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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  How Big Data has Transformed Research | The Guardian Interesting examples of the use of big data in university research Example video concerns "Illustris", a computer simulation of the evolution of the universe. Read more The Death Of Expertise | The Federalist Excerpt: "I fear we are witnessing the ‘death of expertise:’ a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laymen, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers - in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all. By this, I do not mean the death of actual expertise, the knowledge of specific things that sets some people apart from others in various areas. There will always be doctors, lawyers, engineers, and other specialists in various fields. Rather, what I fear has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live. "What has died is any acknowledgement of expertise as anything that should alter our thoughts or change the way we live. This is a very bad thing." Read more Growing Questions About the Business Model for Higher Education in the US | ICEF Monitor Excerpt: "For several years, higher education institutions in the US, and to some extent those in other major destination markets, have faced financial pressures that are, without a doubt, difficult to solve. These include: Increasing competition amid an expanded range of educational choices available to students - including those offered by for-profit universities and institutions (both bricks-and-mortar organisations and increasingly, online institutions such as the University of Phoenix) Growing concerns among students and families as to the cost of education, as well as a greater interest in concrete indications of the return on educational investment (e.g., graduates’ employment rates in desired professional fields) Increasing operating costs including higher technology costs and necessary salary increments for faculty and staff, at the same time as governments are reducing institutional funding and endowments are shrinking." Read more Udacity Says It Can Teach Tech Skills to Millions, and Fast | The New York Times Excerpt: "What she really wanted to do was code. Ms. Marchisio had taken several computer science classes at Harvard, sparking her interest in programming — which happens to be one of the economy’s most in-demand skills. But how does someone with a master’s in education move from customer service to coding as an occupation?" Read more

Annie Murphy Paul’s recent blog, Are College Lectures Unfair?  gives us another look at the weaknesses of the lecture format as a teaching method. She reminds us that teaching through lecture is a cultural phenomenon. According to Norm Friesen’s, The Lecture as a Transmedial Pedagogical Form: A Historical Analysis, the education lecture originated in the early Middle Ages to transmit the written word, first, literally, as lecturers read to their audiences many of whom copied down exactly what they heard so they would have the material in written form. After the Gutenberg printing press made books available to the public, lecturers also included well-respected commentaries in their presentations. It wasn’t until the Renaissance, that lecturers started giving original talks reflecting their own ideas. By the 20th century, when audio and video came into play, lectures started evolving into multimedia presentations. Guides on how to give effective lectures including tips on speech delivery, engaging students, and multimedia integration continue to advise instructors on best lecture practices. As Paul points out, not only are lectures the mainstay of higher education, they are also embedded in online courses such as MOOCs. There is a lot of contradiction on the place of lectures in education. Friesen notes that you can even watch TED talks on the ineffectiveness of lectures. Even if the speaker isn’t behind a podium, it’s still a lecture. How many lectures on pedagogy have you attended that tell you that’s not the best way to teach? Friesen supports the continued use of the lecture format. He sees lectures as "bridging oral communication with writing and newer media technologies, rather than as being superseded by newer electronic and digital forms." In contrast, Paul questions whether the lecture format meets the learning needs of all students. She reviews studies on how lecture courses affect women, minorities, and first-generation and low-income students (non-dominants) who haven’t historically come from or participated equally in the dominant Western culture of well-off white males (dominants). Paul found that the non-dominants do more poorly than dominants when a course is lecture-centered. In the studies she reviewed, professors engaged students with active pedagogical approaches such as questions, exercises, and collaborative work, that required students to engage with the subject matter more than they would with lectures. All groups did well with activity-based learning. And, the non-dominants benefited even more than dominants. In one study, the achievement gap between white and black students decreased by 50% and the divide between first-generation college students and those with a family history of college disappeared. Paul ends her article with this question: Given that active-learning approaches benefit all students, but especially those who are female, minority, low-income and first-generation, shouldn’t all universities be teaching this way? Education technology advocates are responding to Paul’s question with robust digital programs in which students learn through activities such as participating in simulations, completing exercises, drawing diagrams, initiating peer communication, and problem-solving. As higher education institutions and instructors integrate these programs into their courses, they will write the next chapter on how higher education courses are taught.

