When I first entered the field of online education back in 1997, the first 56.6 kps modems were appearing in homes. Most institutions had no more than a handful of online courses. Universities treated educators with an interest in "distance education" with either suspicion or indifference. Online education was largely a faculty-led effort; few university Strategic Plans included more than a passing reference to online education. Obviously, much has changed. But one aspect of online higher education remains largely intact: the way that traditional colleges and universities go about designing, creating, and financing in-house online course development. Now, as in 1997, individual instructors assume the bulk of the responsibility for course design and development. Support from an instructional designer and technical staff is available, but their impact is limited by availability and the conventions of academic work. Funds for course development are similarly constrained, due to the limited revenue that can be generated from offering a single course at a single institution. This "cottage industry" approach took hold not because we thought it was the best way to create a great online learning experience for students, but because it fit with the institution’s existing organization and processes — one based on the classroom model. Mirroring the classroom model made the shift to online relatively painless. As a consequence, though, the quality of the online courses produced within our traditional colleges and universities falls to professionals who were not hired on the basis of their knowledge of graphic design, information architecture, programming, or the learning sciences — the very qualities required to consistently create great online courses. As has long been the case for classroom education, the overarching, but implicit assumption is that putting course design in the hands of people with deep subject matter knowledge translates into a good learning experience for students. There’s little evidence that this is the case in the classroom, and it’s less true for online education, where a whole new host of skills and knowledge are required. By simply transferring the existing roles, responsibilities and financial model to the online context, allowed institutions to quickly "put courses online". But it also all but ensured that these institutions are unable to produce more sophisticated and ambitious online courses that support better learning outcomes or reduce costs. Ironically, it restricts the use of the very instructional techniques, resources, and new business models that research claims can improve the value of higher education — research produced by our universities. Examples of more ambitious online course design include: Courses that offer students hundreds of opportunities to test and apply their knowledge and skills. And an equal number of moments of feedback that let them know of their progress; High-production value media, including illustrations, animations, audio and video, that explain difficult concepts and process in clear and powerful ways; Software that adapts to student input, enabling the optimal sequence of learning activities; Learning analytics, with instructional activities, that provides the student, educator, and institution with detailed explanations of a student’s relative strengths and weaknesses; Instructional methodologies tied to new business models that have the capacity — unlike the current model — to drive down costs by leveraging economies of scale. These tactics and others like them accomplish the obvious: they take advantage of the unique economics of the Internet and leverage the medium’s ground-breaking capacity to combine media, interactivity, social interaction, and data; the very things we dreamt of doing back in the 1990s, but have failed to accomplish. Simply getting courses online is no longer sufficient, and it can no longer serve as evidence of a strong institutional committment to online learning — as Penn’s Robert Zemsky argued a full decade ago. Institutions need now to turn their attention to finding ways to build or acquire instructional content that truly takes advantage of technology to improve learning. There’s no better place to start than course design. :: 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

Ralph Waldo Emerson "Worth Reading" is a hand-picked weekly collection of new, not-so-new articles and downright old ideas, events and other items for higher education professionals. Higher-Ed Leaders Worry Most About Declining Enrollment, Survey Finds "Bottom Line: This year’s survey of higher-education executives underscores the dilemma that many colleges face as they deal with a declining number of high-school graduates (in much of the country) and falling state and federal spending on higher education. The increased competition for students compels colleges to maintain spending on academic programs and amenities at the same time that there is widespread concern about the rising price of tuition and about access for low-income students." Colleges’ Pursuit of Prestige and Revenue Is Hurting Low-Income Students "Fifty years ago, the federal government committed itself to removing the financial barriers that prevent low-income students from enrolling in and completing college. For years, colleges complemented the government’s efforts by using their financial aid resources to open their doors to the neediest students. But a new report from New America suggests those days are in the past, with an increasing number of colleges using their financial resources to fiercely compete for the students they most desire: the "best and brightest" — and the wealthiest." No College Left Behind: Randy Best’s Money-Making Mission To Save Higher Education "Philosophy, political science and art history majors need not apply, nor gifted high school seniors shooting for top-tier schools. "The Stanfords, the Harvards, oh my gosh, those schools are remarkable," says Best. "But they’re irrelevant to the market." The degrees Academic Partnerships are selling are aimed squarely at the bulging middle mass of the college market-the millions of adult students seeking degrees as a vehicle to better jobs and bigger salaries. Let the 20-somethings pack the coffeehouses, stadiums and frat parties. Best’s clients are all business. They are cops, nurses, teachers and construction workers grinding for the promotion and pay bump that comes with a B.S. in criminal justice or nursing or a master’s in education or construction management but can’t take days or nights off-much less four or five years-from the job and kids to earn a diploma." Commuter Students Using Technology "A multi-year qualitative study of undergraduates at six colleges at the City University of New York focused on how, where, and when students accomplished their academic work and how the presence or absence of access to technology helped and hindered them." Boosting productivity in US higher education "To meet the target without spending more, colleges would simultaneously have to attract additional students, increase the proportion of them who complete a degree, and keep a tight lid on costs. Gaming the target by lowering the quality of the education or granting access only to the best-prepared students obviously wouldn’t count. Not surprisingly, many people within and beyond higher education say that colleges can’t possibly do all these things at once." "But McKinsey research suggests that many already are, using tactics others could emulate. In fact, the potential to increase productivity across the varied spectrum of US higher education appears to be so great that, with the right policy support, one million more graduates a year by 2020, at today’s spending levels, begins to look eminently feasible. The quality of education and access to it could both improve at the same time." Students Should Be Tested More, Not Less: When done right, frequent testing helps people remember information longer. "Henry L. Roediger III, a cognitive psychologist at Washington University, studies how the brain stores, and later retrieves, memories. He compared the test results of students who used common study methods—such as re-reading material, highlighting, reviewing and writing notes, outlining material and attending study groups—with the results from students who were repeatedly tested on the same material. When he compared the results, Roediger found, "Taking a test on material can have a greater positive effect on future retention of that material than spending an equivalent amount of time restudying the material." Remarkably, this remains true "even when performance on the test is far from perfect and no feedback is given on missed information." Wisdom in the Age of Information and the Importance of Storytelling in Making Sense of the World: An Animated Essay "This barrage of readily available information has also created an environment where one of the worst social sins is to appear uninformed. Ours is a culture where it’s enormously embarrassing not to have an opinion on something, and in order to seem informed, we form our so-called opinions hastily, based on fragmentary bits of information and superficial impressions rather than true understanding." "Knowledge," Emerson wrote, "is the knowing that we can not know."

(Note: Part One in this series on the subject of online consortia can be found here.) :: In the late 90s — during the "early years" of online higher education — many colleges and universities didn’t have the internal resources required to build, support and market online education. Some institutions saw fit to join online consortia; by pooling limited resources, each institution gained access to the resources they needed. Many of these early initiatives are still operating.  Access and/or Innovation In a recent review we conducted of online higher ed consortia, we found that the majority of consortia, and the vast majority of those that started ten or more years ago, are designed primarily to increase access. That is, these initiatives define success by the number of online courses created and/or supported by the consortia, and the number of students enrolled in these courses. More courses, means more access. Access is obviously important. However, for a number of reasons, we believe that a recasting of the consortia model for online higher education would be beneficial. Given the state of online education, the focus needs now to shift from ensuring institutions can launch and support online courses, to stimulating innovation and improving quality. Time to Focus on Innovation First, and most obviously, the needs of member institutions have changed and consequently consortia need to change, as well. Over the last decade-and-a-half, most colleges and universities have significantly augmented their internal capacity to develop, support and market online education. The LMS is now near universal. The majority of university leaders see online education as fundamental to institutional strategy, and far more instructors have experience teaching online. moving beyond the basics . . . As internal capacity of member institutions increase, the functions that can’t be done well (or at all) within each member institution change too. Although this may seem so obvious as to be not worth mentioning, our review suggests otherwise. Many consortia we reviewed continue to provide only the basic requirements of creating and supporting online courses. One consortium, for example, simply assigned a single instructional designer to work with a lone instructor from the member institution to develop an online course. No meaningful quality standards are employed, the instructor isn’t even paid for the course development. Fewer and fewer institutions need these basic services. It isn’t surprising that our review found that institutions that have set more ambitious goals for online education are less interested in participating in consortia. Our review suggested that more consortia should focus less on providing basic, increasingly common, services and more on helping institutions test and scale more ambitious online learning strategies that can improve outcomes and drive down costs. If the fundamental value proposition of consortia is that it enables member institutions to do what they can’t done alone, then the initiative should be deliberately and systematically focusing on those functions that are anything but "basic". Services that fall into the category of "ambitious" in 2014 might include the development of rich media, the use of learning analytics, and the development of competency-based programs. why consortia . . . Consortia align particularly well with three trends in online higher education: A slow, but important migration to the software model of course development, in which upfront costs for course development are relatively high, but maintenance and distribution costs are marginal. By pooling resources, consortia can accommodate higher upfront costs and then coordinate distribution at scale. Growing use of analytics to inform and personalize learning. The more data is shared and compared across institutions, the greater its value. Again, consortia are well positioned to facilitate the proper movement of data-generated insights across institutions. Online education will continue to demand new, increasingly complex skills and knowledge that are not readily available within each institution. Consortia can serve as a central, shared source of talent and technology across individual institutions. defining ROI . . . Consortia need to define and then share clearer and more concrete objectives with member institutions. In particular, it would be useful for consortia to provide members with more robust assessments of the initiative’s ROI. If success is defined by the consortium (as noted above) by the number of online courses and students that are supported by the consortia, then members should be able to assess whether the cost of running the consortia is greater than the actual increase in enrolment and number of courses. ROI is always difficult in education, but consortia — given their frequently tenuous financial stability — may be less inclined to produce this kind of information. Member institutions should demand it. built to change . . . Lastly, consortia must be built to change. If, as suggested, the basic purpose and value proposition of the consortia is to do what member institutions can’t do separately, then the services offered must change as technology, costs, and objectives change. Again, this may seem obvious. But consortia struggle with change like other organizations. Nevertheless, the value proposition of consortia requires that they continually adjust their services to meet changing conditions. :: 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 Consortia typically offer a range of services for member institutions: Course registration and course registration systems Help desk (technology and/or administrative) for students Professional development for instructors Learning management systems Video conferencing (hardware, software and support) Webinar hosting and management (hardware, software and support) Sharing of online courses between institutions Instructional quality assessment and rubrics Development of new applications Multimedia development (instructional material) Market research services Instructor training on educational technology Instructional design Tutoring services (student online/phone) Learning object repositories Project management/coordination Marketing / clearinghouse of members courses and programs

"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 seek to spend their reading time 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

Join CEO Eric Frank and an esteemed group of leaders in education from the University of California, Davis, Rice University, Capella University, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Arizona State University and CCKF as they discuss Adaptive Learning and the Quest to Improve Undergraduate Education, sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This three-part 90-minute interactive session will highlight recent progress in the implementation of adaptive learning approaches to improve undergraduate education by colleges and universities participating in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Adaptive Learning Market Acceleration Program: Part 1: Three leading adaptive learning providers will provide a brief overview of their diverse adaptive learning solutions, followed by audience participation and dialogue. Part 2: Two instructional designers will provide an overview of their efforts integrating adaptive learning technologies in the design of high-enrollment undergraduate courses. Part 3: A diverse team of "learning engineers" from UC Davis who focused on combining active learning pedagogy in undergraduate high-enrollment STEM courses with adaptive learning technologies will share and recount their experiences. If you are attending the event live, please join us for this lively and informative session, and if you are unable to attend live, consider the online option. You can register to attend the sessions online here.

"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.  :: Using Technology to Engage the Nontraditional Student Article on strategies to serve "non-traditional" students by Phil Regier, Executive Vice-Provost of ASU and Dean, ASU Online.   "Traditional higher education institutions need to focus more intensively on these students and help them succeed while, in turn, helping the country succeed as well. Public education is the cornerstone of a successful, inclusive society. We need to concentrate on nontraditional students’ success and their learning outcomes. We need to leverage personalized and adaptive technologies to create an environment with features that are specific to their needs. We need to stop overlooking these students and start engaging them. And we need to start now." Hire Education: Mastery, Modularization, and the Workforce Revolution  A report from the Christensen Institute that touches on many of the issues he made as part of his keynote at Educause 2014. "Students themselves are demanding more direct connections with employers: 87.9 percent of college freshmen cited getting a better job as a vital reason for pursuing a college degree in the 2012 University of California Los Angeles’ Higher Education Research Institute’s "American Freshman Survey"—approximately 17 percentage points higher than in the same survey question in 2006; a survey of the U.S. public by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation confirmed similarly high numbers. "Learning and work are becoming inseparable," argued the authors of a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research, "indeed one could argue that this is precisely what it means to have a knowledge economy or a learning society. It follows that if work is becoming learning, then learning needs to become work—and universities need to become alive to the possibilities." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOJM6Hv1I8g "Despite these trends, few universities or colleges see the need to adapt to the surge in demand of skillsets in the workforce. Distancing themselves from the notion of vocational training, institutions remain wary of aligning their programs and majors to the needs of today’s rapidly evolving labor market. At the same time, the business models of most traditional schools make them structurally incapable of responding to changes in the markets that they serve. Therefore, whether institutions like it or not, students are inevitably beginning to question the return on their higher education investments because the costs of a college degree continue to rise and the gulf continues to widen between degree holders and the jobs available today." The Student Life Project An interesting project led by Dr. Andrew Campbell at Dartmouth that uses smartphone data to detect depression, loneliness and stress among students. "Much of the stress and strain of student life remains hidden. In reality faculty, student deans, clinicians know little about their students outside of the classroom. Students might know about their own circumstances and patterns but know little about classmates. To shine a light on student life we develop the first of a kind StudentLife smartphone app and sensing system to automatically infer human behavior. Why do some students do better than others? Under similar conditions, why do some individuals excel while others fail? Why do students burnout, drop classes, even drop out of college? What is the impact of stress, mood, workload, sociability, sleep and mental health on academic performance (i.e., GPA)? The study used an android app we developed for smartphones carried by 48 students over a 10 week term to find answers to some of these pressing questions." Big Data: Seizing Opportunities, Preserving Values.  A report from the US government on the creation and use of data. (You may not want to read all of it.) The section on education starts on page 24. "The big data revolution in education also raises serious questions about how best to pro- tect student privacy as technology reaches further into the classroom. While states and local communities have traditionally played the dominant role in providing education, much of the software that supports online learning tools and courses is provided by for- profit firms. This raises complicated questions about who owns the data streams coming off online education platforms and how they can be used. Applying privacy safeguards like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment, or the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act to educational records can create unique challenges."

"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 War Between Universities and Disciplines Excerpt: "This attitude, which seems so normal to academics, provokes absolute bewilderment from the outside world (particularly governments and philanthropists), who believe universities are a single corporate entity.  But they’re not.  As ex-University of Chicago President Robert Hutchins said, universities are a collection of warring professional fiefdoms, connected by a common steam plant.  A more recent formulation, from the excellent New America Foundation analyst Kevin Carey, is that the modern university is just a holding company for a group of departments, which in turn are holding companies for a group of individual faculty research interests.  In other words, Yugoslavia." The Forgotten Female Programmers Who Created Modern Tech Excerpt: "If your image of a computer programmer is a young man, there’s a good reason: It’s true. Recently, many big tech companies revealed how few of their female employees worked in programming and technical jobs. Google had some of the highest rates: 17 percent of its technical staff is female. It wasn’t always this way. Decades ago, it was women who pioneered computer programming — but too often, that’s a part of history that even the smartest people don’t know." Grace Hopper originated electronic computer automatic programming for the Remington Rand Division of Sperry Rand Corp. Size and economies of scale in higher education and the implications for mergers Excerpt: "This paper carries out a meta regression analysis to estimate the optimal size of higher education institutions (HEI) and identify its implications for strategies of mergers in higher education. This study finds an optimal institutional size of 24,954 students. We find potential opportunities for merging different HEIs relative to their mean sample size: public universities by nearly 190 per cent, private universities by 131 per cent, small colleges by around 952 per cent, and non-US HEIs by about 118 per cent. However, if we compare with actual sizes of top ranked universities we find that in some parts of the world top ranked universities seem to be below optimal size, while in others they appear above optimal size. We urge caution in the interpretation of the findings due to the limited data. We recommend further research and that policymakers around the world refer to their own cost structures to determine the optimal size for efficiency." IDEO’S Online Education Beta Excerpt: "IDEO is developing an online school to unlock the creative potential in everyone. Our courses will help you learn to think like a designer and build the confidence to develop bold ideas and new possibilities. Later this year we’ll be launching the beta version." Untapped Potential: Making the Higher Education Market Work for Students and Taxpayers Excerpt: "Decades ago, policymakers built a student financial aid (quality-assurance) system around two pillars: 1) consumer choice and 2) hands-off regulation that relies largely on higher education accreditation. Unfortunately, flawed assumptions about how these mechanisms ought to operate have never been updated, leading to a status quo of increasing costs, subpar outcomes, and lack of innovation." Anyone Can Attend This Coding School That Meets in Coffee Shops Excerpt: "If you want to be a programmer, you pretty much have two choices: Take a class at a school or university, or learn on your own through books and online classes. But Ruben Abergel and Edward Lando wanna give you a third choice. That’s why they founded Hackvard, a web application dedicated to bridging the gap between offline and online education."

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 Socialist Origins of Big Data. The Planning Machine: Project Cybersyn and the origins of the Big Data nation. By Evgeny Morozov Excerpt: "In Allende’s Chile, a futuristic op room was to bring socialism into the computer age. In June, 1972, Ángel Parra, Chile’s leading folksinger, wrote a song titled "Litany for a Computer and a Baby About to Be Born." Computers are like children, he sang, and Chilean bureaucrats must not abandon them. The song was prompted by a visit to Santiago from a British consultant who, with his ample beard and burly physique, reminded Parra of Santa Claus—a Santa bearing a "hidden gift, cybernetics." Why Colleges Should Stop Splurging on Buildings and Start Investing in Software By Donn Davis Excerpt: "For decades, America’s colleges and universities have been on a massive spending spree, building new dorms, student centers, sports complexes, and academic buildings. Despite all these expenditures, the key metrics are not much better. Graduation rates haven’t increased at the pace of much of Europe and Japan. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the percentage of young Americans who are less educated than their parents exceeds other leading nations. What if the leaders of our colleges and universities had channeled just a fraction of this edifice-complex capital into technology improvements instead?" Closing the Skills Gap: Companies and Colleges Collaborating for Change By Aisha Labi Excerpt: "Closing the skills gap: companies and colleges collaborating for change explores the role of partnerships between US industry and higher education to prepare students and employees for the modern workforce. It considers how their cooperation can address the current "skills gap"—a growing gulf between the skills workers possess today and the skills businesses say they need—and investigates what US companies are willing to do to narrow that gap." Is There a Way to Reduce Costs and Preserve Appropriate Student-Faculty Ratios? By Ry Rivard Excerpt: "It’s hard to raise much excitement over a chart, but a recent one that breaks down how colleges can reduce the number of sections they teach and reduce faculty time while educating the same number of students might be getting there. But not all the excitement is positive. The chart is part of a summary of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded studies by the Education Advisory Board, a business that produces research for colleges. The board looked at seven colleges, mostly regional public universities whose names have not been revealed, and tried to figure out what it costs to teach students. Analysts combed through 250 million rows of data to draw up reports that spelled out the costs of each student credit hour in each section in each department of each college."    

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. Online Ed Skepticism and Self-Sufficiency: Survey of Faculty Views on Technology By Inside Higher E and Gallup Excerpt: "Virtually all faculty members and technology administrators say meaningful student-teacher interaction is a hallmark of a quality online education, and that it is missing from most online courses A majority of faculty members with online teaching experience still say those courses produce results inferior to in-person courses. Faculty members are overwhelmingly opposed to their institutions hiring outside "enablers" to manage any part of online course operation, even for marketing purposes. Humanities instructors are most likely to say they have benefited from the digital humanities — but also that those digital techniques have been oversold." How Bad Are the Colleges? By Christopher Beefy Excerpt: "What I saw at Yale I have continued to see at campuses around the country. Everybody looks extremely normal, and everybody looks the same. No hippies, no punks, no art school types or hipsters, no butch lesbians or gender queers, no black kids in dashikis. The geeks don’t look that geeky; the fashionable kids go in for understated elegance. Everyone dresses as if they’re ready to be interviewed at a moment’s notice. You’re young, I want to say to them. Take a chance with yourselves. Never mind "diversity." What we’re getting is thirty-two flavors of vanilla…. College used to be understood as a time to experiment with different selves, of whatever type." Universities Rethinking Their Use of Massive Online Courses From The New York Times Excerpt: "In Texas political circles, massive open online courses — commonly known as MOOCs — have enjoyed a resurgence. Officials have praised the typically free college classes, available to anyone with Internet access, as a crucial component in the future of higher education. Last month, Greg Abbott, the Republican candidate for governor, called on colleges to offer credit for such courses. Later, after a meeting of the House Higher Education Committee on the topic, State Representative Dan Branch, a Dallas Republican and the panel’s chairman, said he was "more convinced that high-quality online content will improve and ultimately reduce the cost of education." On the Question of Validity in Learning Analytics by Adam Cooper "I believe the move to large-scale adoption of learning analytics, with the attendant rise in institution-level decisions, should motivate us to spend some time thinking about how concepts such as validity and reliability apply in this practical setting. Motivation comes from: large scale adoption has "upped the stakes", and non-experts are now involved in decision-making. This article is a brief look at some of the issues with where we are now, and some of the potential pit-falls going forwards."

From "The Lifetime Learner: A Journey Through the Future of Post-Secondary Education" The Lifetime Learner A journey through the future of postsecondary education By John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, Roy Mathew, Maggie Wooll & Wendy Tsu, Deloitte Inc. Excerpt: "A new business landscape is emerging wherein a multitude of small entities will bring products and services to market using the infrastructure and platforms of large, concentrated players. The forces driving this are putting new and mounting pressures on organizations and individuals while also opening up new opportunities. But traditional postsecondary educational institutions are not supporting individuals in successfully navigating this not-too-distant future, nor are the educational institutions immune to these forces." :: The Future of the Book The digital transformation of the way books are written, published and sold has just begun. By The Economist Excerpt: "Many are worried about what such technology means for books, with big bookshops closing, new devices spreading, novice authors flooding the market and an online behemoth known as Amazon growing ever more powerful. Their anxieties cannot simply be written off as predictable technophobia. The digital transition may well change the way books are written, sold and read more than any development in their history, and that will not be to everyone’s advantage. Veterans and revolutionaries alike may go bust; Gutenberg died almost penniless, having lost control of his press to Fust and other creditors.""But to see technology purely as a threat to books risks missing a key point. Books are not just "tree flakes encased in dead cow", as a scholar once wryly put it. They are a technology in their own right, one developed and used for the refinement and advancement of thought. And this technology is a powerful, long-lived and adaptable one." :: Can Design Save Newspapers By TED Talks (video) Excerpt: "Jacek Utko is an extraordinary Polish newspaper designer whose redesigns for papers in Eastern Europe not only win awards, but increase circulation by up to 100%. Can good design save the newspaper? It just might." :: How Southern New Hampshire U Develops 650-Plus Online Courses Per Year Course development at the country’s fastest growing nonprofit online educator is a major endeavor. Here’s how SNHU manages the process. By David Raths, Campus Technology magazine Excerpt: "In the past two years, Southern New Hampshire University has increased its online course offerings by 67 percent and more than tripled its enrollment, making it the fastest growing not-for-profit online educator in the country. Just how has SNHU managed to create so many new programs and courses and hire enough instructors to deliver them?" :: Putin’s Friend Profits in Purge of Schoolbooks By Jo Becker and Steven Lee Myers, New York Times "I have never seen such a level of cynicism and chaos before," said Vladimir A. Peterson, who manages the publication of the math textbooks developed by his mother."The purge was the latest in a string of government maneuvers that have positioned Enlightenment, once the sole provider of school textbooks under Soviet rule, to dominate the textbook marketplace once again. Mr. Putin first directed that the state-owned company be sold into private hands, records show, in a deal that circumvented a requirement intended to ensure the highest prices for state assets. Then, having installed Mr. Rotenberg as chairman, Mr. Putin’s government knocked out much of Enlightenment’s competition."

  Part 2 of this document can be found here.  :: A chasm is beginning to appear between institutions of higher education that offer online programs. The divide is the result of the different strategies taken for designing, sourcing and managing online education programs. A small number of institutions in the U.S. have adopted methods for producing and supporting online courses that have the potential, if not the likelihood, to improve learning outcomes, increase the speed with the institution improves the quality of teaching and learning, increase value (quality/cost). If present trends continue, these institutions could reconfigure the deeply embedded hierarchy that organizes higher education. A couple of scenarios An acquaintance of mine, currently an Assistant Professor at a mid-size university, was asked in mid-July by her institution to create and deliver a new online course for the Fall (September) semester. In the time available, she had to define the new curriculum, determine the instructional tactics to be used, collect existing resources, and create new materials, including assessments. Throughout the process, she worked alone. Although an instructional designer was on-hand, the staff member had little time and offered not much more than a checklist of best practices. The Instructor’s budget for the course development? Nil. Her experience contrasts sharply with practices at a handful US universities. These institutions typically focus, sometimes exclusively, on online education, offer open-admissions, and have centralized management of teaching and learning. Consider this depiction; a composite of a few institutions I’ve had a chance to investigate: An academic department - after conducting a thorough, regularly scheduled review of learning outcomes - determines that a full rework of a key program is required. Starting what will be a twelve-month process, the department conducts a deeper analysis of the current program, consulting with student support staff, faculty, academic leadership, and industry advisors - to define the overarching set of objectives and instructional strategies for the revamped program. A team is assigned to the project, including specialists in learning analytics, subject matter experts, managers of assessment systems, faculty, teaching assistants, student support staff, and technology managers. The institution’s team identifies a number of things they want to offer their students that can be done more efficiently by forming partnerships other universities, consortia, and vendors, so as to complement internal strengths. The course development process ultimately involves more than a dozen people, three external organizations, and costs more than 100k per course, when including internal labour costs. Following the first year of the new programs’ delivery, a review is conducted to identify where refinements are needed. Not an inconsequential impact There are a number of issues of note: All things being equal, this handful of institutions will offer students higher quality education. By bringing the right mix of talent, resources, funds, and processes together, the institution has a much better chance of providing students with a well-conceived, thoughtfully-executed, and well-resourced learning experience. The institutions have considerably greater ability to scale-up learning to meet demand. They can build new courses and programs more quickly, and with greater assurance that each will meet institutional standards for quality. These institutions pay considerably more attention to the results of their instructional strategies. Internal reviews are common, and many are now turning to analytics to generate even more detailed and extensive insights into what’s working and what isn’t. This knowledge provides the basis for better decision-making, which in-turn can provide progressively better learning experiences for students. This last quality needs to be underlined. Knowledge about how to design and support learning in higher education held by individual faculty - whether online or not - is rarely systematically shared with the institution. Teaching is approached as individual pursuit. Indeed, faculty members can work in the same department as other academics for several years without ever seeing each other teach. Each Instructor operates individually. Strictly speaking, this isn’t by design: it’s a by-product of the traditional organizational structure of the institution and conventions of the academic occupation. But the effect of this characteristic is that it limits the flow of knowledge across the institution about effective teaching.  It fits nicely the centuries-old conventions of the occupation, it may ultimately limit the breadth and depth of the knowledge that is brought to bear on each course within the institution. These upstart universities see knowledge about teaching and learning as the domain of the institution. The institution, not the individual educator, captures, interprets and applies knowledge about how best to serve students.  Knowledge is applied on an institutional level, not on a course-by-course, instructor-by-instructor level. Of course, the downside of this approach is the potential to suppress the kinds of innovations that can arise from radical decentralization - letting a "hundred flowers bloom", if you will. But supporters of this more centralized approach contend that the benefits of a collective, institutional approach to knowledge building and sharing may be greater at this point in the evolution of online education. Higher quality learning, they argue, requires a more deliberate and disciplined approach. At times, I can appreciate this perspective: conference presentations about "how to teach online" offered in 2014 have striking resemblance to those we heard in 2001. We don’t seem to be making significant headway by placing the burden of course design and delivery primarily on the backs of under-resourced individual Instructors. Part 2 of this document can be found here.   :: Keith Hampson, PhD is Managing Director, Client Innovation at Acrobatiq LLC.

  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. :: LACE. Learning Analytics Community Exchange Excerpt: "The Learning Analytics Community Exchange is an EU funded project in the 7th Framework Programme involving nine partners from across Europe. LACE partners are passionate about the opportunities afforded by current and future views of learning analytics (LA) and educational data mining (EDM) but we are concerned about missed opportunities and failing to realise value." "The 30 month project aims to integrate communities working on LA and EDM from schools, workplace and universities by sharing effective solutions to real problems." Objective 1 - Promote knowledge creation and exchange Objective 2 - Increase the evidence base Objective 3 - Contribute to the definition of future directions Objective 4 - Build consensus on interoperability and data sharing :: Adaptive Learning Technology: What It Is, Why It Matters by Eduventures Excerpt: "A 2008 study published by the Journal of Interactive Media in Higher education found no significant difference in exam scores for students enrolled in Open Learning Initiative’s introductory statistics course (which contains adaptive learning) compared to the traditional course. Furthermore, the study also found that the OLI students took 50% less time to learn all of the content and perform the same or better relative to the traditional students." :: On Their Watch By Ry Rivard Excerpt: "Inattentive college and university governing boards are putting American higher education at risk, according to a new set of guidelines for trustees issued today by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges." :: Learning Analytics in Higher Education: An Annotated Bibliography by Delta at NCSU (Annotated bibliography developed by Lauren A.S. Hirsh) Excerpt: "Just as big data has become big business in industries from marketing to medicine, so too has it found a place in higher education. Companies use the "data exhaust" we leave in our wake as we traverse the World Wide Web to generate advice and ads, recommend music and movies, and connect us to friends and colleagues on social networks." "This annotated bibliography, written by Lauren Hirsh, a graduate student working with DELTA, provides some resources for consideration and further exploration of learning analytics in higher education. It is not intended to be a comprehensive review of the literature; however a list of additional recommended articles and resources has been included at the end of this document."

