This article suggests a change in corporate tactics regarding the commercialization of online learning. The article argues that due to the increased pressure from the US Department of Education on for-profit online institutions such as Kaplan and [...]]]> Parry, M. (2010) Outsourced Ed: Colleges Hire Companies to Build Their Online Courses Chronicle of Higher Education, July 18

This article suggests a change in corporate tactics regarding the commercialization of online learning. The article argues that due to the increased pressure from the US Department of Education on for-profit online institutions such as Kaplan and the University of Phoenix, investors are turning to companies that will outsource e-learning for not-for-profit private and public campus-based institutions, such as the University of Southern California, Northeastern University and Boston University.

Comment

For many who work as learning technology support staff in public universities, this is often a nightmare scenario. How do you deal with a VP Development or VP Academic who thinks the outsourcing of online learning is a great idea? (I know, because I worked for one where this happened).

For a start, for some institutions without any previous track record of developing online learning, it may be a sensible option, particularly for continuing education or extension departments that are expected to generate revenue, but don’t have experience in this area. It may even make sense where there is a history of online teaching, but it’s not been a good one, in terms of quality or student satisfaction.

However, here is a set of questions that need to be asked before any ‘deal’ is signed:

1. Will online learning remain a peripheral activity in this institution, or is it likely to become a core part of our teaching? The more integral online learning becomes to an institution, the weaker the case for outsourcing. (Another way of putting this is: would it make sense for an institution to outsource its teaching so it can concentrate on research? If not, then why outsource online learning, which is just one way of teaching?)

2. How important is it for the institution to develop its own expertise in online learning, from a teaching and learning perspective? If the institution is to remain entirely classroom or campus based in all its programs, outsourcing may make sense. In this case, though, will the outsourced online courses have the same status and respect as the campus-based programs?

3. Is online learning a way to gain market share and enhance the reputation of the university, or is it seen mainly as a way to generate extra revenues? If extra revenues are the main goal, outsourcing may make sense, but then:

4. If the aim is to make money from online offerings, will we make more money by developing our own in-house expertise than by outsourcing? Do we have business cases for both options? What is the best business case over the long-term compared to the short-term (one to five years)?

5. If the aim is to increase market share or enhance the reputation of the university, what impact will outsourcing have on the control and management of teaching? What role if any will tenured faculty play if online learning is outsourced? What impact will that have on the reputation of the university?

6. How are key stakeholders (faculty, students, employers, the board, the government) likely to respond to outsourcing? Will they support or oppose it?

7. What controls will the institution have over the quality of the outsourced teaching? For instance, who will select instructors to teach in the program and on what basis?

I am not arguing against outsourcing on principle. Some outsourcing companies are flexible enough to develop contracts that will ensure high quality and a good return to the institution, and there are situations where this will make sense. The key question though is: what is your ‘core’ mission? Are we a teaching and learning institution, and if so, why would we contract this out to someone else? If they can do teaching and learning better than us, why are we doing it? Or is our mission to become just an accreditation agency that also does research?

Underlying all this is the belief that online teaching is second rate and therefore can be contracted out without loss to the institution. Big mistake.

Reference

Bok, D. (2003) Universities in the Marketplace: The Commercialization of Higher Education Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press

This team of Italian researchers have developed a methodology to track ‘participative, social, cognitive and teaching dimensions of the learning process’ in asynchronous, text-based online teaching in a blended learning context.

Comment: A [...]]]> Persico, D., Pozzi, F. and Sarti, L. (2010) Monitoring collaborative activities in computer supported collaborative learning, Distance Education, Vol. 31. No. 1, pp. 5-22

This team of Italian researchers have developed a methodology to track ‘participative, social, cognitive and teaching dimensions of the learning process’ in asynchronous, text-based online teaching in a blended learning context.

Comment: A good review of the literature and some interesting suggestions on how to do this kind of analysis in a pragmatic way, such as the tutor classifying and tagging comments when reading. Still looks pretty labour intensive to me, though, for regular online teaching, although useful as a research tool.

