It’s no secret to anyone in higher education that college completion rates for wealthy students have soared, while college graduation rates for students from lower socioeconomic rungs have languished over the last 45 years. In fact, according to a new report from the University of Pennsylvania and the Pell Institute for Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, 77% of adults from families in the top income quartile earned at least a bachelor’s degree by the time they turned 24, up from 40% in 1970. But only 9% of those from the lowest-income bracket earned a bachelor’s in 2013, up from 6% in 1970. Source: Indicators Of Higher Education Equity in the United States. The Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education While it is true that low-income students are enrolling at higher rates than they did 40 years ago, the reality is that most low-income students fail to graduate. Only about one in five college students from the lowest income brackets completes a bachelor’s degree by age 24. Among students from higher income brackets, 99% of students complete their degrees, up from 55% in 1970. So while access to higher education has generally improved in the last 40 years, there’s still much to be done to help students—particularly low-income and disadvantaged students—complete a postsecondary program so they can live better lives and realize personal and professional success. The good news is there’s significant momentum to help accomplish this. Late last year, The Gates Foundation, a private foundation focused on increasing post-secondary success, announced a $20 million investment. It aims to develop next-generation digital courseware that leverages the best of what is known about the learning sciences, education research, and technology-enabled learning. The Gates Courseware Challenge will lead to the creation of next-generation digital courseware to personalize instruction and help underperforming and disadvantaged students successfully complete required general education "gateway" undergraduate courses. The Foundation hopes to prove, via this challenge, that student outcomes, especially for those most disadvantaged, and institutional productivity (defined as individual learner mastery and completion, time to degree, retention and cost per completion), can be enhanced and improved with the broad adoption and implementation of a new generation of exemplary digital courseware. As one of seven recipients of Gates Courseware Challenge Funding, (Other recipients: Cerego, CogBooks, Lumen Learning, Rice University OpenStax, Smart Sparrow, and the Open Learning Initiative at Stanford University), we recognize that scaling new instructional strategies and best practices requires evidence of impact and ease of implementation. To that end, we endeavor to partner with institutions focused on improving completion rates, particularly those serving a large Pell-eligible population to offer feedback on implementation and impact of our forthcoming adaptive courseware - scheduled to come online this summer.  Our pilot site goals include: Successful implementation of our adaptive courseware demonstrating improved learning outcomes, particularly among low income and disadvantaged students; Development and dissemination of best practices associated with implementing courseware models across a range of higher-education delivery modalities including hybrid and online models; Development and refinement of institutional and faculty training and support services to support scaled courseware adoption. There is no cost for an institution to participate as a courseware evaluation site, and students will receive the courseware at a significantly discounted price for the duration of the pilot.  If your institution would like to learn more, please see the links below. Learn more about the Gates Courseware Challenge. Learn more about becoming a Gates Courseware Challenge Institutional Partner.