This post is Part 2. Part 1 can be found here.  The Growing Chasm in the Online Higher Education Market (2 of 2) One of the key characteristics that distinguishes faster growing, more scalable, and increasingly high-quality online universities (described in "The Growing Chasm") is the systematic use of knowledge about what works in online instruction and what doesn’t. This handful of US institutions tend to capture more data about student learning, learn from it, and act on it. As simple as this process sounds, it’s difficult to implement in our traditional colleges and universities, where course design and development is typically a very decentralized activity. Instruction is determined on a course-by-course basis and there’s rarely a systematic, robust process in place for identifying and sharing knowledge about what drives student-learning outcomes most effectively. As a new faculty member, I remember being surprised to learn that my colleagues on the faculty had little to no knowledge of how their other colleagues in the department ran their courses, for example. This need not be the case, though. The required technology now exists and if used creatively in conjunction with basic change management practices, it is possible to increase the volume and quality of information sharing, even within the most decentralized institutions. Initiatives to drive instructional innovation are most likely to be led by central support units responsible supporting online courses and programs. It’s in these departments that the pressure to ensure quality and bring about change is felt greatest. Figure A: Learning Dashboard ™ The core elements include: Get buy-in Define the current state of affairs Make new approaches clear and easy to adopt Distribute tools to measure student learning A Few Details . . . Pitch it. Put together a clear and compelling description of your plan. Use it to get feedback and solicit buy-in. (It won’t hurt if you get buy-in from people with influence, but passion goes a long way, too.) Catalogue it. Take an inventory of the instructional practices currently being used. (Maintain full confidentiality of Instructors). Share this inventory, once organized for simple review, with all stakeholders. There will be some surprises. And many educators will benefit from this tactic, alone - given the current dearth of information. "What are others doing?" Package it. Ask a team consisting of representatives to select 8-10 interesting instructional strategies that they believe would be of value to others within the institution. Showcase these examples, using events, a dedicated website, external conferences, and other means available. Be an insufferable promoter. Reconfigure these 8-10 instructional strategies so that they can be easily understood and copied. Vagueness, here, is your enemy. Be clear, simple and above all, concrete. As Dan and Chip Heath suggest: If you want people to eat more healthy mix of foods, don’t tell them to "eat low fat foods", tell them to "buy skim milk." Assess it. Implement learning analytics that each instructor can use to measure student learning. If the goal is to have students learn more and more quickly, then the analytics must actually measure student learning, not merely track their behaviour; I call this "engagement analytics". The type information collected in engagement analytics often includes: Number of page views (per page) Contributions by students to discussion threads Which students (and what percentage of the total cohort) have completed the assignments Number of logins Engagement analytics do not necessarily measure learning, per se. What’s measured is student activity, which may or may not signal actual learning. For example, engagement analytics is often used to track student page views. The student’s presence on that particular page within the course site tells us that the student has been exposed to that part of the curriculum. But it doesn’t tell us whether the student understands the curriculum. In fact, it may be that the student inadvertently left the browser window open while searching the Internet. Learning analytics, on the other hand, measure the student’s actual learning state; what students know, what they don’t know, and why. It’s this kind of information that’s needed if individual educators are going to imagine new and better ways to stimulate learning. See figure A. Information that can be captured by learning analytics include: What aspects of the course did the student master? Which students are struggling, and with which concepts, topics and problems? What misconceptions about the curriculum are leading to poor performance? What topics require more attention or better presentation? Let us know which of these tactics you’ve tried and which has served you well.  

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. :: Colleges’ Prestige Doesn’t Guarantee a Top-Flight Learning Experience By Dan Berrett Excerpt: "Fayetteville State University rarely crops up in the national conversation about educational quality. Described as a second-tier regional university by U.S. News & World Report, the institution accepts nearly two-thirds of its applicants and struggles to graduate most of them in six years. But the historically black college is also doing something right in the classroom, according to this year’s National Survey of Student Engagement, which was released today. Researchers for Nessie, as the survey is known, took a stab at identifying educational quality on the institutional level, an attribute that is as important to higher education as it is hard to define. The survey collected data from 355,000 freshmen and seniors from 622 institutions in the spring." :: Source: Edutechnica LMS Market Share 2014 From Edutechnica Excerpt: "In 2014, ANGEL usage shrinks in all countries, and Moodle usage grows in all countries. Blackboard Learn has shrunk the most in the UK. Canvas has not taken off overseas in the same way that it has in the US. Usage of Other LMSs has grown in the US and in Australia but has shrunk in Canada and the UK." :: Generation Z and the future of higher education by Northeastern News Excerpt: "The survey results indicated that Generation Z is highly self-directed, demonstrated by a strong desire to work for themselves, study entrepreneurship, and design their own programs of study in college. "What [Generation Z] is telling us is that they want to shape their own journey," Aoun said at a higher education summit in Washington, D.C., held in conjunction with the release of the survey findings. "We need to move from a teacher-centered curriculum to a learner-centered curriculum." See also Debt-Averse Teens from Inside Higher Ed. :: How Universities Can Renew America’s Cities From Brookings Institution Excerpt: "Over the past decade, businesses and research institutions that produce new discoveries and bring new products to market have, increasingly, moved into urban areas. This new geography of innovation, as I and my colleagues at the Brookings Institution call it, is coinciding with and benefitting from young workers shifting their residential preferences and revaluing city life." :: Lawsuits Against Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill Urge an End to Race-Conscious Admissions From The Chronicle of Higher Education Excerpt: "Harvard and other academic institutions cannot and should not be trusted with the awesome and historically dangerous tool of racial classification," the lawsuit argues. "As in the past, they will use any leeway the Supreme Court grants them to use racial preferences in college admissions—under whatever rubric—to engage in racial stereotyping, discrimination against disfavored minorities, and quota setting to advance their social-engineering agenda."

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. :: College Enrollment Peaked in 2011 By Wall Street Journal Excerpt: "Total college enrollment decreased by nearly a half-million students in 2013 from a year earlier, according to Census Bureau data released today, making this the second year with such a drop. Total enrollment, which includes undergraduate and graduate students, peaked in 2011, following a sharp increase during the recession. The decline hit public, private, full-time and part-time institutions and was divided equally among younger and older students. Much of the decline happened at two-year colleges. Enrollment at four-year colleges ticked up slightly." Source: Wall Street Journal (Select for more information)    :: Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurial Universities and Biotechnology By Arlen D Meyers and Sarika Pruthi Excerpt: "There are various definitions of an entrepreneurial university, yet there is a lack of agreement about its core components. This article defines the five key characteristics of an entrepreneurial university based on examples of successful bio-clusters in the United States and Europe, and suggests an agenda for stakeholders." :: Your Elite School Is Not Worth The Cost, Studies Say From Forbes Except: "The cost for a college education has risen to the astronomical, resulting in debt that haunts young people after graduation like a ghost bent on dragging them to a Dickensian poorhouse. It’s forcing us to ask, "Is it worth it?" Especially if the school of choice is an elite institution, is the gamble a card well played, or a sucker bet?" :: Choosing Between Competing Visions for Education Reform By Anthony DiMaggio Excerpt: "Considering how high the stakes are in the financing of higher ed, one must take care to evaluate competing "solutions" for how to address the crisis we face. Competing visions for higher education are being articulated, some far more thoughtful, humane, and progressive than others."  

