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From DSC: Whether you agree with everything here, you *need* to read this one…

On 07/21/2010, in 24x7x365 access, business, business side of he, career development, change, changing business models, colleges, community colleges, competency-based learning/education, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, disruption, education reform, education technology, elearning, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, face-to-face, faculty, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, innovation, leadership, learning ecosystem, lifelong learning, more voice more choice more control, New "Amazon.com" of Higher Education, new business models, online learning, online tutoring, open courseware and systems, pace of change, personalized/customized learning, strategy, teaching & learning, traditional / tradition, universities, using teams, workplace, by Daniel Christian

The future of colleges and universities -- from the spring of 2010 by futurist Thomas Frey

From Spring 2010

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From DSC:

If you are even remotely connected to higher education, then you *need* to read this one!


Most certainly, not everything that Thomas Frey says will take place…but I’ll bet you he’s right on a number of accounts. Whether he’s right or not, the potential scenarios he brings up ought to give us pause to reflect on ways to respond to these situations…on ways to spot and take advantage of the various opportunities that arise (which will only happen to those organizations who are alert and looking for them).


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Moving the social networked learning (the Landing) forward

On 07/12/2010, in instructional design, leadership, pedagogy, social learning / networks, strategy, by Daniel Christian

Moving the social networked learning (the Landing) forward — George Siemens

To foster these types of interactions, programs need to think about social networking tools at a higher level than an individual course (for obvious reasons – a course is a short-term construct whereas social spaces have greater permanence). Designers, deans, and faculty should plan for social interaction at the program-level: design for social interaction between courses much in the same way that social interaction (in Moodle) is often designed into courses).

Most learners tend to the social. They seek interactions, connectedness. Sometimes, however, these interactions require a bit of social lubrication. To this end, a program director (or designer) should plan to include social events and activities in their Landing group: planned conversations, Q & A, recorded tutorials, live interactions (in Elluminate or on Skype), treasure hunts, etc.

Social connectedness needs nurturing. While we are still at the early stages or research on this, my bias is that successful uses of the Landing at a program level will be determined by fostering intentional and planned social activities. But this isn’t really anything new, is it? Any successful community has regular social events and activities – concerts, festivals, and community suppers. Finding out how to best lubricate social interactions is an important area of research.

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Learning to change report — from Learning Conversations

On 07/07/2010, in business, economics, instructional design, strategy, training / L&D, UK, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Learning to change report — from Learning Conversations by Mark Berthelemy

“We’ve just published a research report, based on the opinions of senior decision makers among the UK’s largest 500 firms. Here are some of the findings.”

  • The majority (70%) of business leaders fear that inadequate staff skills are the greatest threat to their ability to capitalise on the recovery.
  • More than two thirds of business leaders admit that their under-trained workforce is struggling to cope with expanded job remits following waves of job cuts during recession.
  • … as the economy moves out of the downturn, two fifths (40%) of leaders estimate that at least half of employee skills risk becoming obsolete.
  • Over a third of leaders (36%) lack confidence that their employees have the skills required to deliver the firm’s upturn strategy, with close to half (46%) casting doubt on their L&D department’s ability to provide these learning services.
  • Over half (55%) claim that their firm is failing to deliver the necessary training for recovery.
  • Around half fear for their company’s ability to respond to surges in demand (51%), retrain and redeploy people where required (47%) and identify where current skills are becoming obsolete (49%).
  • More than two thirds (67%) of business leaders are concerned their employees are struggling to cope with expanded remits following job cuts.
  • More than half (52%) describe their L&D function as slow to respond to the changing requirements of their business during economic turbulence.
  • As strategic objectives have evolved, close to half (46%) of senior managers report no significant change in the training delivery to their workforce. Going forward, almost as many (43%) expect no significant change to L&D delivery over the next 2-3 years.
  • The vast majority (82%) of leaders lack confidence that their firm’s L&D strategy and delivery are aligned to the company’s operational strategy.
  • Half (50%) believe that their L&D function is stuck in a ‘business as usual’ mindset.

Another interesting quote here:

“Perhaps L&D needs to rebrand – towards performance consulting… Often performance problems are more around culture, systems, processes and communication. Solve those, and you won’t need to provide training in a lot of cases.”

