I have just come back from an excellent conference, the Sloa-C International Conference on Online Learning: Online Learning, Teaching and Research in the New Media Ecology.  There were nearly 1500 of us in attendance–faculty, instructional designers, administrators, and instructional technology staff.  We had back to back workshops for three days that ranged from the technical to the philosophical.  Keynote addresses were about social media, open source resources, and more.  The tone of the conference impressed me–online education is here, it is here to stay, and it is high quality, innovative, diverse, and very very needed.

How is the rest of the educational world going to hear about what is happening in online education?

U.S. News & World Report announced in early summer 2011 that it was expanding its program of college ranking with a new category for online universities and programs.  The announcement from editor Brian Kelly sounded upbeat, non partisan, and helpful.  “Later this year, U.S.News & World Report will be publishing an expanded directory of online education programs with more detailed information including rankings and other searchable data.” (http://www.usnews.com/education/blogs/college-rankings-blog/2011/06/29/us-news-to-collect-online-education-data ) The goal, says Kelly, is to help students make more “informed choices” about an online program. The survey questionnaires will be sent out next week [mid July] and will ask schools to provide information.  The questions in the survey, Kelly promised, “are based on academic and industry literature reviews, as well as consultation with numerous heads of online degree programs in multiple disciplines.”

My own experience with the U.S.News rankings is limited and specific. As my first year of law school drew to a close, I realized that I wanted to transfer to another school—for a variety of reasons, both personal and academic.  The school I was attending was ranked in the top 25 law schools in the country.  The school that attracted me, because of its location and its focus on international law, ranked more than 50 places lower. And yet when I told the Dean at the school I was currently attending that I was thinking about transferring and asked her about a reference, she was impressed that I had gotten into that school. When I told her that my new school ranked in the lower 50, not the top 25, she was astonished.  “They have such an outstanding reputation,” she said.  “Those ratings…” and she shrugged. Once I was established at the new school, I asked that Dean about the law school ratings.  “Well, there are a lot of criteria that we don’t do well in,” he said. “One is alumni donations, since nearly half of our students are international and go home when they graduate.  Donating to an alma mater is not really on their agendas.” Left unspoken was the question about what alumni donations could possibly have to do with the quality of a law school.

As with so many things, we have to take the good with the bad.  When it comes to ranking educational programs, transparency is good.  We should be able to ask questions of the collective educational endeavor and be able to measure programs and universities according to a variety of criteria, whether they are brick and mortar or online.

And the bad?  The U.S. News headline proclaims:  “U.S. News Seeks to Fill 3 Gaps in Online Education Data.” In the text of the article, these gaps become “deficiencies” in online education.  They are identified as:

• that there is no national way to assess the quality of online education offerings,
• that there is no standard definition of what constitutes an “online” degree or program, and
• that there is no comprehensive listing of online programs.

This is all true, so where is the “bad”?

No mention is made of the several educational organizations that have been working toward collective definitions of what defines quality in online programs for several years. Nor is there any reference to the hundreds of journals and blogs that have also been holding community conversations to create these standards.  If the U.S.News effort was primarily to bring together the work that is being done in the field by educators and educational administrators, then I believe we might have a higher level of confidence in the results.

For example, in 2009, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE) (http://www.wiche.edu/ ) and The Campus Computing Project (http://www.campuscomputing.net/ )  partnered to develop and conduct the first “Managing Online Education” survey. (http://wcet.wiche.edu/advance/managing-online-education-survey ) This initial report covered topics important to understanding the role of online education in higher education—

• Factors that impede institutional efforts to expand online education
• Reorganizing the management of online education
• Faculty training as a major investment for online programs

In addition, WICHE has collected data on ADA compliance in online programs, the level of technical support for students in online programs and much more.

The Sloan Consortium—“a consortium of individuals, institutions, and organizations committed to quality online education” (Sloan-C)—has also conducted and published a number of surveys and reports about online education. The Sloan-C annual reports (http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/index.asp ) have become the standard for credible academic data and information about online education in the United States.

A number of conversations are taking place nationally about the U.S.News ranking effort. On the Linked-In group for Sloan-C, opinions were mixed. As far as I can tell, few participating in the conversation have ever looked at the rankings except as a parent trying to figure out where a child should apply. The conversation on Twitter is, of necessity, even more limited. But members of the WICHE group are asking questions among themselves and on other websites.  “I’m curious what delivery methods U.S. News will consider to be ‘online,” posted one educator. “Does this include both synchronous (such as live video conferencing, Adobe Connect) and asynchronous (such as archived video courses, self-paced learning modules)?” These and other criteria need to be established, but if they have been, U.S.News has not published that information.”  Others mentioned organizations that are collecting the information that U.S.News calls “deficient.” Methods of data collection, metric standardization—all of this will need to be considered before any “rankings” on online courses will be useful to consumers.

So will these new rankings be part of the good or part of the bad?  There are some rather big “ifs” to hurdle.

U.S. News’s efforts at analyzing and ranking new online programs will be good if:

• the data collected enhances knowledge about online approaches to higher education;
• gathering information into one searchable site provides comparative data on the effectiveness of online academic programs;
• the publicity assists the public to better understand online learning and the opportunities it offers;
• and then (perhaps) this collective effort will expand the market for adult students.

If the new rankings are simply perceived as another way for some institutions to enhance their revenue, then this effort will not benefit a public that needs and deserves this information.

By Claude Almansi and Jan Schwartz

Scoop.it is a new application that is still in beta, although it’s fairly easy to get an invite to join.  Claude Almansi found the app, sent an email about it to a list serv, which prompted Jan Schwartz to join.  We’ve only been at it for a month or so, but already both of us have found some good information that we otherwise would have missed, and we are helping to spread the good work about education technology and change.

First, some information about Scoop.it that Claude dug up.  The web service was conceived in France, launched in December 2010 and its web site is in English.  It’s a social site for sharing news events and articles via subscription. Even if you don’t subscribe, Scoop.it can be used to look for information items selected by others on a given theme via its public search engine.  You do need to subscribe if you want to create and curate your own topic on a given theme or subject.

For example, Jan was particularly excited to find a blog written as a result of a live chat sponsored by the Chronicle of Higher Education, which talked about the topic of Cathy Davidson’s recent book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work and Learn. There were four panelists and 1500 participants on the chat and one of them, David Palumbo-Liu, wrote a blog about his experience, which was very different than Jan’s and so an interesting read for perspective.  She would not have found that blog if not for Scoop.it.

Claude curates a site for Multimedia Accessibility. Currently Jan is ‘scooping’ under the title Technology for Teaching and Learning . You can curate as many different topics as you like.

Just as in other social sites you can follow others and they can follow you. Each day an email comes in that suggests articles and blogs that are within your search fields.  (You can indicate pertinent keywords and Scoop.it will submit to you relevant information found by its search engines). The site allows you to read the material and, if you choose, you can re-scoop.it to help the article reach a wider audience.

Another way to increase content to your topic is to use the Scoop.it  bookmarklet to directly add the content of any web page you are browsing. It is very intuitive to use and the results are immediate.  When you re-scoop via the bookmarlet a side bar will pop up and show you what the scoop will look like and you then make the decision to scoop it, or not.  At this point you can also add your own text to the beginning of the article to introduce it. This community feature enhances the diffusion of topics and in addition, you can share with other social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

While most of this can be done with online book sharing services, Scoop.it is particularly user-friendly.  The two columns on the topic page easily resolve into one when viewed on a smartphone or listened to on a screen reader. Images and videos may also be inserted.  Especially noteworthy is that Scoop.it enhances the viewings of the items presented on the site.

By joining around the same time Claude and Jan have been able to try out different functions without embarrassing themselves with strangers.  For example, Claude recommended an article to Jan and Jan was sent an email letting her know.  She wondered what Claude would see if she either accepted or rejected the recommendation so we tried it both ways.  Either way the recommender receives an email.  It was nice to see first hand the email as it was received so we could be sure it was not offensive (the app is international so one may not be able to predict the cultural implications of an email).

You can find out more about Scoop.it by reading the Scoop.it blog , ”Scoop.it: Curation Made Social” by Diana Rees, and two YouTube tutorials, Scoop.it with subtitles in Italian and French (so far)  and Exlpore the Scoop.it Community.

Jan

The Lumina Foundation released a report this week that unveils a framework for measuring student learning.  (The Foundation is a private, independent foundation that helps to expand access to education beyond high school).  It’s a framework for defining the knowledge and skills that students should acquire before earning an associate degree, a bachelor degree and a master degree and they are calling it the Degree Qualification Profile.

I was thinking about where career school diplomas or certificates would fit into this profile because the profile is meant to be useful regardless of the student’s field of study.  My sense is that the associate degree profile would be appropriate, but then when I think about what constitutes a passing grade is in some schools, I wonder.  The third bullet in the profile for applied associate degrees is: “Generates substantially error-free (bold mine) products, reconstructions, data, etc. or juried exhibits or performances as appropriate to the field.”  Because of the number of school site visits I’ve done for accrediting agencies, both national and specialized, I’ve seen what various schools consider passing grades.  Many of them are at 65%, and most at 70%.  How do we rationalize it being ok for students to be mediocre?  A 65% means the student doesn’t know 35% of the material and a 70% means they don’t even know ¾ of it.  These percentages do not qualify for substantially error-free in my mind.

I don’t understand the reasons behind a minimum level of knowledge to be able to, well, sort of make it.  Do we think that someone who gets out of school knowing only slightly more than half of the material will get a job? And if they happen to score one, even for a little while, how does that reflect on the profession?

Thoughts?

Photo credit: Flickr, Travis_Simon

Mike Rose, a faculty member at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, wrote an article on Resolutions someone should make for 2011

He had 13 resolutions with a 14^th being a repeat of the first.  In case you are curious the 1^st is: “To have more young people get an engaging and challenging education.”

Although I found all of the resolutions interesting, the resolution that struck me was #9.  Rose is talking about standardizing things–curriculum, test, etc. in our rush to make everything measureable in exactly the same way.

To rethink, or at least be cautious about, the drive to bring any successful practice or structure “to scale”. Of course we want to learn from what’s good and try to replicate it, but too often the notion of “scaling up” plays out in a mechanical way, doing more or building more of something without much thought given to the fact that any human activity occurs in a context, in a time and place, and therefore a simple replication of the practice in one community might not achieve the same results it did in its original setting.

This, in my opinion, is also a danger of peer pressured best practices.   It is good to have best practices when it comes to things that don’t have lots of interactions involving people, but I wonder if something that works in one region, culture, community, would necessarily work in others?   Thoughts?

Photo credit: vauvau

Daniel S. Christian writes a blog called Learning Ecosystems.  On that blog is a paper titled, What goes up…must come down, which is about the cost of education.  After talking about the problems he floats some interesting recommendations.

What caught my attention was Christian’s discussion on page 21 about the need for emotional intelligence on the part of the pro technology people as education moves into the technology era.  People confronted with the need or even the desire to change directions and go from the classroom to the internet  (for example), are also confronted with a myriad of feelings about it.  I know this to be true in the fields of acupuncture and shanghai massage therapy as I did my master’s thesis on this subject.  To dismiss the feelings of those who are confused about this change in direction is insensitive at best and destructive at worst.

People feel threatened, frightened and angry for several reasons:        

they may think technology will take their job away,

they don’t understand how the technology works,

they are fearful that they won’t be successful in learning the technology, and

they are skeptical that it can work as well as what they do in the classroom.

The technology people, the instructional designers and those who have already taught online need to have the emotional intelligence to understand where the others are, and to have the maturity to bring them along via education and patience.

Let’s not add to the cost of change by not finding ways to support the people we need to make it happen.

Photo credit: B Tal

While the rest of the educational community, from K-12 through higher ed, including most vocational fields have jumped on the distance education bandwagon, massage therapy still lags.  There are lots of reasons for this, but 2 of them are really challenging.

