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

Steve Denning, “The Management Revolution That’s Already Happening,”
Forbes Magazine, May 30, 2013.

 

 

ChangeIsOptionalDanielChristian-evolllutionDotcom-June2013

 

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PDF of article here

 

 

State systems go MOOC — from insidehighered.com by Ry Rivard

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Universities from New Mexico to New York will join Coursera in a sprawling expansion of the Silicon Valley startup’s efforts to take online education to the masses.

Together, state systems and flagship universities in nine states will help the company test new business models and teaching methods and potentially put Coursera in competition with some of the ed tech industry’s most established players.

 

Also see:

  • A Q&A on the launch of Penn State’s first MOOC — from by psu.edu
    Anna Divinsky and Keith Bailey talk about the launch of the first of the University’s five massive open online courses.
    Excerpt:
    UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Penn State launched its first massive open online course (MOOC), Introduction to Art: Concepts and Techniques, yesterday — an effort that has been three months in the making. Anna Divinsky, lead faculty member of the Digital Arts Certificate Program at Penn State, has been instrumental in creating the first of the five courses that Penn State is offering this year on the leading MOOC platform, Coursera.

TheNextGenerationUniversity-May2013

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Excerpt:

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

Download the full report here.

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In addition to the report, see:

 

Also see:

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

CollegeScorecard-2-13-13

 

Also see:

On notice, again — from insidehighered.com by Libby A. Nelson

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Tuesday night called for major changes to the criteria accreditors use to evaluate colleges, asking Congress to either require accreditors to take college prices and educational value into account or to create an alternative system based on “performance and results.Either could mark a significant shift in how the federal government judges higher education quality and eligibility for financial aid programs.

 

From DSC:

  • This speaks directly to higher ed’s ability — or inability — to stay relevant, be responsive, and to reinvent itself.
    .
  • Accreditation teams should include many others who do not work for — nor are in any way connected to — a current institution of higher education.
    .
  • If higher ed can’t respond, the conversation will continue to move away from traditional pathways/institutions and people will find their own ways of getting ahead/surviving.

 

 

College branding: The tipping point — from forbes.com by Roger Dooley

Excerpt:

Change is coming to this market. While there are multiple issues of increasing importance to schools, two stand out as major game-changers.

 


From DSC:
Important notes for the boards throughout higher education to consider:


Your institution can’t increase tuition by one dime next year. If you do, you will become more and more vulnerable to being disrupted. Instead, work very hard to go in the exact opposite direction. Find ways to discount tuition by 50% or more — that is, if you want to stay in business.

Sounds like the scene in Apollo 13, doesn’t it? It is. (i.e. as Tom Hanks character is trying to get back to Earth and has very little to do it with. The engineers back in the United States are called upon to “do the impossible.”)

Some possibilities:

  • Pick your business partners and begin pooling resources and forming stronger consortia. Aim to reduce operating expenses, share the production of high-quality/interactive online courses, and create new streams of income. Experimentation will be key.
  • Work with IBM, Apple, Knewton and the like to create/integrate artificial intelligence into your LMS/CMS in order to handle 80% of the questions/learning issues. (Most likely, the future of MOOCs involves this very sort of thing.)
  • Find ways to create shorter courses/modules and offer them via online-based exchanges/marketplaces.  But something’s bothering me with this one..perhaps we won’t have the time to develop high-quality, interactive, multimedia-based courses…are things moving too fast?
  • Find ways to develop and offer subscription-based streams of content


 

Crowdsourcing innovation on campus — from CampusTechnology.com by Dian Schaffhauser
By combining innovation management with crowdsourcing, Davenport University has found a potent formula for achieving continual improvement and encouraging organizational change.

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IdeaScale-Feb2013

 

 

Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States [Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board]

 

I. Elaine Allen, PhD | Jeff Seaman, PhD
Co-Directors, The Babson Survey Research Group
Babson College
Babson Park, MA 02457-9985

January 2013

Current/Future State of Higher Education — from Educause Live by George Siemens, Andy Caulkins, Malcolm Brown

Change drivers

  • Globalization
  • Commercial/entrepreneurial activity
  • Funding cuts
  • Online learning
  • Unbundling of education systems
  • Technology advancement (mobiles)
  • Employment-oriented education
  • Big data and analytics

