e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Phil Hill

  • US Department of Education: Almost a good idea on ed tech evaluation

    Richard Culatta from the US Department of Education (DOE, ED, never sure of proper acronym) wrote a Medium post today describing a new ED initiative to evaluate ed tech app effectiveness.

    As increasingly more apps and digital tools for education become available, families and teachers are rightly asking how they can know if an app actually lives up to the claims made by its creators. The field of educational technology changes rapidly with apps launched daily; app creators often claim that their technologies are effective when there is no high-quality evidence to support these claims. Every app sounds world-changing in its app store description, but how do we know if an app really makes a difference for teaching and learning?

    He then describes the traditional one-shot studies of the past (control group, control variables, year or so of studies, get results) and notes:

    This traditional approach is appropriate in many circumstances, but just does not work well in the rapidly changing world of educational technology for a variety of reasons.

    The reasons? (more…)

  • Challenge Of Student Transition Between Active And Passive Learning Models

    Last week the Hechinger Report profiled an innovative charter school in San Diego called High Tech High (insert surfer jokes here) that follows an active, project based learning (PBL) model. The school doesn’t use textbooks, and they don’t base the curriculum on testing. The question they ask is whether this approach prepares students for college.

    As a result, for [former HTH student Grace] Shefcik, college – with its large classes and lecture-based materials– came as a bit of a shock at first. At the University of California, Santa Cruz, she is one of more than 15,000 undergraduates, her assignments now usually consist of essays and exams. At High Tech High, Shefcik had just 127 students in her graduating class, allowing her to form close relationships with peers and teachers.

    The premise of the article is that PBL prepares students for life but maybe not for college. Grace described the big difference between high school, with constant feedback and encouragement, to college, where you rarely get feedback. Other students describe their frustration in not knowing how to study for tests once they get to college.

    After a recent screening of “Most Likely to Succeed” at the New Schools Summit in Burlingame, California, High Tech High CEO Larry Rosenstock told an audience, “We actually find that many of our students find themselves bored when they get to college.” (more…)

  • Reuters: Instructure has filed for IPO later this year

    Reuters is on a breaking news roll lately with ed tech. This time it is about Instructure filing for an initial public offering (IPO).

    Instructure is planning an initial public offering later this year that could value the education software company at $500 million to $800 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

    Instructure, based in Salt Lake City, has hired Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and Goldman Sachs (GS.N) to help prepare for the IPO, which has been filed confidentially, the people said. They requested anonymity because the news of the IPO was not public.

    Under the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, new companies that generate less than $1 billion in revenue can file for IPOs with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission without immediately disclosing details publicly.

    Instructure has long stated its plans to eventually IPO, so the main question has been one of timing. Now we know that it is late 2015 (assuming Reuters story is correct, but they have been quite accurate with similar stories). (more…)

  • ED and CBE: Example of higher ed “structural barrier to change” that is out of institutions’ control

    There has been a great conversation going on in the comments to my recent post “Universities As Innovators That Have Difficulty Adopting Their Own Changes” on too many relevant issues to summarize (really, go read the ongoing comment thread). They mostly center on the institution and faculty reward system, yet those are not the only sources of structural barriers to change that lead institutions to this “difficulty adopting their own changes”. Increasingly there are outside forces that both encourage change and resist change, and it is important to recognize the impact of the entire higher education ecosystem.

    Yesterday Amy Laitinen from New America wrote an excellent article titled “Whatever Happened to the Department’s Competency-Based Education Experiments?” highlighting just such an example.

    About this time two years ago, President Obama went on his college affordability bus tour and unveiled his plan to take on the rising costs of higher education in front of thousands of students at SUNY Buffalo. Promoting innovation and competition was a key part of his plan and President Obama held up competency-based education (CBE) up as one of the “innovative new ways to prepare our students for a 21st century economy and maintain a high level of quality without breaking the bank.” The President touted Southern New Hampshire University’s College for America CBE approach. The university “gives course credit based on how well students master the material, not just on how many hours they spend in the classroom,” he explained. “So the idea would be if you’re learning the material faster, you can finish faster, which means you pay less and you save money.” This earned applause from students in the audience as well as from CBE practitioners around the country. [snip]

    The problem is that day was nearly two years ago and the CBE experimental sites are not yet off the ground. (more…)

  • Online Teaching Conference (#CCCOTC15) Keynote

    Back in June I had the pleasure of giving the keynote at the Online Teaching Conference (#CCCOTC15) in San Diego, put on by the California Community College system. There was quite a bit of valuable backchannel discussions as well as sharing of the slides. The theme of the talk was:

    Emerging Trends in Online / Hybrid Education and Implications for Faculty

    As online and hybrid education enter the third decade, there are significant efforts to move beyond the virtualization of traditional face-to-face classroom and move more towards learner-centric approaches. This shift has the potential to change the discussion of whether online and hybrid approaches “can be as good as” traditional approaches to a discussion of how online and hybrid approaches “can provide better learning opportunities”.

    For those who would like to see the keynote, I am including the video and slides below. Pat James’ introduction starts at 05:50, and my keynote starts at 09:15.

    (more…)

  • Universities As Innovators That Have Difficulty Adopting Their Own Changes

    George Siemens made an excellent point in his recent blog post after his White House meeting.

    I’m getting exceptionally irritated with the narrative of higher education is broken and universities haven’t changed. This is one of the most inaccurate pieces of @#%$ floating around in the “disrupt and transform” learning crowd. Universities are exceptional at innovating and changing.

    While I agree with his primary point about false narratives with simplistic no-change assumptions, I think there is a risk about going too far the other direction. Universities have certainly changed, and there are many innovations within universities, but universities are not very good about diffusing the innovations that they do make. I made this same argument here and here. ((The first article had more of a technology focus, but the same applies to the pedagogical side of change.)) Campus changes are apparent, but too often I see innovative course designs showing real results, but courses in the same department remain unchanged.

    In my opinion Universities are exceptional at innovating, but they are not exceptional at changing.
    (more…)

  • IBM’s Misleading or Just Incorrect National Ad on Student Retention

    Thanks to Chris Edwards for alerting me to this one. In a nutshell, IBM launched a national ad campaign last month that included commercials during Wimbledon on the weekend. They’re spending big money on this campaign about big data, learning analytics, and reducing “dropout rates” [emphasis added below].

    In the US, 3 in 10 college students drop out, but how can you spot who is at risk? The one who lives far from campus? The one who works the night shift? The one with new responsibilities? One thing can’t tell you, but the right combination can. Universities are using IBM Analytics to understand pressures in and out of the classroom. Some expect to cut dropout rates by 25%. IBM Analytics is working to make education smarter every day.

    If you follow the URL listed at the end of the YouTube video and select ‘Education’, you get to the main page that highlights the same video as above. For further explanation: (more…)