Myth No. 1: ‘A university education is becoming so costly – in the USA – that it’s not worth the investment.’

Proto, R. (2010) Is college still worth the investment? HICE SCHOOL, 30 June

Randy Proto, the President and CEO of the American Institutes [...]]]> I came across some blogs about ‘myths’, so I thought I’d put them together.

Myth No. 1: ‘A university education is becoming so costly – in the USA – that it’s not worth the investment.’

Proto, R. (2010) Is college still worth the investment? HICE SCHOOL, 30 June

Randy Proto, the President and CEO of the American Institutes school group, does a pretty good demolition job on this myth on Joe Hices’s excellent blog. Randy points out that the average student college debt in the USA on graduation is about $20,000, less than the average loan taken out to buy a car. More importantly the lifetime return on investment is about $450,000 in earnings more for those with a bachelor’s degree over those without a degree. (The compound interest on $20,000 over 40 years is $140,000 at 5%, so you’re still about $7,750 a year better off with a degree, even if you had $20,000 to invest instead of paying to go to college). Furthermore 63% of jobs will require a degree by 2018.

The ELT@Traceyo blog drew my attention to a recent survey of k-12 classroom teachers in the USA commissioned by Walden University (Eduventures Inc. conducted the research)

Grunwald Associates LLC (2010) Educators, Technology and 21st Century Skills: Dispelling Five Myths: A Study on the Connection Between K–12 Technology Use and 21st Century Skills Minneapolis: Walden University

The report identifies five myths, all of which the survey indicated were untrue:

1. Teachers who are newer to the profession and teachers who have greater access to technology are more likely to use technology frequently for instruction than other teachers. I found it interesting that the report found the opposite: it was the more experienced teachers who were more likely to use technology.

2. Only high-achieving students benefit from using technology. I actually did research many years ago on students’ use of television at the British Open University that did indeed find the opposite. The students who benefited most from math television programs were in fact the ‘borderline’ students. The ‘A’ students didn’t need the extra help, and the fail students were so lost that even the TV programs didn’t help. However, the borderline students found the linking of the abstract formulae to real world examples in the TV programs helped their understanding. (For more on the role of video, see my book, ‘Technology, e-Learning and Distance Education.’)

3. Given that students today are comfortable with technology, teachers’ use of technology is less important to student learning. The report states that: Teachers who use technology frequently to support learning in their classrooms report greater benefits to student learning, engagement and skills from technology than teachers who spend less time using technology to support learning. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? The psychologists call this cognitive dissonance. Once you make a decision, you tend to find evidence to support the correctness of the decision and ignore evidence to the contrary. It may be true that technology leads to better learning outcomes, but you need to measure the outcomes, not ask for opinions about outcomes.

4. Teachers and administrators have shared understandings [I think they mean 'agree'] about classroom technology use and 21st century skills. The report found that administrators overestimated technology use by teachers and were more supportive of the use of technology on the whole than were the teachers.

5. Teachers feel well prepared by their initial teacher preparation programs to effectively incorporate technology into classroom instruction and to foster 21st century skills. In fact, most teachers do not believe that their pre-service programs prepared them well in either technology or 21st century skills. Teachers place more value on advanced training programs. This doesn’t say much for Faculties of Education, who are supposed to provide pre-service training – but then this is Walden University, a private online university focused on adult learners.

Now I suspect that the report writers put up these ‘myths’ as straw men to be knocked down, but the findings themselves are valuable. As the excellent discussion of this report by ELT@Traceyo makes clear, though, the link between the use of technology and generic 21st century skills is less well made in the report. Tracey also notes that this was a survey of teachers in the USA, and wonders what the results would have been in other countries.

In 1959, a physicist and novelist at Cambridge University, C.P. Snow, argued that the breakdown of communication between the “two cultures” of modern society — the sciences and the humanities — was a major hindrance to solving the world’s problems.