:: :: Reducing the cost of higher education is one of the more significant possibilities offered by online competency-based education (CBE). College budgets are not going to get any easier to balance in the near future, and the pressure to restrain decades of increases in tuition is now coming from the highest offices in the US. However, that there’s not yet a great deal of data on costs in CBE. This isn’t unusual: higher education hasn’t spent a great deal of energy trying to understand the cost implications of different instructional models in the past. Partly because it is difficult for institutions to separate the costs of shared services, and partly because such an effort implies that instructional models can and should be designed and evalauted in terms of costs - a highly unpopular view within many instituions. Consequently, institutions too often rely on simplistic calculations to determine "profitability". One institution with which I worked, for example, assumed that a course was profitable if the tuition it generated in any given semester (number of students X tuition rate) was greater than the Instructor pay rate. Competency-based education is an ideal place to start thinking more about the relationship between costs and instructional strategies. The focus on learning outcomes, rather than the traditional focus on inputs - such as faculty credentials, research productivity, tuition rates, and other surrogates of quality - provides the basis for an analysis of instructional value that can be more thoughtfully tied to dollars spent. It makes it easier, though certainly not easy, to compare the value of different instructional strategies in financial terms. A first step is identifying the unique variables shaping costs in CBE. Course Design and Development For most colleges and universities creating CBE courses and programs requires a departure from standard practices. It is typically a more rigorous, disciplined and labor-intensive process than simply "putting classrom courses online". The factors we need to consider with respect to course design and development include: Course Design and Development Resources. Which technologies and talent are required to develop CBE courses? Who will be involved in defining and aligning the objectives, assessments and learning activities? Which software will provide the institution with the data it needs to confirm students are achieving mastery of the curriculum? CBE is perfectly well-suited to leveraging adaptive software and learning analytics; it allow us to estimate the student’s grasp of the curriculum, adjust the experience to meet their particular needs, and allow them to proceed as fast or slow as is suitable. Adjusting Roles and Responsibilities. The design of CBE courses may involve an adjustment to the roles and responsibilities of faculty and support staff. This will have significant cost implications, given that instructional labor accounts for roughly 75% of an institution’s costs.  At Western Governors’ University, for example, the traditional one-instructor per course model is replaced with a more nuanced model, suitable for their CBE-based programs: Course Mentors are responsible for mastery of the content, and Student Mentors provide one-on-one guidance and support to students. Tuition and Loans At this point in time CBE programs tend to be offered by institutions that have lower than average tuition rates. While significant, this alone doesn’t tell us a great deal about the effect of the CBE instructional model on student or institution costs. Speed to Completion. More than other types of instructional models, cost is influenced by speed to completion. The faster the student proceeds through the program, the lower their total costs. This is amplified by the use of subscription or "all-you-can-eat" tuition models in which students are charged for a period of time, during which they can maximize (or minimize) the volume of competencies/courses completed. This obviously can reduce costs for students proceeding quickly and may, as Robert Kelchen notes in his excellent review, serve as a motivation for learners. Availability of Loans. Finally, while CBE has been around for decades in one form or another, regulators are only now getting serious about finding ways to ensure that students can have access to the full array of financial support systems. For better or worse, loans are now fundamental to American higher education; they’re the lifeblood  for a significant percentage of the students, particularly those from low-income backgrounds, and the institutions they attend. Identifying the potential for cost savings in CBE requires a better understanding of the availability of loans and other factors.