Last week the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative released their 12th annual Horizon Report on technology integration in higher education.  Each year these groups coordinate the work of a diverse panel of more than 50 experts to identify key trends, significant challenges, and important developments in educational technology. The final report includes predictions for future adoption of various tools and approaches in the short term, as well as over the next five years and beyond. This year’s Horizon Report identifies two key trends influencing tech adoption over the next two years on a global scale. Evolution of Online Learning The nature of technology in general is that it is constantly changing. As new capabilities are realized and access becomes more ubiquitous, the use of technology allows us to work and live more effectively and efficiently. Online education is just one context in which ever-changing technology is making a difference in both teaching and learning. Online education is steadily gaining a reputation for not only offering convenience and flexibility, but also high-quality academic experience for learners. The work of educators and researchers to develop new strategies and establish leading practices has led to more research and innovation in the following areas: Blended Learning: Students enrolled in blended or hybrid courses can expect a mix of requirements to meet and interact via online resources and face-to-face. As the integration of technology into educational settings evolves, traditional courses are incorporating more blended components with which students can prepare for class, review course materials and textbooks, and continue in-person discussions online. Communication Options: A combination of asynchronous and synchronous (i.e., real-time) tools allows students to connect with each other and the course materials, as well as with their instructors in a variety of ways. The selection of specific media resources to meet specific needs, such as class discussions, social community building, and demonstrations can mean the adoption of multiple tools and techniques. Rethinking Learning Spaces The Horizon Report recognizes that "a student-centered approach to education has taken root," resulting in the need for redesign of traditional learning spaces, both physical and virtual in nature. No longer confined to a physical location, or even a single course website, learners can benefit from new tools and strategies used to organize and structure the environments in which they connect and learn. Personalized Learning: Students bring a variety of learning needs to the learning space, which can be met through environments that not only allow for some degree of choice (i.e., activity options based on learning preferences), but also present materials and assessments based on each learner’s skill level and previous work. Active Learning: While traditional learning spaces provided more passive learning activities, such as reading a textbook or listening to a lecture, active strategies allow students to interact with course content and each other. Online environments increasingly provide opportunities for active learning through virtual laboratory exercises, collaborative projects, and simulations, and game-based activities. Are you involved in technology conversations, planning, and decisions at your institution? Find out more about these and other trends presented in the 2015 Horizon Report for Higher Education and how Acrobatiq’s adaptive courseware offers institutions an innovative approach to designing effective online learning environments.

It’s only February and 2015 is already shaping up to be a watershed year for Acrobatiq. We finished 2014 very strong by releasing major enhancements to our personalized learning platform, and further enriching the data insights available to faculty using The Learning Dashboard. In October 2014, we were honored to be selected by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to receive a Next Generation Courseware Challenge Grant which we plan to use to significantly enhance our current courseware, and to fund the development of new courseware for pre calculus.   In addition to pre calculus, we also announced we would be expanding our courseware portfolio with the addition of 25 more adaptive courseware products — many targeted at the largest general education "gateway" courses and available by this summer, in time for fall classes. Here’s a look forward into what else we’ve got planned in 2015: New Courseware Enhancements As part of the Next Generation Courseware Challenge grant, Acrobatiq is significantly enhancing our adaptive courseware with more dynamic media to deepen engagement and enrich the student learning experience. Examples of dynamic media elements include: Self-contained "mini" presentations that guide students through a concept using interactive images and formative assessment Interactive images with call-outs, hotspots and "pan and zoom" features that allow students to explore topics from multiple perspectives Expanding photo galleries highlighting time-lapsed events that can be viewed in-line, as part of a narrative, or full-screen More video and animation to help simplify difficult concepts and boost student achievement and engagement Here’s a peek at the hotspot feature: Many of the new dynamic elements also include clickable anchor points to formative assessment activities so students have ample opportunity to practice skills and demonstrate learning mastery. Acrobatiq also is developing an additional range of assessments that will provide even more flexibility for instructors who want to use our courseware in traditional classroom settings as a textbook replacement or as part of a hybrid or even fully online course.  Examples of these new assessment types include: Personalized, adaptive exercises emphasizing synthesis and application of concepts added to the end of each module.  