e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: Sloan-C

  • Is the DOE backing down on proposed State Authorization regulations?

    Now witness the firepower of this fully written and delivered WCET / UPCEA /Sloan-C letter!

    – D. Poulin

    One of the policies that we’re tracking at e-Literate is the proposed State Authorization regulation that the US Department of Education (DOE) has been pushing. The latest DOE language represents a dramatic increase in federal control of distance education and in bureaucratic compliance required of institutions and states. In the most recent post we shared a letter from WCET, UPCEA and Sloan-C to Secretary Duncan at the DOE.

    What does it take to get all of the higher education institutions and associations to agree? Apparently the answer is for the Department of Education to propose its new State Authorization regulations. [snip]

    Here’s what is newsworthy – the idea and proposed language is so damaging to innovation in higher ed (which the DOE so fervently supports in theory) and so burdensome to institutions and state regulators that three higher ed associations have banded together to oppose the proposed rules. WCET (WICHE Cooperative on Educational Technologies), UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association) and Sloan-C (Sloan Consortium) wrote a letter to Secretary Arne Duncan calling for the DOE to reconsider their planned State Authorization regulations.

    While it is unclear how direct an impact the letter had, yesterday brought welcome news from Ted Mitchell at the DOE: they have effectively paused their efforts to introduce new State Authorization regulations. As described at Inside Higher Ed: (more…)

  • WCET, UPCEA & Sloan-C call on DOE to change State Authorization proposal

    What does it take to get all of the higher education institutions and associations to agree? Apparently the answer is for the Department of Education to propose its new State Authorization regulations.

    As part of DOE’s negotiated rulemaking process over the past half year representatives from schools (Columbia University, Youngstown State University, Benedict College, Santa Barbara City College, Clemson University, MIT, Capella University) to higher ed associations (WCET) were unanimous in their rejection of the proposed State Authorization rules. As Russ Poulin wrote for WCET:

    On Tuesday May 20, the Committee we had our final vote on the proposed language. I voted “no.” I was joined in withholding consent by all the representatives of every higher education sector. Nine out of sixteen negotiators voting “no” is a high ratio.

    Note that only one of the mentioned groups is a for-profit university – the purported offenders causing the need for the regulations. I wrote a post arguing that the proposed rules represented a dramatic increase in control over distance education that would cause a significant increase in compliance and administrative overhead for both colleges / universities and for states themselves.

    In the end, predictably, the rulemaking process ended in a lack of consensus that allows the DOE to propose whatever language they desire. The latest proposal was from DOE, and it would make sense for the final proposal to follow this language closely.

    Here’s what is newsworthy – the idea and proposed language is so damaging to innovation in higher ed (which the DOE so fervently supports in theory) and so burdensome to institutions and state regulators that three higher ed associations have banded together to oppose the proposed rules. WCET (WICHE Cooperative on Educational Technologies), UPCEA (University Professional and Continuing Education Association) and Sloan-C (Sloan Consortium) wrote a letter to Secretary Arne Duncan calling for the DOE to reconsider their planned State Authorization regulations. As the intro states [emphasis added]: (more…)

  • One Line of Argument Against the Blackboard Patent

    Several folks on the Sloan-C listserv have raised a strong second line of argument in the Blackboard prior art fight. In addition to identifying specific LMS precursors that had most or all of the functionality outlined in the claims, we should be building the case that LMS’s were directly and consciously copied from and evolved out of more generic groupware. In other words, once you you have a generic groupware system with groups, roles, permissions, and collaborative tools, it was obvious to the educational community that groups could be classes and that tool that education-specific tools such as a test engine, a grade book, and a homework drop box should be added. (more…)

  • Learning Effectiveness Via Learning Affectiveness

    I just read a great article by Karen Swan called “Immediacy, Social Presence, and Asynchronous Discussion,” published in one of the Sloan-C’s books. (Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be available online.) The paper appears to be an empirical study to follow up an earlier paper by Swan and several colleagues (which is available online, albeit in PDF format). At the heart of it is something called the “equalibrium model of social presence.” (more…)

  • Teaching Hands-On Classes Online

    From the Sloan Consortium, whose web site is turning out to be a gold mine of solid higher ed distance learning research, come articles on teaching electronics and Chemistry through distance learning. They used multimedia simulations of electronics in the former case while resorting to kitchen chemistry assignments in the latter case. For both courses, distance learning students tested as well or better than their classroom counterparts.

    Here’s a particularly delicious nugget:

    Of particular interest is the fact that, as evidenced by the results of the procedural evaluation, distance learning students were at least as competent as their traditional counterparts in utilizing laboratory equipment such as beakers, graduated cylinders and electronic balances, despite the fact that this type of equipment was not available to them in their kitchens. It appears that in the case of the first semester introductory chemistry course, the laboratory goals can be achieved equally well by the distance learners doing the Kitchen Chemistry Laboratories at home as they can by students in traditional laboratories.

    In some ways, this shouldn’t be surprising; K-12 science teachers do this kind of thing all the time because the schools can’t afford real equipment. I myself (in a prior life) had great success teaching middle school science using what was essentially a kitchen chemistry curriculum out of the University of Hawaii called FAST [PDF]. Likewise, high school teachers having been using virtual frogs in bio labs for years and years. Applying the same principles on a post-secondary level is not a huge leap, especially for 101-level courses. What’s interesting is that the methods, i.e., substituting real-world items in the student’s immediate environment when that’s possible and creating online simulations when it’s not, marry so well together in an e-learning environment as strategies for dealing with what is fundamentally an environment of low situational control for instructional designers.

  • Sloan-C – Resources

    This article [PDF], though two years old now, has some still eye-opening figures on distance learning adoption in higher ed.

    Among the more interesting findings:

    • Nearly one third of all higher ed institutions and one half of all public higher ed institutions now offer complete degree programs online.
    • On average, in institutions that had distance learning programs in 2002, 13% of students took courses online.
    • In 2003, academic leaders anticipated a 20% growth in online learning. (I’d be grateful if somebody could send me actual figures for 2003 or anticipated figures for 2004.)
    • A majority of academic officers believe that the quality of distance learning courses will equal or exceed classroom courses within three years.

    Impressive.