Serendipity35

California and Credit and MOOCs

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 00:33:00 -0400

It was big news earlier in the year when a bill was proposed (and since was approved) in California that mandates statewide open online courses be approved for college and high school credit. That bill, SB 520, was often written up in articles as being a MOOC bill because it requires that these courses be open to all students who require them and cannot get access to them in their own schools. That last part is important. The bill is about access to courses and that was part of the original intent of MOOCs and earlier open courses that may not have been as massive in enrollment.

The California bill originally positioned 20 "MOOC-like" courses that would be credited by high schools and colleges across the state. This bill generated a lot of resistance from faculty who see it both as a threat to their jobs (bringing in "outside contractors") and as a lower quality of education.

It is important to note that the bill's focus is on students who are shut out of a high school or college classrooms due to a lack of space in that class. It is not about a student opting to take a MOOC version of English Composition rather than the one that is available on campus. The bill says that students must be allowed to take the same course in an online or non-classroom format when that is all that is available to them.

The question of whether or not those outside courses provide the same quality and standards as the accredited high school and college classes is a more controversial issue, and one that will be harder to address. That is an argument that has been active for decades in comparing face-to-face courses and their online counterparts. The short answer from research that I have heard many times is that thee is "no significant difference" between a well designed F2F class and a well designed online version. The California bill seems to assume parity but opponents don't accept that assumption.

The problem of there not being enough space in classrooms for students may not be as relevant in all states as it is in California, but I would predict that most states will have to deal with this issue of giving credit to MOOCs or other third-party online courses soon. Schools have had to deal with the issue in other cases already, such as transfer credits, summer courses and exchange programs.

Of course, college credits mean tuition money and no school wants to lose that whether they are labeled non-profit or for-profit. Some providers have been working with the American Council on Education"s (ACE) CREDIT program. ACE has been around since the mid-1970s and requires course providers who want their accreditation to submit substantial documentation about a course for review by a team of academics.

California may have taken the first step in this direction but it looks like other large state systems like New York and Florida may move in the same direction.

One thing that favors the direction this bill moves towards is that it is being viewed as another way to have students take classes they need and move towards completion (graduation) in a shorter time. That aspect is very important to the federal government and most state and even some county (for 2 year colleges) agencies.

In April 2013, the bill was amended based on the discussions and negotiations that followed the announcement. One change that emerged was that course approval would shift from the state (California Open Access Resources Council) to the local administration and faculty senates of the three systems (University of California, California State University, and California Community Colleges). They have also removed the use of ACE recommendations.

There will certainly be more changes, but it is unlikely that the use of some form of the Massive Open Online Courses will simply go away if it is ignored.

SB520 Fact Sheet

Predictive Analytics in Education

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 08:30:00 -0400

Predictive analytics includes ways of using statistics, modeling and data mining in order to analyze current and historical facts in order to make predictions about future events.

It is something that has been used in business in order to identify risks as well as opportunities and improve decision making. Most references to it will be in the fields of actuarial science, marketing, financial services, insurance, telecommunications, travel, healthcare and others.

It got some press just recently as we discovered that the NSA was searching our online life and using predictive analytics to try to catch "the bad guys."

It is just starting to be used in any significant ways in in higher education. Some people see predictive analytics as a way to improve completion and student retention rates. There are now commercial systems and some schools are building their own ways to mine student data.

These systems might be looking at logins and usage patterns of student services, LMS activity, or content and digital textbook interactions. For example, using recruiting data to make predictions about future enrollments is something that has been done (perhaps without sophisticated software) for the past decade. But using it for predicting retention of students is a much newer application.

One place you are more likely to find predictive analytics today is built into learning management systems. Desire2Learn is an LMS that I am reading about as they have introduced it into their product. They acquired Degree Compass earlier this year as a way to help teachers and also students and advisors make decisions. Desire2Learn calls their tool a "Student Success System" and, since student success is a big concern in colleges, it certainly will sound appealing to customers.

Through predictive analysis, data mined can help an instructor identify overall course risks and individual student progress or lack thereof. Some systems give data visualizations about student engagement in discussions, readings and assignments. If a course is built with valid learning outcomes and assessments for those outcomes, it can show what is working and what is not.

If there are multiple sections of a course and/or historical data on past instances, this can be a way of predicting program success and make necessary adjustments.

One of the desired uses of these analytics is to monitor at-risk students and allow interventions at the proper times.

QuickTip: Gmail Aliases

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 07:13:00 -0400

Although Gmail doesn't offer traditional email aliases, you can easily use a kind of alias (alternate) email with your existing account. This is useful for sorting and directing messages.

For example, let's say I own the email serendipity@gmail.com but I want to use it with students in one of my courses. I don't want that course-related mail mixed in with the rest of the messages, so I tell students to email me at serendipity+353@gmail.com (352 being the course number, but I could have added media or any other characters). I will receive those messages sent in my regular mail and then I will set up filters in Gmail to automatically direct these messages to a folder for the course. I could also apply a label or star them, skip the inbox, or forward them to another email account or any other options offered in Gmail. It's a nice way to stay organized. For a small business, you could use aliases for different inquiries by adding +info, +estimate, +billing or any useful label to customize the message.

Threadless Graphics

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Sat, 15 Jun 2013 00:17:00 -0400

Back in 2007, I posted this little mention about Threadless and portrayed it as:

a kind of web 2.0 site for t-shirts. You can buy shirts (and other items) but also submit your own designs for possible use, rate those submitted, and submit photos of you in their t-shirts. They choose designs each week by customer voting and they pay for the designs they use. Sounds like a great opportunity for a new student artist to get some exposure.