These personal practice sessions can be graded, or not. Scored summative, item-based module-level quizzes and unit-level tests. Enough items will be developed to support multiple attempts for both quizzes and tests. New Courseware, Coming Summer 2015 Helping institutions improve course completions and shorten time-to-degree are central to what we do. In order to provide students with a productive pathway to program completion, with the most flexible options, we are developing personalized, adaptive courseware for many of the largest "gateway" courses.  These courses often become the bottleneck for students working toward a degree or certificate. By offering students more choice in delivery modalities, institutions can dramatically improve the chances of students progressing and graduating on time. *2015 Enhanced Courseware Developed With Funding From The Gates Foundation.  Learn More About The Gates Foundation Courseware Challenge New Courseware Authoring Environment Critical to courseware adoption and usage by faculty is the ability to easily remix or adapt courseware to match specific instructional needs or desired delivery modalities. Many instructors would like to use digital courseware in both on-ground and online teaching modalities, but need assistance to overcome set-up, delivery, and content challenges. Here at Acrobatiq we’re taking on those challenges. By systematically developing from the ground up a new courseware authoring environment, we can help teaching faculty, TA’s, or an instructional design team to develop comprehensive, integrated courseware based on the Acrobatiq course-design methodology, grounded in learning science.  Features of the authoring environment include: A simple interface, based on the proven Open Learning Initiative course design methodology  to author or edit learning objectives, skills, and expository content, in addition to coordinating formative/summative assessment items Twenty-four different activity types including not only the basic tools such as multiple choice and drag n’ drop, but also more sophisticated tools that will really stretch creative instructional design such as the ability to make basic images interactive Functionality enabling the addition of self-made video clips captured from almost any device, or the addition of links to videos on YouTube and other sources. Here’s a sneak peek at the new courseware authoring environment: New Acrobatiq Enterprise Learning Platform Developments  The Learning Dashboard™ Over the last several months, we have iteratively released enhancements to The Learning Dashboard. These improvements help instructors, course mentors, and course designers get even more insight from the data, and provide tighter integration with leading Learning Management Systems. Examples include: New Data Card "How Well Are My Students Self-Assessing?" This new data card asks students to rate their confidence level in their learning on a scale of 1-5 and to provide feedback on areas within the course where they may be struggling. Instructors can pin this card to their dashboard as an easy way to see ongoing and topic-specific feedback from students.   Improved Data Organization The overall look and feel of the Learning Dashboard is more streamlined with the most common questions about student learning performance  organized in one trim column. Users simply click on a data card or a question to see the data insight rendered in a visual graphic. The data can also be viewed and sorted in table format. Learning data can also be manipulated in the following ways: Pare down the data based on  parameters, such as population (all or selected students), time, learning objective, location in course (units or modules), and more Switch between graphical and table views of the data Filter the data when it’s displayed as a data table Export the data by printing, creating a PDF, creating a CSV-format spreadsheet, or by copying the data to your clipboard so you can paste it into an existing document or email Add an at-a-glance card to the default dashboard Over the next year, we will continue to make iterative improvements to both the underlying statistical models that generate the learning data, and to the data visualization tables. What Our Learning Scientists Are Researching Creating more personalized learning experiences has been a recent theme for online educational resources. To date, the work in this area has focused on the following approaches to personalization: providing immediate feedback tailored to learner responses, selecting examples or contexts to match learner interests, and adjusting material (e.g., topics, problems) and/or support (e.g., degree of scaffolding, problem difficulty) to fit learners’ current knowledge. It is noteworthy, however, that online educational resources have not yet incorporated the rich literature on human individual differences to create additional modes of personalized, adaptive learning. The goal of individual differences research is to identify and measure particular features of the student that are relatively stable across time and consistent across contexts, and then study their effects on performance, learning, and other behaviors (e.g., Jonassen & Grabowski, 1993; Snow, 1986). This work has included studying an individual’s personality, memory, sensory sensitivity, motivation, and various beliefs about the self. By measuring these individual difference parameters for each learner working in an online environment, we can better account for a significant source of variation in learners’ responses and behaviors, and, in turn, more precisely estimate their learning states, select more targeted instructional interventions and support, and provide more tailored advice and recommendations. Look for more information in the coming months on how we plan to incorporate parameters of individual difference into our learning model to more precisely estimate the learner’s knowledge state, and further personalize and adapt content, pedagogy, and learning strategies for each learner. So I hope this gives you a good overview of where we’re headed over the next six to eight months.   If you have questions, or would like to reach me directly to discuss these or other topics of interest, feel free to email me at alison@acrobatiq.com. For general information related to Acrobatiq adaptive courseware, or our enterprise learning platform, follow us on Twitter, Facebook or Linked In. You can also reach us at info@acrobatiq.com, or by calling 877.998.2937.    

