Millennials move TV content beyond the TV set — from statista.com by Felix Richter
Excerpt:
You will find more statistics at Statista
From DSC:
Why post this here?
Because as expectations around where people are going to get their entertainment-related content change, so will new doors open for where they will get their educationally-related content.
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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)
15 Calif. community colleges to offer bachelor degrees — from usatoday.com by Kyle Plantz
Excerpt:
Paving the way for one of the largest community college systems in the United States to offer four-year degrees, on Sept. 28 California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law a bill that will create a pilot program for 15 community colleges across the state to fill a growing workforce demand for college-educated, skilled workers in fields such as health, science and technology.
Also see:
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From DSC:
I put a similar item out there on Twitter about this same topic and someone came back with some verbiage that hit me as strange…it caught me off guard. She mentioned the word “war” between community colleges and other colleges/universities. I don’t think that’s the word I would use and I think the greater concern for those of us working within higher education might be the dynamics as found in this recent posting. That’s what higher ed should be far more concerned with — i.e. alternatives that keep developing because higher ed is too slow to respond to increasing costs and is not keeping up with a world that’s spinning at speeds that continue to change exponentially, not incrementally.
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From DSC:
Last week, I ran across 2 postings that involved companies creating their own platforms and methods of educating and training folks — especially for their own industry and their own business needs. They were:
A relevant aside/excerpt from Learning TRENDS by Elliott Masie – October 10, 2014 | #851 – Updates on Learning, Business & Technology
As you may know, MASIE Productions is co-producing Love Letters – Starring Carol Burnett starting tomorrow on Broadway. She was interviewed on the Colbert TV Show and asked about the change in how people watch and consume media and content.
Stephen Colbert noted that when her show was on decades ago, she had 50 million viewers each week for the Carol Burnett Show. Carol noted:
* Every Saturday night there were these shows on in row: Archie Bunker, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, Carol Burnett
* She joked that, back then – in 1967 – “There was only 1 channel on TV” – though there were only a few 🙂
* But, she said that the difference was that it was “APPOINTMENT TELEVISION” – People made a plan, to sit together with family and friends, and watch a show together – as others did at the same time around the country.
I loved her phrase “APPOINTMENT TELEVISION”. In relates directly to Learning. Much of what we did, for decades, was “APPOINTMENT TRAINING” – a parallel to the same trend in the workplace. But, now the shift is towards many – many – more options – and viewer/learner freedom to choose when, what, how long and how often.
Also see:
From DSC:
First of all, let me say that I’m a big fan and supporter of a liberal arts education — my degree was in economics (from Northwestern University’s College of Arts & Sciences, as the school was called at the time) and I currently work at a Christian liberal arts college.
That said, within the current higher education landscape, we’re already seeing and hearing more and more about competency-based education, credits for prior learning, and other forms of obtaining a credential in less time. I don’t have data on this, but my mental picture of these things is that such initiatives have had a limited impact, at least so far.
However, as the pace of change has increased, I wonder…what if hiring decisions move significantly more towards “Show me what you can DO…? That’s already taking place to a significant degree in many hiring situations, but my reflection revolves around questions such as:
Again, these reflections involve the increasing pace of change.
Anyway, such a shift could open doors for new “providers” such as:
Then, consider some quotes from the following article, Tottering Ivory Towers:
Excerpts:
…there is growing interest in new ways of measuring the quality of a degree. The variety of scorecards now available, for instance, means students and their parents have much better and more granular measures of quality than accreditation provides. For another, employers are gradually making greater use of independent, competency-based measures and credentialed courses rather than relying on accredited degrees and credit hours (derided as “seat time” by its critics). Try getting a job in computer network management if you can’t show which Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer courses you have passed. Meanwhile, Udacity is partnering with Google, AT&T, and other technology firms in an “Open Education Alliance” to provide top-level technical skills. Nevertheless, when it comes to alternatives to accreditation, the United States is generally playing catch-up with some other countries. In Britain, for instance, students can earn employer-union certified City & Guilds qualifications while studying at almost any institution, and there are standard competency measures in a variety of professional fields.
…
In a New York Times interview, Google’s senior vice president for people operations, Laszlo Bock, admitted that transcripts, test scores, and even degrees are less useful than other data as predictors of employee success.3 In this environment, an industry-led move to create a more dependable measure of knowledge and ability than a transcript will become increasingly attractive.
…
The critical lesson from the transformation of other industries is that it is likely to be a disastrous mistake to assume you can just tweak an existing business model and be all right. That can work only for a while.
