e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: EDUCAUSE

  • 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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  • ELI Podcast: Emerging Issues Around MOOCs

    Michael and I were interviewed by Veronica Diaz for the EDUCAUSE Learning Institute (ELI) podcast series. The theme was looking not at where MOOCs are today, but at where MOOCs might go in the future. The interview is about 13 minutes in length and covers questions such as:

    • Coursera just raised $43m of funding – what potential do investors see in MOOCs?
    • Based on recent Forbes article – do you see MOOCs as replacing parts of traditional higher ed?
    • Will growing numbers of online students reduce hesitation of employers to hire online students? How does this affect institutions being proxies for quality?
    • What applications are there for MOOCs beyond academic programs? (with interesting answer from Michael based on DS106)

    You can access the podcast on iTunes under the EDUCAUSE channel (just search ‘educause’ and go to episode 18), through the EDUCAUSE site, or by the link below.

  • Insight on MOOC student types from ELI Focus Session

    Michael and I had the privilege of leading off the ELI Online Spring Focus Session on MOOCs (taking place today, Apr 3, and tomorrow). Thanks to Stephen Downes, we have a good set of notes on our presentation “Everything You Thought You Knew About MOOCs Could Be Wrong” (program & resources, notes) as well as the other sessions already on each of the sessions on his blog. You know, I think he actually believes this stuff about learner-generated content and self-forming communities . . .  In all seriousness, this is a great session by ELI, great notes by Stephen, and it’s instructive to see the various channels such as chat, Twitter, Google+, and blogs tied to the session (most using #elifocus).

    There was an interesting presentation from Seth Anderson (Duke), Amy Collier (Stanford), Cassandra Horlii (California Institute of Technology) titled “Designing and Implementing MOOCs that Maximize Student Learning” (program & resources, notes) that gives additional insight into MOOC student types. Quoting from Stephen’s notes:

    In most of the MOOCs Stanford has offered, fewer than half the students have come from North America. Nearly half the people in a MOOC may not have a knowledge of English as a first language. They have a more varied educational and cultural background than in traditional courses.

    The majority of active users say they’re taking the course for fun or a challenge, rather than a credential. The tendency to judge MOOCs based on completion rates overlooks the reasons why people join a MOOC. The majority engage in sampling behaviour – like the people in this webinar. Many are MOOC auditors, but they don’t engage, and they aren’t motivated by completion records.

    This is an important aspect of MOOCs and open courses in general that gets missed by popular media and even by some MOOC faculty. The students have varying goals and behavior within a course, and it is a mistake to assume they should converge on a common goal and set of behaviors.

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  • Upcoming Events for Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein

    Michael and I will be speaking at and attending a few events coming up in April.

    ELI Online Spring Focus Session – Michael and I will jointly kick off the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) Online Spring Focus Session “Learning and the MOOC” on April 3 – 4. Our presentation is April 3 from 12:15 – 12:50pm ET:

    Everything You Know About MOOCs Could Be Wrong  There are four things that we think we know about MOOCs: They are “massive,” they are “open,” they are “online,” and they are “courses.” But what happens if we start playing with those “truths”? How massive do MOOCs need to be? How open? Do they need to be fully online? Do they even need to be courses? As institutions determine whether and how to incorporate new online models into their repertoire, Phil Hill and Michael Feldstein will explore the boundaries of the current definition of the MOOC and discuss how it is likely to evolve in the next 12-24 months.

    In addition, we will be helping Veronica Diaz and Malcolm Brown with the closing session, April 4 from 4:40 – 5:00pm ET.

    Pearson Cite – I will physically be at the Pearson Cite conference, also April 3 – 4, and will present during the closing session April 4 from 4:45 – 5:45pm CT.

    Online Educational Delivery Models: What to Expect Next For almost two decades, the world of online education has been evolving. Entering 2013, we are presented with a confusing array of educational delivery models. Ranging from relatively traditional classrooms to fully-online courses, online education is being integrated into the college experience for almost one-third of students. Many of these models, such as Massive Open Online Classes (MOOCs), are geared towards accessibility and affordability. Other models focus on personalized learning styles, such as competency-based education. Traditional LMS providers and textbook publishers are also trying to find their places in this new world, promoting yet different models.

    American Association of Colleges of Nursing – I will be the keynote speaker for the AACN Hot Issues conference April 11 from 1:30 – 3:00pm CT.

    Online Educational Delivery Models: A Descriptive View Consider varied approaches to online courses and programs, including fully online programs, School-as-a-Service, educational partnerships, competency-based education, blended/hybrid courses, the flipped classroom, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

    Education Innovation Summit – Michael will attend the GSV Advisors / ASU Education Innovation Summit April 15 – 17.

  • Beyond the MOOC Hype: Getting Serious about Online Learning

    Phil and I will be giving a webinar with the same title as this blog post for EDUCAUSE ELI on Monday, February 11th at 1 PM ET. It’s aimed at folks on campuses, especially Presidents, Provosts, and other academic decision-makers, who weren’t necessarily focused on online learning in the way that they are now that MOOCs have gotten their attention. We’re going to try to position MOOCs in the larger landscape of online learning and talk a little bit about how campuses can think about the various options in the context of their institutions’ respective missions and strategic goals. It’s a lot to try to accomplish in an hour, but I think we can give people a basic framework and a few important questions to ask themselves.

  • 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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  • Ambivalent on Ed Tech: The EDUCAUSE Re-write

    Now that I’ve had time to digest the implications of EDUCAUSE 2011 – which were significant, but not as mind-blowing as the Reading Market experience – I keep going back to a post I wrote earlier this year (although not on e-Literate).  In that post contrasting a Gartner report on IT spending with an Ambient Insight report on ed tech and online spending, I argued that ambivalence was the key to understanding both reports in context.  Likewise, based on the hype and reality of ed tech at EDUCAUSE, ambivalence can help us understand future implications for education.

    One of the benefits of blog posting is the ability to wholesale plagiarize yourself where needed (ed – I’ll see you in court, Mr. Hill).  Herewith is my rewrite of that post based on this year’s EDUCAUSE experience.

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