The Case for Great Universities (but what about the others?)

From Richard Florida comes this interesting analysis of the value of great universities.

The Extraordinary Value of Great Universities - Jobs & Economy - The Atlantic Cities

The more and the higher quality a nation’s universities, the more innovative and economically competitive it is, and the more open, egalitarian and happier it is as well. The university remains a central hub institution of the knowledge economy, playing key roles in technology, talent and tolerance. Despite their rapid economic growth and predictions of further economic ascendance, the BRICs are particularly challenged on this score. On this critical front at least, prognostications of American decline are surely overblown.

The United States has daunting economic and political problems to contend with, but its huge edge in world class universities lends it a considerable advantage in attracting the world’s top talent and generating cutting-edge innovation well into the future.

The state of education - Paying attention - Engagement as Entertainment

Jeff Selingo, writing in today's Chronicle of Higher Ed, makes a nice, concise point about the entertainment factor that's crept into our conversation.  We in higher ed are not quite sure if we mean engagement or entertainment, or both.  Or, according to some, neither!  Very good read to take the pulse of ongoing debates.  Here's a snippet:

Pay Attention in Class - Next - The Chronicle of Higher Education

In the business world, the mantra is “the customer is always right.” Such a refrain, of course, doesn’t quite work in higher ed, where the premise of the enterprise is that students are paying to be elevated out of their ignorance, and once enrolled they can’t very easily take their business elsewhere. Moreover, it’s essential that authority in the classroom be maintained.

But all of those excuses don’t relieve professors of the responsibility of figuring out better ways of teaching and satisfying the reason they are supposedly there to begin with: the students in front of them.

Ongoing feedback from "customers"...wait this education!

The idea of ongoing feedback is relatively non-controversial, but hard to implement in courses.  Unless, of course one wishes to seek feedback.  Many ways to do it if one is determined.  Glad to see it reported and trending.

As Emphasis on Student Evaluations Grows, Professors Increasingly Seek Midcourse Feedback - Teaching - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Like a growing number of academics, Mr. O'Connell asks students to evaluate his teaching midcourse rather than waiting for feedback at the end of the term. That means he can make adjustments, which can bolster student learning and also satisfaction.

More and more professors are using midterm student evaluations, experts
say, and more and more colleges are strongly urging their faculty to
collect student feedback midway through their courses. Stony Brook this
year put in place a universitywide online system for collecting
midcourse feedback. Professors and students are not required to use it,
but university officials are hoping that both groups will see its
benefits and use it to improve classrooms.

Math redesign - interesting comments from NCAT

Interesting report from Carol Twigg at NCAT.  Summary here, but the whole thing is worth a read.

NCAT: Learning MarketSpace, October 2011

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE PILOT IMPLEMENTATIONS OF CHANGING THE EQUATION

Changing the Equation is a major program to engage the nation’s community colleges in a successful redesign of their remedial/developmental math sequences. Institutions participating in the program will improve student learning outcomes while reducing costs for both students and institutions using NCAT's proven redesign methodology. Each participating institution has redesigned its entire developmental math sequence--all sections of all developmental courses offered--using NCAT's Emporium Model and commercially available instructional software. Each redesign has also modularized the curriculum, allowing students to progress through the developmental course sequence at a faster pace if possible or at a slower pace if necessary, spending the amount of time needed to master the course content.

Blackboard and OER? Cool.

In what is a very confusing time for the makers and users of learning management systems, this move from Blackboard makes some sense, in some ways, to some people.  To me, though, it represents only toe in the water for Blackboard.  I can certainly understand how difficult this whole arena must be for commercial vendors.  I think it's almost day to day - something new each morning.  Scary, but exciting.  Here's the Chronicle's version of the announcement from Blackboard about their "share" feature. 

Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Professors who use Blackboard’s software have long been forced to lock their course materials in an area effectively marked, “For Registered Students Only,” while using the system. Today the company announced plans to add a “Share” button that will let professors make those learning materials free and open online.

The move may be the biggest sign yet that the idea of “open educational materials” is going mainstream, nearly 10 years after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology first began giving away lecture notes online. Blackboard made the change after college officials complained that the company’s software, which more than half the colleges in the country use for their online-course materials, was holding them back from trying open-education projects.