Dmitry Sheynin writes in his article, Is innovation outpacing education? “With the ever-increasing pace of innovation, traditional colleges and universities are failing to train and retrain workers quickly enough. The model of two and four-year degrees, [futurist Thomas Frey] says, is largely incompatible with an industry that gets flipped on its head every couple of quarters.” Again, according to Frey, “The main factor driving change in the labor force is new innovations rendering old jobs obsolete, but no mechanism is in place yet to help workers grow at the pace of evolving technology.”
Self-directed learning, or heutagogy, is key in this fast-paced environment. We all need to be constantly learning, growing, and reinventing ourselves. However, not everyone is comfortable with such an approach. So there are some gaps/opportunities opening up for those organizations who are innovative enough to experiment and to change.
Also see:
It’s time to ditch the ‘old academic identity’ to survive funding cuts — from theconversation.com by Fry and Schutt
Excerpt:
In short, what you do with what you create. Increasingly, the sector is being called to account on this as the world changes around us.
This article re: Southern New Hampshire’s self-paced $10,000 competency-based degree program
Addendum on 9/17/14:
Excerpt:
Argosy University System is among the first institutions in a movement toward competency-based education, creating new models of direct assessment that promise to reduce time-to-degree and offer greater relevance for graduates in the job market. CT talked with Argosy University System’s vice chancellor for academic affairs to learn how that institution tackled competency-based education — creating the first WASC-accredited MBA in its region based on a direct assessment, competency model. Now, Argosy is developing hybrid approaches that combine direct assessment with traditional seat time-based courses.
Addendum on 10/2/14:
Addendum on 10/8/14:
Addendum on 10/13/14:
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C-Suite TV debuts, offers advice for the boardroom — from streamingmedia.com by Troy Dreier
Business leaders now have an on-demand video network to call their own, thanks to one Bloomberg host’s online venture.
Excerpt:
Bringing some business acumen to the world of online video, C-Suite TV is launching today. Created by Bloomberg TV host and author Jeffrey Hayzlett, the on-demand video network offers interviews with and shows about business execs. It promises inside information on business trends and the discussions taking place in the biggest boardrooms.
The Future of TV is here for the C-Suite — from hayzlett.com by Jeffrey Hayzlett
Excerpt:
Rather than wait for networks or try and gain traction through the thousands of cat videos, we went out and built our own network.
See also:
From DSC:
The above items took me back to the concept of Learning from the Living [Class] Room.
Many of the following bullet points are already happening — but what I’m trying to influence/suggest is to bring all of them together in a powerful, global, 24 x 7 x 365, learning ecosystem:
…then I’d say we’ll have a powerful, engaging, responsive, global education platform.
Can disruption save higher education? — from eCampus News by Meris Stansbury
Excerpts (emphasis DSC):
Christensen: “The question now is: ‘Is there something that can’t be displaced within a traditional university’s value offering?'”
…
However, Christensen outlined three ways traditional colleges and universities, like his own Harvard Business school, could survive into the future:
Focus on professors
[when recruiting faculty]…focus less on their publishing capabilities and expert knowledge of material, and more on their ability to connect to others.
Understand why technology, like online learning, is disruptive.
Don’t try to change from the inside — you will fail. [Use offsets.]
What price will society pay if higher education cannot revolutionize college as we know it and evolve a sustainable economic model?
The Ivory Tower — description from Wikipedia.org
Excerpt:
Ivory Tower is a 2014 American documentary film written, directed and produced by Andrew Rossi. The film premiered in competition category of U.S. Documentary Competition program at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 18, 2014.
After its premiere at Sundance Film Festival, Participant Media, Paramount Pictures and Samuel Goldwyn Films acquired distribution rights of the film. The film is scheduled to have a theatrical release in June 2014 in United Sates by Samuel Goldwyn Films. Paramount Pictures will handle the international release of the film, while Participant Media will handle the campaign for film’s theatrical release.
Class, Cost and College — from nyt.com by Frank Bruni
Excerpt:
Scheduled for theatrical release next month, “Ivory Tower” does an astonishingly thorough tour of the university landscape in a brisk 90 minutes, touching on the major changes and challenges, each of which could sustain its own documentary.
But as I watched it, one theme in particular kept capturing my attention. One set of questions kept coming to mind. How does our current system of higher education square with our concerns about social mobility? What place do the nation’s universities have in our intensifying debate about income inequality? What promise do they hold for lessening it?
