e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Dean Florez

  • Proposed California Legislation for Statewide Online Education Courses – The Basics

    Outside of the Vatican, the big news this week in higher education is the proposed legislation in California that would identify and approve a set of up to 50 online courses that the three public systems would accept as credit for admitted students. Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg is co-authoring SB520 that addresses popular, introductory courses for which students cannot get access from their University of California, California State University, or California Community College campus. The pre-coverage of the event included the following:

    As described in the NY Times:

    Legislation will be introduced in the California Senate on Wednesday that could reshape higher education by requiring the state’s public colleges and universities to give credit for faculty-approved online courses taken by students unable to register for oversubscribed classes on campus.

    If it passes, as seems likely, it would be the first time that state legislators have instructed public universities to grant credit for courses that were not their own — including those taught by a private vendor, not by a college or university.

    “We want to be the first state in the nation to make this promise: No college student in California will be denied the right to move through their education because they couldn’t get a seat in the course they needed,” said Darrell Steinberg, the president pro tem of the Senate, who will introduce the bill. “That’s the motivation for this.”

    Update 3/14: Text of bill here

    Senate President Pro Tem Steinberg held a press conference today via Google Hangout and video streaming (archive available soon on site) to announce the package of legislation. I have attempted to summarize the press conference below (any mistakes in note-taking are my own, and I’ll update as needed). While Michael and I will both have analysis of this proposal soon, I wanted to first share the information directly.

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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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