e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Phil Hill

  • UF Online and Enrollment Warning Signs

    The University of Florida Online (UF Online) program is one of the highest profile online initiatives to be started over the past few years (alongside other public institution programs such as California’s Online Education Initiative, OpenSUNY, Cal State Online, and Georgia Tech / Udacity). UF Online, which I first described in this blog post, is an exclusively-online baccalaureate program leading to a UF degree for lower costs than the traditional on-campus experience.

    As part of a new program augmenting UF Online, qualified students that are not admitted to the University of Florida due to space constraints can be accepted to UF Online’s PaCE program, although the Washington Post in April called out that these students had not asked to be part of UF Online.

    Some 3,100 students accepted as freshman by the University of Florida for the fall got a big surprise along with their congratulations notices: They were told that the acceptance was contingent on their agreement to spend their first year taking classes online as part of a new program designed to attract more freshmen to the flagship public university.

    The 3,118 applicants accepted this way to the university — above and beyond the approximately 12,000 students offered traditional freshman slots — did not apply to the online program. Nor were they told that there was a chance that they would be accepted with the online caveat. They wound up as part of an admissions experiment.

    Fast forward to this week’s news from the Gainesville Sun. (more…)

  • Worth Considering: Faculty perspective on student-centered pacing

    Over the weekend I wrote a post based on the comment thread at Friday’s Chronicle article on e-Literate TV.

    One key theme coming through from comments at the Chronicle is what I perceive as an unhealthy cynicism that prevents many people from listening to students and faculty on the front lines (the ones taking redesigned courses) on their own merits.

    Sunday’s post highlighted two segments of students describing their experiences with re-designed courses, but we also need to hear directly from faculty. Too often the public discussion of technology-enabled initiatives focus on the technology itself, often assuming that the faculty involved are bystanders or technophiles. But what about the perspectives of faculty members – you know, those who are in the classrooms working with real students – on what challenges they face and what changes are needed from an educational perspective? There is no single perspective from faculty, but we could learn a great deal through their unique, hands on experiences. (more…)

  • Worth Considering: Students can have their own perspectives on edtech initiatives

    Triggered by Friday’s article on e-Literate TV, there have been some very interesting conversations both in the Chronicle comment thread and on the e-Literate TV site. The most, um, intense conversations have centered on the application of self-regulated learning (SRL) in combination with adaptive software (ALEKS) to redesign a remedial math course at Essex County College. Michael has been wading in very deep waters in the comment threads, trying emphasize variations of the following point.

    But that debate should be in the context of what’s actually happening in real classrooms with real students, what the educational results are, and what the teachers and students involved think of their experiences.

    Right now, the “sides” are having a fight–it’s not really a debate because the sides aren’t really talking to each other–in near total absence of any rational, educator-evaluated, evidence-based conversation about what these approaches are good for. One side says they will “fix” a “broken” education system, while the other side says they will “destroy” the education system. Well, what are the students saying?

    (more…)

  • LMS Observations: You had me until you went nihilist

    Mark Drechsler has a fascinating post in response to my recent LMS as minivan about D2L’s retention claims, mostly playing off of this theme:

    I answered another question by saying that the LMS, with multiple billions invested over 17+ years, has not “moved the needle” on improving educational results. I see the value in providing a necessary academic infrastructure that can enable real gains in select programs or with new tools (e.g. adaptive software for remedial math, competency-based education for working adults), but the best the LMS itself can do is get out of the way – do its job quietly, freeing up faculty time, giving students anytime access to course materials and feedback. In aggregate, I have not seen real academic improvements directly tied to the LMS.

    In response, Mark gives “a personal view of my own journey towards LMS nihilism” in a post titled “How I lost my faith in the LMS” that has some excellent points (first go read his whole post, I’ll wait).

    Mark Nihilist.001

    (more…)

  • Miami, Harvard and MIT: Disability discrimination lawsuits focused on schools as content providers

    In the discussions at Google+ based on last week’s post about the Miami University of Ohio disability discrimination lawsuit ((Insert joke here about G+ and its hundreds of active users.)), George Station made two important points that deserve more visibility.

    It’s been a-coming for several years now. Cal State has some pretty strong rules in place for compliance with ADA and state-level disability laws. Still, [Universal Design for Learning] UDL is a little-known acronym on any campus you care to visit, and staff support is probably one person in an office, except for Miami of Ohio as of this week, I guess…

    Add the recent edX settlement with the US Department of Justice, and the whole direction of edtech changes…

    Put another way, it should come as no surprise that the US Department of Justice is ramping up its enforcement of disability discrimination regulations in the education world. Captioning service provider CaptionSync has an excellent summary of the field, written before the DOJ intervention at Miami. (more…)

  • About Those D2L Claims of LMS Usage Increasing Retention Rates

    In my post last week on the IMS Global Consortium conference #LILI15, I suggested that LMS usage in aggregate has not improved academic performance and noted that John Baker from D2L disagreed.

    John Baker from D2L disagreed on this subject, and he listed off internal data of 25% or more (I can’t remember detail) improved retention when clients “pick the right LMS”. John clarified after the panel the whole correlation / causation issue, but I’d love to see that data backing up this and other claims.

    After the conference I did some checking based on prompts from some helpful readers, and I’m fairly certain that John’s comments referred to Lone Star College – University Park (LSC-UP) and its 24% increase in retention. D2L has been pushing this story recently, first in a blog post and then in a paid webinar hosted by Inside Higher Ed. From the blog post titled “Can an LMS improve retention?” [footnotes and emphasis in original]: (more…)

  • Ed Tech World on Notice: Miami U disability discrimination lawsuit could have major effect

    This week the US Department of Justice, citing Title II of ADA, decided to intervene in a private lawsuit filed against Miami University of Ohio regarding disability discrimination based on ed tech usage. Call this a major escalation and just ask the for-profit industry how big an effect DOJ intervention can be. From the complaint:

    Miami University uses technologies in its curricular and co-curricular programs, services, and activities that are inaccessible to qualified individuals with disabilities, including current and former students who have vision, hearing, or learning disabilities. Miami University has failed to make these technologies accessible to such individuals and has otherwise failed to ensure that individuals with disabilities can interact with Miami University’s websites and access course assignments, textbooks, and other curricular and co-curricular materials on an equal basis with non-disabled students. These failures have deprived current and former students and others with disabilities a full and equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from all of Miami University’s educational opportunities.

    The complaint then calls out the nature of assistive technologies that should be available, including screen readers, Braille display, audio descriptions, captioning, and keyboard navigation. The complaint specifies that Miami U uses many technologies and content that is incompatible with these assistive technologies. (more…)