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I originally saw this at xplana.com
On 10/12/2010,
in 24x7x365 access, adult learning, business side of he, changing business models, competency-based learning/education, consortiums, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, disruption, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, leadership, lifelong learning, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, staying relevant, strategy, traditional / tradition, trends, United States, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
The world changed, colleges missed it — from edreformer.com by Tom Vander Ark
A bunch of colleges are going out of business, only they don’t know it. They pretend that trimming costs and jacking tuition is a solution. They haven’t come to terms with a world where anyone can learn anything almost anywhere for free or cheap. Art Levine, Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, sees three major change forces: new competition, a convergence of knowledge producers, and changing demographics.
…
To Art’s list of three big change forces, add shrinking government support, the press for more accountability, and emerging technology…the next few decades will be marked by a lumpy move to competency-based learning…instant information and the ability to learn anything anywhere.
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The shift to personal digital learning is on. Some colleges get that. Others will seek bailouts until they go out of business. Working adults are getting smart on their own terms.
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From DSC:
Time will tell if Tom’s assertions are too harsh here, but personally, I think he’s right.
I have it that:
- There is a bubble in higher ed
- There also exists a perfect storm that’s been forming for years within higher ed and the waves are cresting
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- Institutions of higher education need to check themselves before they become the next Blockbuster
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- We must not discount the disruptive powers of technology nor the trends taking place today (for a list of some of these trends, see the work of Gary Marx, as well as Yankelovish’s (2005) Ferment and Change: Higher Education in 2015)
- Innovation is not an option for those who want to survive and thrive in the future.
Specifically, I have it that we should be experimenting with:
- Significantly lowering the price of getting an education (by 50%+)
- Providing greater access (worldwide)
- Offering content in as many different ways as we can afford to produce
- Seeking to provide interactive, multimedia-based content that is created by teams of specialists — for anytime, anywhere, on any-device type of learning (24x7x365) — at any pace!
- “Breaking down the walls” of the physical classroom
- Pooling resources and creating consortiums
- Reflecting on what it will mean if online-based exchanges are setup to help folks develop competencies
- Working to change our cultures to be more willing to innovate and change
- Thinking about how to become more nimble as organizations
- Turning more control over to individual learner and having them create the content
- Creating and implementing more cross-disciplinary assignments
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On 10/12/2010,
in change, changing business models, consortiums, education technology, emerging technologies, game-changing environment, new business models, online learning, publishing, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
ASU partners with Pearson to expand online learning services — from PRWeb.com
Partnership will enhance the online student experience and reach new students
Arizona State University (ASU) and Pearson today announced an innovative partnership to develop new technology and management services to support ASU’s online students. The agreement will equip ASU with various capabilities designed to maximize learning outcomes through student engagement and retention, as well as increase overall course offerings. It will enable the university to reach potential students around the country who are not served by brick and mortar or other online institutions.
“When it comes to learning online, there is a direct correlation between quality services and student success,” said Philip Regier, Executive Vice Provost and Dean of ASU Online. “The reality is that learning online is very demanding and most students already have family and work responsibilities. The more support they receive, the better their learning outcomes and overall experience will be.”
From DSC:
With the pace of technological innovation and the costs involved in creating engaging, interactive, multimedia-based materials, it seems that such pooling of resources is wise, efficient. That is why I’m a fan of consortiums and pooling resources. This type of thing also quickly brings TEAMS of people together.
On 09/14/2010,
in education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, innovation, new business models, publishing, using teams, vendors,
by Daniel Christian
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt announces $100 million Innovation Fund to invest in education initiatives globally — from businesswire.com
HMH Innovation Fund will help develop and bring to market groundbreaking new products for delivering individualized learning solutions and classroom technologies; company also investing an additional $300 million in broader technology initiatives over the next three years
BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Global education leader Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) today announced the formal creation of a $100 million fund to support innovative ideas for new products to promote and enhance student achievement, individualized learning and effective technology integration in the classroom. The HMH Innovation Fund will be aimed at supporting emerging education initiatives and programs, as well as accelerating new technology development with the goal of bringing to market and spurring adoption of innovative solutions that can play a critical role in transforming education.
On 08/30/2010,
in digital learning, digital textbooks, disruption, game-changing environment, multimedia, new business models, publishing, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
California State University to license content from major college publishers — from TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home by Paul Biba
The Digital Marketplace, an initiative of the California State University Office of the Chancellor, announced plans today to launch a pilot to license digital course content from Bedford/Freeman/Worth, Cengage Learning, McGraw-Hill Education, Pearson, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
On 08/05/2010,
in business, business side of he, ethics, future of higher education, game-changing environment, higher education, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
“Shellacking the For-Profits” — from InsideHigherEd.com by Jennifer Epstein
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats made it clear Wednesday that their examination of for-profit higher education has only just begun, and that they plan to pursue legislation aimed at reining what they see as the sector’s dishonest — if not fraudulent — practices.
