In the fall of 2011 I made the following argument: We need more transparency in the LMS market, and clients should have access to objective measurements of the security of a solution. To paraphrase Michael Feldstein’s suggestions from a 2009 post: There is no guarantee that any LMS is more secure just because they say they are […]
higher education
Babson Study of Online Learning Released
Babson Survey Research Group (BSRG) just released its annual survey of online learning in US higher education (press release here). This year they have moved from use of survey methodology for the online enrollment section to use of IPEDS distance education data. Russ Poulin from WCET and I provided commentary on the two data sources […]
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 […]
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 […]
On ECAR data and ed tech purgatory
Recently I wrote a post about many ed tech products being stuck in pilots without large-scale adoption. In our consulting work Michael and I often help survey institutions to discover what technologies are being used within courses, and typically the only technologies that are used by a majority of faculty members or in a majority of […]
Pilots: Too many ed tech innovations stuck in purgatory
Steve Kolowich wrote an article yesterday in the Chronicle that described the use of LectureTools, a student engagement and assessment application created by faculty member Perry Sampson at the University Michigan. These two paragraphs jumped out at me. The professor has had some success getting his colleagues to try using LectureTools in large introductory courses. In the spring, […]
Federal Reserve Board backs up e-Literate in criticism of Brookings report on student debt
I have been very critical of the Brookings Institution report on student debt, particularly in my post “To see how illogical the Brookings Institution report on student loans is, just read the executive summary”. D’oh! It turns out that real borrowers with real tax brackets paying off off real loans are having real problems. The […]