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

Why Is It So Hard for Pell Recipients to Graduate? Excerpt: "A new report released Thursday provides a detailed look at the graduation rates of low-income college students. At many colleges, low-income students graduate at much lower rates than their high-income peers. At the University of Missouri-Kansas City, only 35 percent of Pell grant recipients graduate college, a rate that is more than 20 percentage points lower than that of their wealthier peers. And at St. Andrews, a liberal arts college in Laurinburg, North Carolina, only 13 percent of Pell grant recipients graduate, more than 50 percentage points less than students who don’t receive the grants." Read more Who’s Benefiting from MOOCs, and Why Excerpt: "In the last three years, over 25 million people from around the world have enrolled in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by Coursera, EdX, and other platforms. Initially heralded as a revolution in higher education access, expectations have been tempered as research revealed that only a small percentage of these millions were completing the courses, approximately 80% already had at least a bachelor’s degree, nearly 60% were employed full-time, and 60% came from developed countries (defined as members of the OECD). MOOCs seemed to be serving the most advantaged, the headlines blared, and most people weren’t even completing them." Read more Just Half of Graduates Say Their College Education Was Worth the Cost Excerpt: "Only half of 30,000 college alumni polled for the Gallup-Purdue Index strongly agreed that their higher education was worth the cost, according to the results of the second annual national survey, being published on Tuesday. Among recent graduates, the proportion who were unequivocally positive was even lower: only 38 percent of those graduating from 2006 through 2015." Read more Ernst & Young Stopped Requiring Degrees. Should You? Excerpt: "The U.K. offices of Ernst & Young have announced they will stop requiring degrees, but instead will offer online testing and search out talented individuals regardless of background. Why? They say there is no correlation between success at university and success in careers." Read more  

Adaptive learning is a key strategy in higher education today (see previous blog, What’s A Seventeen-Year-Old to Do?).  Research shows that online courseware based on personal learning data has increased success for diverse students. It’s clear that in education one "size" does not fit all. While this research and practice has made an impression on me, others continue to debate the pros and cons of tailoring programs to individual learners. Looking for more confirmation, I found a study that underscores the need for a non-uniform approach from a source outside of education. A recent BuzzFeed article, This Is What "One Size Fits All" Actually Looks Like on All Body Types, describes the results of a test on consumer reaction to the trend towards replacing delineated sizing such as 10, 12, 18, with clothing in one size that companies advertise will fit everyone or as one company says, "most." In BuzzFeed’s experiment, they asked five young women, sized 0-18, to try on samples of several outfits produced as "one size" to compare how they fit. BuzzFeed showed their results through photos and the participants’ comments. The outcomes of the fittings in terms of physical appearance could be anticipated. A skirt only fit on one leg of half the women. One shirt looked like a dress on others. Clearly, to fit physically, the clothes had to be altered to individual characteristics. What was surprising was the women’s comments on how the general experience affected them psychologically. It wasn’t just about how they looked. They talked about how the experience made them feel. I took the liberty of substituting education phrases in a representative response [original wording appears in brackets]: Allison [size 0]: "There’s clearly no such thing as one size fits all! Everyone has a different way of learning [shape], and higher education [clothing stores] should embrace that instead of making people feel shitty for not being able to succeed [fit] following what they deem to be a universal learning pathway [size]. ‘One size fits all’ sends a message that if you don’t  learn successfully in their programs,[fit into the clothing], whether it’s too advanced [big] or too slow-paced [small], you’re not ‘normal,’ and leads to all sorts of feelings of [body] dissatisfaction with how smart you are and how successful you can be."  Kind of eerie that the message for clothing and education can be the same. Yes, education is more complicated; you can’t look in a mirror to see how a course fits you, but over time you will feel the psychological effects of the right or wrong fit in a course. Which brings us back to why we should continue to move towards adaptive and personalized learning online and in the classroom: these strategies put learning in a context that supports all students without stigmatizing them for starting at different levels or coming from diverse backgrounds. And, a positive environment motivates learning. As Lara [size 4/6] says: "We’re all different, so the idea of ‘one size’ for all of us is just absurd. Different minds [bodies], unite!"

