"Worth Reading" is a hand-picked weekly collection of new and not-so-new articles, ideas, events and other items for busy professionals in higher education that prefer to spend their reading wisely.  :: The Current Ecosystem of Learning Management Systems in Higher Education: Student, Faculty, and IT Perspectives Excerpt: "This study explores faculty and student perspectives on learning management systems in the context of current institutional investments. In 2013, nearly 800 institutions participated in the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS) survey, sharing their current information technology practices and metrics across all IT service domains." Software Will Not ‘Eat’ Education Article challenges Marc Andreessen’s argument that . . . "Technology is not driving down costs in . . . education, but it should…[Access is] the critical thing. We need to get every kid on the planet access to what we consider today to be a top Ivy League education. The only way to do that is to apply technology." Why Federal College Ratings Won’t Rein In Tuition Excerpt: "College costs have been rising for decades. Slowing — or even better, reversing — that trend would get more people into college and help reduce student debt. The Obama administration is working on an ambitious plan intended to rein in college costs, and it deserves credit for tackling this tough job. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to work, at least not in controlling tuition at public colleges, which enroll a vast majority of students. The plan might dampen prices at expensive private colleges, but some of them may close if they can’t survive on lower tuition." University Innovation Alliance Excerpt: "By failing to produce enough graduates, our nation is failing to capitalize on its economic potential. In 2008, McKinsey and Company reported that the education achievement gap cost between $1.3 trillion and 2.3 trillion in lost gross domestic produce because "American workers are, on average, less able to develop, master and adapt tone productivity enhancing technologies." ::  Dr. Keith Hampson is Managing Director, Client Innovation at Acrobatiq, a Carnegie Mellon University venture born out of CMU’s long history in cognitive science, human-computer interaction, and software engineering. @Acrobatiq

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On a recent trip to my parents’ home, through miles of congested highway on the outskirts of a city that’s grown far too quickly, I was reminded of how the automobile market in the mid-20th century gave rise to the suburbs, or at the very least, played a central role. Of course, this wasn’t the intention. But technological innovation has a tendency to lead to unintended consequences. The same might prove to be true of competency-based education (CBE). The current focus on CBE will certainly lead to more competency-based programs, but it may also lead to a greater focus on the measurement of learning which, in turn, could ultimately have significant, long-term implications for all of higher education. The Rise and Rise of Competency-Based Education The excitement about CBE is justified. CBE gives shape and direction to the long overdue need to personalize learning in higher education; it allows students to progress at their own pace; it incorporates the practice of prior learning assessment (indirectly through self-paced learning or directly through credential recognition), and offers a logical framework for aligning the demands of the labour market with higher education. CBE works especially well for adults that are returning to school to complete programs of study, and it has the potential to reduce costs for students, institutions, and taxpayers by shortening the time to completion. Not too shabby. Nevertheless, CBE’s greatest impact may be derived from the fact that it is far more dependent on accurate, detailed and frequent measurement of student learning than most other instructional models. An instructional model that allows students to progress at different speeds and to cover different curriculum (as a result of existing knowledge), needs to be especially confident that the student has truly mastered the curriculum. Traditional instructional models may have their weaknesses, but they do minimize risk. Rigorous assessment is the means of managing this risk. The heightened emphasis on assessment in CBE also stems from the focus on demonstrable and measurable learning outcomes. Generally, the greater the emphasis on clearly defining learning objectives, the greater the commitment to measuring results. Politics is another factor. CBE, as well as any other emerging instructional model, must be especially rigorous if it is to be accepted by regulators and other stakeholders. Institutions at the forefront of CBE will attest the additional scrutiny. (Ginger Rogers not only had to match Fred Estaire’s dancing, but do it backwards and in heels.) CBE’s Ripple Effects Developing new and better means of assessment is not been a preoccupation of higher education. Energies have been directed elsewhere. But the growing pressure for accountability, and with new leadership from CBE, the tide may be turning. Impact could be felt in several ways. Increasing the emphasis placed on outcomes may modify how students and other stakeholders think of what constitute the "best" universities. Traditionally, great universities are those with the most academically skilled applicants, the most research-productive faculty, and the most exclusive admissions policies, and, ironically, those with the