation doesn’t scale. In these spaces where scalability does not work well, universities will likely find their new roles in society. Over the next six months, we’ll explore and test this thesis and place the discussion of higher education reform on a firmer foundation than the latest tool and popular hype.
- XEducation – the real disruption isn’t online courses, it’s their business model — from xedbook.com by Bonnie Stewart
. - Do MOOCs say anything about higher ed? — from xedbook.com by Dave Cormier
On 09/18/2012,
in ethics, face-to-face, hearts -- matters of the heart, online learning, policy, strategy, student-related,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
The wetakeyourclass.com website below is very disturbing in terms of the questions it raises — though such questions and activities are certainly not limited to what occurs in the online classroom, as evidenced by The Shadow Scholar (from The Chronicle by Ed Dante) where a man confessed to writing ~5,000 scholarly papers for students, including grad students.
Questions:
- Should the owners of this site go to jail? Or is this just capitalism gone awry?
- Does this business make a profit? If so, why and what does that say?
- Is this type of thing happening for just a handful of people out there? How would we know? Can the turnitin.com’s of the world detect/stop this?
- If their services are in demand, should that inform or influence any differences in the strategies or pedagogies we utilize within higher education? Do we need to re-evaluate what’s really being achieved and not achieved? That is, if employers didn’t look to a college degree, would students come to learn anyway or would they be gone by morning?
- What, if anything, does it say about students’ ethics? Matters of the heart?
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Look at some of the “services,” “benefits,” and messages being offered therein:
- We take your online classes for you and you get an A
Underlying message: We’ll help you get that piece of paper so you can move on to what really counts. (Don’t worry about not knowing anything…you won’t have to prove yourself later on…and never mind about your work ethic, this is a one-time-cutting-the-corners type of decision, right? Isn’t it? Isn’t it?!) - Life is too short to spend on classes you have no interest in
- Give us a deadline and we will meet it!
Underlying message: Corporations outsource many things, why shouldn’t you? (Never mind that learning should be your core business and should not be outsourced.)
How about you all, what are some questions that this type of thing raises in your minds?
On 09/14/2012,
in budgets, cost of getting a degree, hearts -- matters of the heart, higher education, K-12 related, Michigan, society,
by Daniel Christian
Excerpt:
Back in November 2005, when this year’s graduates were in sixth grade, the superintendent of Kalamazoo’s public schools, Janice M. Brown, shocked the community by announcing that unnamed donors were pledging to pay the tuition at Michigan’s public colleges, universities and community colleges for every student who graduated from the district’s high schools. All of a sudden, students who had little hope of higher education saw college in their future. Called the Kalamazoo Promise, the program — blind to family income levels, to pupils’ grades and even to disciplinary and criminal records — would be the most inclusive, most generous scholarship program in America.
Also see:
From DSC:
- I would like to thank the anonymous donors who created and continue to sustain the Kalamazoo Promise; and to recognize their humility and service to society. They didn’t announce their gifts with trumpets; rather, they quietly gave without wanting to put their names to these enormous, life-changing gifts. What a great example for many of the nation’s top 1%-5% to follow! It’s amazing what generous hearts can do. The LORD knows who did it and continues to do it.
On 09/13/2012,
in higher education, innovation, real-world assignments, United States,
by Daniel Christian
On 09/13/2012,
in future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, online learning, trends,
by Daniel Christian
Why online education has gained revolutionary momentum — from pbs.org/mediashift by Doug Ward
Excerpt:
The rush to create large, free online classes has generated anxiety at universities around the country. With finances already tight and with a surge of movement toward online learning, universities are being forced to move quickly to change centuries-old models of learning. Terms like historic, seismic and revolutionary now pop up in descriptions of the challenges that higher education faces in the coming years.
Many institutions have been preparing for these changes for years, building infrastructure and expertise, experimenting and recruiting, and integrating online learning into long-term strategies. Many others, especially traditional research universities, have been caught flat-footed as education has transformed around them.
This point of dramatic — and traumatic — change didn’t swoop in unannounced. Rather, it crept in like a series of streams meeting in a roiling confluence. Only by stepping back and looking in panoramic fashion can we truly understand how we’ve arrived at a point of transformation and how we might deal with it. Let’s take a look.
Stanford U. releases new open-source online-education platform –– from The Chronicle by Alisha Azevedo
Excerpt:
Stanford University is continuing a high-profile push into online education with a new open-source platform called Class2Go, which will host two massive open online courses, or MOOC’s, during the fall quarter. Beginning in October, non-Stanford and Stanford students alike will be able to use the platform to take classes on computer networking and on “Solar Cells, Fuel Cells, and Batteries.”
Google launches open course builder — from techcrunch.com by
Also see:
- Stanford announces free online courses for fall
The university unveils two new homegrown software platforms to host the courses.