As many higher education instructors know, student success isn’t exclusively dependent upon a student’s personal dedication to learning course material. Helping students complete courses requires a combination of effective teaching and learning strategies. John Hattie, the Director of Melbourne Education Research Institute and creator of the Visible Learning approach, conducted one of the largest meta-analyses of research done to date to uncover factors that most impact student achievement. The factors Hattie ranked included everything from family background to teacher-student relationship to instructional practices. By examining how these influences interact and guide learning, Hattie’s research provides insight into how instructors can better identify—and help—at-risk students. According to Hattie’s research, and other subsequent research like it, five common things at-risk students say and strategies to help them succeed include the following³: 1.  "I read the textbook, but I just don’t seem to get it." What It Might Mean:  Low or poor reading skills and/or poor study skills How To Help:  Consider integrating more active learning techniques or interactive learning resources. Providing an alternative learning experience to traditional print textbooks can allow students with weak reading and/or study skills to stay motivated and persist in reaching desired learning outcomes. 2.  "I feel lost—I am not sure what I should be studying." What It Might Mean: Poor organizational skills and/or inability to identify priority tasks How To Help:  Assigning learning resources organized by clearly-stated learning objectives enables students to better understand of what they should master by the end of each study session. This eliminates time wasted studying information that’s not directly related to the desired learning outcomes.  Here’s an example from our own courseware showing three learning objectives outlined at the top of the page.  By the end of this learning session, students should be able to identify parts of the digestive system. 3.  "I feel like I studied really hard, but I still failed." What It Might Mean: Poor test-taking skills and/or poor study habits How To Help: Provide ample practice opportunities with targeted and timely feedback. Assigning learning activities with pedagogy like imbedded hints and targeted, contextualized feedback allows students to gauge their own progress more frequently,  and find areas where additional study focus might be needed. As a result, students are better able to assess their own readiness for summative assessments. 4.  "I am a terrible test-taker." What It Might Mean: Test anxiety How To Help: Prepare students for summative assessment with frequent formative assessment experiences that simulate what they can expect in a testing experience. Also, assign learning resources that collect and report learning performance data while students are actively engaged with course material. Doing so provides students with insight into their own progress, which can help them feel more prepared and reduce test anxiety. 5.  "I missed a couple of classes, but I can make them up." What It Might Mean: Limited study time and/or conflicting personal priorities.  Note that according to recent census data, enrollment of students age 25 and over has risen 41% since 2000 and over 40% of college students now work at least part time.² This means increasing numbers of adult learners are juggling the demands of work, school, and family.  Traditional classroom-based learning models can make it difficult for these adult learners to "catch up." How To Help: Assign learning resources that can be accessed on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, and ensure out-of-class efforts are highly structured in order to maximize  limited study time. How Acrobatiq Courseware Can Also Help You Promote Student Success By providing students with evidence-based learning resources that enable continuous and near real-time insight into student learning performance, instructors can more effectively monitor student progress and potentially identify at-risk students earlier. In reviewing Hattie’s research on factors known to positively correlate with student achievement, these five critical factors below positively correlate with increased student achievement and also form the basis of the design methodology of Acrobatiq adaptive courseware: Formative evaluation (.90) Effective feedback (.73) Meta-cognition (.69) Mastery based learning (.58) Interactive content (.52) In multiple evaluation studies conducted at both 4- and 2-year institutions, Acrobatiq courseware has been shown to produce equal or better learning gains when compared to students learning in traditional classes, and require less out-of-class time from students to achieve similar outcomes. To learn more about Acrobatiq’s adaptive courseware combining high-quality authoritative content, real-world simulations, assessments, and goal-directed practice activities with targeted feedback, visit our course catalog. [1] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. (2013). Digest of Education Statistics, 2012 (NCES 2014-015),Chapter 3. [2] Current Population Survey (CPS) and Integrated Post secondary Education Data System (IPEDS) (May 2014). [3]  Adapted from Recognizing Common Student Study Problems, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, edited by Gail Tennen and Gary K. Hagar  

