PILOTed

Leveraged Learning: How the Future of Education Might Play Out

 

How would you prepare if you knew you were going to embark on the most important project or task of your life; but you had no idea what it was, what skills or knowledge you need, the specific fields of operation, the scope, or the tasks involved? Think about it.

Interestingly, you'll likely come up with the same skills that tend to lead to career success, the ones that are most needed by society, and the ones that schools should be tasked with providing.

In his book Leveraged Learning: How the Disruption of Education Helps Lifelong Learners and Experts with Something to Teach, Danny Iny talks about the societal forces that are changing education, what is likely to come out of it, and what we can be doing today to prepare.

Danny talks about education as moving to a three-phased system: 

1. Foundational: base skills and knowledge
2. Last Mile: skills and knowledge needed for specific life choices
3. Continuing: skills and knowledge needed for whatever happens to be the current or next task

While large organizations like the existing institutions are likely to continue to dominate foundational education, new opportunities exist and are emerging in the areas of last mile and continuing education.

What are these skills that we'd need to prepare for the unpreperable? Iny outlines the following:

1. Salience: The ability to pose central problems and to ask important questions.
2. Novelty: An interest in and ability to find solutions for problems not tackled before. It is intellectual nonconformity, the ability to distance oneself from the established scientific theories and concepts, or artistic forms.
3. Ability to relate old knowledge to new problems: The opposite of novelty, this is the ability to recognize familiar patterns in seemingly new and unique problems.
4. Generativity and mental flexibility: The ability to generate multiple and diverse approaches to a problem is essential to the creative process in science. A scientist would be exceptionally lucky to hit upon the solution of a daunting problem from the first go.
5. Drive and doggedness: In a sense, the opposite of the previous, an ability to deploy sustained effort toward tackling a problem. This is about the relationship between inspiration and perspiration.
6. Mental wandering: The mysterious capacity for the productive and seemingly effortless pursuit of ideas wherever they take you.
7. Mental focus: The opposite of mental wandering, this is an ability to systemically pursue a logical train of thought.
8. Iconoclastic frame of mind: In order to forge ahead of society, a creative individual must be driven by a sense of dissatisfaction with the intellectual, scientific, or artistic status quo.
9. Resonance with central societal and cultural themes: A creative individual, and certainly a genius, is ahead of society, but his/her work must be recognized by society as important and valid in order to survive.
10. Social grace: Certain supremely creative individuals were known to history for their social suaveness and adaptability, and others for a notorious lack thereof.

If you're interested in options for transforming your classroom, school, or district, you might want to join in our Edchat Interactive discussion with FETC speakers Randy Ziegenfuss and Lynn Fuini-Hetton this Thursday night. For more information and to register, click on Leading Transformation, what works and what doesn't.

 

BMO 2015 Back to School Conference

BMO’s Back to School Conference is always an interesting departure from other education events. At Back to School, the perspective is financial; which education products, services, and companies will provide a return to investors? 

Education business is unlike any other business. Everything you do has to be a multi-constituent solution; you have to provide outcomes, value, and efficiencies for a wide variety of stakeholders, with long decision processes. This makes for long selling cycles and longer gestational periods for companies. While Facebook started in 2004 and went public in 2012 with a $100B valuation, education investors need more patience for significantly smaller returns, if they make any money at all.

Even so, the last few years have seen an unprecedented level of interest from investors. A few years ago, there was under $100 million dollars invested in education. Two years ago, there was $334M. Last year, $1.2B was invested, and this year looks like more of the same.

Here were some of the most interesting observations from pundits and investors.

We are unlikely to see a real revolution in Higher Education, because the government (state and federal combined) is putting up too much money to keep things the way they are. Every year, the government puts up $100B in student loans and an additional $130B in grants to institutions per year. How is a new mode of education, without access to those subsidies, going to overcome that headwind?

Not only is there unprecedented investment in education, there are an incredibly large number of startups. When Jonathon Harbor opened applications for 10 spots in his Edge Edtech Accelerator (to receive $100-150K investment plus 3 month bootcamp) he received 560 applicants.

One of the things fueling investment is the myriad of opportunities for company exits. While there has always been the possibility of a few companies growing large enough to be being acquired, there are over 100 examples each of the last two years of companies between $10M to over $200M of annual revenues selling out for substantial profits for their investors.

Of course, a lot of edtech valuations haven’t proven themselves out, but in the short term, edupreneurs are doing well.

One of the critical obstacles for new products and companies is the ability to pilot their products in schools. Can’t you hear a principal saying to an entrepreneur, “I’m really not interested in you trying out your minimum viable product on our kids.”

While there has been an emphasis on data, it’s hard to find data that accurately measure student skills  and that is actionable. In fact, when you consider the things that we say we really value in education, like planning, communicating, problem solving, and persistence, there is virtually no usable data.

Sounds to me that if you're considering expanding your business in edtech, maybe you should contact Academic Business Advisors.

Thank you to BMO, Jeff Silber, and the team for another great conference!

Starbucks or AT&T? ASU or Udacity? What's happening in postsecondary education this week?

This week featured two interesting announcements regarding corporations and postsecondary education.

Starbucks and Arizona State University announced a program where Starbucks will help their employees take courses and acquire degrees through ASU online classes: http://www.azcentral.com/story/laurie-roberts/2014/06/16/starbucks-asu-partnership/10593727/

AT&T and Udacity announced a partnership  around a form of microcredentialing that they are calling nanodegrees: http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/16/att-and-udacity-partner-to-create-the-nanodegree-a-new-type-of-college-degree/

Back before many of you were born, maybe 30 years ago, corporations routinely paid for education for their employees as a benefit; partly out of a sense of providing for their employees, partly as a way to attract more and/or better workers, and partly as a measure to train, retain, and promote their best employees. This practice has, in general, fallen out of favor.

