A growing body of anecdotal evidence suggests that we may be in the early stages of an important trend in digital higher education, in which colleges and universities rethink and rework how they develop online course materials. The common approach, which took hold during the early days of online education in the late 1990s, and has its roots in classroom education, puts development in the hands of lone educators with limited time, expertise in course design, resources and incentives - what Tony Bates long ago coined the "cottage industry" model. The cottage model is giving way to more ambitious models of course development that draws on a team of specialists, software that actually does more than distribute the curriculum, rigorous attention to instructional principles, and, more often than not, longer development schedules. These new tactics have the potential to add significant value to online learning instruction. A handful of institutions in North America are experimenting with these new approaches in order to more fully leverage technology and its ability, for example, to personalize learning through adaptive software, engage learners through high-quality instructional media, use principles from games to stimulate retention, and automate feedback to increase retention. Institutions that successfully make this transition will surely pull ahead of competitors that remain stuck to the cottage model.   DIY Over the next month we’re putting together a set of posts that emphasize the various dimensions of this gradual transition away from the cottage model. In this first post we consider how DIY ("do-it-yourself") technologies and practices intersect with authoring in higher education and influence the possibilities for digital instructional media in higher education. DIY, here, is defined as the practice of putting the responsibility for development in the hands of individuals - in this case digital course materials - rather than teams of specialists, placed within the institution or by external parties. DIY has technological, organizational, as well as cultural dimensions. Technology has made DIY a key part of several industries, from accounting (Intuit, Quicken) to music recording (Garage Band). In the realm of education, the LMS was designed expressly to allow individual educators to create and deliver their own courses independently of substantial support. But DIY is also an ethos - a way of thinking -  that stresses the value of individuals having the capacity and freedom to create independently to meet their own needs. This logic is clearly evident in the "maker-movement" that emerged during the past decade.   DIY and Higher Ed DIY is unusually well-aligned with the traditional organizational structure, processes and culture of universities. The classroom model of higher education, upon which online education based its development processes, is essentially a one-person operation in which the educator assumes responsibility for virtually all aspects of the student’s experience. The significance of DIY to higher education is reinforced by its connection to value of academic freedom. For some, any attempts to rethink the course development process, particularly the academic’s role in the process, is perceived as a challenge to academic freedom. For others, though, the concept of academic freedom is best limited to ensuring the academic’s freedom to choose what subjects to research and teach, rather than how this work is done. Similarly, the DIY approach fits with the interest of institutions of higher education remain free of unwanted external influence, whether it be governmental or corporate.   Finding the Right Balance There is a great deal of support for the idea of DIY across North American culture at the moment - often with good reason. In music, we love the idea that creative musical artists can be free of the constraints imposed by a handful of monolithic record companies (e.g. Universal, Sony BMG). Artists don’t have to, as Seth Godin puts it, "wait to be picked"; they can simply employ increasingly inexpensive and easy-to-use software, Chinese-manufactured hardware, and hit "record".  International distribution is available through platforms like Youtube that rely on user-generated content. But the increased diversity in music that comes from DIY is less valuable in higher education and may, in fact, work against ensuring that students have access to a wide-range of well-funded, high-quality instructional materials. First, the need for diverse content is limited in higher education by the need to ensure that our various institutions and the programs they offer are sufficiently coordinated. This ensures, primarily, that the meaning of, for example, a Bachelors degree has a common value and, second, that our students (and faculty) can move between institutions as needed (high school, university, post-grad, labour market). These needs lead to a strong degree of consistency in curriculum and, in turn, diminish the importance of enabling diversity through DIY technologies and processes. Moreover, DIY, like the cottage model, operates on the assumption that individuals working in isolation can produce instructional content that, if not as good as what can be produced by a well-funded team of specialists, is "good enough". But good enough has different implications in different contexts: in music production, the risk of lower production value, for example, is socially and economically inconsequential. Indeed, some music fans may prefer the quality of lower-budget, less-polished efforts because they sound more "authentic" - a concept that has historically played a large role in the definition of value in music (see, for example, Frith, Simon). But there are an increasing number of things that simply can’t be achieved in digital higher education using the DIY model due to the need for higher levels of investment and specialized labor.  Too great a reliance on DIY models will mean that students don’t have access to these promising instructional models.  

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports When Pittsburgh Steelers’ James Harrison wrote on Instagram (#harrisonfamilyvalues) that he was returning his sons’ participation trophies because they were awarded "for nothing," he was probably unaware that his views on the feedback his sons got are in line with those of an educator halfway around the world. Australian professor John Hattie found teacher feedback to be one of the top factors helping students bridge the gap between trying and achievement. His findings are based on meta-analyses of 50,000 studies involving over 200 million students. What does high-quality feedback look like? It’s clear, dynamic, and specific so that students can address their weaknesses in order to attain their goals. A trophy for participation doesn’t do that. According to Hattie, worthwhile feedback  answers these questions: Where am I going? Students need to have a clear understanding of what the goal is, how to achieve it, and its benefits. For Harrison’s sons, participation was a means of reaching the goal of excelling or winning in athletics. Getting a trophy before you reach your goal can actually undermine working towards achievement. How am I going? Feedback should give students a realistic picture of their progress, what they have accomplished, and what they need to work on. If Harrison’s sons had gotten productive feedback, it would have included acknowledgment of the skills they acquired and evaluation of specific skills they need to improve. Not having that kind of feedback robbed Harrison of the opportunity to discuss and practice skills with his sons. This type of progress report is extremely successful in moving students forward. Where to next? This feedback illuminates learning pathways for students. When teachers outline specific steps such as engaging in new activities, working with peers, or just plain practice, they are showing faith in the student to do better. In this context, "I am not good at math" doesn’t hold. Instead, it’s "I didn’t understand this problem today."  This approach leads students to forget they "failed" and focus on how to do better. Notice that there is no mention of raising student self-esteem. It’s all about the task. According to Hattie, confidence and pride grow from achievement. Productive feedback is not personal; it’s individualized. If, as Woody Allen says, "eighty percent of success is showing up," then it’s the last 20% that gets you significant achievement.  Hattie reveals that any program or method of teaching can show some success—students will show some improvement from the beginning to the end of the year. But that doesn’t mean the program is the best one for your students. Technology can offer the types of feedback Hattie advocates to help students conquer the challenges in that last 20%. To help your students reach the trophy level in their endeavors, here are some questions on feedback to keep in mind when you evaluate a digital learning program: Does it include pedagogically sound learning objectives? Is there targeted feedback specific to skills throughout the program? Is the program adaptive, providing new varied content pathways tailored to each student? Does it share learning data with students and instructors in real time?

With the increase in digital distractions, interest in how we pay attention has grown. Although researchers continue to delineate definitions, most agree with the early psychologist, William James: Everyone knows what attention is. It is taking possession of the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration of consciousness are of its essence. It implies a withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others. Attention is really selective attention.  We consciously or automatically choose which things to ignore and which to focus on. You are more likely to pay attention to something that affects you, interests you, or has deep meaning. What we pay attention to is contextual and subjective. At a play, we think it’s important to focus on what’s happening on the stage without distraction. If an 8-year-old points out that there’s a man behaving oddly in the next row, he will probably get shushed. But these days, if he makes the same observation as his mother rushes him to catch a train or plane, Mom will probably pay attention and report it to security personnel. Attention is the gateway to learning, to remembering and processing information. Instructors competing for student attention isn’t new. Remember when we thought all students were taking notes, but many were doodling, or writing love letters, or passing notes to other students? Remember when daydreaming was a common class distraction? Cell phones may just be a more efficient way of channeling wandering attention. Researchers have shown that students texting/posting on their cell phones while watching a video lecture tested more than a grade level below their phoneless counterparts. They suggested that instructors discuss cell phone use policies with their students. That’s a start, but it doesn’t get to contextual factors that may contribute to cell phone distractions. If, as the Pew Research Center reports, 93% of 18-29 year old smartphone owners use their phones to avoid being bored, maybe we should consider that having students listen to long lectures is not the best way to hold their attention. Even I’ve been known to check my cell phone during the most inspirational TED Talk. Distraction can work in the opposite way as well.  A student who tunes out biology to check Instagram, may also avoid the boredom of waiting on line at Chipotle by accessing their course online. And, with Acrobatiq, the professor standing behind them can evaluate their students’ progress. While helping students think about how and when they use cell phones, educators need to expand opportunities for students to accomplish a wide variety of goals from communication to graduation with mobile devices. Formats such as blended or hybrid classes using digital learning platforms can lessen student distraction. Some instructors are already incorporating education apps into class time as part of the curriculum. Mobile device programs will not replace all forms of teaching. They are meant as an active way to promote student learning by using the technology around us.

Are We Nearing the End of College Tuition Pricing as We Know It? Students at private colleges received an average 42 percent discount on their tuition last year in the US. Jeff Selingo tracks an important change in how discounting is being used in higher education and its implications. Excerpt: "If you’re a parent who recently paid a tuition bill for a college student this fall, you know full well that tuition bills are about as transparent as the pricing of airline tickets. Discounting the published tuition price is a widespread practice throughout higher education. Students have no idea how much the classmate sitting next to them is paying. The sticker price is meaningless, and students who pay more don’t get anything extra for their money. At least on an airplane, you might get a better seat, some food, and a free checked bag for a higher fare. Before the 1980s, tuition was largely discounted for students based solely on financial need. It was a quite simple, and, many argued, fair system: The more your family earned, the more you paid for college. Then two decades ago, private colleges started to use discounting strategies to attract better students away from higher-ranked competitors. They gave students aid — disguised as "merit scholarships" — no matter their family income to entice them to enroll. It worked. And the floodgates opened. Private colleges everywhere copied the practice, and in the past decade or so, public colleges started to follow along, too." Read more The Eight-Minute Lecture Keeps Students Engaged Schools continue to figure out how to make use of lectures in a digital age.  Excerpt: "Numerous studies have demonstrated that students retain little of our lectures, and research on determining the "average attention span," while varying, seems to congregate around eight to ten minutes ("Attention Span Statistics," 2015), (Richardson, 2010). Research discussed in a 2009 Faculty Focus article by Maryellen Weimer questions the attention span research, while encouraging instructors to facilitate student focus." Read more The Digital Battle for Students An interesting, high-level, breakdown of the nature of competition in UK higher education by Precedent. Provides a roadmap of sorts that institutions can use to establish a strong position in the UK higher education market. Excerpt: "There is a war going on. You may not have noticed, as it is without any of the usual unpleasantness associated with actual fighting. It’s a very polite war, but that does not detract from the seriousness of the conflict that is taking place. UK universities are in competition against each other. It’s not that they necessarily want to see other universities crushed or defeated; it’s about the want and need to survive. Consequently, universities are fighting hard for students, research funds, and business partnerships that will bring that all-important income." Read more Accreditation will Change — but Survive A well-written and in-depth essay by Doug Lederman on the important role of accreditation in the US higher education system.  Excerpt: "For all the protestations about accreditation’s limitations, though, a new consensus has emerged, even from tough critics of the system like Kevin Carey of New America Foundation, who sums up the view this way: "No one really likes accreditation but no one knows what else to do." That’s hardly a ringing endorsement. But accreditors now perform so many functions — historical ones like helping institutions improve themselves, plus an ever-growing array of regulatory demands imposed on them by Congress and the Education Department — that jettisoning them would almost certainly require the federal government to take on a much stronger role in higher education, which most observers see as a distasteful outcome. What that means is that as politicians and policy makers seek solutions to what they see as the underperformance of American higher education, they are likely to try to supplement and challenge the existing accreditation system — layering in other ways of trying to measure quality and value in higher education — rather than replace it." Read more Higher Education’s Faulty Economics: How We Got Here Tom Lindsay suggests that the Presidential candidates for the 2016 are looking in the wrong places for solutions to the challenges that face US higher education. Excerpt: "As the presidential primary season goes into full swing, candidates in both parties are championing a number of ideas designed to address the higher education affordability crisis. The proposals run the gamut—from federal measures to impose greater accountability on universities, to income-based repayment of student loans, to community college for free, and to four-year college for free. But while the proposals differ, their differences are less important than what they share. What they all have in common is a fundamental misunderstanding of what’s driving the crisis that all sides seek to solve. They fail to understand that the factors composing the dilemma we face—tuition hyperinflation, burdensome student-loan debt, and poor student learning—are to some extent branches of the same tree, whose roots are found in the well-intentioned but what has proved to be catastrophically naïve assumption that virtually all high school graduates should go to college." Read more

Excitement about competency-based education or CBE continues apace. (See links below.) But the reasons for the excitement differ and, sometimes, conflict. In research reports, essays and press releases, we find a wide range of different motivations for getting behind the rise of CBE. The instructional model acts as vessel for a variety of interests and hopes for professionals in higher ed. Our review of the literature found at least five different areas of interest of those supporting CBE. The "Why" of CBE The value of CBE lies in the promise that it will provide greater clarity about what students are actually learning. This is of value to institutions and organizations that need to evaluate students, such as employers and other educational institutions. But of course it will also help students invest their time and money more wisely. The value of CBE is found in its focus on "competence" which some stakeholders interpret as more tangible, immediate and easily measured, in contrast to, say, critical thinking. Often hidden within this perspective is the notion that classic liberal education in less valuable.  The value of CBE lies in the fact that it recognizes the different skills and knowledge held by students and that the practice of catering to these differences is a more effective instructional strategy than the one-size-fits-all approach.  The value lies in the potential of CBE to reduce costs. By enabling students to focus their time on only those part of the curriculum required, the door is opened to reducing the amount of time that students must spend enrolled, the tuition spent (especially if tuition is charged on a per month, rather than per course, basis).  The value lies, especially among people interested in broad reform of higher education, in how CBE moves the focus from inputs to learning outcomes. Higher educations historical focus on inputs, such as high admission standards, is interpreted by some as  a hindrance to substantial change in the sector. In subsequent posts we’ll consider what’s required of institutions that wish to explore the potential of CBE and the role of adaptive technology.   :: Links Accreditation Will Change. But Survive.  AACUS’s Moderate Strong Voice: Competency-Based Education and Disruption New Graduates Test the Promise  

In education there are two major types of assessment: summative and formative. The most familiar is summative assessment—tests or assignments that are given at the end of a unit or are standardized to show the "sum" of student achievement at one point in time. Summative assessment is often used for grading purposes and now, feeding a national testing controversy, for teacher and institutional accountability. Formative assessment is as or more valuable than summative assessment because it affects students while they learn. Formative assessment often comprises a wide range of teacher and student evaluative measures such as observations, quizzes, practice, teacher/student discussions and student self-assessment during the course of instruction. It leads to changes in instruction before students complete summative assessment. Effective formative assessment optimizes learning so that more students achieve mastery by the time they take high-stakes tests. Feedback on both sides of the desk or podium, so to speak, is a major part of formative assessment. And like feedback (see earlier blog, The Last 20%), formative assessment involves clear learning objectives. We need to know what we are trying to achieve in order to analyze and execute strategies to help us in that achievement. For formative assessment to work, both teachers and students have to be willing to honestly appraise the teaching/learning situation and also change what they are doing. For the instructor, it means modifying the content or style of their teaching at any given time. They may need to turn a lecture into an activity or add more time for an assignment. For the student, it could mean spending more time learning. They may need to do more practice or attend an extra tutoring session. Historically, formative assessment has been centered on improvements for the class as a whole or adjusting instruction for groups at different levels within the class. Modifying instruction for individual students was usually too time-consuming. But, what if instructors could easily see how each individual is progressing and intervene to discuss difficult concepts with struggling students or challenging perspectives with excelling students on a one-to-one basis? And, what if students were engaged in learning programs that automatically adjusted the material to their needs as they worked? Evidence-based digital programs can do just that. In her thorough article, Making it Happen: Formative Assessment and Educational Technologies, Janet Looney advises that we research and try new technologies because they support formative assessment in these ways: Rapid assessment of student understanding Timely and targeted feedback, scaffolding of learning Interactive learning and assessment of higher-order skills. Tracking of student learning in different contexts and over time.  These aspects of digital programs not only allow for individual adaptive learning, but also provide organized data on the class as a whole in real time. This efficient method of delivery helps instructors tailor material in the ongoing course. For those committed to formative assessment, using digital learning programs to enhance the dynamics of teaching and learning is a no- brainer.  

Amid Competency-Based Education Boom, A Meeting to Help Colleges Do It Right Excerpt: "Roughly 600 colleges are in the design phase for a new competency-based education program, are actively creating one or already have a program in place. That’s up from an estimated 52 institutions last year. Amid this quick expansion, a group of college officials is meeting in Phoenix next month to share information about how to develop competency-based credentials. The agenda also features discussions about what academic quality should look like in those programs. Public Agenda, a nonprofit group that seeks to bring a nonpartisan lens to tricky issues, is hosting the meeting, dubbed the CBExchange. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the work. "This is not about advocating for a particular model of competency-based education," said Alison Kadlec, a senior vice president and director of higher education and workforce programs at Public Agenda. "It’s about advocating for the healthy development of a field that’s growing rapidly." Read more Why We Should Fear University, Inc. Excerpt: "Here at Purdue University, where I recently completed my Ph.D. in English, we have a little garden on the far west side of our enormous campus, where students and their families and professors and nearby residents tend to tomatoes and sunflowers. It’s one of my favorite places here. Overgrown and seemingly unmanaged, this western fringe of campus is perhaps the only place left at the university that is not meticulously landscaped and stage-managed for tour groups and the website. There’s nothing specific to Purdue in this aesthetic conformity. Over the past two decades, financial crises notwithstanding, the American university writ large has undergone a radical physical expansion and renovation, bringing more and more campuses into line with grand architectural visions. That’s precisely why I love the garden: It’s one of the last little wild places left at Purdue. Naturally, it’s slated for demolition." Read more Why Hasn’t Higher Education Been More Disrupted? Excerpt: "Making the case for today’s colleges and universities to seriously consider expanding their offerings to include online courses—for both full-time students living on campus as well as those looking to take a couple of courses remotely." Read more What Is College Worth? What’s the Real Value of Higher Education? Excerpt: "If there is one thing most Americans have been able to agree on over the years, it is that getting an education, particularly a college education, is a key to human betterment and prosperity. The consensus dates back at least to 1636, when the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony established Harvard College as America’s first institution of higher learning. It extended through the establishment of "land-grant colleges" during and after the Civil War, the passage of the G.I. Bill during the Second World War, the expansion of federal funding for higher education during the Great Society era, and President Obama’s efforts to make college more affordable. Already, the cost of higher education has become a big issue in the 2016 Presidential campaign. Three Democratic candidates—Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders—have offered plans to reform the student-loan program and make college more accessible." Read more Penn State Starts Network for Entrepreneurs With Focus on Online Learning Excerpt: "Education-technology companies are hot these days. So are online programs by universities. Pennsylvania State University hopes to tap into both trends with a new effort to turn its campus into an innovation hub for ed-tech companies. The effort is called the EdTech Network, and officials hope it will spark entrepreneurship around the campus geared toward improving services for online students, said Craig D. Weidemann, the university’s vice provost for online education. That could help Penn State reach its 10-year goal of increasing enrollments in its online World Campus to 45,000 students." Read more

Competency-based higher education is the "real thing"; not merely hype. Unlike so many other innovations in higher ed - technologies that might work and projects that never really get off the ground - CBE is an honest-to-goodness instructional model with deep roots in higher ed. And its’ benefits are relatively clear: it incorporates prior learning assessment (indirectly through self-paced learning or directly through credential recognition) and offers a framework for measuring the value of programs. It works especially well for adults 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. Sure, we’re still working through the details. Large scale implementation of CBE in traditional institutions will take time and regulators have a lot work ahead of them to position CBE with respect to accreditation and loans. But the numbers are staggering; as reported by IHE, roughly 600 US colleges in 2015 are in the design stage of CBE initiatives, compared to 52 last year. Five years out, we can expect CBE to be a significant part of the digital higher education landscape in North America. Let’s take a quick step back, though, and consider how CBE fits into other broad trends in higher education. A shift of power from institutions to students . . . In most versions of CBE students are empowered to proceed at their own pace through courses and programs. The student, not the institution determines the pace and, as CBE becomes even more flexible, the path of learning. Similarly, it matters less, if at all, where and how a student acquired the knowledge and skills they bring to the table. William Durden interprets this as part of a larger trend in which students become the focal point of the education system: "Students might well now believe that they are the centre of all activity - to include education - and that they are both the sole focus and the drivers of learning. All instructional efforts exist for the purpose of fulfilling their desires." This vision may send chills up the spine of more than a few academics (and parents). But the situation is not entirely dire. The change also reflects the long held desire to see students at the centre of the educational experience, acting as self-directed and self-empowered agents on their own behalf. The rise of team-based course design . . . CBE courses and programs require a more systematic, team-based and labour intensive approach to course development - there’s no winging it. It contrasts sharply with the common approach to course development in which the lone instructor, setting aside 40 or so hours, assumes the bulk of responsibility for designing and developing the online materials. Learning objectives, instructional activities and assessments need to clearly defined and fully aligned. Building a sufficient number of activities, assessments (both summative and formative), and feedback (ideally, generated in real-time) requires longer development schedules and the skills of a broad range of educational professionals. For CBE, instructors need to move into a different role: they should serve, to use the language of film-making, as "producers"charged with defining the overall vision for the course and ensuring its realized. We’re seeing the same trend elsewhere. A handful of institutions in North America are experimenting with new approaches that more fully leverage technology and its ability, for example, to personalize learning through adaptive software, engage learners through high-quality instructional media, use principles from games to stimulate retention, and automate feedback to increase retention. Rise of (truly) educational software . . . One of the great ironies of digital higher education is that the dominant educational technology, the LMS, isn’t particularly "educational". The LMS serves many important purposes in our institutions, but its’ impact on instructional design is intentionally limited. The systems are designed to allow individual educators to create, manage, and deliver their own courses, but it does this in an "instructionally agnostic" fashion. The LMS is an empty vessel in which educators can upload what they wish - good or bad, simple or complex. The software stores and distributes the curriculum, but there’s little meaningful interaction between the two. We could just as easily upload dinner recipes - the software would have as much impact on it as it does on curriculum. CBE is perfectly suited to take greater advantage of software’s capabilities. Adaptive software and learning analytics will play a particularly big role. These technologies allows us to estimate the student’s grasp of the curriculum and adjust the experience to meet their particular needs. This shift to truly educational software can be seen elsewhere in digital higher ed, too: more technologies are being developed that are based on our understanding of what really drives learning; they embody and enforce good instructional practices. It leverages the software to meet educational objectives. We’ll be watching.

:: Data-Informed Design, a Sasaki Perspective in SCUP Journal Excerpt: "In the following Q&A, Claire Turcotte, managing editor of SCUP’s journal Planning for Higher Education, speaks with Sasaki principals Vinicius Gorgati, AIA, LEED® AP, Tyler Patrick, AICP, and Ken Goulding, [pictured above, left to right] about data-informed design. The three experts offer insight on the role data plays in higher education campus planning, the types of tools used during this process, and where data will take us in the future, as illustrated by a case study of Sasaki’s planning work at Brown University." Read more Why Slack Could be the Future of Conferences Excerpt: "We go to conferences to meet people, whether for business or personal reasons, and yet often I meet far fewer than I hope to. Inside a crowded convention space, things can turn cliquish in a hurry. Come lunch time, I’m right back to being the new kid at school, sheepishly hunting for a table that will accept me. Want to know anything about the strangers around you? Just read the fine print on their name badge, and do it before they notice and think you’re staring at their chest. Little about this experience has changed in the last 50 years, and technological efforts to reinvent it have largely stalled out. Glassboard, a private messaging app often recommended for conference-goers, shut down last November. Lanyrd, a full-featured app for discovering and better enjoying conferences, was acquired by Eventbrite in 2013 and hasn’t updated its apps in more than a year. But at the XOXO Festival in Portland this weekend, I saw a new app remaking the conference experience in more ways than I could count. And the app, strangely enough, is Slack." Read more What We Still Don’t Know About Higher Education Excerpt: "We know that over 20 million students are expected to attend American colleges and universities this fall. But we don’t know enough about who these students are, how likely they are to succeed at earning their degrees, and whether they will be able to get good enough jobs to pay back their debt. Here, we investigate what is known — and what still we need to know — about today’s students so we can help more of them realize their college dreams. Who are today’s students? How do they fare in college? We know that the popular idea of college — four years of football games, dorms and parties — is not the experience of most students today. More students who enter college have work and family obligations, leading them to pursue higher education in non-traditional ways such as attending part-time or online. We don’t know enough about how many non-traditional students — like low-income, first-generation and adult students — actually reach their goals at particular colleges because we don’t report that information for all students. Considering how many barriers these students