  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. Blowing Off Class? We Know By Goldie Blumenstyk An update on the evolving use of analytics to support higher education from its best journalists, Goldie Blumenstyk. Excerpt: "Tools developed in-house and by a slew of companies now give administrators digital dashboards that can code students red or green to highlight who may be in academic trouble. Handsome "heat maps" — some powered by apps that update four times a day — can alert professors to students who may be cramming rather than keeping up. As part of a broader effort to measure the "campus engagement" of its students, Ball State University in Indiana goes so far as to monitor whether students are swiping in with their ID cards to campus-sponsored parties at the student center on Saturday nights." :: Barriers to Innovation and Change in Higher Education By Lloyd Armstrong, Provost Emeritus, USC From one of the very best analysts of higher education, Lloyd Armstrong. Excerpt: "Wide-ranging research on institutional obstacles to innovation and change explains some of the reasons why higher education has moved slowly to meet new challenges. A business model perspective helps to identify key aspects of higher education that heighten some of the universal obstacles to innovation and change. These include American higher education’s worldwide reputation for excellence, which serves to reinforce the status quo—particularly among tenure line faculty who play a dual role by both producing the educational product and participating in institutional governance, thereby exerting unusual control over change. The business model lens also helps to identify ways in which these obstacles may eventually be lowered." See, also, this blog post by the same author. :: Mapping Australian Higher Education: 2014-2015 By Andrew Norton A very technical and highly quantitative analysis of higher ed in Australia. But if I want to truly want to understand the space, this is a good place to start (and with the recent proposal to significantly increase tuition, a good time to take a closer look.) :: Innovating Pedagogy 2014: Exploring new forms of teaching, learning and assessment, to guide educators nd policy makers By Martin Sharples, Anne Adams, Rebecca Ferguson, Mark Gaved, Patrick McAndrew, Bart Rienties, Marin Weller and Denise Whitelock. Excerpt: "This series of reports explores new forms of teaching, learning and assessment for an interactive world, to guide teachers and policy makers in productive innovation. This third report proposes ten innovations that are already in currency but have not yet had a profound influence on education." :: Pointers to the Future By Schumpeter (The Economist) A provocative, smart (and short) article about how change unfolds in surprising ways. Excerpt: "Anyone looking for mis-prognostications about it will find an embarrassment of riches. The internet was supposed to destroy big companies; now big companies rule the internet. It was supposed to give everyone a cloak of anonymity: "On the internet nobody knows you’re a dog." Now Google and its like are surveillance machines that know not only that you’re a dog but whether you have fleas and which brand of meaty chunks you prefer. We can now add two more entries to the list of unreliable forecasts about the internet: that it would make location irrelevant and eliminate middlemen."    

"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. :: Twenty-Five Institutions to Participate in ACE Alternative Credit Project ACE Excerpt:"ACE announced today that 25 colleges and universities are joining an alternative credit consortium as part of an innovative initiative to create a more flexible pathway toward a college degree for millions of nontraditional learners. The 25 institutions serving in this pilot project have agreed to accept all or most of the transfer credit sought by students who successfully complete courses that are part of a selected pool of about 100 low-cost or no-cost lower division general education online courses. These institutions also will help identify the sources, criteria and quality of the courses." :: Got Skills? Why Online Competency-Based Education Is the Disruptive Innovation for Higher Education Excerpt: "In the end, rather than a transcript that lists courses and letter grades, a portfolio of competencies enumerates precisely what a student can do: this student can evaluate web resources; this student can sift through various sources of information and create an ethical argument; this student can use data as evidence in a research-based argument; and so on." :: Valuing Elite Higher Education Claremont Port Side Excerpt: "In his July 2014 New Republic article entitled "Don’t Send Your Kid to the Ivy League," writer William Deresiewicz comments that students today are "anxious, timid, and lost, with little intellectual curiosity and a stunted sense of purpose." In the article, a reflection on points from his book Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and The Way to a Meaningful Life, Deresiewicz argues that the formulaic methodologies and value systems of elite colleges establish "success" such that it debases the true importance of a college education. This trains young people to pursue specific definitions success and excellence like sheep. "So extreme are the admission standards now that kids who manage to get into elite colleges have, by definition, never experienced anything but success," he writes. "The prospect of not being successful terrifies them, disorients them…The result is a violent aversion to risk." :: Technology Enhanced Education at Public Flagship Universities: Opportunities and Challenges Deanna Marcum, Christine Mulhern and Clara Samayoa (Ithaka S+R) Excerpt: "Administrators are hoping that technology-enhanced education might improve time-to-degree and completion rates, provide relief for space constraints, improve student learning, and fulfill their institution’s outreach mission. However, the universities we visited have not yet fundamentally re-engineered the production function for teaching and learning in order to achieve those aims, and many faculty remain unconvinced about the potential for technology-enhanced education to do so. "

As the end of the year nears, we’re  taking a look back!  Below I’ve recapped some of this year’s best blog posts about the evolving field of eLearning, data-driven courseware design, and learning analytics.  This has been an important first full year for our team, and we’re excited about the  milestones we’ve reached, and the one’s yet to come.  So here’s a recap of some of the best  posts from our resident thought leader, Dr. Keith Hampson posted to the Acrobatiq blog in 2014. 1.  Design is Crucial in Online Education When we shift the focus of higher education from the physical classroom to the digital environment, design becomes a much greater factor in creating successful student experiences.  Some of the factors influencing online courseware design include the increasing popularity of apps, the availability of design and learner data, and the competitive advantage of unique course design. 2.  New Learning Alternatives Flood the Industry More and more non-traditional learning options are being developed for non-traditional learners in continuing education programs.  As a result, it’s easier than ever to access online education, which is evolving quickly due to its rapid growth. 3.  Business Model Innovation in Higher Education The growing interest in business model innovation during the last five years is in response to challenging conditions facing a number of sectors, including higher education.  Read Dr. Keith Hampson’s excellent 2-part overview of how business model innovation is impacting higher education. 4.  Coherent vs. Incoherent Online Course Design is Explained  Effective online courses need to be well-organized and well-planned. As best practices emerge, experts argue that course materials should not be haphazardly combined from multiple sources. The best courses are consistent throughout to provide a coherent learning experience. 5.  The Lecture in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction In a world where more and more of our experiences are web-based and disconnected from location and time, the idea that we would find it logical to get students to get together in a single location at a specific time to hear a presentation seems increasingly odd.  Read more about why we hang on to the lecture model. 6.  Universities Take Different Paths in Online Learning Each university’s approach to online learning is different, creating a gap in the availability and quality of online courses offered to college students. Differences emerge at the level of course design as larger schools or bigger supporters dedicate more resources to course creation and implementation, leaving other institutions lagging behind. 7.  The Gates Foundations chooses Acrobatiq as a Finalist in Courseware Challenge  While the inclusion of this post is a bit self-promoting, it underscores how much progress we’ve made this year in our quest to enable institutions to personalize learning for students at scale.  On September 30th, Acrobatiq was recognized as a winner in the Next Generation Courseware Challenge. Backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Challenge aims to spur educational technology innovation by awarding  $20M to a diverse portfolio of digital courseware and adaptive learning providers to design, develop, and scale best-in-class  courseware in a variety of general education disciplines. The "Big Goal" of the Challenge is for faculty and institutions to use the courseware to improve the learning outcomes  for  more than a million low-income students by 2018.  As a Gates Grant recipient, Acrobatiq will receive funding to expand our work in data-driven adaptive courseware grounded in learning science.  By the summer of 2015, seven new and enhanced courseware products will be released in beta, including a completely new courseware solution for Precalculus. To learn more about how personalized, adaptive learning is evolving, browse more posts on the Acrobatiq Blog.   To subscribe, sign up for our newsletter.