On 09/13/2012,
in 24x7x365 access, cost of getting a degree, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, innovation, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, online learning, web-based collaboration,
by Daniel Christian
College may never be the same — from USA Today by Mary Beth Marklein
Excerpt:
“The industry has operated more or less along the same business model and even the same technology for hundreds of years,” says John Nelson, managing director of Moody’s Higher Education. “MOOCS represent a rapidly developing and emerging change and that is very, very rare.”
In a new report, Moody’s Investor Service calls MOOCs a “pivotal development” that has the potential to revolutionize higher education. Questions remain whether these online courses can be profitable and whether traditional colleges will award credit for them. But if successful, MOOCs could lead to lower costs for families and access to higher-quality instruction for anyone in the world who has Internet access.
From DSC:
MOOCs are no doubt a very important experiment within higher education today. It’s too early to tell what the future will bring in terms of pricing, certification/accredidation, learning effectiveness, the form(s) they may take, the corporate world’s perspective on them, etc.
However, my main point that I want to make today — September 13, 2012 — is that MOOCs provide yet another example why the question of “where’s the ROI on all of this investment in technology?” should be considered a dead question — let’s put it to rest for good. I simply can’t take that question seriously anymore. At minimum, MOOCs provide an extremely affordable means of gaining exposure to information and ascertaining one’s interest level in that subject. At the price of higher education these days, such knowledge of what one enjoys and would like to learn more about is worth a great deal. MOOCs rest on the foundations set by so many other investments, technological advancements and inventions, trends, platforms, devices, and the pedagogies available to us due to these other foundational pieces.
On 09/11/2012,
in budgets, business side of he, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, new business models, reinvent,
by Daniel Christian
Technology and the broken higher education cost model: Insights from the Delta Cost Project — from Educause by Rita Kirshstein and Jane Wellman
Excerpt:
Although U.S. higher education has faced numerous crises and dilemmas in its history, the situation in which colleges and universities find themselves at the moment is indeed different. Shrinking public subsidies coupled with historic rises in tuitions come at the same time that colleges and universities have been tasked to dramatically increase the number of individuals with postsecondary degrees. Additionally, many of these students need financial aid, putting further strains on the higher education system. The stratification between rich and poor institutions in their access to resources is also growing. These conditions make the current “cost model” under which higher education has typically operated no longer sustainable and have led to college and university leaders examining alternative ways to deliver both high-quality and affordable higher education. These alternatives incorporate technology and include access to distance-delivered education and services, a focus on learners’ outcomes rather than inputs, and technologically sophisticated buildings and classrooms.
The changes are welcome and largely overdue in much of higher education, but unless the use of technology, whether in instruction or in the operation of the institution, is guided by an understanding of higher education costs and cost structures, its use will not fix the problem of a broken higher education cost model. This problem is not confined to the way that instruction is funded and delivered; rather, it is much broader, including the costs of academic and administrative overhead and the largely unexamined “fixed costs” that drive so much of institutional spending. To implement technological innovations that can improve both efficiency and effectiveness, leaders must be guided in their efforts by a strong understanding of the impact of the innovations on both costs and revenues, as well as on learning outcomes. Without this understanding, leaders are likely to follow the usual model of innovation in higher education: implementing program add-ons, which are sometimes successful and sometimes not but which inevitably increase costs rather than replacing or reducing them and ultimately fail to take hold in ways that will leverage systemic improvements.
On 09/08/2012,
in business, economics, funding / grants, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, legislatures / government / legal, United States,
by Daniel Christian
U.S. debt $417 billion below the debt ceiling — from CNN.com by Jeanne Sahadi
Excerpt:
The debt ceiling is currently set at $16.394 trillion. At the end of August, the amount of debt subject to that limit — which excludes certain types of debt — was $15.977 trillion, roughly $417 billion below the cap. Since the government typically borrows between $100 billion and $125 billion a month, that means it’s on track to hit the ceiling sometime in December. But the Treasury Department will likely be able to use “extraordinary measures” to keep the debt just below the legal limit for a couple of months.
Bottom line:
Congress will likely need to raise the ceiling in early 2013 or Treasury will risk defaulting on the country’s legal obligations by failing to pay all of its bills in full and on time.
From DSC:
At some point, if we don’t turn things around, the vast majority of our tax dollars will go to pay for interest on our debt…and. nothing. else.
On 09/04/2012,
in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Daniel S. Christian, digital storytelling, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, mirroring and/or multiple devices, MOOCs -- Massive Open Online Courses, more voice more choice more control, multimedia, online learning, participation, personalized/customized learning, second screen apps, smart/connected TV, social learning / networks, story, storytelling, tablets, technologies for your home, television, transmedia, trends, user experience (UX),
by Daniel Christian
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From DSC:
My interest in this? All of this ultimately relates to:
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![The Living [Class] Room -- by Daniel Christian -- July 2012 -- a second device used in conjunction with a Smart/Connected TV](http://danielschristian.com/learning-ecosystems/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian-July-2012.jpg "The-Living-Class-Room-Daniel-S-Christian---July-2012")
Addendum on 9/12/12:
- Transmedia storytelling for content creators — by Jason Konopinski