The Starbucks/ASU announcement could be an early indicator that labor markets are heating up. It’s certainly an indicator that online courses are becoming mainstream. It demonstrates the trend for online brands to grow beyond their geographic borders, which might portend fewer but larger (or much larger) institutions of higher learning. And it might show a new trend in university/corporate partnerships which will increase the numbers of college graduates.

Corporations, with their focus on the bottom line, will, of course, be looking for the biggest bang for the buck. Will this drive down the cost of a college degree? Will this prompt a race to the bottom, where higher education providers focus on decreasing costs (and service) so that higher education will start to deliver the level of service we’ve all come to expect from telephone companies and airlines?

The Udacity/AT&T announcement is different.

Corporations want employees with the specific skills to do the job that needs to be filled right now. They may not need employees with college degrees for that job. They don’t want the expense of giving employees time off for training. If possible, they don’t want the trouble and costs of providing the training.

Can providers of online content, like Udacity, fill this void? They will need to provide a short path to certify those skills, that a corporation is hiring for, and they will have to bridge the gap between what an individual knows and what an employer needs more economically than other alternatives.

Udacity is a profit making institution, and top management is highly motivated to find a niche. But this type of short term skill development, especially for mid-level skills has been fulfilled by community colleges, which are subsidized by state and local governments. Can Udacity compete? Can Community Colleges pivot as fast as an entrepreneurial company? Will some other education channel beat out both?

At the content level, hundreds of thousands of instructors and instructional designers are creating free resources (Open Education Resources) that also may provide these skills. The issue has been the difficulty of finding the right content to fit the specific skill being taught, and so organizations such as the Saylor Organization have stepped in to curate and maintain this content around competencies (Competency Based Learning) and then measure and certify the skills acquired, usually at very low costs. Perhaps Saylor can step in to fill corporations’ needs using curated free content.

And let us not forget the traditional textbook companies like McGraw-Hill Education. They are not going to sit idly by while others provide the skills that their materials have covered for over a hundred years. These companies are pivoting from producers of textbooks to curators of learning content.

To me, the Udacity announcement shows a change in beyond-high-school (or postsecondary) education. While the Starbucks announcement is focused on degrees, the job market wants skills. It makes sense for content providers to partner with the job providers to meet their needs: to provide bite-sized learning, certify the results, so that job seekers can advance their careers and companies can fill their employment needs.

Related articles

Starbucks to open college program for baristas

AT&T and Udacity partner to create the 'nanodegree,' a new type of college degree

The Missing Link Between School and Job

Global Foundries is making a $10 billion investment in a semiconductor plant just outside of Saratoga. They’ll need over a thousand tech employees, workers who will be earning $50,000 a year and up, who are capable of working in an advanced manufacturing environment, but who do not need a four year degree.

How would you script the path to finding these employees?

Global Foundries is working with a number of SUNY Community Colleges, who developed 15-

Wolk Center at Monroe Community College (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

week certificate programs to train high school graduates who will not only meet the current needs, but who will also have enough higher order skills to adapt to different advanced manufacturing jobs in the future.

No one school had the resources for all the different jobs. So, using Global Foundries as the catalyst for change, the SUNY Community College System, under Johanna Duncan-Poitier, pooled together 30 campuses to develop paths to middle skill jobs, such as those in advanced manufacturing. What one school cannot offer, another one is able to provide, and they can share resources and course content.

This is a success story, but it’s not unique. We learned of many examples at the American Council of Community Colleges Conference last week.

Community Colleges across the country have become the bridge between high school and either jobs or 4-year degrees or both.

Maricopa Community Colleges and Arizona State University have created seamless paths for Community College Students to go from start to four year employable degree in four years, and for far less money than starting out at a four year school.

The Community College of the District of Columbia works with hotels, clubs, restaurants, and corporate dining facilities to create paths to management for minorities in the hospitality industry.

Clusters of Community Colleges around the country participate in the NSF’s Advanced Technical Education program, and partner with industry to provide career specific training, some of which leads to certificates, some leads to Associate Degrees, and all lead to jobs in fields such as agricultural and bio technologies, energy and environmental technologies, and advanced manufacturing technologies.

The US Department of Labor just this month (April 2014) announced the Registered Apprenticeship College Consortium, which is developing pathways for students to apprentice at companies and study at Community Colleges to gain access to high paying careers.

Maybe all of us in the education sector should be paying more attention to Community Colleges; they seem to be leading the way to higher paying employment opportunities for students.

Related articles

Economic Scene: The Bane and the Boon of For-Profit Colleges

Robot aims to enhance MCC advanced manufacturing training

Six Innovative Community Colleges Named Awards of Excellence Winners

America's Futuristic Factories

BMO Back to School 2013

Each year, Jeff Silber of BMO Capital Markets hosts their Back to School education investment conference. 

There are a lot of challenges in education, from new regulations, roadblocks to federal funding, a sea change in technology, and changing buying patterns. This year, ABA was pleased to be included into the program's K12 segment, with Farimah moderating a panel on the role of the teacher in the education economy. Read more below.

Also, for anyone going to Ednet next week in Denver, let us know if you want to meet. We are proud to be a sponsor of the conference.

Legislative and Regulatory Update

Nina Rees, National Alliance for Public Charter Schools

Look for continued cutbacks in federal education money, with nothing much on the horizon except a continuation of sequestration cutbacks.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) governs federal funding and regulations for K12 

English: President Lyndon B. Johnson signing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

schools, and is supposed to be reauthorized every 5 years. The most recent reauthorization was the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. While nearly everyone in Washington sees major flaws in the 2001 act, there will be no ESEA reauthorization or K12 legislation in the foreseeable future. This means that there is more action taking place at the state level, and that private foundations are having a big influence on state departments of education by lobbying and funding pet projects.

