3 Questions for Susan Aldridge — from insidehighered.com by Edward J. Maloney and Joshua Kim
Excerpt:
According to RNL research (2022), over each of the last five years, face-to-face undergraduate and graduate enrollments had a net decline, while online enrollments have seen significant expansion. The pandemic further accelerated online growth. University presidents and provosts are taking advantage of the post-pandemic environment to transform their universities by building digital ecosystems.
What can institutions do to get ahead of a fast-changing higher ed market? — from highereddive.com by Laura Spitalniak
Excerpts:
Turn L&D Teams into Performance-Driven Microlearning Masters — learningsolutionsmag.com by Robyn Defelice
Excerpt:
Over several articles, I have pinpointed challenges that many learning and development (L&D) leaders face when integrating microlearning into their organization’s learning ecosystem. These have mainly been strategic and operational in nature, covering topics such as having an agreed-upon purpose for adopting microlearning to ensuring that the L&D department has achieved a learning maturity and agility level that enables them to leverage microlearning.
What still hasn’t been addressed, and what is equally critical to success, relates to your L&D team capabilities and tools.
Addendum on 1/30/22:
Michigan Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack on the Transformative Possibilities of this Moment — from law.upenn.edu with Michigan Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack
Excerpt:
Bridget Mary McCormack is Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court and is a leading voice on modernizing court systems to expand access to justice and deepen public confidence in legal systems.
On this episode, she joins us to share her thoughts on how courts can learn from the experiences COVID-19 has created to better serve the public in a post-pandemic world. She also shares her views on how regulatory reform can transform legal services and why improving legal systems matters for the entire American experiment.
Addendum on 12/13/21:
Ontario Court Lays Down the Law on Technology Competence and Video Proceedings — from legaltechmonitor.com by Bob Ambrogi
An Ontario judge has laid down the law on technology competence, ruling in no uncertain terms that every lawyer has a duty to keep pace with changing technology, and that a lawyer’s discomfort with new technologies — in this case, video depositions — is no excuse for reverting to pre-pandemic methods.
EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues — from educause.edu
Excerpt (emphasis DSC):
The EDUCAUSE 2022 Top 10 IT Issues take an optimistic view of how technology can help create the higher education we deserve —through a shared transformational vision and strategy for the institution, a recognition of the need to place student success at the center, and a sustainable business model that redefines “the campus.”
Almost two years into a global pandemic, it’s clear the higher education we knew will never return and now we can focus on getting the higher education we deserve.
From DSC:
I’m assuming that the we in the we deserve (as highlighted above) includes the students, as *the students* are the ones who most need for things to change.
That said, I’m doubtful such profound change will occur within higher education as it stands today. The existing cultures may prevent such significant and necessary change from occurring — and higher ed isn’t used to dealing with the current exponential pace of change that we’re experiencing. Plus, the downward spirals that many institutions are in don’t always allow for the new investments, programs, and/or experiments to occur. But who knows? When institutions of traditional higher education have their backs pressed up against the walls, perhaps such institutions and the people within them will be forced to change. There are innovative individuals and institutions out there. (I’m just not sure how much they’ve been listened to in many cases.)
To help students truly succeed means to change one’s core products/services — one’s story. But higher ed loves to play around the edges…rarely letting the core products/services get touched.
To me, student success includes having students pay far less and, while still getting a solid liberal arts education/foundation, can get solid jobs immediately upon graduation. At least that’s my hope as we head into 2022.
But what student success looks like may be different in the future.
Perhaps in 5 years, we will have moved much more towards a lifelong learning situation. Individuals may have joined a global, next-generation learning platform whereby one teaches for X minutes of the day, and learns for Y minutes of that same day. AI-based dashboards let people know which skills are in high demand, and then offer a menu of choices for how to acquire those skills.
A couple of lasts comments:
The State of Student Success & Engagement in Higher Education — from instructure.com (authors of the Canvas LMS)
Our 2021 Global Student engagement and success study uncovers vital stats and key trends to help education institutions thrive through today’s education challenges.
Excerpt:
8 tech and leadership podcasts to add to your playlist — from enterprisersproject.com by Stephanie Overby
Check out these podcasts to keep up to date on CIO lessons learned, emerging tech trends, leadership best practices, and more
From DSC:
This article does a great job of providing a description of each podcast, why you should listen to it, and a list of recent episodes so you can see some of the topics that they are talking about.
Ohio State U. Unveils a Plan for All Students to Graduate Debt-Free — from chronicle.com by Eric Kelderman
Excerpt:
Nearly half of all undergraduates at Ohio State University take out loans to help pay the costs of attending college, borrowing an average of more than $27,000. Kristina M. Johnson, the new president of the land-grant university, wants to reduce that proportion to zero.
Johnson announced a plan on Friday, at her investiture, to reach that goal within a decade.
Instead of offering students federal direct loans as part of their financial-aid packages, the university will use a combination of grants, internships, and opportunities to assist with research.
“People without family means, which includes many of the country’s minority students, start their adult lives in a financial hole,” Johnson said during her investiture speech. “I want all of our graduates to be free to say yes to every great opportunity that comes their way.”
Why Aren’t Professors Taught to Teach? — from techlearning.com by Erik Ofgang
Professors are experts in their subject matters but many have limited training in actually teaching their students.
Excerpt:
“A lot of faculty are just modeling their instruction after the instruction they’ve received as an undergraduate or graduate student,” says Tanya Joosten, senior scientist and director of digital learning at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the lead of the National Research Center for Distance Education and Technological Advancements.