The answers in “Ivory Tower” and beyond it aren’t reassuring. Indeed, the greatest crisis may be that while college supposedly represents one of the surest ladders to, and up through, the middle class, it’s not functioning that way, at least not very well.
From DSC:
I graduated with a liberal arts degree. I work at a Christian liberal arts college. I believe in the liberal arts. However, I see our current business models as broken. I, along with many others, see issues and problems that need to be dealt with — whereas many within higher education see no need to change at all. “What’s the problem?” they ask rhetorically…not wanting their great ride of the last 20-30 years to end.
But such individuals aren’t seeing the invisible devastation that’s taking place, such as the mounting/crushing debt on our students’ backs that stays with them for YEARS after they graduate. Such debt loads affect graduates’ ability to purchase a home or to save for retirement (then there’s those who didn’t graduate but spent a great deal of $$ in the attempt to get a degree). I’m also hearing that it’s delaying marriage in some cases. And unlike a car or a house, you can’t realistically refinance many student loans. (Although Elizabeth Warren is seeking to change that situation, thankfully.)
So while I strongly believe in obtaining a college education, we have to get the price down! We have to recognize that there’s an issue. Change must occur.
The seven habits of highly effective digital enterprises — from mckinsey.com by Tunde Olanrewaju, Kate Smaje, and Paul Willmott
To stay competitive, companies must stop experimenting with digital and commit to transforming themselves into full digital businesses. Here are seven habits that successful digital enterprises share.
Excerpt:
The age of experimentation with digital is over. In an often bleak landscape of slow economic recovery, digital continues to show healthy growth. E-commerce is growing at double-digit rates in the United States and most European countries, and it is booming across Asia. To take advantage of this momentum, companies need to move beyond experiments with digital and transform themselves into digital businesses. Yet many companies are stumbling as they try to turn their digital agendas into new business and operating models. The reason, we believe, is that digital transformation is uniquely challenging, touching every function and business unit while also demanding the rapid development of new skills and investments that are very different from business as usual. To succeed, management teams need to move beyond vague statements of intent and focus on “hard wiring” digital into their organization’s structures, processes, systems, and incentives.
From DSC:
“The age of experimentation with digital is over. … To take advantage of this momentum, companies need to move beyond experiments with digital and transform themselves into digital businesses.”
Though this may be true for the corporate world (the audience for whom this piece was written), the experimentation within higher education is just beginning. With that said, I still couldn’t help but wonder if some of these same habits might apply to the world of higher education. For example, three habits that the article mentioned jumped out at me as being highly relevant to those of us working within higher education:
1. Be unreasonably aspirational
4. Challenge everything
7. Be obsessed with the customer
Rising customer expectations continue to push businesses to improve the customer experience across all channels. Excellence in one channel is no longer sufficient; customers expect the same frictionless experience in a retail store as they do when shopping online, and vice versa.
A potentially-related item, at least from the perspective of the higher ed student of the near future:
From DSC:
The bolded text is what I want to highlight in this posting/reflection:
Ship your grain across the sea;
after many days you may receive a return.
2 Invest in seven ventures, yes, in eight;
you do not know what disaster may come upon the land.
3 If clouds are full of water,
they pour rain on the earth.
Whether a tree falls to the south or to the north,
in the place where it falls, there it will lie.
4 Whoever watches the wind will not plant;
whoever looks at the clouds will not reap.
5 As you do not know the path of the wind,
or how the body is formed[a] in a mother’s womb,
so you cannot understand the work of God,
the Maker of all things.
6 Sow your seed in the morning,
and at evening let your hands not be idle,
for you do not know which will succeed,
whether this or that,
or whether both will do equally well.
From DSC:
This advice may prove incredibly beneficial for businesspeople, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and innovators.
But I have it that these words could also apply to the future of education — especially to those of us trying to determine/influence the future of higher education. TRIMTAB Groups within higher ed will need to live by those words.
Example slides:
Strategic principles for competing in the digital age — from mckinsey.com by Martin Hirt and Paul Willmott
Digitization is rewriting the rules of competition, with incumbent companies most at risk of being left behind. Here are six critical decisions CEOs must make to address the strategic challenge posed by the digital revolution.
Excerpts:
Today’s challenge is different. Robust attackers are scaling up with incredible speed, inserting themselves artfully between you and your customers and zeroing in on lucrative value-chain segments.
The digital technologies underlying these competitive thrusts may not be new, but they are being used to new effect.