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From DSC — The “new language” continues to develop

On 07/02/2010, in Adobe, animation, creativity, digital audio, digital learning, digital storytelling, digital textbooks, digital video, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, game-changing environment, innovation, learning ecosystem, learning preferences, mobile learning, mobile technologies, multimedia, music, new media literacies, online learning, online media, pedagogy, podcasting, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, simulations, storytelling, strategy, teaching & learning, training / L&D, workplace, by Daniel Christian

A new langugage continues to develop


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Public School 69 teachers the first in NY to experience a new concept in K-12 education: the digital teaching platform

On 06/24/2010, in digital learning, education technology, K-12 related, professional development, strategy, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

Public School 69 teachers the first in NY to experience a new concept in K-12 education: the digital teaching platform — from eSchoolNews.com

Dallas, Texas — June 23, 2010 — Public School 69 – The New Vision School, an 87-year-old school in the Bronx surrounded by single-family homes and low-rise apartment buildings, has plenty of experience with technology. But this month the school catapulted to the forefront of New York’s educational technology cutting edge as the first public school in the state to introduce its teachers to a new concept emerging in K-12 education: the digital teaching platform.

This June, 12 teachers from P.S. 69 participated in a comprehensive professional development program to introduce the Time To Know digital teaching platform to their fourth and fifth grades classes this fall. Time To Know is a complete, interactive curriculum system designed specifically for today’s one-to-one computing classrooms. The digital teaching platform empowers teachers to easily manage instruction, individualize learning, assess mastery in real time, and provide immediate feedback to students. Designed around guided constructivist principles, Time To Know’s digital comprehensive curriculum helps students build 21st century skills, including problem-solving skills, higher order thinking, and cooperative learning to prepare them for high stakes tests and the future.

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“When your school test scores are in the mid-90s, it’s difficult to maintain and improve upon that level of performance. But when I saw Time To Know, I knew this was a tool to bring my school to the next level. A key benefit of the program is that it allow teachers’ individual personalities and teaching styles to shine,” said Cohen. “My teachers are thrilled with the professional development they’ve received. The Time To Know staff members are very knowledgeable about the standards for New York City and for the state, and how to meaningfully connect the standards with curriculum and assessment to improve student achievement.”

More…

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Highlights from the New Media Consortium’s Summer 2010 Conference — by Alan Levine

On 06/24/2010, in education technology, multimedia, new media literacies, strategy, teaching & learning, tools, trends, by Daniel Christian

Highlights from the New Media Consortium’s Summer 2010 Conference — by Alan Levine

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New Media Consortium's Summer 2010 Conference in Anaheim

Whether you were there or not, below you will find our collection of media and highlights from the 2010 Summer Conference, hosted by the University of Southern California.

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How to create a successful M-Learning strategy — from Upside Learning

On 06/23/2010, in India, mobile learning, strategy, by Daniel Christian

How to create a successful M-Learning strategy: mLearnCon – Part I — from Upside Learning by Amit Garg

Last week I attended a day-long certificate workshop at the inaugural mLearnCon in San Diego titled Creating a successful m-learning strategy: From Planning to Implementation conducted by Judy Brown, Rovy Branon, Jason Haag, and Chris Raasch. The workshop was well designed and gave a wide range of information along with templates and charts that could be useful for the beginners and the slightly more experienced professionals in the field.

Judy had this quote on a slide which I think summarizes how important mobiles are for our future:

“Mobile phones are misnamed.They should be called ‘gateways to all human knowledge.”
–Ray Kurzweil, Futurist (at Handheld Learning ’09)

I believe this to be true and all organizations will realize this sooner or later. The pace of change is phenomenal and m-learning has truly come of age now. Now is the right time to get your m-learning strategy in place.