At a hearing on the “student recruitment experience” at for-profit colleges that began Wednesday morning and carried on through the mid-afternoon, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, outlined plans to hold more hearings on the sector, to collect broad sets of information from for-profit colleges, and to begin drafting legislation aimed at cleaning up the sector.
“Education is too important for the future of this country,” he said. “Facing the budget problems we have in the next 10 years, we just can’t permit more and more of the taxpayers’ dollars that are supposed to go for education and quality education … to be going to pay shareholders or private investors.”
From DSC:
Coming from a corporate background, I’m thinking this morning in terms of market share. If those of us in the more “traditional” institutions of higher ed were smart, we’d take this as major opportunity. The for-profits made a big mistake here — sacrificing integrity and reputation for building up their revenues; very bad move. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who once said something like, “Glass, china, and reputation, are easily crack’d, and never well mended.”
The for-profits here seemed to have taken their cues from the casino we call Wall Street. Yet another example of cold-heartedness. This is an opportunity for those institutions of higher ed to take the legitimate, effective items of what was/is working for the for-profits and implement them with integrity instead…for example, implementing the use of teams.
Also relevant:
On 07/29/2010,
in adjunct faculty, engagement / engaging students, faculty, innovation, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
Reaching the last technology holdouts at the front of the classroom — from the Chronicle by Jeff Young
Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard U., helped write the Department of Education’s new National Educational Technology Plan, which challenges educators to leverage modern technology to create engaging learning experiences for students.
Every semester a lot of professors’ lectures are essentially reruns because many instructors are too busy to upgrade their classroom methods.
That frustrates Chris Dede, a professor of learning technologies at Harvard University, who argues that clinging to outdated teaching practices amounts to educational malpractice.
“If you were going to see a doctor and the doctor said, ‘I’ve been really busy since I got out of medical school, and so I’m going to treat you with the techniques I learned back then,’ you’d be rightly incensed,” he told me recently. “Yet there are a lot of faculty who say with a straight face, ‘I don’t need to change my teaching,’ as if nothing has been learned about teaching since they had been prepared to do it—if they’ve ever been prepared to.”
And poor teaching can have serious consequences, he says, when students fall behind or drop out because of sleep-inducing lectures. Colleges have tried several approaches over the years to spur teaching innovation. But among instructors across the nation, holdouts clearly remain.
From DSC:
A major part of me agrees wholeheartedly with this. If a group of people are in control at an institution, those persons are responsible for the performance of the institution. So if faculty have the control at an institution, they are responsible for the results of that institution.They must take the steps to keep innovating, adapting, and must never be content w/ the status quo. (And actually, this is the case whether they are in control or not.)
Yet…another part of me struggles with loading everything on the faculty member. While I agree that we all need to keep growing, innovating, and updating our courses, I think that we are asking faculty to do too much here. They can’t keep up and neither can the instructional technologists. Few, if any, people have all the required skills nowadays. The bar has risen too high.
We need TEAMS of specialists…and that’s why the for-profit, online universities are kicking the tails of everyone else. They utilize teams to build and deliver their content.
(Michael Jordan, as good as he was, wasn’t able to beat a solid team of players. It wasn’t until he got support from other members of his own team that the Bulls went on to win multiple championships.)
On 07/28/2010,
in budgets, business side of he, higher education, online learning, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
From DSC:
Here’s an article that gets at the use of TEAMS of specialists:
Outsourced Ed: Colleges Hire Companies to Build Their Online Courses — from The Chronicle by Marc Parry
On 07/21/2010,
in education, education reform, engagement / engaging students, higher education, innovation, using teams, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning,
by Daniel Christian
..
On 07/12/2010,
in cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, education reform, future of higher education, game-changing environment, multimedia, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
Evaluating Part-Time Faculty — from Academic Impressions by Daniel Fusch
This fall, the US Department of Education is expected to release a report showing a further drop in the percentage of US faculty who are tenured or tenure-track (which as of 2007 had already dropped to 31%, down from 57% in 1975). This comes on the heels of a recent study published in the journal Educational Policy that showed lower persistence rates for freshmen who have many of their courses taught by adjuncts, prompting fresh debate over what the increased use of contingent faculty may mean for the quality of education.
From DSC:
I don’t mean to be critical or find fault here…but I do wonder how many resources are put into full-time faculty’s training and development in terms of helping them learn how to TEACH (vs. doing research, publishing their findings, etc.). Teaching is tough and is both a science and an art. Few can be good at everything.