…
As these technologies gain momentum, they are profoundly changing the strategic context: altering the structure of competition, the conduct of business, and, ultimately, performance across industries.
Also see:
Digital strategy — from mckinsey.com by Paul Willmott
Digitization is fundamentally altering the nature of competition. McKinsey’s Paul Willmott explains how digital winners think and what companies can do to compete.
Excerpt:
Digital is fundamentally shifting the competitive landscape in many sectors. It allows new entrants to come from unexpected places. We’re seeing banks get into the travel business in some countries. We’re seeing travel agents get into the insurance business. We’re seeing retailers go into the media business. So your competitor set is not what it used to be.
One thing that digital allows is what I call “plug and play dynamics”—meaning that companies can attack specific areas of the value chain rather than having to own the whole thing. This is because digital allows different services to be stitched together more quickly and cheaply.
From DSC:
The above two items made me wonder:
Assuming that such startups can create quality alternatives at far less expensive prices, I would say the answer to that is “yes, at least a significant amount of the time.” The word cannibalize was used in the “Strategic principles…” article, and again, I can’t help but think of Steve Jobs’ philosophy of cannibalizing one’s own company before someone else does it for you. I also can’t help but reflect that Apple is the worlds’ largest/most valuable company based on market cap.
There is danger in the status quo — especially if the status quo means taking no action whatsoever.
Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.
— Coach John Wooden
Also see:
From the WSJ’s Morning Ledger:
The online MBA comes of age.
You’d think that of all the academic pursuits, business school would remain most immune to online learning. Beyond studies, MBA programs offer up-and-coming C-suiters access to the graduate-level schmoozing that could come in handy later on. Nevertheless, the online MBA program is growing, Delta Sky Magazine’s Kevin Featherly reports. What they lack in post-exam cordials with the professor, they make up for in a more diverse, more experienced student body, say advocates. “In ground-based programs, you’re connected to a more local audience,” the dean of the University of Bridgeport’s Ernest C. Trefz School of Business tells Delta. “In the online program, you’re interacting with business professionals from around the world.” But not everything is so encouraging. A professor at Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina tells Mr. Featherly how surprised he was “when a course designer suggested he use a cartoon character to illustrate a hard-core economics principle.”
Also see:
From DSC:
Consider this. Steve Jobs lived by the philosophy of cannibalizing Apple’s own business, as he held that Apple needed to cannibalize itself or someone else would do it for them. And here’s the key thing to consider: Apple is the largest company in the world, based on market cap (505.92B as of this morning) and market value.
The point is, we in higher ed can’t be afraid of change. We must change. It’s time for more Trimtab Groups within higher education.
A Case for Applied Liberal Arts: Adapting to Disruption — from evollution.com by Michelle Rhee-Weise | Senior Research Fellow, Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation
Excerpt:
This is neither another defense of the liberal arts nor another piece that pits the liberal arts against vocational training. We’ve all grown weary of commentators who ennoble without question the ideal of the liberal arts while denigrating vocation as factory work or corporate training.
In lieu of these tired tropes, I would suggest the notion of applied liberal arts. It’s time we shed vocation of its connotations of career education, corporate training and utility. Vocation does not preclude the liberal arts but can fuse a liberal education with the application of knowledge, effective citizenship, well roundedness and even artistry.
…
The instinct for some institutions might be to give into the “threat rigidity,” or to cease being flexible in the face of such major, systemic shifts. If, however, traditional institutions double down on a static curriculum, then how will they compete with these lower-cost, briefer and targeted programs that lead directly to high-skills opportunities at desirable companies? The oncoming disruption must be viewed as an opportunity to tie education to economic relevance — to offer more than a trajectory, but a well-defined pathway, to employment.
The $10,000 Degree: Fundamentally Changing the Way Universities Do Business — from evollution.com by Jean Floten | Chancellor, Western Governors University Washington
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
The reset button has been pushed in this country. We have the choice to either participate in the reshaping of higher education to help more prospective students reach for their aspirations or live in denial.
Most Americans have changed how they do business and manage their personal finances. We must, too. The recession of the last decade spawned more leery consumers and led far too many to question the value of an investment in education.
That’s the importance of the $10,000-degree challenge. It recognizes the need for fundamental change in higher education. Furthermore, it provides a tangible finish line to which the academy may strive.
It’s time we, the leaders of colleges and universities, raise educational attainment levels — not costs.