highest tuition (sticker-prices). (Lloyd Armstong has nicely described these and other inputs as "surrogates of quality".) A renewed focus on measuring learning outcomes will help us focus on the student’s actual learning gains. Someday we may come to believe that the "best" universities are not necessarily the most exclusive. CBE may also help to open the door a bit wider to alternative education providers and new forms of credentials. "Badges" and other emerging models will be aided by the rise of objective, measurable and reported learning outcomes (See, for example: The Carnegie Unit: A Century-Old Standard in a Changing Education Landscape, January 2015). Rigorous assessment enables students, regulators and other stakeholders to make more thoughtful comparisons of value. The most far-reaching and unpredictable impact, though, may be in stimulating new ideas and better approaches to instruction. Improved understanding of what works and what doesn’t in teaching and learning is the foundation of innovation; it’s the means by which we move beyond anecdotal evidence and ingrained assumptions about what constitutes effective instructional strategies. Insight is the first step, but we need substantial, rigorous information about the effects of our work to move forward. More Reading on Competency-Based Higher Education Credit For Actually Learning — Not Time In Class — Is Shaking Up Higher Education Accreditation in a Rapidly Changing World The Opportunities and Challenges of Competency-Based Education Getting Credit for What You Know    

:: The growing space accorded the topic of innovation in higher education has two sources: a recognition of the importance of the institution to 21st century modern economies and, simultaneously, a sense amongst some educators, pundits and government officials that the institutions isn’t necessarily prepared for the challenges that await it in the coming years.  Students and their families perceive a degree as a minimum requirement for entry (or maintenance) of a middle-class existence. For nations, higher education is a key means by which prosperity can be maintained in the face of growing international competition for jobs and investment.  However, tuition fees have increased faster than inflation for decades; student debt surpassed credit card and auto loans, and more public funds are being directed to cover growing health care costs. Maybe most troubling of all, there is a growing scepticism that higher education is producing adequate improvement in learning.  The concept of innovation has lost much of its value, though; stripped of a sufficiently precise meaning by overuse and hyperbole (we’re looking at you, content marketing-types). We may know innovation "when we see it", but a more tangible concept and measurable would be helpful as higher ed rallies its energies to rethink and rework how it serves students and the broader society.  In our small way, starting today, we want to bring some order and clarity back to the concept of innovation. We are producing a set of resources for professionals in higher education who want to take practical, concrete steps toward increasing the pace and quality of innovative work within their institutions.  This will require, first of all, addressing innovation specifically in terms relevant to higher education. Much of the literature about innovation comes from the world of business and, within that realm, tends to emphasize product innovation over process and service innovations - which are equally important. While the vast literature on innovation is helpful - providing us with concepts and processes that can be used across different industries - special care needs to be taken to tweak these theories, techniques and processes, to fit the unique characteristics of higher education.  Topics we’ll address in this series include:   Process versus product innovation; How to cultivate Innovation in your department; How innovations typically unfold over time and across different groups; Communication strategies you can use to help people make difficult changes; The growing importance of business model innovation to higher education; Common obstacles to innovation in higher education. Innovation Series Posts Change & Innovation in Online Higher Education

:: We like to think of ourselves as open to change. Indeed, we often see ourselves as one of the "change agents" in our organization, not the person that needs to be constantly prodded to do things differently. But the truth is less flattering. All of us resist change more often than not. The greater the perceived change, the stronger our resistance. Why? Because change is uncomfortable and occasionally threatening. Change can affect our status, reduce our level of control and, worst of all, makes us look bad. Although we’re just as likely to benefit from the change as not, history suggests that we will work harder to hang on to what we currently have than to obtain something new. Our efforts to innovate in online higher education runs headlong into our resistance to change. Technology tends to provoke an especially fierce resistance — for good reason. First, because technology is unfolding and shifting so quickly and, more to the point, because it has the capacity to reconfigure the world of work — an area of obvious importance to anyone with a family to support. The benefit of technology is also our source of anxiety. Advances in technology typically replace lower level tasks, allowing us to focus on higher, knowledge-intensive responsibilities. The subsequent improvement in productivity can raise the standard of living. But in the process, technology upsets the existing labour market. Sometimes this means jobs are eliminated outright; more often, though, it simply changes the range of duties required for existing positions. (There are, apparently, more bank tellers in 2015 than there were when ATM’s were first introduced.) Change in online higher education has been slow. Despite forecasts of "transformation", "revolution" and (God help us) "disruption", the vast majority of our institutions continue to operate more or less as they did when "distant education" first became a going concern and 56.6k modems were the norm. The literature on innovation can help us understand our current predicament and offer tactics to stimulate faster and hopefully better quality innovation. But the bulk of this literature comes from the world of business - in particular, consumer and technology industries. Higher education, as is often stated, is unique. The institution operates by its own set of rules; consequently, we need to develop theories and practices around innovation that suit the character of the institution. Selected Principles of Innovation As a first step, we can consider a few of the more useful principles of innovation in terms of how they relate to higher education. The Free Flow of Ideas Organizations stagnate without regular exposure to ideas and information from a range of sources (the same might be said of societies.) It’s oxygen for innovation. While higher education has good processes in place to encourage the free flow of information, we’ve been less successful with respect to teaching and learning. A minority of academics regularly attend conferences and other events on teaching and learning. Few make the study of pedagogy a standard part of their workflow. Indeed, it’s not uncommon for academics in a single department to have never witnessed classes offered by their colleagues. (This was one of my greatest surprises when I joined faculty.) Derek Bok went further: "A remarkable feature of American colleges is the lack of attention that most faculties pay to the growing body of research about how much students are learning and how they could be taught to learn more. Hundreds of studies have accumulated on how undergraduates develop during college and what effects different methods of teaching have on improving critical thinking, moral reasoning, quantitative literacy, and other skills vital to undergraduate education. One would think faculties would receive these findings eagerly. Yet one investigator has found that fewer than 10 percent of college professors pay any attention to such work when they prepare for their classes." The limited flow of information about instruction in our institutions appears to have two distinct origins: a lack of rewards for effective teaching (for the instructor, certainly, but also for the institution) and the degree of autonomy afforded higher education professionals, which supports - albeit unintentionally - impenetrable one-person silos. Freedom to Fail Innovation involves risk. If we try something new, it may not work out as hoped. But without the freedom to screw up, innovation has little chance to take hold. It’s true that the meaning of failure has undergone some modification of late; it’s no longer the end of the world, according to some. The romanticization of entrepreneurialism and "start-ups" in North America during the past couple of decades brought with it the notion that we ought not to fear failure, but "fail fast, fail often". Failure, here, is a symptom of a robust and sufficiently innovative economy. But it would be overstating the case to suggest that this logic has taken hold in our larger, more well-established organisations. Universities like many other mature organizations still treat failure as something to avoid at all costs. If you’re going to fail, best keep it to yourself. More optimistically, the relatively high degree of autonomy afforded many educational professionals may make it easier for new instructional approaches and technology to be tested on a small, less risky scale. A Sense of Urgency John Kotter popularized the idea that leaders need to create a "sense of urgency" within the organization in order to drive substantial change. The degree to which this tactic maps effectively to higher education is an open question, though. The tactic of creating a sense of urgency implies a top-down leadership model: the leaders are in a position to foster a set of beliefs widely across the organization that leads to a particular orientation and set of behaviours. Higher education, however, has a far less centralized and formal management structure than most other types of organisations. University presidents may have plans, but faculty - as a result of culture and a shared governance structure - aren’t always especially concerned. CEO’s in other organizations are not subject to non-confidence votes and the like. Second, despite the very real challenges facing higher education, the fact remains that demand for post-secondary education has been growing for decades, despite tuition increases above inflation rates. The notion that young adults should aspire to attend college has never been more widely accepted. The sense of urgency, then, will need to come from concerns other than a belief that the institution is under threat. :: In the next installment in our "Innovation Series" we will look at the obstacles in the way of innovation in higher education and how we might best navigate them. The introduction to the series can be found here.  

:: Five Ways Universities Have Already Changed in the 21st Century "Global higher education underwent a period of remarkable change in the first 15 years of the 21st century. Five key trends affecting universities around the world illustrate how, despite increased access to information, our understanding of higher education remains limited." Read the full article.  :: Platinum Pay in Ivory Towers "Ideally, higher education is dedicated to values different from those that govern Wall Street and corporate America. It supposedly calls students to more soulful concerns, even to sacrifice.But that message is muddled when some of the people who run colleges wallow in payments and perks that would once have been considered vulgar." Read the full article.  :: What’s the Point of a Professor? "For a majority of undergraduates, beyond the two and a half hours per week in class, contact ranges from negligible to nonexistent. In their first year, 33 percent of students report that they never talk with professors outside of class, while 42 percent do so only sometimes. Seniors lower that disengagement rate only a bit, with 25 percent never talking to professors, and 40 percent sometimes." Read the full article. :: The Category of Digital Courseware: Emerging Trends "Time for Class: Lessons for the Future of Digital Courseware in Higher Education" is a new three-part series from education consultants Tyton Partners that considers the current state of the digital courseware market. Read the full article.        

:: MIT and German Research on the [Appalling] Use of Video in xMOOCs Useful review by my favourite blogger, Dr. Tony Bates, on the use and misuse. Excerpt: "We found documentation on the use of video as an instructional tool for online learning to be a notably under-explored field. To date, little consideration has been given to the pedagogical affordances of video, what constitutes an effective learning video, and what learning situations the medium of video is best suited for. 2. On the whole, we found that video is the main method of content delivery in nearly all MOOCs. MOOC videos tend to be structured as short pieces of content, often separated by assessment questions. This seems to be one of the few best practices that is widely accepted within the field. 3. We found two video production styles that are most commonly used: (1) the talking head style, where the instructor is recorded lecturing into the camera, and (2) the tablet capture with voiceover style (e.g. Khan Academy style). 4. It appears that the use of video in online learning is taken for granted, and there is often not enough consideration given to whether or not video is the right medium to accomplish a MOOC’s pedagogical goals. 5. Video tends to be the most expensive part of MOOC production. There is a tendency for institutions to opt for a professional, studio-style setup when producing video… but.. there is little to no research showing the relevance of production value for learning. 6. More research is needed on how people learn from video." Read more. :: Who Are Your Online Students? An interesting summary of research on the characteristics of the online learner. Highlights include: Competition for online students is increasing The main motivation for online students is to improve their work prospects In online education, everything is local Affordability is a critical variable We could do better Blended learning is an option - for some The program or major drives the selection process. Online students are diverse Cost matters Read more.  :: What Will Education Look Like in a More Open Future? Excerpt: "In my book, OPEN: How We’ll Work, Live And Learn In The Future, I argue that a relentless focus upon high-stakes accountability — through student testing and teacher evaluation — has done little to improve outcomes, and has de-professionalized and demoralized teachers. On the other hand, the flourishing of social collaboration among educators offers hope for a profession under siege, because it’s through self-determining their own professional learning that teachers and administrators can both offset the worst effects of being told how to do their jobs and accelerate innovation. After the failure of command-and-control, there is now a growing interest in self-managed work-groups, radical transparency and open learning systems as productivity and innovation drivers. What would that look like for educators?" Read more. :: Does Assessment Make Colleges Better? Let Me Count the Ways Excerpt: "Erik Gilbert’s recent commentary in The Chronicle, "Does Assessment Make Colleges Better? Who Knows?" raises an important question about the value of assessment. As one who has worked in education for 15 years and dutifully assessed learning in his classes, Gilbert now wonders if that measurement has been a worthwhile use of time. He’s not certain that the tweaks he’s made (and they’ve been mostly tweaks) have been meaningful enough to merit the time all that assessing has required. Gilbert’s question itself contains an argument for the value of assessment. And he may have missed that value because it occurred where he wasn’t expecting to find it." Read more. 