Also, I think there is an emphasis on teaching at some institutions, but there may be more of an emphasis on publishing and doing research at other institutions.
For example, I went to Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. Currently, NU charges about $55,000 a year to go there. Does the student get top notch TEACHING? In many cases, I doubt it. The students may get subject matter experts (SME’s) who know their subject matter like the back of their hand or they make be taking a course from someone who has carved out a name for himself/herself in a particular discipline…but that doesn’t mean they know how to teach that material. Also, it doesn’t mean that many students will ever get to take a class from these folks, as they may be getting a grad student teaching some of their core courses…I know I did.
Also, this is all the more reason that teams of specialists will be/should be used to create and deliver content. You want the best SME’s you can get…but you need to back them up with the resources to create the best all-around product. You need the skillsets found in instructional designers, programmers, web designers, interaction designers, graphic designers, legal experts, etc. — the best that you can afford to create engaging, interactive, multimedia-based, personalized content.
You can bet that the “Forthcoming Walmart of Education” will get this right! And when they do, watch out. They will leave many institutions in their dust.
Learning from the creative industries – consistency to build trust — from infoq.com
In the June 2010 edition of Wired magazine Jonah Leher wrote an article titled “Animating a Blockbuster: Inside Pixar’s creative magic” in which he examines the creative process in use at Pixar Animation Studios. He states
“Since 1995 when the first Toy Story was released, Pixar has made nine films, and every one has been a smashing success. Pixar’s secret? It’s unusual creative process.”
According to Leher: “the studio has built a team of moviemakers who know and trust one another in ways unimaginable on most sets”
He points out how Pixar’s process requires deep trust among the team, and the ability to handle feedback on the quality of the work being done. Each day the team review the work done the previous day and “ruthlessly shred” each frame. This constant feedback cycle enables the team to continuously improve the quality of the work being done, and the product being developed. This process involves every member of the team, “even the most junior staffers are encouraged to join in”, the intent is to learn, adapt and improve in a short cycle time – something that should be very familiar to anyone who has worked in an Agile software development team.
This safe to fail environment is one of the key aspects that makes Pixar so successful. Leher quotes Lee Unkrich (director of Toy Story 3) who says “It is important that nobody gets mad at you for screwing up. We know screwups are an essential part of making something good. That’s why our goal is to screw up as fast as possible”
On 06/22/2010,
in business side of he, digital textbooks, future of higher education, game-changing environment, library / librarians, textbooks, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
Reflections on The E-Book Sector — from InsideHigherEd.com
First of all, some excerpts (with emphasis from DSC):
E-textbooks might be the most-talked about and least-used learning tools in traditional higher education. Campus libraries and e-reader manufacturers are betting on electronic learning materials to overtake traditional textbooks in the foreseeable future, but very few students at traditional institutions are currently using e-textbooks, according to recent surveys.
Not so in the world of for-profit online education.
For-profit institutions in general are moving toward wider e-textbook use than other sectors of higher education, Stielow says. “I think a great many [for-profits] are certainly trying to move toward this model,” agrees Bickford. And the ones that have appear to be succeeding.
Why is that?
John Bourne, executive director of the Sloan Consortium, which studies online learning, posits that it might be a function of the more centralized administrative structures at for-profit institutions. “For-profits do things like provide lesson plans for instructors, provide you with what you’re supposed to do; they hire all these adjuncts to deliver all these things that have been sculpted by instructional designers,” says Bourne. Being able to dictate to the faculty what text format they should assign to their students probably makes it easier to implement e-textbook adoption across the institution, he says.
It is more difficult to engineer change at such scale at nonprofits, because of their more distributed governance models. At those colleges, faculty control of curricular texts — including mode of delivery — is “sacred,” Bourne says.
Manny Rivera, a spokesman for Phoenix, says that the online giant’s centralized administration does indeed allow it to make sweeping changes without many hang-ups. “The university is set up to be more nimble to confront market forces,” Rivera says. “So we’re able to innovate more quickly.”
From DSC:
To be more nimble…to confront market forces…to be able to innovate more quickly…to use materials created by teams of specialists…hmmm….sounds like a solid position to be in as the bubble continues to expand (and may even be beginning to slowly burst based upon where students are going — more community colleges, more state/public schools, lower-cost alternatives, etc.)
On 05/10/2010,
in adjunct faculty, business side of he, change, changing business models, content development, aggregation, repositories, digital textbooks, disruption, e-readers, entrepreneurship, faculty, game-changing environment, higher education, innovation, publishing, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
Earn more, charge less
He also spends less money publishing them. With his original textbook, he printed 3,000 copies and had to store them, so he didn’t break even for a while. That’s not the case with creating e-textbooks.