Last week, MIT announced they’re making Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)  part of their admissions process-candidates for their one-year Supply Chain Management master’s program will enhance their chances of acceptance into the program if they successfully complete relevant MOOCs before application. If they are accepted into the program, they will get credit for their online work and only have to complete one semester on campus to get their degree. Why is this exciting? Like adaptive courseware, MOOCs are fairly new. The University of Manitoba’s Stephen Downes and George Siemens built the first online course called a MOOC in 2008 to see just how learning might be accomplished using the internet. Since then there’s been a lot of speculation about how MOOCs fit into the broad spectrum of education. Initially, many hailed MOOCs as the wave of the future. Others saw it as a disruptive, revolutionary force that would replace colleges. When early reports showed that retention or course completion of  MOOCs was 5-10%, many education stakeholders breathed a sigh of relief—MOOCs would not replace or even really compete with institutions of higher education. Others, like Koller, Ng, Do and Chen in Retention and Intention in Massive Open Online Courses: In Depth aren’t ready to write off MOOCs. Retention should be understood in context. MOOCs have large enrollments, many with over 100,000 students. Where 5% would be a ridiculously low retention rate for a college class of 100, for a MOOC, 5% represents more students than some faculty reach in a decade. Koller et al. suggest we change the way we evaluate MOOCs: …one can relate the act of enrolling in a free online class to that of checking out a book from a public library…Some people might read a few chapters of a nonfiction book and stop after getting enough information to suit their needs. Others might read more deliberately and renew the book a few times before finishing. In both cases, few would consider the lack of completion or the extra time taken to be a waste or a failure of the book. MIT’s new policy also represents looking at MOOCs in a different way-as a "test" for admission. The shortcomings of standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT are well-known. Wouldn’t seeing how a student learns in an online program be a more accurate picture of their abilities? And completing relevant learning activities would give students a taste of what’s to come, helping them make more informed decisions about how they want to further their education. MIT’s policy, which could be a first step towards unseating a decades-old admissions policy in all areas, is a reminder that we are far from harnessing the full power of digital learning programs. Because the major shareholders-students, faculty, institutions, and education technology companies-are learning by doing, we can’t even foresee all of the possibilities. If we’re open-minded rather than judgmental about innovations, if we’re willing to take some risks and even fail at points in the process without ditching the whole framework, we’ll make great strides in education.

Blended or hybrid learning has come a long way from its original concept of brick (classroom) and click (e-learning) in 1999. Just using some media with students doesn’t make it a blended approach anymore. Now, blended learning is usually described as the integration of adaptive courseware yielding learning analytics and face-to-face learning situations such as class lecture, tutoring, or discussion groups, to advance student learning. Penn State professor Ike Shibley advocates for blended learning: "When you see how well blended learning fits with established pedagogical paradigms, creating a synergistic blend of what works best in face-to-face and online, the question becomes why wouldn’t you want to at least try it?" Maybe because we still have to dispel some myths about blended learning: Myth#1 Blended learning isn’t as good as traditional approaches. On the contrary, research confirms that blended learning is more effective than on-line learning alone or class learning without technology. A 2010 US Department of Education meta-analysis of 84 studies  (79 with higher education or adult learners) concluded that blended learning is much more effective in achieving learning outcomes than face-to-face instruction alone. Myth #2 Blended learning requires less faculty. Not true. The 2010 study cited above found that students using courseware received more "learning time and instructional elements" than those who did not use courseware. When instructors use courseware learning analytics on individual and group progress to inform teaching, they spend less time in front of the classroom, but they spend more time in targeted communication with students. This aspect of quality blended learning became clear in a recent pilot program with adaptive learning in math at New Jersey’s Essex Community College. After the one-year pilot, less students passed in the adaptive course than in the traditional course. Lack of legitimate faculty involvement was cited as one of the major contributing factors to the pilot’s shortcomings. Essex CC thought they could just use graduate students to teach segments of the course. According to Douglas Walcerz, a  program consultant, "We underestimated the skill that you would need as a teacher to deliver that content." Myth #3 Blended learning creates more ongoing work for instructors. As happens with most changes, startup takes time. Once instructors take the plunge, however, teaching a blended course is no more time-consuming than teaching a traditional course. How much time it takes to make the transformation also depends on which approach you take. Instructors who create all of their online materials will do the most work. That’s why in her  insightful post, Blended Learning on the Ground: Advice from College Educators, Jennifer Spohrer advises against starting from scratch. She suggests instructors new to blended learning "stand on the shoulders of giants" and use pretested online products from education technology companies as the foundation for their courses. Finally, there are added benefits to blended learning (see previous blog, What’s a Seventeen-Year-Old to Do?) including those articulated by learning and development professionals in a 2013 survey:  …it’s critical to foster lasting learning. It helps ideas stick and creates an air of accountability that is critical to learner success." "Blended solutions deliver customization and focus on individual needs which traditional methods just can’t match.

President Obama started off this school year by talking about testing. While he highlighted the overuse of standardized testing, others have found that low-stakes testing can actually enhance learning and performance on high-stakes tests. Cognitive psychologist Roddy Roediger is a prime mover in getting people to understand that testing can be a part of learning. Doing well on tests largely involves retrieving information from memory. Learning and memory are inextricably connected. According to the American Psychological Society   Learning is the acquisition of skill or knowledge, while memory is the expression of what you’ve acquired. Another difference is the speed with which the two things happen. If you acquire the new skill or knowledge slowly and laboriously, that’s learning. If acquisition occurs instantly, that’s making a memory. Adapted from the Encyclopedia of Psychology In other words, learning takes time and practice. If you’ve ever crammed for an exam, you know that you really haven’t learned the material even if you pass the test. Roediger and his colleagues started with studies that included learning a number of terms. While the control group studied in the traditional manner, the other group was quizzed intermittently. On the final test, the quizzed group did significantly better than the control group. The reason for this is that these students actually practiced retrieving the information which is at the core of the testing experience. But does this have any meaning when it comes to higher levels of cognition such as analyzing and synthesizing information? Yes, according to the researchers: ...retrieval practice doesn’t just lead to memorization. Because students have a better understanding of classroom material by having practiced using this information, students can adapt their knowledge to new situations, novel questions, and related contexts. You can use a variety of question types (fact-based, conceptual, complex or higher order, etc.) to ensure that students are not memorizing, but using information flexibly. In the past, frequent quizzing and practice opportunities, have been impractical, taking instructors hours to correct and provide feedback to students.  Digital programming has changed all that. Now opportunities to practice retrieval and application during the learning process are built into courseware.  In Acrobatiq students do various exercises including problem-based activities, applications, quizzes, and checkpoint assessments before taking summative tests (see previous post, Formative Assessment in the 21st Century).  Each type of practice is a powerful learning strategy in itself. The combination of varied exercises for the same content only strengthens the effectiveness. As we continue the conversation on testing, we need to make sure that we clarify what kind of testing we are discussing. Some "tests" are essential to learning.

While there doesn’t seem to be one definition for the student or learner-centered approach in higher education, Barbara McCombs, author of two books on learner-centered teaching, provides a comprehensive definition including the three features discussed below: The core of the LCM [Learner-Centered Model] is that all instructional decisions begin with knowing who the learners are - individually and collectively. Instructors need to take into account who they are teaching. Each student comes to class with their own past—academically and experientially. They also come with their own goals. Not everyone will succeed in the same way and with the same type of instruction. Personalized learning data is key to understanding and supporting this aspect of the student-centered approach. Instructors can obtain this data by analyzing each student’s work and engaging with them. Courseware that incorporates personalized learning (see previous post  One Size Fits All…Not) makes this process easier and more productive. The data that instructors obtain from courseware helps instructors reach individuals and the class as a whole in real time. This allows instructors to use their time in a more focused way to move the whole class forward. This [the first tenet] is followed by thoroughly understanding learning and how best to support learning for all people in the system. Approaches to student-centered learning are innovative and varied. They usually fall into these categories: Activity-based learning such as discovery exercises, exchange of ideas (in person or online), simulations, problem-based learning, and project-based learning Choice such as students choosing assignments, when and where they study, how they want to approach a topic, and deadlines Collaboration such as team-based learning and peer exchanges Real-world challenges such as problem-solving and community outreach Metacognition such as transparency of progress and learning pathways, reflection on learning, and self-motivation Quality courseware includes most if not all of these types of support for learner-centered programs. Decisions about what practices should be in place at the school and classroom levels depend upon what we want learners to know and be able to do. Learning outcomes based on instructor-determined teaching goals are integral to the success of student-centered learning. The student-centered approach changes but doesn’t eliminate the role of the instructor in the learning equation. While the instructor’s role is no longer mainly about transferring knowledge, it’s still about determining what students should learn and how they learn it. At the institutional level, faculty coming together on how to implement the student-centered approach strengthens the success potential of the approach. Creating learning outcomes across departments and connected to institutional outcomes is important. Faculty have also begun to value using personalized courseware that works across subject matter areas so that students are engaged in a consistent method of learning. What we see as innovative for instructors is also innovative for students, particularly those in higher education today who are used to more traditional methods of learning. The more practice learners get at student-centered learning, the more impactful the approach will be. And that applies to those implementing it as well.