Your account also allows you to blog a bit, add RSS feeds, Flickr links, your bookmarks etc., so they have turned their store into a kind of social network site. Very 2.0.

The site is still running strong and features lots of other items besides shirts - like iPhone cases - and they still have some great crowdsourced designs. Check it out at http://www.threadless.com

Parents Invoice Pearson For Using Their Kids for Field Tests

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 01:37:00 -0400

Here's an unusual story concerning standardized testing. Some concerned parents in New York have drawn up a bill of about $38 million to Pearson LLC for using their children as uncompensated research subjects in field tests of their commercial product development process.

They came up with the amount by calculating the value of their children’s free labor and included the opportunity costs of lost instructional time and resources, plus the real costs to schools of administering the June tests.

The invoice was shown at a press conference on June 6. It was also noted that at they were aware of at least 37 New York City schools that had parents opt their children out of the tests and 30+ schools on Long Island saw test refusals.

more info at http://ednotesonline.blogspot.ca/2013/06/reposted-with-invoice-parents-present.html

MOOC Summer School

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 00:47:00 -0400

The Saylor.org Summer School project allows students to potentially pick up credit through one of their partner schools or many others that are willing to take a look at NCCRS-recommended exams. On the Saylor blog, I saw that:

...the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies [is] helping to spread the word and reminding folks how our summer school courses can be used as electives or to fulfill certain core requirements. How can this news help you? We know you probably don’t attend CUNY. So how does this apply to you? Well, maybe as a source of motivation: why not take one of our courses and see what your Registrar’s Office is willing to do for you in terms of credit? Ask some questions, pitch the idea, give it a whirl! If you or your school has questions, we at the Saylor Foundation are just a phone call or email away.

A Toolkit to Rethink Planning and Designing a Next Generation Learning School Model

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 16:54:28 -0400

FREE WEBINAR: A Toolkit to Rethink Planning and Designing a Next Generation Learning School Model

Thursday, June 13, 2013, 3:00-4:00 PM ET

Speaker: Dave Edwards, Quality Assurance Director, iNACOL

Are you a forward-thinking educator interested in starting an innovative K-12 next generation learning program or moving your current program to the next level? If you are, you have probably been looking for that resource to help you start the planning and designing process. Well, look no further. In this iNACOL Special Edition Webinar, participants will be introduced to RETHINK: Planning and Designing for K-12 Next Generation Learning, a toolkit created
by Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) and iNACOL to guide district, charter, and school leaders as they conceptualize, design, and develop a next generation model school. This toolkit can help you and your team understand next generation learning and the need for change; gain a working knowledge of the planning and change management processes; plan and design a framework for next generation learning; and understand how to ensure quality and continuous improvement for your design. This flexible and dynamic resource offers links to existing communities who are currently planning for and/or implementing next generation learning. It also offers an overview of critical topics, each of which includes an introduction, a set of guiding questions, and resources and tools centered on the topic that you and your team will need to tackle while planning and designing your program. So, what are you waiting for? Join in the webinar to learn more and give your students the powerful learning opportunities they’ve been waiting for!

Register

NextGenU

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Sat, 08 Jun 2013 07:30:00 -0400

NextGenU.org describes itself as "the world's first portal where anyone, anywhere in the world can access university and graduate-level courses for interest or for credit through recognized accredited institutions and organizations. The credit (or interest) is the important word in this new site.

At this point, they concentrate the courses, certificates, residencies primarily in the health sciences.

They work in collaboration with experts and professional organizations for quality assurance and endorsement, and use cutting-edge educational innovations, including computer-based learning resources, local and web-based peer-to-peer interaction, and mentoring experiences.

NextGenU.org is your portal to the world’s first free, accredited, higher education. Starting with a focus in the health sciences, NextGenU.org partners with leading universities, professional societies, and government organizations like the U.S. CDC, Grand Challenges Canada, and the World Health Organization. NextGenU.org’s accredited partners give learners credit for this training (or institutions can adopt them and use them with their students), all for the first time ever for free (and without advertisements). All our courses are competency-based, and include a global peer community of practice, and local skills-oriented mentorships. Founded in 2001, we launched our first full course (Emergency Medicine) in March 2012, and have students registered in over 80 countries: initial data show that NextGenU’s training performs comparably to traditional American medical schooling. Please come learn more about us or have a look at our available courses.

How Will Coursera Brand the 'Less Elite' MOOC Providers?

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:29:00 -0400

Part of the appeal of being a university that offers MOOCs through providers like Coursera is that it puts you in very nice academic company since the courses are offered by many of the elite world institutions. Recently, Coursera added ten new state university systems with multiple colleges to their network.

As pointed out on moocnewsandreviews.com, in partnering with so many institutions, Coursera sidesteps a contractual obligation to primarily offer courses from members of the Association of American Universities (AAU) or “top five” universities in countries outside of North America.

Coursera will be branding a new section of its offerings website for these state universities. Some of those state universities might see this as creating a second tier of offerings which put their schools in a less prominent, perhaps second class, light.

Inside Higher Ed reported that SUNY's associate provost, Carey Hatch, "...said SUNY, which has two AAU institutions (Stony Brook University and University at Buffalo), was not quite thrilled with the segregation. 'We’re not totally happy about it, but we understand the perspective of where Coursera partners started from,' he said. 'We hope through the course of time where they end will be something different.' The University of Colorado system is glad it can offer more MOOCs from all its campuses on Coursera. