e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: WCET

  • New Post at WCET: Update on California Online Initiatives

    I have a new post up at WCET with updates on the California Online Initiatives driven by state government, including today’s news that SB520 is on hold.

    The big news today is that the controversial bill seeking to allow for-credit partially-outsourced online education in California has been put on hold until at least 2014. [snip]

    On the surface, it appears that higher education insiders might have defeated state government efforts to take a leading role in online initiatives. SB520 is on hold and possibly dead, and most conditions on the additional funding have been removed.

    If you look under the surface, however, the outcome is not as clear. It turns out that the systems are in fact changing their priorities and investing in online to help matriculated students complete degrees at a lower cost, which was the original goal of state government leaders.

    There’s more information there, including news on the University of California’s and California State University’s two new online initiatives.

  • Summary from WCET on State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement

    For any online program in the US that enroll students from more than one state, the issue of the Department of Education’s State Authorization proposed regulations is a major issue. WCET has played a leading role in raising awareness on the issue as well as pushing for a solution. From their summary page (read the whole page for a summary of the timeline, pushback, state regulations, etc):

    On October 29, 2010, the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) released new “program integrity” regulations.  One of the regulations focused on the need for institutions offering distance or correspondence education to acquire authorization from any state in which it “operates.”  This authorization is required to maintain eligibility for students of that state to receive federal financial aid. Institutions have until July 1, 2014, to have obtained the appropriate approvals. Meanwhile, institutions are required to demonstrate a ‘good faith’ effort to comply in each state in which it serves students. While the regulation has been ‘vacated’ by court order, we believe it will be reinstated.

    To give an idea of the issues, consider that Missouri charges institutions $5,000 – $25,000 fees to register in the state, and there is a burdensome process. While not all states are as expensive as Missouri, the costs and overhead add up quickly, and there are conflicting and inconsistent requirements from state to state. According to a survey from UPCEA, WCET and Sloan-C, one third of online programs have not applied to any states outside their home, despite the serving a median of 37 states. Furthermore State Authorization rules would stifle online education programs and is already causing many programs to reject students in certain states.

    Despite losing in court (the ruling was vacated), the Department of Education still plans on pushing forward and planning to revive State Authorization.

    The most promising approach to dealing with this situation is the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA).

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  • New Post at WCET On Activist Role of State Government in Higher Education

    I have a new post up at WCET based on some observations from the recent 20 Million Minds conference.

    In past years the primary role of state government was to take the lead on funding while working with statewide systems on enrollment policies to serve workforce and general educational needs. Last week in California we witnessed the state government, both from the governor’s office and the legislature, become the driving force of change for determining the role of educational technology and online education to transform the public systems. State officials are no longer content with encouraging and hoping that postsecondary institutions will develop a strategy for systemic change on their own.

    Three interdependent events are emerging that clarify this trend.

    Read the whole article here.

  • WCET Conference Oct 31 – Nov 3 in San Antonio

    Just a quick note that I’ll be at the WCET conference in San Antonio this year, participating in two sessions and attending the Annual Meeting:

    • Academic Leadership Forum (Invitation Only) Oct 31, helping moderators Greg Von Lehmen and Karan Powell and the topic “What Is Learning in a Mobile World.”
    • “Beyond the LMS – What’s Next?” Discussion Nov 2, along with Richie Boyd

    For those who are not familiar with WCET:

    WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) accelerates the adoption of effective practices and policies, advancing excellence in technology-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education.

    While smaller than EDUCAUSE, the WCET conference is a great event for institutions, vendors and others to learn about e-learning issues on the horizon and network with key educational decision-makers and practitioners.

    As an example, WCET is the best source I know to help online program decision-makers to understand the impact of state authorization federal rules, and they have also through Russ Poulin’s work taken a lead role in trying to craft a workable solution through reciprocity agreements. Any vendor wanting to be on the forefront of e-learning and online education, you should get involved and attend.

    I hope to see you there – feel free to tweet (@Philonedtech) or email me. Register here.

  • Guest Blog at WCET: Institutional Decision-Making and Changing LMS Market

    Today I had a guest post at WCET’s blog. WCET is a great organization that “accelerates the adoption of effective practices and policies, advancing excellence in technology-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education”. They have been leaders in sharing best practices for online education, including taking a leading role on explaining State Authorization regulations as well as others. You can read the full post here.

    The topic of the post is how the changing LMS / Learning Platform market is, or should be, changing institutional decision-making.

    We have seen a great deal of change in the higher education Learning Management System (LMS) market over the past year, as has been described in several blog posts. One of the biggest changes to the market that I’ve noticed is that we seem to be moving from an enterprise LMS market, with full-featured monolithic systems, into a learning platform market, with many cloud-based platforms that don’t attempt to have all the features in one system.

    As Ritchie Boyd has described, the WCET LMS Common Interest Group (CIG) is recasting itself this year as “the ‘Beyond the LMS’ Common Interest Group. The idea is to not ignore the LMS, but rather to acknowledge that there is so much more going on in the broader academic technology ecosystems and their impact on our campuses, and that much of this activity often includes or is enveloped by the formal LMS.”

    In last year’s WCET-sponsored Managing Online Education survey, 47% of respondents indicated they are reviewing their LMS strategy and 27% are planning to change LMS within 2 years. A key question arises, however, about how institutions should adapt their technology decision-making processes based on these market changes. It’s all well and good for the market to change and provide more choices and new approaches, but how should schools decide which system(s) best fit their specific academic and administrative needs? The emergence of new, often free, cloud-based learning platforms may require changes to our decision-making.

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