had to overcome just to get into college, they deserve to have the information they need to choose the schools that will help them succeed." Read more There Is No Excuse for How Universities Treat Adjuncts Excerpt: "Students are paying higher tuition than ever. Why can’t more of that revenue go to the people teaching them? In early June, California labor regulators ruled that a driver for Uber, the app-based car service, was, in fact, an employee, not an independent contractor, and deserved back pay. The decision made national news, with experts predicting a coming flood of lawsuits. Two weeks later, FedEx agreed to a $288 million settlement after a federal appeals court ruled that the company had shortchanged 2,300 California delivery drivers on pay and benefits by improperly labeling them as independent contractors. The next month, the company lost another case in a federal appeals court over misclassifying 500 delivery drivers in Kansas. Meanwhile, since January, trucking firms operating out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach have lost two major court battles with drivers who claim that they, too, have been robbed of wages by being misclassified as independent contractors." Read more  

You’ve recently launched the Experiential Network at Northeastern University. How does it work? ND: The Experiential Network is a consolidated approach to providing employers in Northeastern University’s network and the university’s graduate student talent with opportunities to collaborate with one another. The initial opportunity offered to employers through the Experiential Network pairs employers, or "project sponsors," with graduate students to work together on 30-hour, real-world projects, conducted virtually, over a six-week period during a student’s course of study. The program’s goals are to: Create online experiential learning opportunities for graduate students, regardless of their location and visa status; and Empower students to translate knowledge gained through their coursework into applied skills through projects with real parameters, constraints, and consequences. :: Sounds like Northeastern is returning to its roots with this focus on relationships to employers and an emphasis on experiential learning. ND: Yes, we know experiential education works and our #1 career services ranking by Princeton Review supports the co-op model. Co-op is an amazing opportunity but six month immersive work experience doesn’t fit into the lifestyle of many of our online learners, working professional master’s students, or international students—and those segments happen to be where we are seeing a lot of growth. So we designed the Experiential Network projects for them. :: These are early days, but at this point what do you anticipate being the linchpin for this project - the factor that will most determine its’ success? ND: We have to keep both stakeholders happy: students and project sponsors (employers). Students want relevant, authentic experiential learning opportunities that allow them to hone their skills by applying what they learn in the classroom to the real world. They also want to expand their network. Project sponsors want to engage with students to build their talent pipeline, and for alumni, to give back to the university. :: What types of students do you anticipate this will appeal to most? ND: We’re largely serving three types of students: Working professionals that are looking to make a career change. Some of our students may have experience but in a prior field. They’re looking to get relevant work experience in their new direction. This program provides them that opportunity. International students who want experiential opportunities while pursuing their academic studies and don’t want it to count against their CPT or OPT. This program is also great for international students who might be in their home country on a break from their studies, but want to apply what they’ve learned into experiential context. Online learners that may be in a region that doesn’t have a vibrant employer ecosystem, or the type of work that they’re looking to move into. :: I understand that you didn’t come to higher education via a typical route, Nick. ND: Nope! I enjoy diving into entirely new categories and I’ve done it a few times. After graduating from The University of Texas School of Law with Honors, I was a corporate and securities attorney at a leading international law firm, working with startups and VC funds. I represented companies and investors in over 25 financings raising an aggregate of over $250 million. I leveraged the network I built there to cofound a company in the big data space—Infochimps—and raised venture capital, growing the team and business during the company’s formative years as the company’s initial CEO. I’m proud that the company was acquired by CSC, a $9 billion public company, in 2013. After moving to Boston, I joined Boundless, a startup that raised $10 million to disrupt the textbook oligopoly, and that’s what brought me closer to higher education. I’m grateful that President Aoun and Philly Mantella, CEO of the Northeastern University Global Network, took a bet on me. Boundless was acquired by Valore, a Tyton Growth50 company, earlier this year. :: What’s surprised you most about your time in higher ed proper? ND: Higher Ed is undergoing so much change and the most surprising thing to me is how little consensus there is as to how the changes will metastasize to the core business. It is exciting to be part of the zeitgeist and be in a position to create the changes instead of just responding to them. Northeastern is kind of like a 117 year-old startup in that we have an industry and customer orientation, move fast relative to our peers, and are willing to try new things and accept the risk of failure. That didn’t surprise me, but I think that would surprise a lot of people. :: Nick on Twitter Northeastern University The Experiential Network