The concept of technology-enabled learning is certainly not new. Ever since the use of the personal computer became mainstream, multimedia technology has played an important role in the classroom. Initially this was done with film clips, later with PowerPoint presentations and Smart Boards. Technology has also helped students assimilate knowledge—first through computer-based homework systems, then through interactive eBooks, and now through more personalized and adaptive technologies. Yesterday’s notion of online coursework (i.e., digital homework solutions that are often textbook-centric) has quickly evolved into today’s adaptive, intelligent courseware. What is Adaptive, Intelligent Courseware? In its simplest form, "courseware" is technology-enabled resources designed to augment teaching and learning. More specifically, and in the case of formal learning, courseware can be thought of as a tool, or set of tools designed to optimize the learning process and bring about a change in knowledge state. Adaptive, intelligent courseware, sometimes referred to as "Next Generation Courseware" differs from other types of courseware in that it combines principles from learning science—or what we know about how people learn—with intelligent tutoring capabilities. In this setting, the computer helps enact instruction by providing detailed, timely, and context-specific guidance as students work through learning activities. This embedded and ongoing feedback simulates the role of a human tutor to help students stay motivated and fine-tune their learning. Embedded formative and summative assessments have the added transformational benefit of providing detailed student learning data that, when combined with state-of-the-art statistical tools, enable near "real-time" and highly accurate predictions about learning progress. This nuanced view of student learning performance is a potential game changer for faculty. Here’s why: while traditional types of periodic quizzing and assessments are lagging indicators about what’s happened in the past, predictive learning models like those embedded in adaptive, intelligent courseware offer insight into what’s likely to happen in the near future.This allows for timelier and targeted instructional interventions that can be applied right at the point of need.   The idea, of course, is not to use computers to replace the role of a passionate and effective instructor, but rather to use technology as a powerful "virtual assistant" to aid faculty in the process of teaching while reducing time spent grading and responding to grade-related issues. Providing instructors with real-time insights about what students are learning while learning is actually occurring is a powerful new tool to help faculty move students from passive receptors of information to active participants in their own learning. How Adaptive, Intelligent Courseware Benefits Instructors As previously discussed, the transformational benefit of adaptive, intelligent courseware is the ability to use student interactions from within the courseware to make dynamic and continuously updated predictive estimates about student learning progress against a set of desired outcomes. Traditionally, the process for measuring and evaluating student learning is still largely centered on assessments given at periodic intervals covering large portions of curriculum that students are expected to master. The problem with this approach is two-fold: First, typical summative assessments rarely produce quantitative details about specific skills or knowledge components where students are struggling. Rather, they provide instructors with averages or distributions of student scores -often at too high of a level to be meaningfully actionable. Secondly, for students, typical quiz or test scores happen after the unit of material is completed, and many students are less motivated to remediate given the expectation that all students must progress at the same pace. For students, the very real risk of "falling behind" often necessitates moving ahead, despite clear evidence that they may not be ready to move ahead. With intelligent courseware, we have the ability to collect fine-grained details about student learning progress, as learning is happening,  and individualize practice  based on student-specific needs. For students with low levels of learning mastery, more instructionally scaffolded practice can be provided; for students with high learning estimates, less. By adapting personal practice sessions based on real data, students are more apt to persist, and stay motivated in the leaning process. What’s more, learning data can also be utilized with other key stakeholders involved in the teaching and learning process like course TAs, or course mentors where access to finely-tuned and student-specific learning data can help make their efforts more effective and efficient. Acrobatiq’s Learning Dashboard from adaptive, intelligent courseware Using learning analytics to help optimize the learning process for students is not all that different from how industries like healthcare, for example, are using data analytics to support new models of evidence-based practice and drive improvements in health outcomes. Increasingly, the same data-driven decision-making capabilities are reaching education. While faculty and institutions are beginning to see the potential of learning data, many are still in early stages of using learning analytics to inform decisions about their instructional practice. With today’s adaptive, intelligent courseware and learning analytic dashboards,  faculty now have a whole new set of powerful and easy-to-implement tools to assist them in their core mission: helping more students successfully complete courses and achieve their educational goals. To learn more about Acrobatiq’s adaptive, intelligent courseware and how it benefits teaching faculty, particularly in high-enrollment "gateway" subjects, contact us today. View our courseware catalog. Schedule a meeting to learn more about custom adaptive courseware development at info@acrobatiq.com.

"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. Will Professors Teach Differently in 10 Years?  Marcelo Knobel asks if the lecture will fall from its dominant position for teaching in higher education. Excerpt: "Unfortunately, my guess is that the answer to this question is a sound "NO". Despite continuous claims of a revolution in classroom teaching strategies, the advent of massive on-line open courses, and the huge expansion in the use of technological devices (cell phone, computers, tablets, etc), in most higher education institutions (HEIs) around the world traditional lecturing endures. It will probably continue this way for many years to come, because to do otherwise requires a change of paradigm for hundreds of thousands of instructors, HEIs tradition and culture, and every aspect of institutional operation (research grants, hiring and promotion processes, etc)." :: Save the Wisconsin Idea Christine Evans rejects Governor Scott Walker’s ham-fisted attempt to reconfigure the mission statement at the University of Wisconsin. Excerpt: "Earlier this month, Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin and potential Republican presidential candidate, unveiled a proposed budget that would cut $300 million of funds to the University of Wisconsin system and shift power over tuition from the Legislature to a new public authority controlled by appointed regents. The initial draft of Mr. Walker’s budget bill also proposed to rewrite the university’s 110-year-old mission statement, known as the Wisconsin Idea, deleting "the search for truth" and replacing it with language about meeting "the state’s work-force needs." Higher Education, Liberal Arts and Shakespeare Frank Bruni suggests, as many before him have, that the Liberal Arts is more important than ever. Excerpt: "But it’s impossible to put a dollar value on a nimble, adaptable intellect, which isn’t the fruit of any specific course of study and may be the best tool for an economy and a job market that change unpredictably." :: K12, Higher Education Worlds Must Collide to Improve Student Outcomes Douglas Baker, President of Northern Illinois University, calls for a more coordinated relationship between K12 and higher ed. Excerpt: "Put simply, each level of the educational system — including higher education — is more conjoined than legislators and other thought leaders recognize. With the increasing and highly appropriate emphasis on raising what are admittedly low four and six-year college graduation rates at universities, the spotlight has shone on how prepared students are, or are not, for the academic, financial and emotional pressures and demands of higher education. That level of preparation has proved to be inadequate for almost half of our students. As educators, we all share responsibility and blame for that — and, working more closely together, we all need to be part of the solution." :: Mapping the Competency-Based Education Universe Eduventures attempts to map the growth and trajectory of competency-based education. Two Events We’re Attending This Spring International Symposium for Emerging Technologies  & The Education Innovation Summit The Online Learning Consortium (formerly Sloan Consortium), MERLOT, and our Emerging Technologies steering committee welcome you to the 8th Annual Emerging Technologies for Online Learning International Symposium (ET4Online), which will be held Dallas, TX on April 22-24, 2015. The Education Innovation Summit, in its 6th year, is held in Scottsdale, Arizona on April 6-8

University of Michigan In-House Digital Innovation The University of Michigan recently announced the launch of the DIG - the Digital Innovation Greenhouse. This is a model for generating innovation that other schools would be wise to watch. First impressions suggest that the initiative is particularly interested in using data to better understand and serve. A second focus, rightly, is in ensuring innovations scale across the institution - which has often stymied efforts at other institutions. Learn more about DIG here and here. What Are They Saying About Us? There’s no shortage of talk about higher education within higher education, but what are those outside of the institution saying? In my experience, there’s much to learn by paying attention to those outside of the institution are thinking, especially critical views. Below, are two recent examples: Bob Hayes, a second-year student at Northwestern reflects on his experience thus far, and wonders why he "  . . . learned more in the classrooms of nearby New Trier High School than I have during my time in Evanston. How does it make sense that I learned more at a public high school than I have at the elite college for which my family pays more than $65,000 per year?" "Synapse" uses a comic book format to question the impact on social class of the college system in "Why America’s Higher Education Needs Reform." Innovation: Inside and Outside of Higher Ed There’s no shortage of smart people doing interesting work in online higher education in 2015. But equally important is the work in digital learning happening outside of our institutions. Unhampered by the regulatory, cultural and financial model of higher education, a number of interesting initiatives are growing at extraordinary rates. Udemy (u-du-me) recently announced that its top 10 instructors have generated more than 17 million in revenue. Lynda.com has raised more than 100 million in financing. Codecademy, which focusses on teaching code, is also doing very well. The success of these organizations can tell us a great deal about what the future of online learning might look; which parts will be based within traditional colleges and universities, and which will be served by the commercial sector.

Kevin Carey has been one of the more useful non-academic writers on US higher education of the last decade. It’s not surprising then that his recently released book, The End of College, is generating significant attention. Also not surprising is the significant backlash that has been generated in the blogosphere from those that question the role of technology in higher education; each offering criticisms with gaps that you could drive a truck through - but judge for yourself. Book excerpt: Here’s What Will Truly Change Higher Education: Online Degrees That Are Seen as Official Critical responses: MOOCs as torture. | More or Less Bunk The Higher Ed Disruptors Are Still With Us  Silicon Valley’s Thunder Lizards Want to Hack America’s Broken Universities :: As you know, funds have been short in California and many are watching to see how they respond to these conditions; a test case for other jurisdictions to come, I suspect. In this context, an investment fund of 50 million dollars is of interest. California offers $50 Million Carrot for College Innovation Excerpt: The governor has pledged $50 million to reward campuses with creative and cost-effective approaches to getting more students to earn degrees in less time. A seven-member committee chaired by Brown’s finance director is scheduled to name the winners of the California Awards for Innovation in Higher Education later this month. :: Many countries have publicly funded organizations that track and support the work of colleges and universities. One of the better ones in Canada is HEQCO. Two recent projects by HEQCO are of particular importance: HEQCO is leading the charge in Canada to raise the profile of measurable learning outcomes. Earlier this week they released The Learning Outcomes Assessment: A Practitioner’s Handbook, which is available here: Learning Outcomes Assessment: A Practitioner’s Handbook They’ve also just released a comprehensive analysis of Canadian universities, with a rather provocative atop their press release: "When it comes to Canadian universities, the level of funding doesn’t predict performance . . . " Access the report here: Canadian Postsecondary Performance: IMPACT 2015 Excerpt: "When it comes to Canadian universities, the level of funding doesn’t predict performance, according to a new report from the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO). In its newest and most comprehensive analysis of Canadian postsecondary systems, HEQCO finds that Ontario and Nova Scotia are top performers overall despite lower per-student operating costs, while other provinces that spend the same or in some cases considerably more money achieve average or below average performance. "It’s no longer just a question of how much money is spent on postsecondary education," says HEQCO president and CEO Harvey P. Weingarten. "It’s a question of how the money is spent and what outcomes are achieved." :: How to Calculate the Real Costs of Developing and delivering MOOCs eCampus News points us to two studies looking at the ROI of MOOCs. The real challenge in this case, of course, is defining what constitutes ROI. Read more here.          