Funding penalties to all states and nearly all districts for not meeting the NCLB prescriptions (legislated in 2001 and never adjusted) has given the Department of Education the opportunity to negotiate policy changes with states in return for “forgiving” non-compliance. These negotiations generally cover a two-year period, result in policies that vary state by state, and have to be renegotiated every two years.

There is some pressure to change the definition of failing schools. Currently schools fail when their students to not pass grade-level tests. An alternative is that a school would fail if its students progressed at less than one year’s worth knowledge gain. If a student starts out as two years behind, there is little in the short term the school can do to bring that student up to grade level, and so the school and teacher would be labeled as failures. The change would be to recognize that perhaps the school could at least help that student from falling further behind, or start to catch up, and that that would be progress. So far, there is no change to the original definition being posited by the Department of Education, and there is little hope of any progress with the definition being changed through ESEA reauthorization in the near future, but it’s a meme and idea worth following, and it would have broad ramifications if it is ever enacted.

There are now 6,000 charter schools with 2 million students, and 1million families on charter wait lists. Growth is strong, with over 400 new charter schools in the last year. There are more public charter organizations, but for-profit charters are serving the largest numbers of students. Growth of charter schools has been constrained by state caps on the numbers of schools and numbers of students who can attend, and loosening those caps is a major focus of charter

A construction project to repair and update the building façade at the Department of Education headquarters in 2002 resulted in the installation of structures at all of the entrances to protect employees and visitors from falling debris. ED redesigned these protective structures to promote the "No Child Left Behind Act". The structures were temporary and were removed in 2008. Source: U.S. Department of Education, (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 school and private foundation lobbying efforts.

Finally, there is the possibility that the FCC will be able to pass some additional funding to schools via E-Rate, which is used to pay for connectivity. Because E-Rate is funded through the Universal Service Administration fees paid by telecom companies (not officially a tax) it may not need Congressional approval.

Comments on the current proosed changes to E-Rate are being accepted now.

Sally Stroup, Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities

In higher education, the action is at the federal level. Since such a large percentage of students are getting federally guaranteed student loans, and the Department of Ed determines which colleges can accept student loans as payment, it is using this leverage to define new policies on admissions, graduation rates, and programs of study which affect the ability of students to get jobs which allow them to pay back the loans. These rules are being especially applied to for-profit schools, but it’s possible that they will be expanded to all schools. The rules are being negotiated over the next 12 months.

While many view it as beneficial that the Department of Education prod higher education improvements, opponents point out that a) it’s not the government’s job to control college costs, that is the job of the market, and b) the accrediting agencies should control education quality, not the Department of Ed.

Still, when you that fewer than half of community college or for-profit students graduate, and that many graduates then find it difficult to get decent jobs, it’s pretty clear that something is broken.

Empowering K12 Teachers

Farimah Schuerman, Academic Business Advisors
Ketan Kothari, Edmodo
Andy Myers, Renaissance Learning
Jeanette Haren, Truenorthlogic

Better data leads to better decision making, better instruction, and more effective use of student learning time. But having the data is useless unless it is used by the teachers.

Edmodo portrayed that the best way to penetrate education is through the teachers, and that it’s important to have one central platform that collects and reports on the data. Edmodo is focused on user growth, not revenues.

Renaissance Learning argued that the important content and data decisions were made at the district level, and that as long as the information is available and useful, no one platform is going to win.

Truenorthlogic agreed that the administrative buying decisions are made at the district level, that you need to both get teacher buy-in and that you need to provide a path for teachers to improve their skills, both to assure teacher buy-in and to comply with professional regulatory requirements.

Talking to Public, Private, and Venture Investors

Jeff Silber, BMO Capital Markets
Michael Moe, GSV Asset Management
Lisa Rapuano, Lane Five Capital Management
Peter Wilde, Providence Equity Partners
Chris Howhn-Saric, Sterling Partners

At last year’s conference, education investors were flocking out of the US market, and into international markets. The US was seen as over-regulated, saturated, and not growing. This year, there has been a resurgence of education investment activity in the US.

Some of the activity has been a result of shifting from other US sectors. The US economy in general is seen as zero growth, but it’s also the largest capital market. The education sector is large, it’s fragmented with many small players with an opportunity for scaling, and there are a convergence of catalysts (common core, technology, big data, assessment, and others) pointing to a huge opportunity.

Some of the activity has shifted from global markets back to the US, which is, after all, by far the largest education market in the world. There are segments of the US education market that are (in terms of revenue or money spent) larger than the entire education market in India right now. Plus, economic instability in other parts of the world may be encouraging funds flow back to the US.

And some of the activity is because, in global opportunities, the locus of corporate headquarters is not that important. For example, Coursera may be a US company, but 60% of the students come from outside the US.

Overall, the panelists agreed that returns in education are not going to be good for investors. Although there are going to be some phenomenal winners, predicting them is going to be like the automobile industry at the turn of the last century. In the 1910’s there were about 2,000 US car companies; only three of them remain. Those three saw outsized returns, but virtually all of the others gave back pennies on the dollar.

A great question came from the audience, “Can you give an example of an education investment you made that didn’t pan out the way you expected, and what you learned?”

The most honest answer: “All of them.”

Conclusions

Both the K12 and Higher Education sectors are undergoing rapid change. Buying and usage patterns are being transformed by technology and regulations. For anyone looking to expand in or acquire firms in the education space, this might be a great time to seek advice from experts such as Academic Business Advisors.

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Interesting tidbits on Higher Education

Student Growth

Current projections by Department of Education’s NCES are for Postsecondary enrollments to grow at 1.5% to 2.0% through 2020 (to about 21 million students), although the demographics point to a decrease in the 18-22 year old population through 2015, a greater percent of students will be enrolling. This forecast of slow growth assumes that we will not meet the Obama’s goal that by 2020 the US would have the highest college graduation rate in the world, 60%. Achieving that goal would add another 6 to 10 million students.

Time to complete programs

Students attending proprietary (also known as for-profit) higher education institutions tend to graduate faster than students at the not-for-profit or public ones, as shown in the following chart:

 

Adult learner market

38% of Postsecondary students are adult learners, and the For-Profit sector has drawn a greater proportion of these students than either the Publics or the Not-For-Profits. The 25-44 demographic is going to increase by 28% by Fall 2020 to 9.6M, and a higher percentage of them will attend Postsecondary institutions (from 9.8% to 10.8%). This translates to an increase of just over 300,000 students in this demographic in Fall of 2020 registrations.

Veteran (Photo credit: Keturah Stickann)

Educating Veterans

Current benefits of the GI bill are $1,473 per month for 36 months. Only 6% of veterans use the full amount; and the average veteran that uses these funds uses them for only 17 months. The market leader is U of Phoenix with 17,000 veteran-students (the 3rd and 4th have 4,000 students) and $133M last year in GI Bill revenues. The biggest caveat in targeting veterans is that 54% drop out of 4-year programs, and 63% drop out of 2-year programs.

 

Trending Career Preferences

The National Research Center for College and University Admissions (NRCCUA) conducts surveys of HS seniors, including career preferences. Below are the professions that moved up the most between the (college graduating) classes of 2013 and 2017:

Trending Occupations among HS Seniors

Occupation	2017 rank	Move up from 2013
Journalism	39	20
Game Design and Developer	12	19
Christian Services/Missionary	35	18
Engineering (Computer)	25	15
Marine Biology	20	13
Fashion Merchandising	19	10
Electronic Technician	46	10
Software Developer	55	10
Athletics/Coaching	3	9
Veterinary Medicine	10	9
Interior Design	39	9
Travel/Tourism	50	9

Trends on online learning

2.78M (13.5%) of postsecondary students enrolled in fully online programs 2010-11. 6.1M  students (31%) took at least one online course in Fall 2010. Online enrollments are increasing at 5.5% annually compared to 1.4% of all postsecondary enrollments.

$18.5B was spent on online postsecondary education in 2010-11, and will grow by 11% per year for the next five years (unless prices decrease, which is a possibility given some of the new business models)

80% of online students live within 100 miles of the campus

Of 6.700 colleges, only 2.6% offer fully online learning programs

Almost ¾ of students who seek online degrees do so primarily for career, job, or employment reasons.

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BMO 2012 Back to School Conference

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Our thoughts from Sloan-C Blended Learning Conference 2012

Sloan’s Blended Learning Conference was held April 23-4, 2012 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is primarily a postsecondary conference, although there were a few sessions on K12 blended learning implementation. K12 often follows where higher education leads, so if you are primarily interested in K12 education, this might be a glimpse into your future as well.

Blended learning methodology graphic (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Blended learning is expanding, in types as well as numbers.  The face to face component might occur incidentally once or twice, or might meet as often as twice a week.  The drivers for expansion are both monetary and pedagogical, although, as you’ll see below, there are certainly obstacles and wrong turns in its implementation.   We think it’s important to note that this conference dealt with Higher Ed as it functions today, and did not provide a glimpse of future changes we might see there.  Perhaps that will be more apparent at the Innovations Conference Sloan runs in the summer. 

Cost drivers for blended learning

To the extent that money drives educational decisions, blended learning may be the most viable solution to two problems.

There seems to be a growing national shortage of classroom space, and no money to build more. Institutions are thus pressuring instructors to reduce seat time requirements for their course. In fact, the original definition of blended learning stated that 30 to 70% of class time be replaced by online activities. 

There are only two ways to substantially adapt to the huge cuts in state spending for higher education: raise tuition (the prime reason tuition rates have increased dramatically over the last 10 years), or increase efficiencies (larger classes, more classes per instructor, use of more adjunct faculty). Blended learning is looked on as a way to allow an instructor to teach larger classes and also potentially reach a larger audience, since there is a lower requirement to be in the same classroom. Changes in financial aid have also made it possible to spend less “seat” time to accomplish learning.

Improved pedagogy for blended learning

While these economic factors are probably driving the institutions to expand blended learning, there is a potential for more effective teaching as well. In fact, many students seem to prefer blended to online or face to face classes, and some studies indicate greater effectiveness of blended over either of the other two methods. After all, how engaged is a student in the back row of a 400 person class listening to a lecture?

Some of the enhancements that are now available include:

• Heterogeneous groups: Greater diversity often results in greater learning. One example is small groups consisting of students from different campuses who are taking the same course and who then work together in project or problem based learning. Students can form, or be placed in, asynchronous study groups as well, jointly taking notes on readings and lectures or commenting on each other’s’ summaries. (A session on long-term group project management proved most informative and is described later.)
• Peer review: giving students the ability to see and then review (using some rubric) the works of other students increases their awareness of good work while also potentially reducing the workload of the instructor.  Peer evaluation, which is related, also emulates the real-world work environment and has proven valuable.
• Gamification: converting reading, research, or assessment assignments into game-like activities can increase student engagement. For example, a research project can be made into a treasure hunt, or quizzes can be converted into games.  This design change really enhances elements of interactivity beyond what’s accomplished in traditional instruction.
• Flexibility and time shifting: In addition to making class lectures available online, tests can be scheduled not at a particular moment, but at the point the individual students feels competent.
• Assessment: Some schools are experimenting with letting students retake tests until they are satisfied with the results, converting assessments of learning into assessment as learning.  Testing can also emulate real world work scenarios by allowing resources to be used in test taking environments, testing not only what the student knows, but how well they can solve problems using the right tools.

The general practice for creating blended courses is for the individual instructors to determine how to incorporate online resources and tools into their classes: which resources to use and how much seat time to reduce. Schools support the instructors through training, use of graduate students for design and development, and school guidelines for look and feel. Experienced companies such as Erudient (Erudient is a client of ours) are available to assist with design, development, support, and resource selection.

Hurdles and some solutions for blended learning

The end goal of education is still to increase student knowledge, skill, and expertise. Some clumsy attempts at blended learning are to put PowerPoint slides online along with some narration, reduce face to face by one class a week, and call the course “blended”. This conference was to dispense with those types of efforts, and many sessions at the conference dealt with some of the problems in implementation blended classes and the ways that the speaker used in overcoming them.

One problem is students who sign up for hybrid or online classes, and then are not prepared for the differences between instructor directed classes and the self-motivation and organization required online. One suggestion was to have successful students make videos of how they successfully completed the course to be shown at the beginning of courses. Other instructors pointed out the importance of early warning systems to monitor when students start falling behind and then immediate engagement with those students.

For group work, many pointed out that you can’t just assign remote students into a group and then expect them to productively accomplish something. Students need time to form, which can be provided by icebreaking or get-acquainted activities. One school requires groups to record their online interactions so that, if there are disagreements among group members about certain participants not contributing, the school can monitor what actually happened.

Similarly, some faculty are used to traditional settings and haven’t managed the nuanced differences such as building the community of learners, structuring activities and projects in a way to help students manage the time to complete long term projects.  One particular session covered techniques to help students by building team activities including peer evaluations and assigning a grade to completing a task. Milestones ensured that students move through the activity without creating bottlenecks or problems for one another.  Peer evaluation on the various iterations of the project ensure that by the time the end is reached, the final output is already in good shape.  While this technique is used in writing all the time, a group activity in a blended scenario requires real project management planning and skills.

One interesting use of blended learning in K12 is the WCATY (Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth) Academy, which is a middle school. This group serves about a third of the districts in the state, with about 1300 students a year. Their goal is to make students responsible for their own learning and understand their own learning processed by digging deeply into one topic. For example, a  course on the French Revolution is called “Off with their Heads” and starts with a virtual tour of the Versailles palace. A course on meeting up with aliens actually teaches communications techniques. WCATY teachers focus on learning, and assessing learning, through storytelling, with a combination of virtual and face to face activities for students.

Another session was presented on blended learning in a studio course, and the research showed clearly that while the activity was accomplished by individual students, group evaluations and expert feedback were critical to the final result and greatly enhanced the learning of both the students evaluated and the students evaluating.  To learn more and to see the research, including some of the best use of graphics in a research paper, contact Mahmoud Reza Saghafi at [email protected], (Queensland University of Technology.)

One of the financial goals for institutions to implement blended learning is to increase class size, which can cause a cascade of issues. Aisha Jackson, Amanda McAndrew, Jackie Moriyama, and Viktoriya Oliynyk of the University of Colorado at Boulder maintain a website of mostly free tools to help with these large classes, and which can also help with face to face large classes: http://bit.ly/largecourseinfo

In conclusion

Blended Learning can be a magic button; reducing the costs of education while also enhancing learning. There are many resistors and still some hurdles to overcome to successful implementation, but, as one participant pointed out, if the lecture format for classes were introduced as a new technology today, it would like be universally panned.

This conference would not have been possible without the energy and organization of Tanya Joosten and the folks at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. We would like to put a plug in for Dr. Joosten’s book Social Media for Educators as a big thank you for your successful efforts.

 

Related articles

• Brainstorming ideas for blended learning (tsegaygirmay.com)
• What Does Blended Learning Look Like? (ruthcatchen.wordpress.com)
• Blended Learning: An Excellent Investment (effecetivelearning.wordpress.com)

Summary of Educause 2011

Educause 2011, the huge higher education technology conference took place last week. There was a lot of buzz around online learning and the changing face of IT.

On a broad brush, students are increasingly taking one or more online classes during their higher education tenure and more schools are offering classes and programs of study. The schools are grappling with how to develop and fund these courses, and then how to support the students and faculty. Below are case studies from three sesions: Outsourcing Online Learning at USC, Engaging Learner Across Time and Space at U of Minnesota, and Effective Support for Online Learners at Bay State.

Technology departments have been facing declining budgets for four years, but technology demands have not receded. Additionally, IT is being asked to provide better and more usable data to drive academic and business decisions. These concerns are summarized in Problems Faced by CIOs, CTOs and Technology Departments and Data to Dashboards below.

Outsourcing Online Learning

Joan Falkenberg Getman, Susan E. Metros, Jade Winn, all from USC

Why did USC start online programs?

The goals for establishing new programs were and continue to be:

• Remain current and competitive
• Reach working professionals
• Reach new markets
• Extend global reach
• Build new revenue

USC made the following requirements for all new online programs:

• Only graduate programs; undergraduates should get the full brick and mortar USC experience
• No tuition differentiation; same costs as face to face programs
• Only where there were new revenue opportunities; not in areas that would cannibalize existing students
• There had to be both synchronous and asynchronous content and interactions with the students (and faculty)
• There had to be active learning activities and rich interaction (interaction with content and also with other students and faculty). USC wanted to make the online experience as good as a good face to face classroom experience.