“You don’t have to have a bunch of books laying around, you don’t have to have the initial startup costs,” Chamberlain said, “and then you can send that savings on back to the students.”
For the past five years, Florida State College at Jacksonville has been driving down the cost of textbooks for its students through the SIRIUS initiative. SIRIUS brings together between 50 and 75 faculty members to create course material and textbooks for classes they’re qualified to teach, said Chief Operations Officer Jack Chambers. So far, they’ve developed 20 interactive general education courses.
The textbooks cost $60.98 in print, but this fall, they will publish online through CafeScribe at a price of $48 each. Eleven other colleges will use them as well.
Before the courses publish, a team of content specialists, instructional designers, quality assurance staff and multimedia personnel review them, as do expert faculty members outside the college (emphasis DSC).
On 04/29/2010,
in colleges, community colleges, disruption, face-to-face, future of higher education, game-changing environment, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, universities, using teams,
by Daniel Christian
The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer) — by Seth Godin
For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll. From Harvard asking Galileo to be a guest professor in the 1600s to millions tuning in to watch a team of unpaid athletes play another team of unpaid athletes in some college sporting event, the amount of time and money and prestige in the college world has been climbing.
I’m afraid that’s about to crash and burn. Here’s how I’m looking at it…
From DSC:
Seth’s perspectives on this are similar to what I’ve been saying — and warning would happen — for years now.
My take on the future of higher education is that someone will get it right and will be able to offer team-created and delivered content 24 x 7 x 365 that is mind-blowing by today’s standards and will be able to package and deliver that content and learning experience at discounts of 50%+ off of today’s prices. Yeah, yeah, yeah I hear ya say. Right Daniel…I’ve heard it all before.. your talk about disruption…about technology, etc. etc. etc.
You might have heard it, but you haven’t seen it in higher ed……....yet! My take on this is that you will see this happen. Massive change. The great commoditization of higher education as we know it today. The bubble is about to burst.
After all, the same publishers are selling the same textbooks to many institutions of higher education. In fact, I’m surprised that some publisher hasn’t yet taken a right turn and started offering degrees.They have access to subject matter experts (SME’s), teams of talented instructional designers, programmers, project managers, interface designers, legal/copyright experts, etc. What they lack is accreditation.
More and more I think societies will become increasingly interested in what you can DO and not where you attended school. Sure, there will still be those companies who want to hire only from ____ , ____, or _____; but that type of hiring perspective may not hold up if that organization is being outperformed by others. Also, who knows if corporations are even going to be around in 20 years. It’s turning into a situation where everyone is their own brand, their own company. Project teams come together, do the project, and then disband.
If students are paying a premium today, they should be paying that premium to go to an institution of higher education that:
- Has excellent faculty members — knowledgeable, passionate teachers who know their material cold and know how to teach that material; they are adaptable and are open to changing pedagogy and the use of various kinds of technologies
- Emphasizes and rewards teaching — not necessarily research
- Provides small class sizes and/or the ability to meet frequently with their professors (not a TA, not a grad student, and not a faculty member who might be a skilled researcher but who doesn’t know how to teach very well)
The thing all of us in higher ed need to be on guard about and the question we need to constantly be asking ourselves is, “How do we keep from becoming a commodity? What value do we bring to the table? Why should someone pay X when they are about to be able to pay 0.25 X elsewhere?”
New Skills for Instructional Designers — kineo
As Ellen sees it, the practice of eLearning instructional design sits at the intersection of instructional design and IT. ID + IT = eLearning. Take a moment and imagine four pie wedges:
- Instruction (learning and pedagogy)
- Design (creative production – writing, graphics, video)
- Business Intelligence (being able to speak the language of business, analysis and metrics)
- Technology (architecture and implementation – authoring tools, programming, LMSs)
Many of us ID practitioners entered the field from one angle of that pie. What about you? Did you come in to the field with an aptitude or passion for facilitation and training or writing or learning design?
Now take those four wedges and combine them into one individual and you have a superhero. Or a great eLearning instructional designer who can really make a difference in the business.
What you have is a true eLearning professional.
From DSC:
I’m glad they mentioned that if someone were to have all these skills and abilities, that you would have a superhero here; because when you consider all that those four pieces of the pie contain (which you only know if you’ve actually worked in those areas — which I have), it’s a huge and ever-changing amount of information to know.
Again, this is why I go back to the need to specialize.
I struggle in this area of being a generalist vs. being a specialist. In my current work, I need to play the role of a generalist (which probably helps explain in part why I attempt to scratch the surface on such a broad and sweeping set of topics in this blog).