MOOCs’ disruption is only beginning — from studentforce.wordpress.com; reposted from The Boston Globe written by Clayton M. Christensen and Michelle R. Weise
Excerpt:
JOURNALISTS, as 2013 ended, were busy declaring the death of MOOCs, more formally known as massive open online courses. Silicon Valley startup Udacity, one of the first to offer the free Web-based college classes, had just announced its pivot to vocational training — a sure sign to some that this much-hyped revolution in higher education had failed. The collective sigh of relief from more traditional colleges and universities was audible.
The news, however, must have also had the companies that had enthusiastically jumped on the MOOC train feeling a bit like Mark Twain. When newspapers confused Twain for his ailing cousin, the writer famously quipped, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Undoubtedly pronouncements over MOOCs’ demise are likewise premature. And their potential to disrupt — on price, technology, even pedagogy — in a long-stagnant industry is only just beginning to be seen.
Tuition costs have been ballooning faster than general inflation and even faster than health care. And what do we get in return? Nearly half of all bachelor’s-degree holders do not find employment or are underemployed upon graduation. At the same time, employers have not been satisfied with degree candidates. Two recent Gallup polls showed that although 96 percent of chief academic officers believe they’re doing a good job of preparing students for employment, only 11 percent of business leaders agree that graduates have the requisite skills for success in the workforce. And this is all occurring while higher education leaders were convinced that they were innovating all along.
It was just the wrong kind of innovation.
Education-as-a-Service: 5 ways higher ed must adapt to a changing market — from venturebeat.com by
Excerpt:
Within a few years, some students will come to higher education with an understanding of their current competencies, the competencies required for their dream job, and the resulting gap. Colleges will need to respond to these students with more than just a course catalog.
For example, for an 18-year-old who wants to start a career in video game design, colleges will offer courses that produce the requisite skills for an entry-level position – in addition to some general education – and will award a meaningful credential at completion of those courses (a process that will be completed likely in less than four years).
Or a laid-off marketing manager, whose time-to-job is six months rather than four years, may come to a university for reskilling in social media marketing, taking four targeted courses and earning a credential that employers can understand.
5 reasons the college student loan debt crisis could top subprime mortgages — from educationdive.com by Keith Button
Excerpt:
As the U.S. higher ed student loan debt continues its ascent, more warnings are sounding about the consequences.
Student debt currently amounts to $1.08 trillion owed by nearly 37 million borrowers. Richard Cordray, president of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has warned that the student loan problem is comparable to the home mortgage market prior to the Great Recession that began in 2008.
Could the economic impact of the student debt crisis one day match (or even exceed) the credit crunch created by subprime mortgages? Here are five reasons for concern…
Taking the Liberal Arts Online in the Summer — from chronicle.com by William Pannapacker
New ways of delivering courses can be compatible with small-college values
Excerpt:
A major reason we created the program was to assist students in completing their degrees within four years. Several of our preprofessional programs have demanding sequences that do not mesh easily with the schedules of courses in our core curriculum. In addition, a growing proportion of our students want to spend a semester off-campus, which places even greater constraints on their academic schedules.
…
Adopted cautiously, in a critical, evolutionary, decentralized way, a variety of online approaches to learning—beyond what we already have—can allow faculty members to improve their teaching by placing lecture content online and using classes for high-impact experiences, allowing professors and students to become more interactive with each other. And—by making it less necessary for students to transfer credit for entire courses from outside parties—online courses developed within an institutional context can preserve rather than undermine our unique missions as liberal-arts colleges.
Also see:
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Created by Knewton and Column Five Media
If change is inevitable– is progress optional? Four education institutions opting for progress — from onlinelearninginsights.wordpress.com by Debbie Morrison
Excerpts:
From DSC:
As I was watching “The Future of Higher Education: MOOCs and Disruptive Innovation,” a video recorded last August, (GW’s School of Business) Dean Doug Guthrie mentioned a company named In the Telling. The name of that company piqued my curiosity, so I went to look at that company, and what instantly struck me about their offerings were the use of:
Dean Guthrie’s comments on interaction, community building, and customization rang true for me, but it was the customization part that really grabbed me. And there too, most likely it will take a team of people to understand and use the data, to build the algorithms that Doug was talking about to deliver the learning trees of the future (and I would add the phrases/terms learning paths and learning playlists).
I have it that as MOOCs continue to morph and as the perfect storm in higher education continues to amass, those institutions who implement a team-based approach to content creation, delivery, and assessment will be the ones who thrive in the future.
This thought was further brought home when I viewed Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein discussing “Online Learning – What Is It Good For?” Consider the appearance of the word TEAM in the following graphics:
