Make higher ed more accessible

Colleges should consider accrediting web-based programs offered at free or low-cost online schools, making higher education more widely available to populations with little access to post-secondary classes, a former official from the United Kingdom's Open University told a gathering of technology advocates Nov. 6.

Brenda Gourley, vice-chancellor of The Open University from 2002-2009 and a longtime advocate for education's role in social justice, spoke to hundreds of IT professionals at the annual EDUCAUSE conference in Denver, which ran from Nov. 3-6.

Gourley, who became South Africa's first female vice-chancellor in 1994, stressed that colleges and universities that cannot afford to launch web-based classes should evaluate courses offered at ventures such as The Open University and allow students to take the class for school credit.

"Especially in these economic times, we have to find a more optimum outcome to balance with financial necessities," she said, adding that the global economic slump should spur campuses to look for alternatives to expanding course offerings as college enrollment spikes. "It may well be more sensible to accredit particular courses offered elsewhere than to provide them in house."

Gourley warned against trimming back college offerings as campus operating budgets shrink and endowments dwindle, reminding IT officials gathered at EDUCAUSE that this could be a chance to bolster online education that would keep campuses financially afloat and serve non-traditional students whose schedules don't allow for on-campus lectures.

"I don't think these . . . times should be some kind of excuse for putting that on hold while we sort something else out," she said. "Exactly the opposite. … If your strategic thinking of technology isn't combined in your holistic strategic thinking, I think you're in trouble."

Closely tracking informal web-based communities of researchers and potential students, Gourley said, should be a priority for online schools and brick-and-mortar institutions.

"What we see on the web are all sorts of people creating communities of interest," she said. "We must not underestimate the sophistication of those learning communities. … What we need to do is [understand] how we harness that energy and recognize some of that learning."

The Open University's history can serve as an example for expanding web-based learning, she said. The idea of a distance-learning program in the 1960s drew scorn and criticism from officials in higher education and government, Gourley said. But accessible education proved popular once it was introduced in Britain and eventually, to other European nations.

The school now has 150,000 undergraduates and 30,000 graduate students, about 70 percent of whom have full-time jobs. Most Open University classes require no previous qualifications, and students must be 16 or older to begin a course.

Gourley said the social and political tumult of the 1960s contributed to a desire for non-traditional forms of education -- an idea that gained acceptance in official circles in the 1980s and 1990s.

Civil rights battles and the Vietnam War "fed a yearning for a different order," she said.

Gourley said a wider embrace of education technology -- especially among the oldest, most well-established universities -- will require a dramatic shift in the traditional roles of professors and students.

"We need to go from teacher-centric to student-centric," she said. "The teacher is no longer the sage on the stage but rather the guide on the side."

Dennis Carter via eCampusNews

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I am Canadian

Posted via email from david blake

Did you know?

This is from 2008… how quickly the world turns.

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A Canadian's Take on US Healthcare Reform

I got this message from one of my Canadian friends this morning, unsolicited, commenting on the US healthcare "reforms". I thought I would share with everyone:

So Dave you must be pissed. If the leftists get their way you are going to have another Canada on your hands. Tina tried to see a specialist about her feet. She has to wait 4 to 6 months. Last time that I was sick in the good ole state of Utah a Doctor actually came to where I was staying. It blew my mind. A house call. I'd never seen one before.

What I do see is Canada's top doctors dealing with waiting rooms full of people who need a sick note because they missed work. When things are free everybody wants one. My other favorite is my 4 hour stay in an emergency room on the verge of my apendix exploding and screaming my lungs out for nurses who wouldn't come. I guess they were too busy taking care of all those coughs and colds.

I would love private coverage and so would most of my family. Just imagine paying 46 cents on every dollar to the government of Canada. The same government that just gave public funding grants to Toronto's Gay Pride parade. As well, in most cases abortions are free without previous consultation, one of the only operations that you can get here without waiting 4 to 6 months.

Fight it and fight hard because as soon as the leeches start sucking they won't stop till all the blood's gone.

On a brighter note I talked to Craig Walker. He said he might move to Oklahoma. I told him not to wear his Cougars jersey for awhile. Their probably still sore about the loss.

Regards,

Kevin

Education 2.0 vs Harvard 2.0

As a freshman on campus in the Fall of 2002 I stayed awake at night dreaming about how different college could be.  One B. Sc. degree, a two-year service mission, three internships, one corporate job, and two startups later I cannot say how excited it makes me to see headlines like this one: "Yahoo! U".

Students starting school this year may be part of the last generation for which “going to college” means packing up, getting a dorm room, and listening to tenured professors. Undergraduate education is on the verge of a radical reordering. Colleges, like newspapers, will be torn apart by new ways of sharing information enabled by the Internet. The business model that sustained private U.S. colleges can’t survive.

This article did a good job at distilling down the forces behind this coming change in education, though I don't agree with everything said.

In the future, a handful of Soc. 101 lectures will be videotaped and taught across the United States, and online faculty will administer classes with many students but relatively little individual contact...

The typical 2030 faculty will likely be a collection of adjuncts alone in their apartments, using recycled syllabi and administering multiple-choice tests from afar.

I believe hacking edu means hacking three things: the professor, the textbook, and the classroom. This is where this article falls shortsided.

• The Textbook. The explosion of ebook readers and online textbooks was actually not even mentioned in this article--fine.
• The Professor.  "The typical 2030 faculty will... be a collection of adjuncts alone in their apartments" and "online faculty will administer classes with many students but relatively little individual contact."  I think that many see things this way--that the emergence of the dominance of online education will bring the student-to-teacher ration into the tens of thousands and that videotape will kill the radio star.
• The Classroom. Though it doesn't say it outright, this article, like all others, hint at social media being the new classroom.  I think this will both happen and that it is a good thing, but I don't think that it will be the most successful classroom of the future. 

This article correctly identifies that education 2.0 will separate the "class from the college".  It foresees the aggregation of online content that will bring education efficiently to the masses at low costs.  It also correctly identifies that learning is not the only end goal of college and that the role of certification and degrees are at the core of the college's product offering.

Not all colleges will be similarly affected. My bet would be that the more endowed a school and the more its name carries a cultural value independent of its ability to offer a degree, the less likely it is to change. Like the New York Times, the elite schools play a unique role in our society, and so can probably persist with elements of their old revenue model longer than their lesser-known competitors.

This article even correctly identifies that the Harvards of the world play a special role and have a third core product offering--"a cultural value". But where this and other articles are short sided is that they assume students want to learn and that they want a degree and that education 2.0 will revolutionize those two things. This article states that because of the ivys special third product offering--the cultural value--that they will survive longer than most.

Education 2.0 will bring revolution to both learning and certification, but what this article fails to foresee, is the revolution that will come to that third product offering--the cultural value.  That intangible element of networking and social interaction amongst elite sets of peers under the tutelage of pipe-smoking, sweater-vested professors--these articles all seem to think that innovation and the future will come at the cost of that third element. 

But why should it.  People don't really want degrees--they want what degrees yield and what they mean. They yield jobs and they mean status.  They are, for now, a differentiator.  Many entrepreneurs will profit in this revolution that will make a B.A. a commodity open to the masses and online learning the norm, but the real winner is he who can replace and innovate, not inundate, on what the Harvards of the world offer--that third product of higher education--the cultural value.

And that will never happen with adjunct professors alone in their apartments, with little interaction amongst their students.

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