e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Author: Phil Hill

  • Babson Report on OER in US Higher Education

    The Babson Survey Research Group just released their report on OER usage in US higher education, “Growing the Curriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education”. The report is based on three different surveys among faculty and academic leaders, and it is heavy on attitudinal information – are you aware of OER, do you plan to use OER, what are the reasons to choose OER, what are the barriers to adoption, etc.

    Some of the key findings from the executive summary:

    • Most academic leaders are at least somewhat aware of open education resources (OER) and slightly over half list themselves as ‘Aware’ or ‘Very aware.’
    • Only one-half of all chief academic officers report that any of the courses at their institution currently use OER materials.
    • In 2011, most surveyed academic leaders report that open education resources will have value for their campus; 57 percent agree that they have value and less than five percent disagree.
    • Nearly two-thirds of all chief academic officers agree that open education resources have the potential to reduce costs for their institution.
    • There is wide agreement among academic leaders that open education resources will save time in the development of new courses.
    • Over one-half of academic leaders agree or strongly agree that open education resources would be more useful if there was a single clearinghouse.
    • Among faculty, cost (88% reporting as important or very important) and ease of use (86%) are most important for selecting online resources.
    • The time and effort to find and evaluate are consistently listed as the most important barriers by faculty to the adoption of open education resources.
    • Older faculty have a greater level of concern with all potential barriers to open education resource adoption than do younger faculty.

  • Online Educational Delivery Models: A Descriptive View

            This article was originally published at EDUCAUSE Review.

    Update (11/25): This post has been bumped and amended to include the full article.

    Although there has been a long history of distance education, the creation of online education occurred just over a decade and a half ago—a relatively short time in academic terms. Early course delivery via the web had started by 1994, soon followed by a more structured approach using the new category of course management systems.1 Since that time, online education has slowly but steadily grown in popularity, to the point that in the fall of 2010, almost one-third of U.S. postsecondary students were taking at least one course online.2 Fast forward to 2012: a new concept called Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) is generating widespread interest in higher education circles. Most significantly, it has opened up strategic discussions in higher education cabinets and boardrooms about online education. Stanford, MIT, Harvard, the University of California–Berkeley, and others have thrown their support—in terms of investment, resources, and presidential backing—behind the transformative power of MOOCs and online education. National media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and The Atlantic are touting what David Brooks has called “the campus tsunami” of online education.3

    Unfortunately, a natural side effect of this new interest in education and educational technology is an increase in hype and in shallow descriptions of the potential for new educational models to replace the established system. All too often, the public discussion has become stuck in a false dichotomy of traditional vs. online—a dichotomy that treats all online models as similar and that ignores blended or hybrid approaches. This false dichotomy is even more evident now that discussions are spilling into national media forums. But in fact, as my colleague Molly Langstaff has described, educational technology is interacting with innovative educational courses and programs to create not only new language but also multiple models for delivering education.4

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  • Project Blue Sky: Big Boost to OER From . . . Pearson?

    In June 2012, Campus Technology interviewed some higher education leaders in the use of open educational resources (OER) to discuss the major challenges to more prevalent adoption of free and open resources. The top two challenges mentioned in the article were:

    • discovering material efficiently due to the vast quantity of resources; and
    • getting faculty to move beyond the “textbook is the course” mindset.

    In a move that could have a significant impact on higher education, Pearson announced just before EDUCAUSE the creation of Project Blue Sky, which directly addresses both of these challenges.

    From the article:

    There are too many resources to choose from. OER may be a new concept for some professors, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t enough resources to go around. In fact, Geoff Cain, director of distance education for Eureka, CA-based College of the Redwoods, said the number of resources is so vast that it can literally paralyze instructors.

    “Helping faculty find appropriate resources is a major issue,” said Cain, whose institution is a member of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources.[snip]

    Cain said impressing upon the educators the fact that they already “adapt” coursework and textbooks to meet student needs is a good way to help break them out of the “textbook is the course” mindset. “Teachers skip chapters, incorporate current events, and drill down on specific student needs all the time,” said Cain. “OERs are really just an extension of that.”

    While anecdotal, the findings of this article (at least on discoverability) are backed up by an upcoming report from the Babson Survey Research Group that lists the barriers to adoption of OER from a faculty study.

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  • Canvas Network – Are the LMS and MOOC Markets Colliding?

    Six weeks ago I posted a new graphic on the LMS market which included MOOCs in the same view as traditional LMS solutions.

    In the comments to the post there was an interesting note from Josh Coates (Instructure CEO) in response to whether MOOCs should be so closely aligned with the LMS market:

    i agree with you [fellow commenter Bob Puffer] that MOOCs aren’t the same thing as an LMS and should be accounted for differently.

    With the recent news of the Coursera / Antioch partnership as well as Instructure’s release of the Canvas Network, I believe we are starting to see the LMS market overlap with the MOOC market, although I do not see them completely merging. After offering to fix Josh’s broken shift key, I’d like to explore the prospects for the Canvas Network to compete in the MOOC marketplace.

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  • Kuali: A Primer for Community Source Administrative Systems in Higher Ed

    I was recently invited to attend a user conference – Kuali Days in Austin, TX – and was struck by the disconnect between Kuali’s relatively low profile and the excitement expressed by the institutional representatives attending the conference. Before getting to any analysis of Kuali and its prospects, however, I need to lay out the basics to help me keep the terminology straight.

    My focus in consulting and writing is on educational technology – those systems that directly impact a student’s educational needs. While there are a range of administrative systems within the Kuali portfolio of projects, I will place more emphasis on those systems which are closer to the student experience.

    Based on interviews at the conference, the core value that Kuali provides are:

    • Administrative systems designed for specific needs (for higher education, by higher education); and
    • Dramatically lower hard costs for administrative systems.

    What is the Kuali Project and Foundation?

    In 2004, a group of technologists were looking to collaborate on a shareable Financial System based on a homegrown system designed at Indiana University. Within the CIC (a forum for technology collaboration mostly amongst the former Big 10 schools), there were several discussions about the nature of sharing. Even though the source code and design would be shared, who would own the software and intellectual property? Who would manage common development? These questions led to the concept of a third-party organization.

    The Kuali Project was created in early 2005 based on founding partners Indiana University, The University of Arizona, the University of Hawaii, Michigan State University, San Joaquin Delta Community College, Cornell University, NACUBO and the rSmart Group.

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  • Is Higher Education Ready For Rapid Evolution of xMOOCs?

    Recently I wrote a post arguing that xMOOCs such as Coursera, edX and Udacity will likely evolve and that “while the current examples of massive online courses are interesting, the real potential of MOOCs will be revealed in future generations.”

    Today Antioch College announced that it is creating a new MOOC-for-credit partnership with Coursera. The key points as summarized by Tony Bates (via Inside Higher Ed article):

    This article reports on an interesting deal signed between Coursera and Antioch University. Antioch is a well-established private university with campuses in four different states, with around 4,000 mainly adult students. Under this deal:

    • Antioch University will pay Coursera for the rights to offer MOOCs from 33 universities for credit as part of its third year undergraduate program, focusing particularly on students transferring in from community colleges (the fourth year will be on campus)
    • Antioch will charge a lower tuition fee for these courses (closer to community college fee levels than public universities’)
    • Antioch will assign a faculty member to provide learner support for Antioch-registered students in each MOOC-based course, with about 20 students per instructor (as for on-campus classes)
    • Students will take an exam at the end of each course for credit from Antioch
    • Coursera will pay rights to the universities contributing MOOC courses to Antioch.

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  • Postscript to CEO Transition at Blackboard

    There are three additional management changes at Blackboard not mentioned in my recent post – two announced over the past week and one announced in April. These changes are worth noting as they further back up the point that Blackboard is in turnaround mode.

    What should we expect from the future Blackboard? I believe the best way to understand future changes at Blackboard is to view the CEO transition as the latest move in a corporate turnaround – and an unsurprising move .

    The additional management changes:

    • Bob Alcorn – chief architect of the Learn product line since 2007, lead architect and designer of Building Blocks, lead developer of CourseInfo, and original member of the Blackboard team – has left the company and will be replaced by David Ashman.
    • Siegfried Behrens resigned his position of Global Manager of US Education for Microsoft and joined Blackboard in the new position of President of Global Sales.
    • In April Bill Davis became the new CFO, replacing John Kinzer.

    There seems to be fairly significant management changes going on, and I would expect more to come once Jay Bhatt is fully in place as the new CEO.

    Update: I should clarify that Bob Alcorn’s departure is significant news, but he left for a new opportunity, not directly from a management shake-up.