When co-founder Larry Page recently announced Google’s reorganization, he referred to the company as "still a teenager." Incorporated in 1998,  Google is 17 years old, making Page and co-founder Sergey Brin 17-year-old businessmen. Like 17-year-olds, they are are tired of routine and  want the flexibility to do things they like doing.  Restructuring Google frees its co-founders from the mundane tasks of running a large company. As Page writes, it allows them "to do things other people think are crazy but we are super excited about." While the Google founders are getting what they want, most 17-year-olds getting ready for college will not. According to Remediation—Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere, Complete College America’s study of public institutions in 33 states including Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Texas, over 50% of students starting college or community college test into remedial courses.  In California, 68% of students entering the state college system test into remediation. These courses rehash high school material. To adapt a University of Chicago motto, this is where excitement and freedom come to die. The proof is in how many people don’t go on to graduate.  According to the study, about 40% of community college students don’t even complete their remedial courses. Less than 10% of community college students who finish remedial classes graduate within 3 years. Only about 35% who start in remedial courses in four-year colleges obtain a degree in 6 years. Factor in the cost of remedial courses, courses that do not count towards a degree, and you have a formula for failure. To make things even worse, placement in remediation is often based on one test that researchers say is a poor indicator of student potential. To address this situation, educators are calling for reforms. Some states are giving remedial students a choice of whether to take remedial courses or directly enroll in regular college courses. Others are eliminating remedial education as prerequisites for regular courses, allowing students to take them as co-requisites. Technology offers other ways to support students with weak skills in regular college courses. Digital adaptive learning programs can be adopted for all students in college courses. They address individual student abilities at every level, in effect, containing what might be called "embedded co-requisites," academic support where needed. As students learn, these self-paced digital programs assess their abilities, tailoring the material so that they get the most out of their time in the course. For example, if a student shows non-mastery in identifying evidence for historical argument after reading a text section, the program might give them more explanation, activities, or video on that subject. On the other hand, if a student shows mastery after one text section, they can immediately move forward. Adaptive programs also give instructors data on how each student is progressing in real time. Based on this data, instructors can reach out to students while they are learning instead of after they have failed a test. As students succeed at their own pace in courses that count, they will have greater motivation to complete their degrees. They might even enjoy the experience.

The growth of alternative education and training providers continues. Companies like Udemy, Udacity, Codecademy, Fulbridge and General Assembly appear to be settling in for the long run and are expected to be a significant component of the expanding learning eco-system for adults. Critics are beginning to ask how these alternative providers should fit into the regulatory and loan systems - questions raised by Andrew Kelly and Michael Horn in a very useful report, "Moving Beyond College: Rethinking Higher Education Regulation for an Unbundled World". Horn and Kelly view these providers as evidence of the unbundling of higher education. Colleges and universities bring together a wide range of services under one roof: learning, research, housing, career services, social networking, credentialing and more. In contrast, the alternative providers offer a relatively specific value set - courses on Ruby on Rails, or digital marketing techniques, or verification of skills, for example. The authors stress the importance of measuring and reporting on the quality and costs of these new providers as a key step in securing federal aid for students. Reporting on value has been difficult and often political in higher education, though most now recognize the importance of improved information in the hands of prospective learners. " . . . the logic of the market discipline - where consumers "vote with their feet" by rewarding quality providers with their business - depends on consumers having sufficient information on providers’ cost and quality to make these decisions. The truth, though, is that not all colleges serve students equally well, and it is difficult for students to distinguish the worthwhile investments from the bad ones." 4 Assessment of Learning Gains The reporting on value in higher education tends to focus on institutional performance as it relates to the student’s successful progression through an institution’s program of study: did the student graduate, how quickly, and did it ultimately lead to related and gainful employment. These new providers, though, should (and likely will) place greater emphasis on learning gains, rather than progress through a program. Students enrolled in narrowly defined educational experiences bring a different set of needs and expectations to the investment; they are more interested in how quickly and effectively they acquire specific skills and knowledge. Are they able, upon completion, to write code at the level promised by the educational organization? Systems that measure institutional performance are of less relevance. This requires a different set of metrics and analytics to measure outcomes. Learning analytics, such as that provided by Acrobatiq, focus on how well students have acquired specific skills and knowledge. This is a different, altogether far more ambitious objective, as it calls for careful and rigorous course design, as well as a deep integration of curriculum and software. Providers like General Assembly or Codecademy would be wise to seek out analytics software and services that can help them demonstrate the actual learning gains that take place over the relatively short duration of their courses and programs, in order to generate the kinds of evidence demanded by students, regulators and other stakeholders.