In one way or another all of us in higher education are working to make a dent in the iron triangle’s three points - access, cost, and quality. The challenge we face, nicely captured in Immerwahr et al, is to improve one of these three important objectives without diminishing one or both of the others. Can we, for example, increase access without reducing quality? Can we improve quality without increasing costs? Few initiatives take such direct aim at the iron triangle as the Next Generation Courseware Challenge. Another in a long line of education-related initiatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the project invited more than a hundred institutions and organizations to imagine new and better ways to build 100- and 200-level courses that improve learning outcomes, reduce costs for low-income students, and do it all at scale. This is familiar terrain for Acrobatiq. We were created to expressly expand upon the early successes of the Open Learning Initiative at Carnegie Mellon University. For more than a decade, the OLI project demonstrated that the right instructional methodology, informed by intelligent learning analytics, could help students learn far faster than students in conventional, classroom courses.   Partnership for Improved Learning Outcomes Our proposal to the Gates Foundation was nothing if not ambitious. It brings together a range of institutions, technologies, support services, and instructional strategies. It starts with the right partners: We know that substantially improving learning outcomes for low-income is no small feat; it requires putting together a range of services into a coherent, financially sustainable system. We sought out partners with a complementary mix of talent, history and ambition with whom we could launch a long-over due assault on the iron triangle. Our project partners represent a broad spectrum of higher education solutions: leaders in alternative pathways to credit (Straighterline), emergent instructional, such as competency-based learning  (Western Governors University, National Louis University), systemic innovation in two and four year institutions (Arizona State University, University System of Georgia, and Rio Salado College), innovative assessment models (CAE), and emerging accreditation (ACE). We will work with our partners to accelerate the development a number of critically important professional services and courseware products, including: Both enhance existing general education courseware, through the integration of dynamic media and scenario-based summative assessments, and develop new courseware for pilot implementation among our partner institutions; An enhanced Learning Dashboard (TM) that provides faculty with the ability customize the kinds of information about student learning they need to use their time effectively, and to imagine new and better ways to improve the quality of learning in their individual courses; A new student-facing Learning Dashboard (TM) with which they’ll be able to review their own learning progress, stimulate metacognition, make better use of their time, and develop an understanding of what instructional techniques and study habits work best for them; Accelerate the development of a new authoring platform that allows individual educators to create their own courses based on our research-backed instructional methodology; Extend significant introductory pricing models to both existing project partners, and new institutional partners interested in piloting courseware.  Our objective, using these tactics and others is, like the Gates Foundation, to see significant improvement in outcomes for low-income students. Working with our partners, we’ll share notes about our progress. Feel free to reach out to us if you’d like to learn more. References The Iron Triangle: College Presidents Talk about Costs, Access, and Quality. John Immerwahr, Jean Johnson, Paul Gasbarra. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education and Public Agenda, 2008.  The Next Generation Courseware Challenge, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

"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. Online Class Sizes ‘May Not Matter’ By Scott Jaschik We need more discussion about the impact of class size in online learning; we’re still working with frameworks that are no longer appropriate.  Excerpt: "Conventional wisdom (backed by many research studies) holds that students benefit from smaller classes. They receive more personal attention from instructors, who can spend more time evaluating each assignment turned in and can spend more time with each student. Many rankings systems reward colleges for small class sizes. Many potential undergraduates judge colleges on the availability of small classes. But a large national study presented this weekend at the annual meeting of the American Economic Association challenges that conventional wisdom. The study finds that increases in online class size have no impact on student grades, student persistence in the course or the likelihood of students enrolling in future courses." :: The Gates Courseware Challenge By Keith Hampson An introduction a major project we are launching with our partners, drawing on support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; a great opportunity to demonstrate the power of learning analytics and personalized learning in a variety of institutional contexts.  Excerpt: "Few initiatives take such direct aim at the iron triangle as the Next Generation Courseware Challenge. Another in a long line of education-related initiatives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), the project invited more than a hundred institutions and organizations to imagine new and better ways to build 100- and 200-level courses that improve learning outcomes, reduce costs for low-income students, and do it all at scale." :: A Longitudinal Study of Online Learners: Shoppers, Swirlers, Stoppers, and Succeeders as a Function of Demographic Characteristics By Melissa Layne, Wallace E. Boston and Phil Ice A useful discussion about the diversity of student life cycles. Learning data can dramatically improve our ability to track and predict student needs.  Excerpt: "During the past decade, the convenience of online learning has afforded postsecondary students of all ages the opportunity to attend and complete online programs—especially to those students who have full and/or part-time employment, dependents, and those maintaining busy schedules. The benefits of taking online courses include flexibility, convenience, and cost-effective educational opportunities anywhere and anytime. Despite these well-known affordances, postsecondary institutions offering online courses are also fully aware of the challenges concomitant with this learning environment—most notably, student retention. Numerous studies have approached the retention, progression, and completion issue from a variety of angles attempting to predict, classify, identify, and increase opportunities for students to reach their personal academic goals. Rather than repositioning and assuming a new angle, the authors of this study chose to fuse these well established-yet isolated angles. Therefore, the purpose of this study was (1) to identify significant student demographic predictors among students who dis-enroll ("stoppers"), reenroll ("swirlers" and/or "shoppers"), and/or complete their online program of study ("succeeders"), and (2) to calculate the variance among the significant predictors." :: Teaching the Many, Rather than the Few By Robert M. Fano Some misconceptions are remarkably sticky, as illustrated by this excerpt from a paper written in 1970.  Four decades before the MOOC, a 1970 essay anticipates the potential boon of an education by computer. Excerpted: "Computer-aided instruction is often misleadingly described as ‘replacing teachers with computers.’ This interpretation implies mechanizing, rather than personalizing, education. Instead, we should strive for an interaction between teacher and student through the medium of a computer system. The goal is to make it possible for a teacher to provide individual guidance to many students instead of a few. From "Computers in Human Society: For Good or Ill?" by MIT professor Robert M. Fano, from the March 1970 Technology Review.  

"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.  :: 5th International Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK) Conference We’ll’ be speaking and participating in this event in late March. Out topic: "Using Data to Enact Early Intervention Strategies and Deepen Instruction in Intro Psychology Courses" For more information, visit LAK15. :: Barriers to Innovation and Change in Higher Education By Dr. Lloyd Armstrong, USC Excerpt: Key Take-Aways Individuals generally are wary of changes that challenge old assumptions and require new skills to succeed. Organizations are collections of individuals, and thus relect individual concerns. People in very successful organizations often internalize key aspects of their business model as deining quality in their field; changes in these key aspects consequently imply lower quality. U.S. higher education has epitomized quality for more than a half century, leading to an exceptionally high level of internalization of business-model driven definitions of quality. Special characteristics of higher education that heighten the normal obstacles to change are the unusual dual roles of tenure line faculty as both managers and producers of the core educational product; the credence-good nature of higher education; and the multiple overlapping missions of learning, research, and social growth of students. The member-organization accreditation system naturally exhibits and supports the same obstacles to innovation and change as do its member organizations. :: American Higher Education in Crisis Review by Richard Azzizi Excerpt: "And while Blumenstyk comes down clearly on one side ("Yes," she writes, "Higher education is most assuredly in crisis"), she follows with an assurance that "It certainly does not … spell doom for the thousands of colleges that make up American higher education. But what is abundantly clear from her impressive and exhaustive marshaling of recent and relevant data is that higher education in America is at a crossroads." :: Opposing Views of the New "Free" Community College No. 1 The Genius of Obama’s Two-Year College Proposal By Richard Kahlenbergjan Excerpt: "Most commentators have focused on scrutinizing the plan’s strategy, questioning its feasibility and its failure to address the root problems plaguing higher education. But they’re overlooking the truly revolutionary possibility that it would make two-year institutions more economically and racially integrated—something that should be applauded." No. 2 There is No (Tuition-) Free Lunch By Arthur Hauptman Excerpt: "President Obama has jumped on the bandwagon, which started in Tennessee, of making community college tuition-free. This latest proposal is his most recent effort to increase the prominence of the federal government in higher education. While giving higher education more federal  visibility may be a good thing, making community colleges tuition-free is also the latest in a series of proposals in which the administration seems to have decided that sound bites trump sound policy." :: Average is Over: It’s Graduate Degree Holders Versus the Rest of Us By James Pethokoukis Excerpt: "Valletta points out that, beginning in 2000, the US labor market has increasingly favored workers with a graduate degree, while the "wage advantage" for four-year college grads has hardly changed (see featured chart). This divergence between those with college and graduate degrees "may be one manifestation of rising labor market polarization, which benefits those earning the highest and the lowest wages relatively more than those in the middle of the wage distribution."  

Founded in 2009, University of the People ("UoPeople") holds the distinction of being the first tuition-free, non-profit online university. To date, UoPeople has admitted more than 2000 students from over 150 countries, including the Sudan, Indonesia, and Haiti. Students enrol in either Business or Computer Science, for Associates or Bachelor’s programs. Most of the academic labour is supplied by volunteers, for which there is apparently no shortage. Open content is used and delivered using open source technology. Students rely heavily on peer-to-peer learning. In higher ed circles, discussions about of UoPeople typically frame the initiative in philanthropic terms: it’s grand and generous, but quite removed from higher education proper. Certainly, generosity came to mind when I spoke with Shai Reshef (pictured above); the Founder and sponsor is modest and plain-spoken, and clearly has a sincere desire to help students. But UoPeople can also be understood as a highly resourceful example of business model innovation. It has hallmarks of textbook disruptive innovation: it combines technology with a new business model to offer a stripped-down, feature-poor version of an existing service (higher education); it seeks to serve "non-consumers", rather than offer an alternative that attract students that have other, convenient and affordable options for getting a college education. It’s true that the UoPeople relies on volunteers, many of whom are only able to share their expertise freely because they have jobs with universities. (The Provost is from Columbia, a Dean from NYU.) But Reshef confirms that the operation is sustainable in its current form and, in time, the anticipated surplus of funds could be used to hire a certain percentage of staff at market rates. It’s also important to remember how relatively large the "free economy" is in the education sector. (For more on the "free economy" concept, see Chris Anderson’s original riff here). More than a philanthropic effort, the UoPeople may also be understood as an example of the different forms that higher education can take to meet the needs of increasingly global higher education system - particularly in the developing world. Learn more about the University of the People.

 "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. ::   New Gates report evaluates digital courseware’s impact on student learning By eCampus News After reviewing the major Postsecondary Success projects, several features were identified as having positive effects on student learning: Instructional designs or redesigns for entire courses produced significantly greater learning effects compared to less intensive approaches such as designs for supplemental resources. Learning effects from digital courseware implementation were greater in community colleges than in four-year colleges. Courses in mathematics produced more positive learning effects than courses in other subject areas such as science or the humanities. Course implementations using individualized pacing had more positive impacts than those with class-based or a mixed form of pacing. Online courses in which students’ dominant role was solving problems or answering questions had more positive effects than those where most of the students’ time was spent reading text or listening to lecture videos. Adaptive learning technologies demonstrated larger learning effects than non-adaptive technologies. Full report available here. :: Sharp drop in part-time student enrolment since fee rises By Brendan O’Malley Excerpt: "Part-time student enrolments in higher education fell by 22% in the two years since university tuition fees were allowed to triple, according to new figures released last Thursday by the Higher Education Statistics Agency, or HESA. Between 2012-13 and 2013-14, the number of part-time students fell by 2% overall. According to HESA the decline in total student numbers of nearly 41,000 was mainly because of a fall in undergraduate enrolments, down by 2%, and part-time student numbers, which fell sharply by 8%." :: Atlantic Article on Minerva Project Overstates University’s Future By Judith Shulevitz Few magazine editors—myself included—can resist a dash of apocalypse in a cover line, which is why I don’t fault writer Graeme Wood for the question on the front of this month’s Atlantic: "Is College Doomed?" I’ll answer that question anyway: no. The appetite for college is huge. A larger percentage of Americans are pursuing some sort of post-high-school degree than ever before—70 percent in 2009, compared to 45 percent in 1960—and that number keeps rising. Undergraduate education isn’t going away any time soon. :: University of the People: A Case of Disruptive Innovation? By Keith Hampson Excerpt: "In higher ed circles, discussions about of UoPeople typically frame the initiative in philanthropic terms: it’s grand and generous, but quite removed from higher education proper. Certainly, generosity came to mind when I spoke with Shai Reshef (pictured above); the Founder and sponsor is modest and plain-spoken, and clearly has a sincere desire to help students. But UoPeople can also be understood as a highly resourceful example of business model innovation. It has hallmarks of textbook disruptive innovation."  ::   Can online learning bend the higher education cost curve? By David J. Deming, Claudia Goldin, Lawrence F. Katz, and Noam Yuchtman, University of California, Berkeley Excerpt: "We find some evidence that colleges are charging lower prices for online coursework, suggesting that advances in online learning technology might be able to "bend the cost curve" in higher education." :: The 5 Real Reasons Textbooks are So Expensive By Elizabeth Weir Excerpt: "Let’s say that again- TWO HUNDRED DOLLARS. Let that number sink in. That is the average cost of an intro-level college textbook, with some in the sciences reaching or exceeding $300. To give it context think about this: The average family of four is spending $151 a week on groceries. Most who are paying attention to this problem know the stats: 82% increase in textbook costs between 1982 and 2012 , students are spending an average of $1200 a year on textbooks and materials, up to 65% of students are just opting out of buying materials entirely even when they know it could cause them to fail. Have you ever wondered why the books, and now digital materials, are so expensive? It all starts with the inherently broken market." :: The Student Loan Debt Crisis in 9 Charts By Maggie Severns Excerpt: "Got student loans? You are far from alone: More than 38 million Americans have outstanding student loan debt totaling nearly $1 trillion, and those numbers are rising fast. This month, Congress will consider proposals to keep the interest rates on direct federal student loans down. (If it doesn’t act by July 1, the rate for one kind of loan will double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.) Regardless of what lawmakers do, many students and graduates will still have to take on large amounts of debt to pay for college."

Although testing is the standard way to measure student performance, tests are stressful for students to take and time-consuming for instructors to grade. So what if someone told you there’s an easier way to learn everything about a student’s progress—without any tests? There is, in fact, a faster and more detailed way to measure student performance through the Learning Dashboard. The dashboard is part of Acrobatiq’s adaptive courseware, an interactive learning platform that can supplement or replace traditional course materials like print textbooks. To see why the Learning Dashboard is so efficient, take a look at how it compares to traditional quizzing below. Traditional Quizzing Courseware with The Learning Dashboard™ Learning performance data is collected by giving and grading quizzes. Learning performance data is collected automatically. Student performance can be measured once the quiz is complete. Student performance is measured in real time. Quizzing reveals what students did or did not learn after studying a subject. The Learning Dashboard measures what students know and can do while while studying a topic. Summary graphs, tables and reports can be manually generated from learning performance data. Summary graphs, tables and reports are automatically generated from learning performance data. Quizzing measures what students know in a moment of time. The Learning Dashboard reveals what students did or did not learn, quantifies how well students have learned each skill, identifies consequential patterns in students’ learning behaviors, and measures effectiveness of instructional and design choices. Quizzes identify what students have learned, which students are struggling, and what the most challenging assignments were. The Learning Dashboard identifies what students have learned, which students are struggling, what the most challenging assignments were, which activities students have practiced the most, and who is participating the most. Learn more about the Learning Dashboard.