USC used Embanet and 2Tor to help develop and offer the two programs. There are relatively few quality providers to partner with, and they can be very different. It’s important to find a provider that matches weel with the particular program at the institution. Different programs for the same institution may work better with different providers, depending on chemistry, outlook, reach, and financial considerations.

Who was responsible for what?

The partner financed all of the development, there was no upfront cost for USC. Partner paid USC faculty for subject matter expertise and curriculum design, coordination, and approval, and did the graphic and interactive design.

USC Professors develop the content, the partner works with the professors on online instructional design, and the partner does the graphics and develops any videos, animations, or interactive media. USC has final approval on the work product.

The Professor owns the content, but cannot use any media that was developed outside of USC if they teach outside of USC. USC can use the content at no extra charge for their brick and mortar students.

Partner is responsible for obtaining admissions candidates and marketing, including training admissions staff. USC reviews and approves applications and collects fees.

Partner provides the platform, including online social networks and communities that encourage academic and extracurricular student activities.

Partner provides 24x7 technical support for students, faculty, and staff from a service level agreement. Partner reports major issues and solutions back to school.

USC Professors teach the courses.

Engaging Learners Across Time and Space: Models for Distance Learning

Mary Davis, Ron Fitch, and Jude Higdon from University of Minnesota

A 2010 meta-analysis by the Dept of Education on previous studies found “students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” (Personal note, isn’t it interesting that the NY Times interviews one school district and comes to the conclusion that technology doesn’t affect education results, while the Dept of Ed reviews more than 500 studies and concludes that it does? Guess the Dept of Ed missed the one district that matters.)

Defining goals is key step in online instruction design, because it dictates so many other aspects about the pedagogy and technology. The goal of the online program for the U of MN Dept of Pharmacy was to provide specialty classes for schools that offered degrees in pharmacology, but were too small to offer specialized courses.

When developing the curriculum and syllabus, you need to map content and activities to learning goals, accreditation standards, and industry standards (for example OSCE and NAPLEXS in Pharmacy).

Doing the video segments in a studio produced a much higher value video than videoing a lecture, and postproduction to insert key points and graphics into the video made for more engaging and didactic content.

U of Minnesota felt it was important to provide a way for students to audit courses, possibly at a lower cost.

Online tracking of student activities yields a gold mine of data which can be used to improve the course, monitor student engagement, and provide support to reduce dropouts.

Graduate students can provide a high quality, but also relatively inexpensive way, to develop curriculum.

Effective Support for Online Learners

David Demers, Peter Testori, Amber Vaill, Bay Path College

A required orientation course, before a student’s first online course, increases the likelihood of student success. Bay Path College’s course consists of 4 sessions, and covers the LMS, meeting technology requirements, time management strategies, submitting assignments, understanding online communities, netiquette, and how to get assistance. The course is conducted by one of the support coordinators.

Support coordinators for online students can also make a big impact on retention. At Bay Path, each student is assigned to a support coordinators, who

• Monitors the amount of time students are logged in
• Monitors whether students are submitting assignments on time
• Provides technical support
• Is the first point of contact for any question from an online student
• Calls the student when usage is down or assignments are late
• Assists faculty when faculty notice that a student may be having problems

A good amount of support time is helping students with time management, and time prioritization.

Problems Faced by CIOs, CTOs, and Technology Departments

This section is a summary from a variety of sessions, working groups, and interviews during the course of Educause 2011.

IT departments are being asked to measure effectiveness, and schools are afraid that accreditation will depend on measuring effectiveness, but it is truly not possible to determine. You might be able to tell what classes are being attended, what content is being accessed, but you can’t isolate successes or failures to any particular activities.

Many institutions have had compounded IT cuts for each of the last three years. At best, this will be a flat year.

The demand for services does not decrease. Students are demanding more online courses and resources, students and faculty are demanding new technologies, but there is little acknowledgement in institutions about the full cost of complying with those demands.

Even when a technology solution will have a clear payback, there are often no funds available for the startup or transition costs.

A Biology Professor needs to use a microscope, because it’s an integral part of the class; why is it okay for professors not to know that online learning tools that their students are using? When faculty members incorporate technology into their classes that they don’t know how to use, it escalates support costs.

On new projects involving technology, IT has to make sure that

1. The full cost of the technology (including support and maintenance) be factored into the life of the project
2. There is a built-in way to measure the success (or failure) of the project. One of the biggest headaches is pilot projects that are not scalable but meet a faculty member’s needs; ongoing support can be a huge issue.
3. There is an understanding of next steps if the project succeeds or fails.

Some of the biggest success for IT in institutions is when they have given faculty (or administration) something that they didn’t even know they needed (such as an online scheduling system to meet with faculty advisors that made it a lot easier for both faculty and students to schedule).

The concerns of IT have become a lot more fragmented over time. Ten years ago, over 2/3 of Postsecondary CIO’s said that their most pressing issues were instructional and security related. Today, there is no one issue that is of primary concern to more than 15%.

While there is a lot of talk about clouds, the biggest use of clouds on campus is with email systems. Over the next couple of years, it is more likely that LMSs will start moving to the clouds, and after that ERP systems. Currently, over 70% of institutions are not considering clouds for ERP or CRM systems over the next two years.

Data to Dashboards: Creating and Using Analytics

Stephen Grieco, Susan Hauck, Celeste Schwartz, Montgomery County Community College, PA

The purpose of creating a dashboard is not to create nice looking reports and graphs, it is about taking information and changing the way decisions are made to increase efficiency and effectiveness. A dashboard provides a summary, visualization, or filter of data. Dashboards should allow decision makers or service providers to predict, drill down, plan, benchmark, make decisions, get feedback, and become more effective.