This article [...]]]> Parry, M. (2010) The humanities go Google Chronicle of Higher Education, June 3

In 1959, a physicist and novelist at Cambridge University, C.P. Snow, argued that the breakdown of communication between the “two cultures” of modern society — the sciences and the humanities — was a major hindrance to solving the world’s problems.

This article looks at the modern interface of digital science with traditional literature, and from the way this article is written, the cultural interface remains an ugly mess. The article is about attempts by computer scientists to analyse on a quantitative basis all the works captured in Google books to identify (here I got a little lost) trends or themes that perhaps that have been ignored in the past.

One word cried out to me when reading this article: epistemology. One reason for the great divide in cultures is epistemological. Science and humanities approach the issue of what is ‘true’ from completely different perspectives. Writing algorithms to identify common ‘themes’ based on quantitative, statistical analysis seems to me to miss the point about meaning in literature and how it is interpreted.

For computer scientists, ‘meaning’ is a big, black hole into which billions of dollars have been sunk. Just look at the pathetic results from many years research into speech recognition or artificial intelligence (with respect to meaning – AI has been very successful in other areas.) Let’s not even consider the semantic web. I really do fear that if, one day, computer scientists do crack the code of meaning, as humans we will be redundant, and totally replaceable by machines.

There is so much in this article – the way it is written, the goals the computer scientists have set themselves, the attempt to dehumanize the reading of literature – that terrifies me. We do not need a single, dehumanized, reductionist, computerized culture. Be afraid, very afraid.

Pagliaro, J. (2010) Apple America: Why Canada’s learning technology experts say tech handouts are lackluster Macleans, May 17

Another disappointing article from a national journal, this time Maclean’s of Canada. It went after Canadian reaction to giving out the latest technology to students. Not much to learn from it, but it’s here for the [...]]]>

Pagliaro, J. (2010) Apple America: Why Canada’s learning technology experts say tech handouts are lackluster Macleans, May 17

Another disappointing article from a national journal, this time Maclean’s of Canada. It went after Canadian reaction to giving out the latest technology to students. Not much to learn from it, but it’s here for the record.

Generally, my view is that students are usually ahead of faculty in acquiring the latest technology, so why give them stuff they are already likely to buy for themselves? If they are not likely to have it already, why would you use it?

However, there is one exception I would make to this. We don’t have enough innovation in teaching, and it would be good to see faculty, using decent evaluation methods, exploring the potential role of new technologies for teaching and learning. This might require buying some iPads or iPhones just for the purposes of trying them out with a small group of students – provided students are happy to be part of such an experiment, and there is a clear learning strategy behind the choice of the technology.

However, our research funding agencies (and the ethics committees in particular) probably couldn’t handle this kind of improptu research and evaluation – by the time they agreed to funding, the technology would already be obsolete.

See also: A good reason to give students iPads?

The paper, from researchers at the Open University of Portugal, proposes two main types of instruments to be used in undergraduate fully online courses: e-folios and p-folios. The e-folio “is a short digital document elaborated [...]]]> Pereira, A. et al. (2009) Evaluating continuous assessment quality in competence-based education online: the case of the e-folio EURODL, December 9

The paper, from researchers at the Open University of Portugal, proposes two main types of instruments to be used in undergraduate fully online courses: e-folios and p-folios. The e-folio “is a short digital document elaborated by the student and published online to be visualized by the teacher, and should clearly demonstrate that the student acquired or developed a given competence” The e-folios may be complemented by a p-folio that takes place in a face-to-face setting. The p-folio may take the form of “a set of questions defined by the teacher, or other forms, such as the presentation of a project or a report, according to the competences to be developed by the students.

Thanks to Lourdes Guardia for bring this to my attention.

An article about the use of Google Wave by Ray Schroeder at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He has used Google Wave to link classes between Springfield and Sligo Institute of Technology, Ireland.

