e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Phil Hill

  • Helix: View of an LMS designed for competency-based education

    Within higher education, we tend to talk about LMS solutions based on an institutional perspective – which systems can serve as the official LMS for an entire institution. While this view is important and forms the basis for my LMS graphics, the emergence of new educational delivery models has led to the development of some interesting program-specific LMS models. One example that I have already written about is 2U’s platform (built on top of Moodle and Adobe Connect) for their specific Online Service Provider (OSP) business.

    One educational model that is becoming more and more important is competency-based education (CBE). One of the challenges for this model is that the traditional LMS – based on a traditional model using grades, seat time and synchronous cohort of students – is not easily adapted to serve CBE needs. As described in this CBE primer:

    OBE [Outcome-based education] can be implemented in various modalities, including face-to-face, online and hybrid models.

    Competency-based education (CBE) is a narrower concept, a subset or instance of OBE, where the outcomes are more closely tied to job skills or employment needs, and the methods are typically self-paced. Again based on the Malan article, the six critical components of CBE are as follows:

    1. Explicit learning outcomes with respect to the required skills and concomitant proficiency (standards for assessment)
    2. A flexible time frame to master these skills
    3. A variety of instructional activities to facilitate learning
    4. Criterion-referenced testing of the required outcomes
    5. Certification based on demonstrated learning outcomes
    6. Adaptable programs to ensure optimum learner guidance

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  • Opening Up the LMS Walled Garden

    In yesterday’s post I described where I (and many others) see the LMS market heading in terms of interoperability.

    At the same time, the LMS does a very poor job at providing a lot of the learning technologies desired by faculty and students. There is no way that a monolithic LMS can keep up with the market – it cannot match functionality of open internet tools especially without adding feature bloat.

    I would add that part of the cause of the “false binary position” that D’Arcy points out is that much of the public commentary focuses on where the LMS has been rather than where it is going. There is a significant movement based on interoperability that is leading, perhaps painfully and slowly, to a world where the LMS can coexist with open educational tools, with even end users (faculty and students) eventually having the ability to select their tools that can share rosters and data with the institutional LMS.

    Coexistence and interoperability, however, should not imply merely having links from the LMS to external tools as is too often the case.

    The Walled Garden

    The LMS (which George Station rightly points out was really called the Course Management System in the early years) started out as a walled garden with basic functionality of syllabus sharing, announcements, gradebook, email, and a few other tools.

    walledgarden

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  • LMS and Open: The false binary is based on past, not future markets

    D’Arcy Norman has an excellent blog post up titled “On the false binary of LMS vs. Open” that captures a false framing issue.

    We’re pushed into a false binary position – either you’re on the side of the evil LMS, working to destroy all that is beautiful and good, or you’re on the side of openness, love, and awesomeness. Choose. There is no possible way to teach (or learn) effectively in an LMS! It is EVIL and must be rooted out before it sinks its rotting tendrils into the unsuspecting students who are completely and utterly defenseless against its unnatural power!

    While D’Arcy is a proponent of open tools, he rightly calls out the need to understand institutional responsibilities.

    But. We can’t just abdicate the responsibility of the institution to provide the facilities that are needed to support the activities of the instructors and students. That doesn’t mean just “hey – there’s the internet. go to it.” It means providing ways for students to register in courses. For their enrolment to be automatically processed to provision access to resources (physical classrooms, online environments, libraries, etc…). For students’ grades and records to be automatically pushed back into the Registrar’s database so they can get credit for completing the course. For integration with library systems, to grant acccess to online reserve reading materials and other resources needed as part of the course.

    This is an important point, in that the institutional LMS is important and will not, and should not, go away anytime soon. I have pointed out recently that the LMS is one of the very few technologies now used in a majority of courses within an institution, and the institutional responsibility described above helping to explain why. (more…)

  • GAO Report: Yes, student debt is growing problem

    In case anyone needed additional information to counter the Brookings-fed meme that “Americans who borrowed to finance their education are no worse off today than they were a generation ago”, theU.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report yesterday with some significant findings. As reported at Inside Higher Ed by Michael Stratford:

    More than 700,000 households headed by Americans 65 or older now carry student debt, according to a report released Wednesday by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. And the amount of debt owed by borrowers 65 and older jumped from $2.8 billion in 2005 to $18.2 billion last year. [snip]

    Between 2004 and 2010, for instance, the number of households headed by individuals 65 to 74 with student loan debt more than quadrupled, going from 1 percent to 4 percent of all such families. During that same period, the rate of borrowing among Americans under 44 years old increased between 40 and 80 percent, even though borrowing among that age group is far more prevalent than it is among senior citizens.

    I have been highly critical of the Brookings Institutions and their report and update. This new information from the GAO goes outside the selective Brookings data set of households headed by people aged 20 – 40, but it should be considered by anyone trying to draw conclusions about student debt holders.

    Noting that Brookings analysis is based on “Americans who borrowed to finance their education” and the GAO report is on student debt holders, it is worth asking if we’re looking at a similar definition. For the most part, yes, as explained at IHE:

    While some of the debt reflects loans taken out by parents on behalf of their children, the vast majority — roughly 70 to 80 percent of the outstanding debt — is attributable to the borrowers’ own education. Parent PLUS loans accounted for only about 27 percent of the student debt held by borrowers 50 to 64 years old, and an even smaller share for borrowers over 65.

    Go read at least the entire IHE article, if not the entire GAO report.

    Student debt is a growing problem in the US, and the Brookings Institution conclusions are misleading at best.

  • Brookings Institution analysis on student debt becoming a farce

    I have previously written about the deeply flawed Brookings Institution analysis on student debt with its oft-repeated lede:

    These data indicate that typical borrowers are no worse off now than they were a generation ago …

    Their data is based on the triennial Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) by the Federal Reserve Board, with the report based on 2010 data. With the release of the 2013 SCF data, Brookings Institution put out an update this week on their report, and they continue with the lede:

    The 2013 data confirm that Americans who borrowed to finance their educations are no worse off today than they were a generation ago. Given the rising returns to postsecondary education, they are probably better off, on average. But just because higher education is still a good investment for most students does not mean that high and rising college costs should be left unquestioned.

    This conclusion is drawn despite the following observations of changes from 2010 – 2013 in their own update:

    • The share of young (age 20 – 40) households with student debt rose from 36% to 38%;
    • The average amount of debt per household rose 14%;
    • The distribution of debt holders rose by 50% for debt levels of $20k – $75k and dropped by 19% for debt levels of $1k – $10k; and
    • Wage income is stagnant and same level as ~1999, yet debt amounts have risen by ~50% in that same time period (see below).

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  • Say What? Buzzfeed follows up on D2L story with solid reporting

    In a post last month I questioned the growth claims that D2L was pushing to the media based on their recent massive funding round. A key part of the article was pointing out the lack of real reporting from news media.

    It is worth noting that not a single media outlet listed by EDUKWEST or quoted above (WSJ, Reuters, Bloomberg, re/code, edSurge, TheStar) challenged or even questioned D2L’s bold claims. It would help if more media outlets didn’t view their job as paraphrasing press releases.

    I should give credit where it’s due: Education reporter Molly Hensley-Clancy at Buzzfeed has done some solid reporting with her article out today.

    In response to detailed questions from BuzzFeed News about figures to back up its claims of record growth in higher education and internationally, the company released a statement to BuzzFeed News, saying “As a private company, D2L does not publicly disclose these details. The past year has been one of record growth for D2L, culminating in the recent $85 million round of financing.” A representative declined to make the company’s CEO, or any other executive, available for an interview related to the company’s growth.

    The stonewalling didn’t come as a surprise to former employees with whom BuzzFeed News spoke.

    “The picture they’re painting of growth is not accurate,” said one former employee, who left the company within the last year and asked to remain anonymous, citing his confidentiality agreement with the company. “If you look at actual metrics, they tell a different story. They’re very likely not seeing growth in higher education.”

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  • Unizin Updates: Clarification on software development and potential new members

    In a recent post on Kuali, I characterized Unizin as a community source initiative. Brad Wheeler, CIO at Indiana University and co-founder of Kuali and Unizin, responded via email (with permission to quote):

    Unizin is not a Community Source effort in the way that I understand Community Source as we started applying the label 10+ years ago. Unizin is better understood, as you have reported, as a cloud-scale service operator somewhat like I2. It does not plan to do lots of software development other than as needed for integrations. No biggie, just a nuanced observation from the end of the story.

    Brad is correct, and I note that Unizin document has been fairly consistent in the lack of plans for software development, as seen in Unizin FAQs:

    Is Unizin another open- or community-source project like Sakai or Kuali?
    No – those endeavors focus on building software as a community, for use by individual institutions. Unizin strives to foster a community more concerned with creating and sharing content and improving outcomes.

    I have already revised the Kuali post to add a clarification on this point. I asked Brad whether this means that Unizin is ruling out software development. His reply:

    Unizin is working on its roadmap for each area. If we do need to head down some development approach that is more than integration, we’ll give thought to the full range of options for best achieving that, but there is no plan to begin an open/community source effort at this time.

    All public indications are that Unizin plans to source existing technologies (as they have done with Canvas as the LMS) for content repository and learning analytics functionality, focusing any software development on integrations.

    Potential New Consortium Members

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