e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Online Education

  • Requiem for a Heavyweight – Lessons to Learn from the Problems at UC Online

    In 2009, the University of California finally decided to offer online education with a system-wide initiative called UC Online. Based on an article in the Chronicle that echoes a previous article in the Daily Californian, we learn that just three years later, UC Online is facing significant hurdles to survive the pilot phase and establish a sustainable online option. After raising just 1/8 of the promised private funding that would have avoided significant internal UC investment, UC Online has already borrowed $6.9 million from the system and is facing expenses of $7 million budget over the next year. Despite plans for 20 courses as of January 2012 for current UC students, UC Online has just eight courses available this fall (although only three are listed today). As the pilot expands in January 2013, there are serious questions about the feasibility of enrolling the thousands of non-UC students needed to avoid additional budget shortfalls.

    Given the supposed tsunami of online education that many claim to be revolutionizing higher education, how could such a high-profile initiative from an elite system face such problems?

    Despite an otherwise excellent article, the answers lie not so much in xMOOCs (e.g. Coursera, Udacity, edX), but rather in the underlying assumptions about what constitutes quality. Elite brand names may draw hordes of people willing to sample free content, but that doesn’t mean brand names will automatically draw tuition-paying students looking for credit.

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  • Competency-Based Education: A Primer for Today’s Online Market

    As I described in my most recent post, the competency-based movement is finally gaining momentum based on recent announcements. But what actually is “competency-based education” and why has it taken so long to expand beyond Western Governors University?

    I’m not an expert in the academic theory and background of outcomes and competencies, so in this post I’ll summarize the key points from various articles as they relate to the current market for online programs. Links are included for those wanting to read in more depth.

    What is Competency-Based Education?

    SPT Malan wrote in a article from 2000 about the generally-accepted origins:

    Competency-based education was introduced in America towards the end of the 1960s in reaction to concerns that students are not taught the skills they require in life after school.

    Competency-based education (CBE) is based on the broader concept of Outcomes-based education (OBE), one that is familiar to many postsecondary institutions and one that forms the basis of many current instructional design methods. (more…)

  • Competency-Based Online Education: The Rising Tide of College Affordability

    One of the interesting trends over the past year or two is the emergence of educational delivery models as a locus of innovation – with new business models, applications of technology, and tight integrations of educational content and delivery platforms. In part 1 of this series, I described a new landscape of educational delivery models. In part 2 I described the master course concept that is the basis for most scalable for-profit and not-for-profit online programs. In part 3 and part 4 I described the emergence of MOOCs as well as four barriers they must overcome to become self-sustaining. In this post, I’d like to focus on the less glamorous, but perhaps more significant, movement in self-paced and competency-based online education.

    Consider that just two years ago Western Governors University stood almost alone as the competency-based model for higher education, but today we can add Southern New Hampshire University, the University of Wisconsin System, Northern Arizona University, StraighterLine and Excelsior College.

    Let’s review some of the recent announcements of competency-based programs.

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  • The Master Course: A Key Difference in Educational Delivery Methods

    In part 1 of this series of posts I presented a view of different educational delivery models based on course design and modality.

    Why does it matter that we describe these educational delivery models with finer granularity than just traditional and online? Because the aims of the models differ, as do the primary methods of how these models are created and delivered.

    To show an example of how the methods differ, let’s look at one of the most significant, but overlooked, concepts in this landscape – the master course. This concept of the master course changes the educational delivery methods of an institution, and in my opinion is the real differentiator between traditional institutions and for-profit institutions (both blended and fully online) and even non-profit fully-online organizations.

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