Still thinking about the future

I liked this article:  http://www.contactnorth.ca/sites/default/files/contactNorth/files/pdf/publications/5_wishes_for_the_future_of_online_learning.pdf.  I especially liked the wish that we would all focus on pedagogy.  I completely agree that there has been too  much focus on video and reproducing lectures.  Sure that is one way to get content to someone, but there are many other ways that might be more effective.  I love the idea of gaming and situation analyses.   In my class, with my limited time and technical skills I have tried to make a few of the assignments relevant -- teach your neighbor or write an analysis for your boss kind of thing.  That only goes so far though.  My hope is that organizations like the Gates Foundation will spend their money creating really interesting courses that approach learning and teaching in different ways, maybe including the lecture, but not focusing on it.

List of Papers on Education

Lots of good reading in this list:

http://www.nationalaffairs.com/blog/detail/findings-a-daily-roundup/a-terrible-thing-to-waste

HT to Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution

Lisa

Future of higher Ed

Okay I could not resist the post title since it is still the first week of January. And it's a silly title as it implies a disintegration or disappearance. That's not what is happening though .... Or maybe it is a disintegration in the sense that the landscape is not as carefully maintained as it once was. Certainly students have more options now than they had even a decade ago.

The largest change is that colleges and universities are beginning to allow students to have those options and to integrate them into their college degree plan. As the pool of 18 year olds whose parents are willing and able to fund four years of college gets tighter more types of colleges find themselves looking at other demographics. And other demographics come with baggage... err... learning... from other places. They have more skills, learning, and understanding picked up on the job or from workplace education classes or from random classes from many colleges and universities. And they want credit for those skills and those learning experiences. How to assess that learning and integrate it into the current AA or BA is perhaps the question for the next few years. We don't want to lose the strengths that come from a liberal arts education, but we also need to truthfully assess our students as they come to us. And that doesn't mean asking them to take classes on material they already have a solid understanding of, even if they picked that understanding up in a non-traditional place.

The future of higher ed is exciting as long as we understand that learning can take place apart from the traditional academic campus and as our students become more integrated outside of campus they will want to see that reflected on their degree plans.

Who is not ciritcal of MOOCs?

I have been reading critiques of MOOCS, of which there are legion.  The best I have seen is here:  http://edtechnow.net/2012/12/29/moocs-and-other-ed-tech-bubbles/.  The bottom line for me is that there is no business model.  Everyone teaching appears to be paid by someone else.  This of course is a strength of StraighterLine -- there is a business model.  I have to say I am insanely curious about the outcome of the College Algebra experiment from the perspective of the MOOCs.  Will learners pay more for a name brand? And if they do will adjunct faculty earn more for teaching in the future?

Interaction and Learning

From Terry Anderson (http://terrya.edublogs.org/2012/12/18/connectivy-your-course/)

An avid reader might note that the advice above tends to contradict the 1st theorem of my Interaction Equivalency Theory namely:

Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–teacher; student-student; student-content) is at a high level. The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.

This implies that one can still learn without enhanced interaction (that grounds connectivist pedagogy). I still believe this to be true. People can and do learn in a very broad array of models, models, contexts and personal inclinations. However the second theorem posits that:

High levels of more than one of these three modes (student-student; student-teacher, student-content) will likely provide a more satisfying educational experience, though these experiences may not be as cost or time effective as less interactive learning sequences.

As I redesign my economics course I of course like that quote because it gives me permission to back off on some of the interaction in the course.  The Reflection assignments work on the student-content interaction, the first 2 assignments and the discussions work on student-peer interaction (okay and student-teacher).  That leaves my comments on reflections and other grading for student-faculty.  I have all three built into the class, but the focus is on student-content.

Where's the Viola?

Michael Feldstein just posted a few thoughts on what is missing from xMOOCs and from publisher material on eLiterate, http://mfeldstein.com/ .  I am curious how many students had a college experience that included long thoughtful discussions with either faculty or peers about the content?  And then of course I am curious where you went to school.

I am back thinking about my economics courses again.  I do try to spend time in the discussion area, but I have my questions there focused on application, not on theory.  Perhaps this semester I will move them to theory.  Maybe that will help me spot not only the that a student has a problem with indifference curves, but exactly where the problem is and how to solve it.  This is the sort of thing that is easier to build into an online course than it is to build it into a F2F course - for more students, not just for those who sit in the front of the classroom. 

I am also wondering about the intersection of xMOOCs and providers like StraighterLine.  Do we get to take over the lower level courses, those where at most universities the discussion taking place is between peers, not between students and faculty?  The PSY 101's that are taught in giant lecture halls anyway?  Clearly there is plenty of room for improvement there, particularly in STEM fields where that course is taught as a weeder course (think General Biology I, or  Chemistry I).  If someone other than traditional F2F educators do take those over, then there needs to be an improvement in pedagogy, not just in cost.  Is the community college model of small classes the best model?  Is it the only model?  Or are we working our way towards a new model that does scale?  

StraighterLine has added new ways to include the professor with Professor Direct. More importantly, SL is looking at new ideas and new ways to add the Viola back in -- via the new models grouped under Professor Direct or via organized student study groups or simply thinking carefully about other possible changes in pedagogy. We need to fit analytics into this discussion though as well as instructional design theories, role of the faculty, etc.

If the goal of discussion is to increase learner's critical thinking skills then online has some major advantaged over the traditional classroom.  That said, there are still significant skills to leading a discussion whether it is online of face to face and not a lot of places to get training in those skills.

Watched a keynote of Tony Bates today - we've spent a lot of time thinking about online course design, what to put online and how to present it.  We need now to think about the classroom.  What goes there, why, etc.  Also what to put online should be thought about at the program level, not only at the course level.