Net Pedagogies: New Models for Teaching & Learning

  • New pedagogies emerging from:
    • Concerns about how well institutions are meeting their mission, on behalf of students they serve
    • Pressures resulting from feeling constrained within the “Iron Triangle” of costs, access, and quality
    • New technologies
  • How to balance personalization with competency-based pathways
  • How to build community among students who are geographically distant and proceeding at different rates (a different cohort dynamic taking place here)
  • Personalized learning divisions/groups
  • Innovation labs <– From DSC: This lines up nicely with my posting here

Entrepreneurship

  • Deborah Quazzo, GSV Advisors
  • Velocity of change
  • e-books up
  • 200K education apps
  • 98% of students own some sort of device
  • Coursera — 33 partners, 1.7 million students
  • 13% of students now at for-profits
  • The Bear Story
    • Readiness — freshmen often needing remediation
    • Completion rates
    • Cost
    • Career
  • Venture capital and startups increasing
  • What’s driving investment
    • Funding issues
    • Accountability
    • Technology
    • Consumer choice
  • Waves of HE innovation
  • “Traditional institutions are not standing still”
  • Higher ed arms race — online program delivery (tuition-based) / MOOC (free)
  • Growth in MOOC students — .51 in Fall 2011, 2.79 in Fall 2012; 447% growth rate
  • Need to increase learning outcomes, access, capacity, and decrease costs

Big Data & Analytics

  • Erik Duval, Simon Buckingham Shum, Caroline Haythornthwaite
  • State of learning analytics
    • Open analytics
    • Standards
    • Methods and metrics
    • Impact on learner success
    • Early risk detection
    • Common language
    • Institutional use of analytics
    • Planning and deployment of LA
    • Move from concept to application
  • Participation wall seems to be occurring 30-40% of the time into the course
  • 762 tweets, 305 links, 172 RTs, 244 Unique Twitter accounts

Leadership in Education

  • James Hilton
    • Characterizing change
    • Not a linear system often times; instead, an emergent change; not always orderly and linear
    • Unknown end point
    • Adjust as you go
    • Adjust fundamental conditions
      • 2 fundamental forces in HE
      • Commoditization
      • Unbundling
    • “Find your North Star”
  • George Mehaffy
    • Challenge and change article
    • Massive change and great uncertainty
    • Technology changes everything
    • Traditional institutions loss of control
    • Students abilities to interact and learn without mediating
    • “Outsiders” becoming players
    • Venture capital
    • Models of college changing
    • Course models
    • Data analytics
    • Cost discrepancies
    • Measuring success
    • Loss of credentialing monopoly
    • Leadership vacuum
    • Change is rapid, profound, emergent
    • We need to rethink HE leadership model
    • We need to rethink HE in many fundamental dimensions
    • Now is the time for bold, imaginative, entrepreneurial leadership

Distributed Research

  • Traditional methods of sharing research, established centuries ago
  • Need to re-imagine those methods and generate higher, faster, better outcomes from research
  • Challenges: pace, dissemination, incentive to collaborate
  • Opportunities: immediacy, openness, new/richer tools and indicators, unprecedented progress

Still some challenges in offering a MOOC-based course:

  • Skillset development
  • Getting participants orientated to the course
  • Technological glitches

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Other resources/links:


 

16 flipped learning uses in K-12 and college classrooms — from educationdive.com by Roger Riddell

Excerpt:

Flipped classrooms require educators to reconstruct traditional classrooms by sending lectures home and providing more face-to-face time at school, but elementary- through university-level instructors are finding good reasons to try them out.

Frequently traced back to Colorado teachers Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, who were quick to experiment with posting videos online in 2008, the flipped classroom concept is small, simple and has shown positive results. The general idea is that students work at their own pace, receiving lectures at home via online video or podcasts and then devoting class time to more in-depth discussion and traditional “homework.”

Here are 16 examples of flipped learning at all levels nationwide and abroad:

 

What universities must learn about social networks– from evolllution.com by Jay Cross and Chris Sessums; also posted at internettime.com

Excerpts:

THE ISSUE IS NOT whether you are going to become a socially networked university but how soon.

Networks are the glue that connects us. No one works alone. It takes a team to get things done. No one learns alone either. Others show us the way, share their know-how, and help us make meaning of the world. We rely on colleagues and social networks to separate the signal from the noise; their advice makes our experiential learning productive. Collaboration is the key to success in both working and learning; they usually take place simultaneously.

Universities have a mandate. Most students, faculty, and administraters use social networks extensively outside of school. They will use them with your blessing or without it. Mobile devices route around IT; amateurs can bid software slaves do their will.