What is propelling the need to more effectively utilize data?

• Shrinking resources
• Accountability, being asked to prove that what you do has value
• Assessment driving data driven decision making
• Desire to use the data you have to improve processes or spur actions

Examples:

1. By monitoring the support calls by day of the week and time, the help desk was able to be staffed more efficiently and for better support.
2. By looking at class sizes at different times, and demand for sections on different days, the school was able to increase instructor and class utilization while also making class schedules more convenient for students
3. By analyzing the types of related classes that students were taking, the school was able to determine that there was a need for new degrees

 

 

BMO Back to School 2011

The BMO Back to School Education Conference was held on Thursday, September 15, and there was a ton of information. With three concurrent presentations, it wasn’t possible to follow everything, but here is a distillation of some of the points made by the CEOs running leading publishers, charter schools, and for-profit colleges.

General Observations from Farimah Schuerman

The conference expanded its program this year to include more general and informational panels. As usual, Higher Ed had the lead role, but not as much as in past years, and with a much sharper and defensive tone. The For-Profit Higher Ed sector has been under a lot of pressure, with some organizations seeing declining enrollments, and facing increased scrutiny from Congress, the Dept of Education, the press, and the states. In Postsecondary, the core technology segments (LMS, SIS, course tools) are pretty mature, and newcomers aspire to be absorbed.

 

Image by York College of PA via Flickr

There seemed to be a lot more Private Equity activity than Venture Capital, and there seemed to be a number of folks managing private wealth (possible Angel Investors) who were investigating but not yet investing. Of course, these may reflect more the people we know and work with, since we gleaned this information from our conversations.

 

There was more interest in K12 than in the past. The acquisitions from Pearson and News Corp seemed to have spurred some real interest, and possible transactions involving McGraw-Hill wove their way into conversations.

There is lots of room for innovative, specialized applications. Textbooks and instructional materials are in upheaval still, with rental, online, and freemium instructional materials vying for market share, and new online channels competing against the existing sales forces.

A few companies talked about their success this year, in that they maintained revenue levels. This leads one to believe that not slipping is cause for pride in this difficult market. Companies seem to be looking for new positioning and expanding their market niche in order to access other revenue opportunities and not give up ground.

Difficult economic conditions call for creativity (which is both true and a blatant self plug for Academic Business Advisors).

Ronald Klausner, CEO, Cambium Learning

Education is a $4.6 Billion industry. The current twin concerns are to reduce costs and increase effectiveness. With teachers accounting for half of all spending, districts and states are looking for tools to reduce the number of teachers and make the surviving teachers more effective. In addition, there is going to be a big shortage of teachers, with 1/3 of all new teachers leaving the profession in their first three years, and 1/3 of existing teachers expecting to retire in the next five years.

Special education accounts for ¼ of all spending, with 1/8 of the students; it’s the area where schools have the most latitude to spend. About 2/3 of all districts have either already deployed or are in the process of implementing RTI (Response to Intervention) programs.

Cambium Learning itself is a $200M company with 140 sales reps. Their strategy for new products is a combination of acquisitions and looking for academics who have had success with specific student populations, and then to productize and monetize those practices.

Kevin Modany, Chairman, ITT Educational Services

We need to better define the outcomes we want from education. Reducing dropouts or student default rates are not outcomes. Do we want schools to increase employment, increase salaries, get students started on good careers? Then we need to measure those outcomes and adjust our practices.

Folks with skills get the jobs, and we need to get the story out about how for-profit schools are giving kids skills to help them get meaningful employment.

Richard Barth, CEO, KIPP Foundation

 

Two lessons learned: 1) once parents see that their kids can learn more, they will demand more from both the charters and the public schools, 2) you can’t just come up with a good system and expect it to work, you need to work to continuously improve it based on student outcomes and feedback.

 

The margin for error in a for-profit is tiny; for-profit schools are held to a different standard from non-profit or public schools. One reason is that the reporting on education is not good, usually the education reporter is a starter position, and another is that you get more readership with a story bashing for-profit education than one showing good things happening. There is a strong recognition that charter schools provide a way to move the needle for all schools.

We need to have a national assessment. Absent a national test, where you are educated will determine what you know, and will perpetuate inequalities. We know that a Kipp child education in Louisiana learns what one in NYC learns. But when you look at state test scores, even though a public school student in Louisiana may pass that state test, he or she cannot hold a candle to one who passes the NY State test.

Michael Connelly, CEO, Mosaica Education

Not a single parent has ever raised the issue with him about whether his schools were for-profit or not. The question of for-profit or public seem more a concern for unions and politicians.

Andrew Fitzmaurice, CEO, Nord Anglia Education

Parents aren’t as concerned about whether you are for-profit or not, they are more concerned about getting the best possible outcome for their particular child.

Private pay, premium schools is a lot easier environment than government pay or charter, there are fewer regulations. They can do things like have classes in Warsaw working with classrooms in North America or the Middle East working together, which would be more difficult if they had to meet very specific standards.

There are still restrictions. In China, every student has to have 5 hours of Mandarin a week. In Abu Dhabi, every student needs to take 5 hours of Islamic studies a week. Some parents don’t seem to understand that you need to follow local laws.

Chris Whittle, CEO, Avenues

Over regulation can really impede education. For example, certain countries do not allow nationals to attend foreign owned schools, even though they have a shortage of schools.

It takes about three years to start a school from scratch.

Mac Gamse, CEO, Meritas

All schools have to use technology. Technology can personalize the education for our kids, and it can reduce the administrative tasks of teachers so they can spend more time and effort teaching. We have a unit on uses of water, where we have students in Manhatten, Montreal, and the deserts of Mexico providing completely different insights into water management.

