Could “Badges for Lifelong Learning” be our tipping point? –– from hastac.org by Cathy Davidson

Excerpt:

As more and more fascinating and creative and surprising applications to our DML Badges for Lifelong Learning Competition flood in (we’re at almost 100 and the competition does not close until the end of today), I am wondering if, a hundred years from now, some historian ploughing through the dusty data archives of the Internet, will see this moment as digital learning’s tipping point. I mean that.

This could be our tipping point for how we measure, the entry point to thinking up an array of new forms of deciding what counts for our era.

So many of us work in schools or in jobs where what counts has been decided for us. The array of badging systems in these applications is starting to suggest that there are many, many of us who are frustrated with our inherited systems and want to come up with new ways of deciding what we want to count, what we want to value and acknowledge and credit and reward. A badge system can be the symbol of all that, visible proof of  some quality of participation and contribution that previously wasn’t even defined.

 

Cloud Learning as Universal Primary Education — from Teemu Arina

Excerpts:

The internet is lowering the transaction costs of learning. This leads to a situation where learning happens more and more in the open markets, in a distributed and decentralized manner. It is obvious that the primary interface will be based on mobile, cloud-based devices. Some principles…

There are effectively three levels of certification: 1st hand, 2nd hand and 3rd hand certification.

  • 1st hand certification is what you say you know.
    In the old world you would describe your skills in a resume and leave it to the employer to evaluate if that holds true. In the new world you can make your work and learning processes visible as it happens, demonstrating progress and increasing the believability of your 1st hand descriptions. A simple blog (a log of thoughts) makes reflection visible  and demonstrates the evolution and iteration of thinking as it happens.
  • 2nd hand certification is what others say about you.
    In the old world you would describe your references in a resume and leave it to the employer to call these references to evaluate if these people really value your work and learning. In the new world people accumulate links, likes and comments to the resources you produce on social networks. A Klout score on social media or a personal stock price based on social media activity on EmpireAvenue demonstrate your social capital through a simple metric. The question is, are you making an impact with your progress, enabling other people to build on top of your work through reflection and co-creation, or are you effectively invisible to others?
  • 3rd hand certification is what an authority says about you.
    In the old world you would get a certificate on hand to add in your resume that you have demonstrated the ability to pass a specific rat test (a school). This doesn’t necessarily mean you have mastered all the topics involved, but it demonstrates that you have been capable of passing such tests under the supervision of an authority. In the new world a single test in isolation is not enough but your ability to solve problems in connection with others.

Michigan universities, state lawmakers look for ways to bring down price of higher education — from mlive.com by Lindsay Knake | The Saginaw News

Also:

Growing U.S. Jobs Challenge - McKinsey Quarterly -- June2011

Also see:

  • Future of Work Survey Findings: Focusing on the Future?– from thefutureofwork.net
  • How Technology Is Eliminating Higher-Skill Jobs — from NPR.org by Chris Arnold
  • Difference Engine: Luddite legacy — from economist.com
    Excerpt:
    There is a good deal of truth in that. But it misses a crucial change that economists are loth to accept, though technologists have been concerned about it for several years. This is the disturbing thought that, sluggish business cycles aside, America’s current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much. The evidence is irrefutable that computerised automation, networks and artificial intelligence (AI)—including machine-learning, language-translation, and speech- and pattern-recognition software—are beginning to render many jobs simply obsolete.
    This is unlike the job destruction and creation that has taken place continuously since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, as machines gradually replaced the muscle-power of human labourers and horses. Today, automation is having an impact not just on routine work, but on cognitive and even creative tasks as well. A tipping point seems to have been reached, at which AI-based automation threatens to supplant the brain-power of large swathes of middle-income employees.

 

Addendum on 11/22/11:

New College Board Trends Reports Price of College Continues to Rise Nationally, with Dramatic Differences in Pricing Policies from State to State — from collegeboard.org
Increases in federal tax credits, combined with growth in grant aid, help some students cover rising expenses
10/25/2011

Key Tuition and Fee Findings:

  • Published in-state tuition and fees at public four-year institutions average $8,244 in 2011-12, $631 (8.3 percent) higher than in 2010-11. Average total charges, including tuition and fees and room and board, are $17,131, up 6.0 percent.
  • Published out-of-state tuition and fees at public four-year colleges and universities average $20,770, $1,122 (5.7 percent) higher than in 2010-11. Average total charges are $29,657, up 5.2 percent.
  • Published in-state tuition and fees at public two-year colleges average $2,963, $236 (8.7 percent) higher than in 2010-11.
  • Published tuition and fees at private nonprofit four-year colleges and universities average $28,500 in 2011-12, $1,235 (4.5 percent) higher than in 2010-11. Average total charges, including tuition and fees and room and board, are $38,589, up 4.4 percent.
  • Published tuition and fees at for-profit institutions average an estimated $14,487 in 2011-12, 3.2 percent higher than in 2010-11.