Universities will transmogrify into networked universities.

Innovations on campus — onlineuniversities.com

 

 

 

National University Rankings

Liberal Arts College Rankings

Regional Colleges
These schools focus on undergraduate education but grant fewer than half their degrees in liberal arts disciplines.

Regional Universities
Regional Universities offer a full range of undergrad programs and some master’s programs but few doctoral programs.

Best Value Schools
The higher the quality of the program and the lower the cost, the better the deal.

A+ Schools for B Students
These schools consider good students with less than stellar test scores or so-so grade point averages.

Up-and-Coming Schools
See which schools are making strides that earned them the most votes from other college administrators.

Best Undergraduate Business Programs
These colleges are the highest ranked by business school deans and faculty.

Top Public Schools
See which state schools across the country rank the highest.

Most International Students
The student body at these colleges and universities includes many students from abroad.

More rankings and lists

A-to-Z list of all colleges

 

Also see:

Tagged with:  

‘Clicks’ could be future of higher education — from Voice of America by Ted Landphair

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

But a new survey of more than 1,000 Internet experts, researchers and observers of American education found that higher education may soon be more about “clicks” than “bricks.”

The survey was conducted by Elon University in North Carolina and the Pew Internet & American Life Project.  Sixty percent of its respondents agreed with the statement that, by 2020, “there will be a mass adoption of teleconferencing and distance learning” in order to give students greater access to real-world experts.

But not all the experts who were polled are thrilled with this vision.  According Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Project, they worry that long-distance learning “lacks the personal, face-to-face touch they feel is necessary for effective education.”

Colleges are realizing that traditional classroom instruction “is becoming decreasingly viable financially,” says Rebecca Bernstein of the State University of New York at Buffalo.  “The change driver will not be demand or technology.  It will be economics and the diminishing pool of students who can afford to live and study on campus. “

From DSC:
For those faculty members and institutions offering the majority of their courses with small classroom sizes of 10-20 students, I can appreciate such worries (though I would still say that there’s no where to hide in an online class of 15-20 students either). 

But for those faculty and institutions who are holding to this viewpoint — and who are offering intro courses to 100-300 students at a time — I have the following questions concerning this so called “personal, face-to-face touch” being alluded to:

  • If I were your student in your  Intro to Pysch or your Organic Chemistry class on your campus, and I had 150 other students taking such classes with me, would you even know my name if I met you walking down the street?
  • Would you know my major? My passions? My interests?
  • Would you know what I’m trying to accomplish or where I’m trying to get to?
  • Would you even care to know these things or would you be grudgingly teaching courses, while anxiously awaiting your return to your research lab?  (Not that research is bad at all…it’s just that few people can both teach well and research well at the same time — teaching is as much an art as it is a science and it takes a ton of work to do well…learning is messy.)

So this “personal, face-to-face touch” that’s often alluded to in order to achieve effective education simply doesn’t hold water for a great majority of the courses being offered throughout higher education today.  I’d loved to be proven wrong here —  and I hope that things have changed since my Big 10 educational experience.

 

 

 

 

The rise of the multinational university — from universityworldnews.com by Geoff Maslen
Excerpt:

More than 200 degree-granting international branch campuses of universities are now located in foreign countries. But a new report says some universities are considering transforming the branch campus model into fully fledged multinational universities “by slicing up the global value chain in ways akin to multinational corporations”.

Prepared by Sean Gallagher and Geoffrey Garrett from the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney Business School, the draft report says many of these universities are focusing on China because of its scale and rapid development, and on Singapore because of its aggressive government policy and high level of development.

Also see:

Disruptive Higher Education is Opening Access Worldwide — from evolllution.com by Thomas Gibbons | 2012-2013 President, UPCEA
Excerpt:

Something extraordinary is taking place in higher education. Not a week goes by without a national headline about the latest “it” initiative in the online learning world.

This summer a dozen highly ranked universities announced signing up with Coursera, a private start-up that will offer free online classes. They join forces with founding institutions Stanford, Princeton, University of Pennsylvania and University of Michigan.

What is certain is that the walls of the most exclusive universities are coming down—but not in a bad way. Many of our great universities have prided themselves on creating the highest-quality learning communities with the world’s best faculty, premiere research facilities and most beautiful campuses, but they have also defined their greatness by not how many students they educate but by how few they allow within their hallowed walls.

 

© 2024 | Daniel Christian