Mark Dreyfus, President, ECPI University

With the new for-profit regulations, schools are starting to realize that they can no longer grow by increasing tuition. Tuition is going to have to follow the types of jobs you are training for, and there will be a reward for the schools who can deliver jobs effectively and efficiently.

For example, we will still provide some soft skills where they are needed to complete a degree, but we won’t be able to offer anything that is not needed.

Our management is focused on installing local controls, instead of thinking about improving instruction.

Tim Foster, Executive Chairman, Concorde Career Colleges

The new for-profit regulations is going to put a lot more cost discipline into the sector.

These particular regulations are not particularly onerous, but the fact that there is now a thermometer that has been installed means that the metrics can be changed by a strike of a pen. That’s a good amount of uncertainty and hinders our ability to plan.

Duncan Anderson, CEO, Education Affiliates

The regulations, because they are going to focus schools on costs and very specific measurable outcomes, are going to have the unintended consequence of driving less education. If something is not necessary for a degree or a job, it’s going to be eliminated.

A positive by-product is that we are getting a lot better at our processes. We audit every single placement, we record every conversation and review them daily. But it still keeps you up at night knowing that there are 400 people talking to students every day, and you don’t fully know that every one is in compliance.

 

Related articles

• Proposed Government Regulations on For-Profit Schools to Benefit Students (prweb.com)
• Kipp (socyberty.com)
• NewSchools CEO Ted Mitchell: My Best Idea For K-12 Education (forbes.com)

Three Things You Should Know About the Postsecondary Market

These are the slides and notes from a webinar I gave for the SIIA. The webinar is an introduction to the SIIA's Expert's Guide to the Postsecondary Market. There is a sampler from that report on the SIIA website. I'd written a section of the guide, Five Things You Need to Know About the Postsecondary Market, which is part of the sampler.

These are the five different aspects of the postsecondary marketplace that are reviewed in my report. If you are going to sell into higher education, you need to know how the market size and demographics, online courses and content, accountability for postsecondary institutions, new technologies, and student attitudes toward e-content and online classes are changing the face of higher education.

Because the report is available free here, rather than repeat what’s already in the report, I decided to talk about three other aspects of the market which are also critical to success, the fact that there are at least four different markets, not one, the content areas that are growing fastest, and a little about the financial drivers for higher education.

If you develop a product or service, and then go into one of the large public university systems and tell how you’ve been successful at Trinity College or some other small liberal arts institution, you are not going to be successful. You can’t be successful speaking to Higher Education with a one size fits all approach.

 

The most common breakdown is shown above, Public 4-year, Public 2-year, Private not-for-profit, and Private for-profit are the four main sectors. The last two, dealing with private 2-year schools are tiny in comparison.

 

Over the past 15 years, the private for-profits have been on a roll, growing from less than 1% of the market to almost 10% of the four-year market. However, changes in how the federal government finance student tuitions (loans and grants) to for-profits may throw a curve at the industry. For example, one pending policy is that these institutions, in order for their students to receive tuition assistance, will need to show that most of their students do, in fact graduate and earn enough to pay back student loans. This touches on the broader accountability issue which is covered in greater depth in the Five Things report.

 

Notice the big difference at the 2-year schools, where almost twice as many of the students are part time. That means that the way you define and position your services for two year schools may need to be very different from the way you talk about them to four year schools.

 

These are just two examples of how you need to know your market niche, and prepare your product or service toward your potential buyers.

With an increasing emphasis on jobs, it helps to know which occupations are growing. These projections are taken from the Bureau of Labor statistics. We pulled professions that earn more than $30,000 a year and were growing and here are the top 6.

 

Some things to note. Two of the top six involve accounting. Elementary school teachers are fourth, despite the short term disruption with state budgets and spending. This is because the elementary school population is starting to grow again, along with the fact that there are sleighted to be quite a few retirements of senior teachers over the next 5 to 10 years. Truck driving, with a median income of about $50,000 and no education requirements doesn’t look that bad, does it?

 

The National Center of Education Statistics records the number of students receiving degrees for different majors.

 

For 4 year schools, what do you think the number one major is?

 

Business, 350,000 graduates, almost three times as many as the second biggest, which is Health Professions at 120,000. However, health has grown at a 10% annual rate for the last five years, while business has grown at 2.5%.

 

Education, which is the third largest major at 101,000 graduates, has been shrinking by just under 1% per year.

 

What do you think the number one major is at Community Colleges? Liberal Arts with 260,000 graduates, growing at 3%. Healthcare and nursing is second at 140,000, growing at 10% per year, and Business and Accounting is 3 with about 80,000 also growing at about 10%.

 

If you’re looking at content, these are the largest content areas to concentrate on.

The final of these three additional things you need to know about the postsecondary market has to do with costs. Expenses have been increasing faster than inflation at all types of institutions, but this especially hits the public ones.

 

Above is the breakdown of major costs for public postsecondary institutions. If you look back at the original slide, more than 2/3 of students attend public institutions, either 2-year or 4-year. Increasing costs, as states are all decreasing spending, at a time when the number of students is increasing, so schools are being hit with a triple whammy.

 

Thus if you target one of the niches and can come up with a solution that attacks costs in instruction, academic support, student services, institutional support, or the operation and maintenance of the physical plan, or which allows institutions to increase students without increasing costs, or allows them to teach more students with the same or lower costs, you’ve got a decent chance of being heard.

 

Related articles

• A Call to Action on College Completion (whitehouse.gov)
• Basic Skills / US : strategies to help lower-skilled adults and out-of-school youth (skillsinfo.wordpress.com)
• Why Do Students Borrow So Much? Recent National Trends in Student Loan Debt (education.com)