Student loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion this year — from USAToday.com by Cauchon

Excerpts:

Students and workers seeking retraining are borrowing extraordinary amounts of money through federal loan programs, potentially putting a huge burden on the backs of young people looking for jobs and trying to start careers.

The amount of student loans taken out last year crossed the $100 billion mark for the first time and total loans outstanding will exceed $1 trillion for the first time this year (emphasis DSC).  Americans now owe more on student loans than on credit cards, reports the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Students are borrowing twice what they did a decade ago after adjusting for inflation, the College Board reports.

“It’s going to create a generation of wage slavery,” says Nick Pardini, a Villanova University graduate student in finance (emphasis DSC) who has warned on a blog for investors that student loans are the next credit bubble — with borrowers, rather than lenders, as the losers.

 

From DSC:
Again, this speaks for the need for higher education to work hard on reinventing ourselves — innovating and thinking creatively to come up with significantly lower cost alternatives in offering a quality education to the youth of today. 

 

 

Check out some of these announcements from The Future of State Universities 2011 Conference

 


From DSC:
Following are some of the announcements from last week’s the Future of State Universities Conference (oddly enough, I couldn’t find any blogs, recordings, etc. here…)


 

————————————————-
October 7, 2011
————————————————-

10:05 AM – 87% of the respondents to the pre-conference survey believe that public universities will undergo major structural changes in the future.

————————————————-

9:15 AM –Two thirds of students graduating with 4-year degrees last year, owed on average $23,186 in student loans. CNN Money

Student loan debt has eclipsed credit card debt at $1.0 trillion and counting.

————————————————-

In 2010 Open Universities Australia grew 35%–the largest increase on record. The Australian

————————————————-
October 6, 2011
————————————————-

3:45 PM – 57% of people surveyed by Pew and the Chronicle say that the cost of college outweighs its value. Boston Magazine

Unemployment rate for people under 25 is 54% and 9 out of 10 college grads are planning to move back in with their parents. Boston Magazine

————————————————-

2:45 PM – Only 11% of respondents to the pre-conference survey believe that student readiness for college is stable or increasing.

————————————————-

2:00 PM – 100% of presidents and 75% of provosts and deans that responded to the pre-conference survey believe that faculty interactions with students will change significantly in the coming years.

————————————————-

1:00 PM – Stanford professor Thrun offered his, “Introduction to Artificial Intelligence” course online and free. 130,000 students signed up. —They will get the same lectures as students paying $50,000, same assignments, same exams, and, if they pass, “a statement of accomplishment”, but not Stanford credit. “Literally,” Thrun says, “we can probably get the same quality of education I teach in class for 1 to 2 percent of the cost.” The New York Times

————————————————-

12:25 PM – iTunes U online is running 300 million downloads a year, with 350,000 lectures offered by more than 1,000 universities worldwide. BBC News Oxford has 10 million downloads—130,000 per week. More than half the people using them are from the US and China.

————————————————-

9:45 am – 50% of respondents to the pre-conference survey believe that foreign universities will increasingly become competitors with U.S. universities for U.S. students.

95% believe that foreign students will be a major source of students in the future.

————————————————-

9:35 am – Did you know: global higher education enrollment increased 53% in the last decade?

Did you know: 20% of all college students in the world are studying outside of their home country.


————————————————-
October 5, 2011
————————————————-

5:00 pm – Pre-conference Survey:

  • 90% of respondents to the pre-conference survey believe that state funding for higher education will continue to decline.
  • 85% believe that federal funding for higher education will decrease in the future.
  • 75% believe that public support for higher education is destined to decline as costs increase.
  • 13% believe that public universities are well prepared to market their online programs effectively.

 


From DSC:
Besides the words “reinvent” and  innovation— and the phrase “the perfect storm” — the following graphic comes to my mind yet again:

 

Staying Relevant

The University of Wherever — from The New York Times by Bill Keller

Excerpt:

The traditional university, in his view, serves a fortunate few, inefficiently, with a business model built on exclusivity. “I’m not at all against the on-campus experience,” he said. “I love it. It’s great. It has a lot of things which cannot be replaced by anything online. But it’s also insanely uneconomical.”