I’ve presented a short summary of the first session (Judy’s) which mainly covered planning part:

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Also see the slides at:
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Projections of jobs and education requirements through 2018 — Georgetown University

On 06/23/2010, in career development, change, higher education, K-12 related, strategy, student-related, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Projections of jobs and education requirements through 2018 -- from Georgetown University

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Strategic thinking about e-learning — Tony Bates

On 06/14/2010, in elearning, higher education, online learning, strategy, by Daniel Christian

Strategic thinking about e-learning -- by Tony Bates in June 2010

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Unnatural acts — InsideHigherEd.com by Burck Smith

On 04/08/2010, in business side of he, game-changing environment, higher education, policy, strategy, by Daniel Christian
Unnatural acts — InsideHigherEd.com by Burck Smith
That said, these deals and actions worry me. Not because they are asking students to pay more – students always have the option to pay more – but because they do not give the students options to pay less.
Pay less? In these budget times? Any student who passed Econ 101 can tell you that, in a perfect market, price restrictions cause capacity constraints. State-mandated tuition levels and political resistance to tuition increases certainly qualify as price restrictions for public colleges. Therefore, the way to increase capacity is to allow higher prices for those willing to pay for it through a provider that’s not subject to state oversight. While these deals will undoubtedly allow greater enrollments and expand access to higher education, they do nothing to address the core failures of higher education economics. Indeed, higher education, abetted by an outdated accrediting and financial aid model, dramatically overprices many courses.
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Economist Paul Romer wryly noted that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.” Indeed, the higher education financial crisis presents an opportunity to examine basic pricing and financing assumptions in higher education (emphasis DSC). Agreements like the ones made by Bristol and in California should be welcomed as a way to expand capacity in high-demand fields. However, such agreements can only be embraced if similar agreements are made or policies enacted that allow students to more easily receive credit for taking much more affordable courses at other institutions and in other formats. If public colleges plan to allow students to pay variable tuition for more expensive courses, they should also allow variable pricing for less expensive courses. With many education providers – for-profit, nonprofit, accredited and unaccredited – available to provide additional educational capacity, colleges and their legislative overseers need to look at partnerships that will help students reduce tuition in addition to those that increase it. Given that this is in the student’s interest, not the institution’s, this might be the most unnatural act of all (emphasis DSC).
From DSC:
  • The alluded to agreements tell me (again) that this is a game-changing environment. We aren’t going back to the way things were 5-10 years ago.
  • Also, I agree with Burck’s thinking here in that we need models that will cost the students less — not just models that more expensive to offer/provide.  Again, that’s not to say that the models that cost more are bad. In fact, if you are a student meeting in a face-to-face class that is being taught by an experienced faculty member and that only has 15-25 students in it, you are — and will be — paying a higher price for that type of excellent learning environment. This is reasonable.
  • But institutions of higher education need to work even harder to offer a greater variety of delivery methods and at a variety of prices. I propose that we offer more blended and online-methods  — as well as face-to-face methods — but that have online-based access to faculty members, tutors, guides. We need to think about what options might be out there for pricing our offerings…along those lines, here’s a graphic I created last July:
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UC panel outlines drastic reforms – The Huffington Post — via Ray Schroeder

On 04/02/2010, in budgets, business side of he, changing business models, game-changing environment, higher education, strategy, by Daniel Christian

UC panel outlines drastic reforms – The Huffington Post — [via Ray Schroeder, and his comments below]

The University of California Commission on the Future met today to discuss a host of major changes to the school system, including substantial student fee hikes and three-year bachelor’s degree option. According to the Daily Californian: Recommendations from the group include the implementation of online courses in order to increase student access to courses, decrease the time necessary to acquire a degree and reduce the costs of education to both students and the state. The report recommends “the pursuit of the pilot project being coordinated by the Office of the President which … will develop and deliver up to 40 online undergraduate courses, evaluating their quality, learning effectiveness, workload impacts (and) costs.”

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The big questions: Now what? — from weblogg-ed

On 03/24/2010, in change, curriculum, game-changing environment, K-12 related, leadership, passions, policy, strategy, teachers, by Daniel Christian

The big questions: Now what? — from weblogg-ed

So as of today, 220 of you were kind enough to vote on what you thought were the 10 most important questions from the list that we generated at Educon. Here are the “winners” at the moment:

  1. How do we support the changing role of teacher? 116
  2. What is the role of the teacher? 110
  3. How do we help students discover their passions? 110
  4. What is the essential learning that schools impart to students? 109
  5. What is the purpose of school? 102
  6. How do we adapt our curriculum to the technologies that kids are already using? 100
  7. What does and educated person look like today? 97
  8. How do we change policy to support more flexible time and place learning? 97
  9. What are the essential practices of teachers in a system where students are learning outside of school? 92
  10. How do we ensure those without privilege have equal access to quality education and opportunity? 92

And here were the next three that didn’t quite make the cut:

  • What is preventing us from being adaptable to change? 79
  • How do you validate or evaluate informal learning? 77
  • How do we measure or assess the effectiveness of individualized self-directed learning outside of school? 68
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Becta is Fit for the Future (March 2010)

On 03/24/2010, in cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, future, future of higher education, global / globalization, higher education, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, pace of change, strategy, UK, by Daniel Christian

Becta is Fit for the Future (March 2010)
This project will identify opportunities that technology will bring to education over the next few years…

Fit for the future is an exciting new project which aims to identify the opportunities and challenges that technology will bring the education and skills sectors over the next 5-6 years and work with leaders, practitioners and the technology industry to develop practical, real-world solutions.

The rapid pace of change and innovation in technology means that the education and skills sector constantly needs to adapt to the technical and social impact of new developments. Fit for the Future is about looking several years ahead and making decisions today that will make us ready for tomorrow’s world (emphasis DSC — and a quick comment: this is a very smart strategy).

The project began in Autumn 2009 and will run until Summer 2011. Becta is currently working with key leading educationalists, technologists, thinkers and experts to develop propositions in response to the key trends identified in the DCSF-funded programme Beyond Current Horizons.

Focusing on five themes, the ideas that these response groups generate will then be tested in real-world situations to assess if and how they could work on a wider scale.

The five themes are:

Theme 1 – Learners’ personal cloud: this theme explores the capacity of learners to constantly connect or engage with a network or school at any time or place and investigates their experiences and expectations of personal virtual environments and personalised data.

Theme 2 – Learning beyond a single setting: this theme looks at how learning is increasingly taking place across multiple institutions or places (school, home libraries, museums, employers) and explores how technology can support this in a revised 14-19 curriculum.

Theme 3 – Making the most of data: looks at how technology can be used to make better use of the huge amount of data that is constantly generated in the life of a learner and increasingly being used to build profiles about them.

Theme 4 – New Knowledge Skills: Our future economy will be heavily reliant on innovation, research and development, problem solving and digital capability. This theme aims to better understand what competencies, skills and knowledge will be required of both students and teachers, particularly in relation to STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths).

Theme 5 – Education across borders: Learners and educators now have access to resources not just from their immediate surroundings but from across the globe. This theme explores the potential creation of educational franchises across national boundaries supported by technology-based resources and networks.

Beyond Current Horizons -- UK

Beyond Current Horizons -- 6 possible scenarios for higher ed

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Incorporating innovation into strategic planning that will enrich learning — from the Innovative Educator

On 03/24/2010, in innovation, K-12 related, leadership, policy, strategy, by Daniel Christian

Incorporating innovation into strategic planning that will enrich learning — from the Innovative Educator

From DSC:
Some quotes that jumped out at me include:

As innovative educators, students, leaders, and families, are well aware, technology is just a tool. In and of itself technology does not equate to either innovation or greater effectiveness.

I’ve heard one too many educational leader, teacher or parent proudly state that they are part of an innovative school as evidenced by the fact that they have laptops or Smartboards in every classroom. That is not impressive. What is impressive is when the conversation begins with how student learning is enriched in new ways and learners are engaged with innovative tools and ideas.

Here are some ideas on how your school can get started on the road to developing a strategic plan for learning…

From DSC:
The keys here for me are to have a strategy on where and how you are going to innovate. The status quo must go.

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Universities look into the future – from the BBC

On 03/22/2010, in change, changing business models, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, disruption, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, higher education, online learning, pace of change, strategy, student-related, traditional / tradition, UK, universities, by Daniel Christian

The current funding crisis will transform Britain's universities by 2020.

Quotes below — with emphasis from DSC

Already more than one in three students studies part-time and one in six is from overseas.

There will be more mature students, more studying part-time, more living in their own or their parents’ homes, and many more studying online.”

There will be more tailor-made vocational courses, operated in partnership with individual companies and employers.

There will be more “pick-and-mix” degrees, with students accumulating course credits at different universities, even across different countries, and with gaps for employment in between.

Students will increasingly become “consumers” as we reach the tipping-point where their contribution to the cost of the degree is greater than that made by the government.

Private providers will take over an increasing share of the university market.

The all-round university will increasingly lose out to more specialised institutions.

Finally, universities will become more global.

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