Ed Tech Magazine - Blended Learning

Thanks to the folks at EdTech Magazine for hearing us out on the topics and issues related to blended learning.  The discussion was good and the article turned out okay. 

EDTECH: Focus On Higher Education - The Right Mix

Faculty and students incorrectly assume that online classes are easier, adds Mike Simmons, senior associate director of the Center for Learning Enhancement, Assessment and Redesign at the University of North Texas.

"They really aren't. They are harder to deliver, and the courses are harder for students," says Simmons, who adds that the Denton, Texas, university has offered blended courses since the 1990s. "They require greater self-discipline."

Instructor Broadcasting: courses about participants, not instructors

Nice and short from George Siemens (http://www.elearnspace.org/) in talking about Stanford U. (http://www.ai-class.com/) massive open AI course.  His point is not so much about the specific course, but about the overall direction of course design.  Or, to paraphrase another famous quote: "it's the learner, stupid"

"Quick advice to Know Labs: whatever your platform becomes, design it to optimize learner sharing of their sensemaking artifacts, not instrutor broadcasting. It's an obvious statement, but if you want to unleash the creativity of participants, tools need to be designed for them, not for instructors"

Spaced Repetition and Retrieval Practice (a.k.a. making students work to learn)

Nice to see some real innovation in learning discussed on the main thought pages of a major newspaper.  It's this kind of research, and this kind of information sharing, that can make a difference in the work of schools and teachers.  This seems like common sense, doesn't it? 

"When we first acquire memories, they are volatile, subject to change or
likely to disappear. Exposing ourselves to information repeatedly over
time fixes it more permanently in our minds, by strengthening the
representation of the information embedded in our neural networks."

and...

Every time we pull up a memory, we make it stronger and more lasting, so
that testing doesn’t just measure, it changes learning. Simply reading
over material, or even taking notes and making outlines, doesn’t have
this effect.

and...

When students can’t tell in advance what kind of knowledge or
problem-solving strategy will be required to answer a question, their
brains have to work harder to come up with the solution, and the result
is that students learn the material more thoroughly.

In recent years, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and educational psychologists have made a series of remarkable discoveries about how the human brain learns. They have founded a new discipline, known as Mind, Brain and Education, devoted to understanding and improving the ways in which children absorb, retain and apply knowledge.

Mind, Brain and Education methods may seem unfamiliar and even counterintuitive, but they are simple to understand and easy to carry out. And after-school assignments are ripe for the kind of improvements the new science offers.

Thanks to Annie
Murphy Paul: Teasing the brain to make homework count | Dallas Morning
News Opinion and Editorial Columns - Opinion and Commentary for Dallas,
Texas - The Dallas Morning News for good work in bringing these small but important findings to the fore.

Multitasking vs Time on Tasking? Let the debate continue!

Cathy Davidson, of Duke University, brings us this fascinating summary of a variety of topics - yet all tied together well.  The essay alone compels me to want to read her book.  Highlights that caught my eye:

Collaborative Learning for the Digital Age - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education (8/31/11)

It's not easy to acknowledge that everything we've learned about how to pay attention means that we've been missing everything else. It's not easy for us rational, competent, confident types to admit that the very key to our success—our ability to pinpoint a problem and solve it, an achievement honed in all those years in school and beyond—may be exactly what limits us. For more than a hundred years, we've been training people to see in a particularly individual, deliberative way. No one ever told us that our way of seeing excluded everything else.

Time on Task or time on tasks??? - revisited?

Unfortunately, current practices of our educational institutions—and
workplaces—are a mismatch between the age we live in and the
institutions we have built over the last 100-plus years. The 20th
century taught us that completing one task before starting another one
was the route to success. Everything about 20th-century education, like
the 20th-century workplace, has been designed to reinforce our attention
to regular, systematic tasks that we take to completion. Attention to
task is at the heart of industrial labor management, from the assembly
line to the modern office, and of educational philosophy, from grade
school to graduate school.