Disrupt is right. It would be an earthquake for the majority of colleges that depend on tuition income rather than big endowments and research grants. Many could go the way of local newspapers. There would be huge audiences and paychecks for superstar teachers, but dimmer prospects for those who are less charismatic.

An educational system built for another time, another student demographic — by Lloyd Armstrong, University Professor and Provost Emeritus at the University of Southern California

 

 

Excerpt:

…This is probably because much of our education system originally was designed around the traditional student and his or her needs, and the leading institutions in the system still serve primarily the traditional student. As a consequence, potential changes in educational approach or organization are most often judged according to whether or not they will benefit those traditional students who enjoy the benefits of residential life and a manageable financial burden. But, as this report describes, times have changed, the composition of the student body has changed, and because many of our institutions have not changed accordingly, the results are not pretty.

In particular, the report focuses on the plight of part time students, and shows that graduation rates for part time students at all levels – certificates, associates, and bachelors – are only about 40% as high as for full time students (if one looks at a time period twice the nominal period required for graduation). Graduation rates for both full time and part time students who are African-American, Hispanic, older, or low income are considerably lower than for the general student body, and the part-time “penalty” is somewhat higher than for the general population.

All in all, a very important report, with sensible and meaningful recommendations. I can’t give it an A, however, because I think its basic conclusion in not bold enough – and maybe not even correct. The recommendation is basically to fiddle the system to enable part time students to behave more like full time students, assuming that if they can behave more like full time students they will graduate like full time students. That is not a bad idea, of course, but why not start from the premise that the system itself needs to be redesigned so that it focuses on the needs of the part time students? Maybe the problem is not simply the full time/part time divide, but that the system responds or does not respond to the many and highly varied needs of part time (and by extension, non-traditional) students.

 

 From DSC:
Nice report — well done.  My only wish here would be that the costs of obtaining an education were discussed more — as one of the causes of this issue but also a potential/significant piece of the solution.  I think cost is one of the key factors as to why more students are becoming part-time students — and thus are more likely susceptible to “life getting in the way.”

There was some mention of this in the solution proposed — which was good to see:

4. Restructure programs to fit busy lives. It’s time to face facts: College students today are going to have to work while trying to graduate. What else can they do when college is so expensive? (emphasis DSC)

 

 

 

Addendum on 9-21-11:

A visualization of the United States Debt — from usdebt.kleptocracy.us

From DSC:
Though this is the U.S. debt, the ramifications of this affect the entire globe. I believe my cousin, Mr. Stephen Gibson, is correct when he says that we may well be heading towards a “Global Reset.”

 

usdebt.kleptocracy.us

 

 

http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/

 

Also see:

usdebtclock.org

— as of 8/24/11 around noon

 

Addendums later on 8/24/11 from Academic Impressions:

 

First day of sessionMPR Photo/Jeffrey Thompson

Just what are states pledging for higher ed these days?

  • Fidelity® study finds significant shifts over 5-yr period in how families tackle rising college costs
    Fifth Annual College Savings Indicator Study finds parents projected to meet only 16% of college costs, despite improved savings habits
    BOSTON – Fidelity Investments®, a leader in helping families save for college, today announced the results of its fifth annual College Savings Indicator study, which found significant shifts in savings behavior from 2007 to 2011, with more families: 1) starting to save in the preschool years despite financial pressures, 2) seeking guidance and saving for college using a dedicated account, such as a tax-advantaged 529 college savings plan, and 3) making shared sacrifices to achieve their college savings goals.

    The study features the College Savings Indicator, a calculation of the percentage of projected college costs the typical American family is on track to cover, based on its current and expected savings. After four consecutive years of decline, the Indicator held steady to the prior year at 16 percent, down from 24 percent in 2007, when Fidelity first launched the study. While overall preparedness has declined, a larger percentage of parents — more than two-thirds (67 percent) — have begun saving for college costs, compared with 58 percent five years ago.

Excerpt:

The news this summer is teeming with trillions. The national debt is more than $14 trillion. In a recent report, the credit rating agency Moody’s says the 1,600-plus U.S.-based companies it rates harbored some $1.2 trillion in cash at the end of 2010. The newly minted congressional supercommittee is charged with finding ways to pare the federal deficit by at least $1.2 trillion in the next decade.

Trillion. It’s the new black — tres chic, tres cher. The higher-water mark. If you’re not talking trillions, you’re talking chump change. All of a sudden we are tossing the term around like we understand it.

 

From DSC:
As always with my Learning Ecosystems blog, see the tags and categories that I referenced here as to how I think this item is especially relevant.

 

 

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