:: Data, Technology, and the Great Unbundling of Higher Education Colleges and universities must address several critical issues in the years ahead in order to prepare for the next seismic change: the unbundling of higher education. Excerpt: "American colleges and universities continue to navigate by the stars of rankings from U.S. News & World Report and other sources. These rankings are primarily derived from easy-to-measure inputs such as student selectivity, faculty resources (e.g., class size and student-to-faculty ratio), spending per student, library holdings, and research productivity. Not surprisingly, the country’s elite colleges and universities (those with the highest admissions standards) consistently rank at the top of these lists. The result? Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), notes: "No one in the United States tries to figure out what a great university is; they just look at the Ivy League." Read more. Also see our recent post on unbundling, here. :: Administrators Are People, Too An essay on the administrator-faculty tension from Inside Higher Ed.  Excerpt: "When I moved into administration after being a professor, a colleague who had made the same move years before told me to brace for the loss of my faculty friends. Impossible, I argued — we attended regular Friday cocktail hours, had fought and won battles across campus, supported each other across the thorny paths leading to tenure and promotion. We’d been through it all, and those are precisely the kinds of experiences that make for lasting relationships. I was wrong. My colleague was right." Read more. :: Academics,You Need to be Managed. It’s Time to Accept That A second attempt (in the same week, no less) to get people to rethink the divide between faculty and administration - from the Guardian.  Excerpt: "If we ask about their research, academics accuse us of ‘neo-liberalised surveillance’. But we have an academic background too, and need their support I work in a university that still has sabbaticals. It’s the largest investment we make in research. We ask staff for a short proposal about how their time is to be spent, and what they hope to gain from the experience. A number of staff have labelled this process a form of neo-liberalised surveillance. And this sums up the problem many of them have with management. I have just stepped down as an academic manager after nine years to return to my previous professorial career, teaching and researching. I have grown used to being seen as "the other side" by a minority of colleagues who seem to believe they are self-employed and not part of a large, complex organisation." Read more. :: 20 Years in E-Learning A recap of sorts from Mark Smithers, one of the more interesting practitioners and pundits in higher education technology.  Excerpt: "In June of this year it was twenty years since I set up my first web server for delivering e-learning courses. I’m using this anniversary to reflect on my experiences in educational technology over the last 20 years. I’ll have a look at some of the things we got right and some of the things we got wrong and why, after all these years, I’m still an optimist. What did we get right? Well a lot of people have done a lot of good things. There has been a huge amount of innovation at the edges of higher education. We’ve found out a lot about how people learn in higher education and the technology has allowed us to try things that just weren’t possible before. For me the highlights have been in following the work of George Siemens, Stephen Downes, Dave Cormier, Bonnie Stewart, Alec Couros, Steve Wheeler, Audrey Watters, Jim Groom, Catherine Cronin, Tony Bates, David Wiley, Doug Belshaw, Keith Hampson and in Australia and New Zealand Leigh Blackall, Joyce Seitzinger, Tim Klapdor, Sarah Thorneycroft, Dean Groom, David Jones and Kate Bowles. There are many others as well that I could mention." Read more.