Collaboration by difference

We used a method that I call "collaboration by difference."
Collaboration by difference is an antidote to attention blindness. It
signifies that the complex and interconnected problems of our time
cannot be solved by anyone alone, and that those who think they can act
in an entirely focused, solitary fashion are undoubtedly missing the
main point that is right there in front of them, thumping its chest and
staring them in the face. Collaboration by difference respects and
rewards different forms and levels of expertise, perspective, culture,
age, ability, and insight, treating difference not as a deficit but as a
point of distinction. It always seems more cumbersome in the short run
to seek out divergent and even quirky opinions, but it turns out to be
efficient in the end and necessary for success if one seeks an outcome
that is unexpected and sustainable. That's what I was aiming for.

Turning over traditional notions of evaluation

Research indicates that, at every age level, people take their writing
more seriously when it will be evaluated by peers than when it is to be
judged by teachers.

And in a classic moment of reflection, Davidson admits in her own courses a need to relearn:

They pointed out that I had used entirely conventional methods for
testing and evaluating their work. We had talked as a class about the
new modes of assessment on the Internet—like public commenting on
products and services and leaderboards (peer evaluations adapted from
sports sites)—where the consumer of content could also evaluate that
content. These students said they loved the class but were perplexed
that my assessment method had been so 20th century: Midterm. Final.
Research paper. Graded A, B, C, D. The students were right. You couldn't
get more 20th century than that.

Fascinating essay.  My compliments to the author and her exploratory work - and for the willingness to be open about its results.  Her book: Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn,  Viking Press.

Goals for First Day of Class - Case Study

Of use and interest...from Merlot's ELIXR project.

Students Love Technology

Via: OnlineEducation.net

Faculty Roles - Evaluation and Assessment?

From the 8/8/11 Chronicle of Higher education comes this interesting discussion of the potentially changing role of instructors/faculty in higher education.  The entire article is worth a read, but here's the lead...

To Justify Every 'A,' Some Professors Hand Over Grading Power to Outsiders - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education

The best way to eliminate grade inflation is to take professors out of the grading process: Replace them with professional evaluators who never meet the students, and who don't worry that students will punish harsh grades with poor reviews. That's the argument made by leaders of Western Governors University, which has hired 300 adjunct professors who do nothing but grade student work.

Of note: perceived or real - the quality of K-12 alternative education called into question

The U.S. military obviously discounts the value of homeschool and virtual school for its recruits.  At first glance, that's an offensive and seemingly old-fashioned position they've taken.  However, the research cited by the military spokesperson probably deserves a closer look.  Is it really true that these so-called "Tier 2" students are not likely to succeed in the military?  What are other possible explanations than instructional method?  Hmmm.  Points to ponder.

Military Uninviting To Recruits With Online High School Diplomas

Lainez said the Department of Defense limits all branches of the military to accepting no more than 10 percent of recruits with what is known as an "alternate high school credential."

Those who've opted out of the traditional educational system just don't stick with military service, she said. That includes students from what she called "any computer-based, virtual-learning program."

"Years of research and experience show recruits with a traditional high school diploma are more likely to complete their initial three years of service than their alternate credential-holding (Tier 2) piers," Lainez said. Data collected since 1988 shows only 28 percent of graduates with traditional diplomas leave military service before their first three years in uniform, while those with non-traditional backgrounds have a 39 percent attrition rate, she said.

It comes down to money because its costs $45,000 to replace someone who hasn't met their full term, she said.

Higher Ed, Bigger Courses

How to make huge university classes more meaningful - Parentcentral.ca

Here's some interesting discussion about the large class issue.  Even though it's within the Canadian system, it's still very relevant.

"No longer just a problem faced by large schools like the University of Toronto, whose Convocation Hall lectures pack in more than 1,000 students, smaller universities are feeling the pressure of an enrolment boom that is outstripping staff hires."

And the story continues...

"The survey tracked how universities are trying to make large classes
more engaging – some with media technicians and studios to add bells and
whistles to video lectures. It’s a problem more of them face: 14 of all
19 universities reported at least 30 per cent of their first-year
lectures last year had more than 100 students, the HEQCO survey found —
five more universities than the year before."

Redesigning the Accreditor? Comparative student learning measures? Changes are afoot!

From Inside Higher Education, April 14,2011

News: What's 'Good Enough'? - Inside Higher Ed

Last week, at his agency's Academic Resource Conference here, Wolff and WASC's other leaders sought to sell presidents, provosts, and faculty members from the region's four-year colleges on the idea that, with policy makers in Washington increasingly questioning the future of accreditation, the time has come for major changes in the agency's peer review process.