1. State laws.  The majority of states say that foundational education needs to happen in a face-to-face classroom.  Why?  Because the people who formulated the rules didn’t know about or were afraid of online education, or they suffered from terminal uniqueness (we’re different from all other education).  Laws will not change until those affected step up to the plate.

2.  Prohibitive accreditation costs.  One specialized accreditor for the shanghai massage field has an outrageous price for converting a course even to a hybrid format.  Why?  Personally I don’t think they did their homework.  The content is the same, the delivery is different—that’s about it.  All of the other standards would apply.  This is a whole other blog post.

Of course there are other reasons too such as needing teacher buy-in, the learning curve involved in making a change, insuring quality, etc.  But these are more easily overcome internally once a decision is made and the research done.   The two I mention above need some serious education and community involvement.  Who is going to do this so that the field comes into the 21^st century learning paradigm?

Photo credit: mikebaird

In an Op Ed last week, neurological physician Oliver Sacks wrote about the resiliency of the brain and gave examples of how brains—yes, even older brains—can change and grow in the ability to do new things.  “Don’t leave learning to the young,” he admonishes.  

I certainly know this to be true in my own life and that of my friends.  One is painting for the first time as she turned 70, and she is good.  Another is writing her first book in her late fifties and editors are predicting publication and good sales.  Several of us have changed careers—not just moved laterally into a new area, but really changed.  From lawyer to novelist.  From travel writer to political activist.  I am still teaching, but my brain is dealing with a whole different subject area—law added to my literature background, technology added to my teaching.

Why bother?  Exercising my body makes me feel good all over.  Exercising my brain gives me an emotional lift.  It’s fun.  It makes me happy in my life.

 But I can’t help but think that the discussion about assessment has to start in a different place—at the beginning.  If we are looking at an outcome without evaluating the assignment that created the outcome, then we are shortchanging our students and ourselves.  We can’t get an involved discussion in a classroom or in an online forum if the question that begins the discussion is not clear and focused.  We can’t expect essays or written assignments from students that demonstrate critical thinking if we have not created an assignment that explains and leads them in that direction.  Yes, our content teaching is important.  But if we want our students’ knowledge to shine through, we need to create the vehicle that will allow that.

 Here are a few pointers: 

•  Be specific.  If I want a substantive response, I need to tell folks what that means.  Respond to all of the articles?  Some of them?  Am I looking for a summary or an argument?
• Be inclusive.  Is this assignment a first step? What will the next step be? Too much information is always better (if it is clearly stated) than too little, and I can always repeat it later if they’ve forgotten.
• Be exclusive.  Leave out the things that don’t matter.  Just because I can work in my favorite quote or picture—that doesn’t make it pertinent or useful. 
• Be relevant.  It has to matter to folks, not just because they signed up for this course or discussion, but because it is relevant to or applicable to their lives.  That’s when I have the absolutely best discussions.  “Women between 20 and 55 use more healthcare than men.  Are insurance companies therefore justified in charging them more for health insurance?”  Now THAT was a discussion! And it would make a great research paper.

I use Evernote, which for me is a great tool.  After I downloaded the newest version I had trouble shutting down my computer.  I always had to lay on the off button because Evernote just wouldn’t quit.  I went to the forum to see if anyone else had this problem and I couldn’t find anything so I emailed the support desk.  Actually, one person responded to my querie but I needed an in-service to follow his directions!  Anyway, the tech folks responded within hours with a suggested solution—step by step.  It worked and I sent back an email thanking them.  They responded within minutes with a nice note back to me.

The reason this kind of response is important to me is that Evernote is important to me, but if I continued having this problem I would have found another app to perform similar functions.  It would have been a challenge to switch, but I hate turning my computer off and not letting it shut down properly.  This investment is way more important than an app.  And, BTW, this is the reason I’m an Apple lover—customer service!

If you need a digital brain organizer try Evernote.  It’s a great tool and they have great customer service.