As a perpetually short-on-time adjunct professor, I understand those who worry about mandatory training and required course reviews, but Pelletier stresses that she’s advocating for a more organic shift and that a top-down approach isn’t best. “That’s not as collaborative and generative as really just embracing that we have these two different kinds of experts, one type of expert is an expert in their subject, and the other expert is an expert in teaching and learning,” she says. More attention is needed to meld these two kinds of expertise.
From DSC:
It’s not just that colleges and universities are big business — if you have any remaining doubts about that perspective, take a moment to look at this new, interactive database to see what I mean. But it’s also that this type of business often rewards research, not teaching. And yet the students over the last several decades have continued to pay ever-increasing prices for skilled researchers, instead of increasingly skilled teachers.
Would people put up with this with other types of purchases? I don’t think so. I wouldn’t want to…would you? Would we like to pay for something that we aren’t getting — like paying for all the extra options on a new car, but not getting them?
What goes around, comes around.
But by allowing this to have occurred, a backlash against the value of higher education has been building for years now. In many learners’ minds, they are questioning whether it’s worth taking on (potentially) decades’ worth of debt. At a minimum, the higher the price of obtaining degrees and/or other credentials becomes, the less Return on Investment (ROI) is realized by the learners (i.e., the purchasers of these goods and services). So while getting a degree is often still worth it, the ROI is going down. And this doesn’t address how relevant/up-to-date the educations are that these learners are receiving, which the employers out there will take issue with.
From an Instructional Designer’s perspective, it isn’t just time that’s the issue here. There continues to exist a tiered hierarchy within higher education. Faculty see themselves as more knowledgeable because they are teaching and because they are the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). But they are not expert teachers. Many full-time faculty members don’t listen to people who are knowledgeable in the learning science world, and they often don’t value that expertise. (This can be true of administrators as well.) But when a fellow faculty member (i.e., their “true peer” from their perspective) suggests the same idea that Instructional Designers have been recommending for years, they suddenly open their eyes and ears to see and hear this seemingly new, wonderful approach.
Some possible scenarios
Thus, a wave has been building against traditional institutions of higher education — readers of this blog will have picked up on this years ago. Once alternatives significantly hit the radar — ones that get the learners solid, good-paying jobs — there could be a mass exodus out of what we think of as traditional higher education. At least that’s one potential scenario.
For example, if a next-generation learning platform comes along that offers teams and individuals the ability to deliver lifelong learning at 50% or more off the price of an average degree, then be on the lookout for massive change. If professors and/or teams of specialists — those who are skilled in instructional design and teaching — can go directly to their learners — it could be an interesting world indeed. (Outschool is like this, by the way.) In that scenario, below are two potential methods of providing what accreditation agencies used to provide:
Other possible scenarios
Another scenario is that traditional institutions of higher education really kick their innovation efforts into high gear. They reward teaching. They develop less expensive methods of obtaining degrees. They truly begin delivering more cost-effective means of obtaining lifelong learning and development “channels” for educating people.
And there are other possible scenarios, some of which I could think of and many I would likely miss. But to even ask the solid and highly-relevant question as plainly stated in the article above — Why Aren’t Professors Taught to Teach? — that is something that must be dealt with. Those organizations that use a team-based approach are likely to be able to better answer and address that question.
How to Support Students and Families through Technology and Innovation — from thejournal.com by Jeremy Davis
Excerpt:
Here are just a few district-wide innovations that resulted from the pandemic:
DC: Which reminds me of this idea/graphic:
All aboard: Bitcoin’s rise inspires even big banks to staff up on crypto talent — from linkedin.com by George Anders
Excerpt:
That’s according to a new analysis by LinkedIn’s Economic Graph team, which finds that major financial services firms will add more than three times as many staff steeped in digital-asset experience this year than in 2015. That pace jumped 40% in the first half of 2021 alone, compared with the same period last year.
“The opportunities in digital assets are plentiful,” BNY Mellon’s Roman Regelman, the bank’s CEO of asset servicing and head of digital, told LinkedIn News. “We can now attract talent in a very different way.”
Also relevant, see:
From DSC:
Time will tell which institutions have the prerequisite culture of innovation that will help reinvent themselves, stay relevant, and survive.
And for people (who have worked in higher education for years) who don’t like to see learners as customers…well…when those learners are often paying $100,000-$250,000 or more for a four-year degree, those folks don’t have much say or credibility any longer. The price increases that they never stepped in to stop from occurring have forever changed the learning ecosystems within higher education. The idea of supporting the perspective that says:
Well, we’re proud (and content) that our institution will have the lowest price increase in X (where X is a city, state, or geographic region)
or
We’re proud that our institution will have the lowest price increase within our group of similar/comparative institutions.
…well, that type of perspective hasn’t cut it for years now. But the danger of that status quo perspective is only becoming apparent to many now that one’s very survival is at stake.
Addendum/also see:
The new frontier: Why visionary CLOs are switching focus to developing technical teams rather than people managers — from chieflearningofficer.com by Alastair Gordon
The new frontier for CLOs is this: How do we unleash the untapped potential of our technical experts to gain competitive advantage or community benefit?
Excerpt:
The race to develop talent is changing its focus.
Historically, success relied on developing extraordinary leaders to inspire and lead large groups of people. But today, and in the future, the new challenge for learning teams is to create an edge for their organization by radically improving their development of technical specialists.
Engineers, economists, researchers, software developers and data scientists — they’re in the vanguard of innovation. No other group has the same potential to create value, cut costs or introduce better processes. This trend is seeing early adopter organizations in the vanguard of a shift to rebalance the annual learning budget toward developing technical experts in nontechnical capabilities.
Also relevant/see:
