e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Category: Ed Tech

The “Ed Tech” category includes posts about educational technology products themselves, including LMSs and other learning platforms, adaptive learning and other digital curricular materials products, learning analytics, and educational apps of all types. It also includes technical aspects of ed tech products, especially interoperability.

  • Please Welcome Featured Blogger Mike Caulfield

    Michael and I have been very impressed with the articles from Mike Caulfield, an edublogger who writes at Hapgood. Mike is director of blended and networked learning at Washington State University Vancouver, and he and Michael first met at a Lumen Learning event this summer. In addition to writing at his blog, Mike Caulfield has also written an excellent  EDUCAUSE Review article along with Amy Collier and Sherif Halawa, titled “Rethinking Online Community in MOOCs Used for Blended Learning”.

    I’m happy to say that Mike will be doing a series of posts for us, starting today. Please welcome him.

  • A response to USA Today article on Flipped Classroom research

    Update 10/25: Bumped comment from Darryl Yong, a member of the research team, into its own post here.

    Update 10/26: We now have Rachel Levy and Nancy Lape (who was the researcher interviewed by USA Today) both agreeing with Darryl’s comments. That’s three of the four members of the research team. While I do not claim to understand how the reporter developed her story line (I have asked for comment), it is quite clear that the article does not represent the work of the Harvey Mudd research team and has a misleading headline and lede.

    USA Today published an article today titled “‘Flipped classrooms’ may not have any impact on learning“, based on research from four Harvey Mudd professors. This research is backed by a “$199,544 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the effects of the flipped classroom on students’ learning”. This is newsworthy, right? A real research report with NSF funding finding no statistical difference in learning outcomes from flipped classroom seems to contradict much of the recent promise of ed tech.

    Upon closer reading, however, there are some major problems with the story. Exaggerated claims by ed tech enthusiasts are not helpful, but neither are exaggerated claims by ed tech skeptics. We at e-Literate have been critical of both flavors (witness our analysis of San Jose State claims, Desire2Learn claims, and edX claims for examples of the former).

    Let’s review today’s story as an example of the latter.

    In a flipped classroom, students watch their professors’ lectures online before class, while spending class time working on hands-on, “real world” problems.

    The potential of the model has many educators thrilled — it could be the end of vast lecture halls, students falling asleep and boring, monotone professors.

    This is a decent summary, although I would argue there should not be a one-size-fits-all mentality. Flipped classrooms, even where successful, should not replace all lecture-based classes. But for national media, this is not a bad description.

    But four professors at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. who are studying the effectiveness of a flipped classroom have bad news for advocates of the trend: it might not make any difference.

    This is the lede, and the claim that we should examine. What is the basis of their study?

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  • e-Literate TV trailer from EDUCAUSE 2013

    Last week Michael announced a new project of ours called e-Literate TV. To recap, the idea is that there are new groups involved in decisions that impact ed tech and online education. Deans, provosts, presidents, boards of trustees, state legislators, and even national media are newly interested in topics with different levels of understanding and different perspectives.

    This new situation can be frustrating for e-learning professionals who have been involved in ed tech for years, but we cannot and should not wish away this new interest. Instead, there is an opportunity to develop new ways to engage the various groups in discussions about the usage of technology to enable change in education.

    This is the goal of e-Literate TV. One way we see e-Literate TV being used is by e-learning professionals sharing easy-to-consume ~10-minute videos with various stake holders as a method to enable more productive conversations. As such, all of the video segments will come with a creative commons license for easy sharing.

    What event is complete without a cool tee shirt?
    What event is complete without a cool tee shirt?

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  • Apereo Foundation Reception at EDUCAUSE Tonight

    This is just a quick note on behalf of my friends at the Apereo Foundation to note that their reception will be at 6:30 PM at the Hilton tonight at EDUCAUSE. For some reason, it got left off the program. Details are here. I, unfortunately, will not be able to join, but if you’re interested in talking to good people ding good work in higher ed open source, then drop on by.

  • Differentiated, Personalized & Adaptive Learning: some clarity for EDUCAUSE

    Josh Kim wrote three predictions at Inside Higher Ed for the EDUCAUSE 2013 conference, and I particularly agree with the basis of #2:

    Prediction 2: Adaptive Learning Platforms Will Be the Toast of the Party

    Everyone will want to talk to Knewton. The ASU / Pearson / Knewton partnership is a huge deal. Knewton has the technology, relationships, funding, and management team to make a huge impact.

    I’ll be looking at EDUCAUSE at the other adaptive learning players. Where are they focusing their platform work? What deals and relationships do they currently have? How big is their market penetration? What is the quality of their leadership team and employees they have a EDUCAUSE?

    I’m betting we will see at least one major adaptive learning vendor announcement. A purchase, a big collaboration deal, or a new huge round of funding.

    I also expect much of the discussion this year to be on adaptive learning. But one risk of this zeitgeist (if it comes to pass) is that terminology becomes fuzzy and often devoid of meaning. Hey, get your adaptive here. You want to be adaptive, don’t you? We are the adaptive makers… and we are the dreamers of dreams.

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  • The IMS’s New “Caliper” Learning Analytics Interoperability Framework Is Deeply Interesting

    The IMS has announced the initial public release of something they call Caliper, which they characterize as a learning analytics interoperability framework. But it’s actually much, much more than that. In fact, it represents the functional core of something that my SUNY colleagues and I used to refer to as a Learning Management Operating System (LMOS), and is something that I have been hoping to see for eight years, because it promises to resolve the tension between the flexibility of lots of  separately developed, specialized learning tools and the value and convenience of an integrated system.

    Let’s take a peek at the framework to see why I’m so hopeful about this framework. But before we do that, you should fasten your seat belts and strap on your aviator goggles. It’s going to get geeky in here.

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  • e-Literate and Conflicts of Interest

    As you may know, Phil and I started a consulting practice in January. Throughout my years of blogging here, I have made it a practice to update readers on how changes in professional life may affect the writing that I (and now we) do on the blog. I don’t believe there is any such thing as “objective” analysis. Analysis is all about perspective, and perspective is derived from your point of view—where you stand, and so on. If we are going to be fortunate enough to continue earning your trust, then it’s important for you to understand our perspective so that you can anticipate and account for any limitations that are inherent in it. As it turns out, running a consulting business creates both some complex ethical challenges as well as some exciting opportunities for the blog. Now that Phil and I have had some time to understand the landscape better, this seems like a good time to give you an update. (more…)