The speed with which innovations in technology move from inception to adoption by individuals continues to pick-up; it takes years rather than decades. Although the television was invented in the 1920s, it wasn’t until the 1950s that it became a common feature in Western living rooms. Fast forward to 2015 and of the 220,000 drones expected to be sold this year, 70% are for home use. (In case you missed it, "National Drone Day" was this past Saturday, March 14.) At the same time, new technologies are more frequently taking hold first in consumer markets, rather than among enterprises (hospitals, government, corporations, military), which was once the norm. As the size of the consumer market for technology swells, investment and talent follow.  (For more information, see the "Consumerization of IT".) In the midst of these changes, it’s useful to take a moment to consider how consumer technologies interact with education technology. First, it is common for educators and even institutions to adopt technologies that were designed for consumer markets. Youtube, Twitter, WordPress, Google+, Facebook and others are deployed by individual academics to facilitate parts of courses. (It’s worth noting these technologies likely start as personal applications for educators in their role as consumers.) Similarly, institutions turn to Google and Microsoft for email and other enterprise technologies. The benefits of adopting widely-used consumer applications for educational purposes is plain: the majority are free, and students are already familiar with them - thereby reducing complexity. However, many institutions struggle with security and privacy concerns, as a result. If an academic chooses to use a WordPress site for part or all of a course, the students’ work may be exposed to the general public or to servers that don’t meet institutional standards. University requirements for data security tend to be more stringent than those of external, commercial providers - many of which pay their bills by sharing data with advertisers. Equally important is the degree to which these external applications are suited to the goals of teaching and learning.  Certain types of social media, for example, have proven to be an awkward fit. While social media is well-suited to facilitating open-ended exchanges between people - with no clear or prescribed beginning and end - higher education has clear boundaries (e.g. course duration) and largely predetermined objectives (e.g. a fixed and standard set of assessments). Social media is user-generated and leaderless; that’s what makes it so compelling. On the other hand, higher education is top-down and instructor-directed. Social media thrives when there are thousands, if not millions, of users within a single, overarching community. A high volume of users provides online communities with enough activity and content to ensure that each user finds what and who they want with sufficient frequency.  Twitter and Linked In have well over 100 million users. Higher education instruction typically restricts participation to a single class (e.g. average of 40 students per course). This is not to say that social media can’t be used in higher education; they can, and they are. But their use will be limited given that they are not designed for teaching and learning in our institution’s unique constraints. Higher education interacts with consumer technology in a second, possibly more productive, way. It involves mimicry. Technologies are built specifically for online education, but they draw on the best of consumer technologies. They identify what works well in consumer technologies that can be used to support educational objectives, rather than, for example, maximizing exposure of user demographics to advertisers. Second, these educational technologies are designed with a recognition that many of the preferences and behaviours of students are being established in the consumer environment. At this point in history the consumer technology market is the dominant, defining force in technology use. Education should seek out ways to leverage this fact in order to meet its own objectives. The interplay between consumer and educational technologies, specifically in terms of online education, will continue to evolve. And I anticipate that we will continue to see both education and consumer-born technologies being used to create and support online learning. But it is also the case that the education technology sector is beginning to find its feet. Investment is up and just as importantly, more talented people are applying themselves to crafting new and better education-specific technologies.  

:: SXSW Edu SXSW Edu has become an increasingly popular conference over the last five years. Acrobatiq was invited to participate as part of the Higher Ed Innovation Showcase, part of the Getting to College Graduation Summit, organized by the Gates Foundation. Also noteworthy, is the creation of an Ed Tech Women, part of the Change Makers series. :: Protests There’s been a flurry of protests recently in higher education, all related in one way or another to concerns about costs. The University of Toronto and York University (Toronto, Canada) have both dealt with strikes. More information here. A small group of LSE (London School of Economics) students recently staged a protest to demand that the government scrap tuition fees. More information here.  Dutch students call for a "new university" model with transparent finances. More information here. Finally, the University of California’s new President, Jane Napolitano referred to a student protest over tuition hikes as "crap" (unfortunately, for her, within reach of a recording device) to the "crap" of student protests. More information here. :: Trends We continue to study to evolving higher education landscape. Two trends worth noting, include: Competency-Based Education: The Ripple Effects of Taking Assessment to the Next Level & The Interplay Between Educational and Consumer Technologies We look forward to hearing your thinking on these and other subjects. :: Opinion University of California President, Janet Napolitano, responds to the refrain that higher education is in the throes of a meltdown with "Higher Education is Not in Crisis". She uses quick reviews of two books as a launchpad for her argument: Ryan Craig’s "The Great Unbundling of Higher Education" and Kevin Carey’s "Creating the Future of Learning and the University of Everywhere".  Read the full article here.