One interesting aspect is the possibility [...]]]>

Parry, M. (2010) How to teach with Google Wave Chronicle of Higher Education, January 4

An article about the use of Google Wave by Ray Schroeder at the University of Illinois at Springfield. He has used Google Wave to link classes between Springfield and Sligo Institute of Technology, Ireland.

One interesting aspect is the possibility of using Google Wave instead of a learning management system.

The comments on this article are also worth reading.

Vancouver Community College has entered what appears to be its next phase of life with regards to educational technology. Over the past four years, we have gone from less than a dozen programs utilizing online environments to a robust Moodle environment in [...]]]> Robin Popow wrote this report for the BC Educational Technology Users Group:

Vancouver Community College has entered what appears to be its next phase of life with regards to educational technology. Over the past four years, we have gone from less than a dozen programs utilizing online environments to a robust Moodle environment in use by over 300 faculty members. Phase two comes as many using Moodle over the past few years become more comfortable with the environment and the constructivist paradigm shift it quietly encourages. In a general way, we have reached the E in the ADDIE model and the Centre for Instructional Development (CID) has been actively evaluating offerings on a voluntary basis based on established best practices and evaluation criteria. A focus now is on the redevelopment of courses at a program level with many areas collaborating to create a layout to offer their common students consistency across courses. These templates have been well received by faculty and students.

With our downtown campus closing to accommodate the 2010 Olympic Games many programs will be utilizing the online environment during this time to ensure no time is lost. Many of these programs will also be taking their first journey into Moodle and have been working hard to prepare – some for as long as one year. It is as if the fever of the games has inspired VCC to “go for the gold” too.

Among these online developments at Vancouver Community College is a course for car body repair apprentices that delivers 10 weeks of the program online, using a large number of simply produced video clips of practices and procedures in car body repairs, with the last three weeks being the hands-on training. Because all the students are apprentices already working under supervision, many already have the skills required when they arrive at the college for the last three weeks hands-on work. They are tested, and those that have the skills are sent back to work, so the instructor can focus on those that need the skills most.

If you want to share your experiences with Moodle 2.0, you can contact Robin at rpopow@vcc.ca

An article on Sungard’s change of strategy regarding its Banner administrative software, providing more flexibility in its services. Not mentioned is whether this is the first response of commercial providers to the Kuali Project’s move towards open source administrative [...]]]> Parry, M. (2009) Software giants try boutique approach to tempt colleges Chronicle of Higher Education, November 29

An article on Sungard’s change of strategy regarding its Banner administrative software, providing more flexibility in its services. Not mentioned is whether this is the first response of commercial providers to the Kuali Project’s move towards open source administrative software.

A news report of a study by the consulting firm Eduventures, “Benchmarking Online Operations: Snapshots of an Emerging Industry,” (not yet available as of November 28, 2009, except to Eduventures members).

From the Chronicle’s news report

Online education [...]]]> Parry, M. (2009) Online Programs: Profits Are There, Technological Innovation Is Not Chronicle of Higher Education, October 19

A news report of a study by the consulting firm Eduventures, “Benchmarking Online Operations: Snapshots of an Emerging Industry,” (not yet available as of November 28, 2009, except to Eduventures members).

From the Chronicle’s news report

Online education has grown in popularity, yet it remains dependent on learning-management systems, with content-delivery built around text, says Richard Garrett, an Eduventures managing director.

“The underlying delivery model or pedagogical model hasn’t really changed much in the last five, 10 years,” Mr. Garrett says.

The study found that nearly all programs were either profitable or breaking even. Overall, 65 percent reported that their online programs were profitable. For for-profits, 100 percent were profitable; for nonprofits, 62 percent were. (With nonprofit colleges, “profit” is used in the sense of a surplus, with revenues being larger than expenses. Universities have various systems for handling the surplus.)

The Eduventures survey found that the widely used tools are e-mail, text discussions that don’t happen in real time, physical textbooks, and word and PDF documents.

That contrasts with what you find on the programs of distance-learning conferences, where the talk is often about Web 2.0 technology that allows students to interact with the content or the provider in tangible ways.