Many of the alterations in the "redesign" would represent a significant break with how WASC and the other regional accrediting agencies have historically operated, including by making public the commission’s letters of findings about individual colleges and using an outside auditing firm to review the finances of publicly traded higher education companies during WASC’s accreditation process. Currently, WASC announces the actions it has taken on colleges, but does not release the evaluations themselves.

But perhaps no change would be more dramatic than a proposed requirement that colleges benchmark their own learning outcomes and measures of student success (i.e., retention and graduation rates) against those of their peers. One WASC document summarizing the commission's goals suggested that each institution would work with WASC to set a "target graduation rate" (and potentially different rates for different subgroups) that it would "be expected to meet or exceed."

List of Next Generation Learning Challenge grant winners - the face of innovation

Next Generation Learning Challenges

Check out this list of Next Generation Learning Challenges grant winners.  Fascinating list of innovative projects.

Learning Analytics projects funded by the NGLC project

These should be interesting to watch - and they are open projects, which means we should all take advantage of them as the evolve.

NGLC Grants Target Open Courseware, Blended Learning -- Campus Technology

Recipients whose proposals focused primarily on student retention and analytics included:

Central Piedmont Community College: Online Student Profile Learning System: A Learner Analytics Model for Student Success;
City Colleges of Chicago: Math On-Demand + Early Warning System (also includes a blended learning component);
Eckerd College: In-Class Polling for All Learners (also includes a student engagement component through the use of classroom clickers);
Iowa Community College Online Consortium: eAnalytics -- ICCOC Best Practices in Using Learner Analytics to Enhance Student Success;
Marist College: Open Academic Analytics Initiative;
Sinclair Community College: Scale-up and Sustainability of the Student Success Plan Software;
University of Baltimore: A Socially Centric Blended Learning Model for At-Risk Youths at an Urban University; and
University of Hawaii System: STAR: Using Technology to Enhance the Academic Journey.

The Case for Nudge Analytics (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE

Of interest and note.

The Case for Nudge Analytics (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE

"As we see more independent, working, and older students in higher education (see Greater Expectations), we propose that today's learners might not need nurturing — they might just need a nudge. Nudge analytics, or machine recommendations based on patterns found in the data, might be a better way of reaching these students: a personalized digital nudge to study, to come to class, to read the chapter assigned, to submit the assignment due tomorrow. Based on the machine's ability to find success patterns in the data, students could receive reminders in the form of a simple, objective, nonintrusive nudge. An automatically generated message could point out that "Based on historical data for this point in the semester, 80 percent of students who log in as infrequently as you (1.3 times per week) seldom complete with better than a D, and 60 percent fail. You can improve your projected grade by 24 percent by logging in every 3 days with time on task greater than 2 hours." Never has it been easier to use analytics in proactive outreach to influence and encourage behavior associated with persistence."

Helpful comparision of Powerpoint and Prezi

Comparison chart – PowerPoint and Prezi « NspireD2: Learning Technology in Higher Ed.  From Chris Clark at the Kaneb Center - University of Notre Dame.

A year or so ago, when Prezi first arrived, there was a lot of debate about whether it was better or worse than PowerPoint. That’s like arguing over whether a barbecue grill is better than a toaster oven; they both have strengths and limitations. The answer to which is better is situational; it depends on what you are trying to accomplish.

During the initial excitement phase, many people sounded like they were ready throw out PowerPoint with the bath water. Detractors on the other end of the spectrum wrote off Prezi too early, before it had a chance to expand its feature set and support pages. Hopefully, cooler heads have begun to prevail.

If you are considering which tool to use for your next presentation, it might be helpful to see how the features of these two compare. What are the key differences? The chart below may help; my goal was to be objective and thorough, yet compact.

Active Learning - setting a fire

There is sometimes solace in community.  A kind word to a discouraged friend can go far in helping them push ahead against opposition.  Water is most precious to a thirsty man.  But I digress...this word comes just at the right time to encourage us in our ongoing work of course redesign.  Thanks to Dr. Mark C. Carnes, a professor of history at Barnard College, for this excellent word of encouragement about the power of engaging students and igniting the fires of learning.

Setting Students' Minds on Fire - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education

When absorbed in intellectual games of this nature, students find the customary diversions of college—beer pong, World of Warcraft, Facebook, fraternity hijinks—less compelling. The ideas, texts, and historical moments on which academic discourse depends become a part of their lives, and the friendships they forge in the heat of prolonged competition can transform their class into a community.

Active learning is one of those academic buzzwords whose meaning has been dulled from overuse. (Some professors even regard taking notes as active learning.) But research shows that the strongest gains come from pedagogies that feature teamwork and problem solving. Experience also suggests that teams work harder when they're competing against one another, and that students learn more when they're obliged to think in unfamiliar ways. Money alone won't improve graduation rates. After students make it past the bursar, they need to attend classes that set their minds on fire.

Immigration Debate: College Students/Illegal Aliens?

Georgia clamps down on illegal immigrants in colleges - CNN.com

Georgia's public colleges have adopted new policies that officials say will prevent illegal immigrants from attending five high-demand schools and from being admitted ahead of legally and academically qualified residents at the rest of the state's public institutions of higher learning.

Rationing Education in a Time of Educational Demand: Which will we choose?

In the excellent summary article by Reeve Hamilton in the Texas Tribune, UNT Chancellor Lee Jackson is one of a number of Chancellors who comment on the upcoming budget cuts for higher education in Texas.  Of all the comments, Jackson's hit the issue most squarely.  The state of Texas cannot have their cake and eat it too.  In other words, you cannot have a burgeoning population that you continue to insist must have access to higher education while at the same time reducing the capacity to handle the growth.  This is contradictory policymaking.  There's not a moral right or wrong side to choose here.  But there is a side to choose here.  Texas leaders must make the hard call between cutting the budget to meet needs by 'rationing' public higher education (the result of cutting resources to colleges and universities dramatically) or promoting more access to higher education for more people.  These values are not easily reconciled. 

Texas University Chancellors Brace for Budget Cuts — Higher Education | The Texas Tribune

What worries UNT’s Jackson is the discussions that have cropped up in states like California, Florida and Nevada — states suffering through even deeper, more protracted budget problems. “They have discussed what are in effect rationing plans,” he says. These include limiting enrollment, restricting transfers from community colleges and deferring pursuits of lofty goals like recruiting top faculty. Such measures have yet to be discussed in Texas, which, Jackson says, has been emphasizing “more enrollments, more degrees, more research and more student access” even as cuts loom. “You can’t have a lot of expectations and not recognize the cost,” he says.

Bill Gates on Course Size and Education Quality

In his speech to the nation's governors at their annual association meeting in Washington, DC., Bill Gates made remarks which are likely to cause heartburn for some and create excitement for others.  Paraphrased: put a good teacher in front of students and the size of the course has less of an impact!

Gates: Spending Cuts Don't Have To Harm Learning : NPR

Even in the midst of large spending cuts, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said Monday that schools can improve the performance of students if they put more emphasis on rewarding excellent teaching and less emphasis on paying teachers based on seniority and graduate degrees.

Gates spoke to the nation's governors mindful of the severe financial woes that many of them face as they try to bridge deficits totaling about $125 billion in the coming fiscal year. He said there are some clear do's and don'ts. Among the do's: Lift caps on class sizes and get more students in front of the very best teachers. Those teachers would get paid more with the savings generated from having fewer personnel overall.

"There are people in the field who think class size is the only thing," Gates said in an interview with The Associated Press prior to his speech. "But in fact, the dominant factor is having a great teacher in front of the classroom."

Seeing is believing: the link between education and income

The graphical representation of relationships between education (high school and college) and income (median average by county) is pretty fascinating when viewed on a map.  Intuitively demonstrates what would take a while to understand if you only looked at datasets.

Infographic of the Day: Do Smarter People Make More Money? | Co.Design

We all know, at least vaguely, that a better education leads to better prospects in life. But is that really true? A superb map created by GOOD shows that it is -- but thanks to the ingenuity of the map design, it also manages to reveal a good deal more about the links between education and money.

Smartphone Apps come to the classroom

College 2.0: 6 Top Smartphone Apps to Improve Teaching, Research, and Your Life - Technology - The Chronicle of Higher Education

Some of the most innovative applications for hand-held devices, however, have come from professors working on their own. They find ways to adapt popular smartphone software to the classroom setting, or even write their own code.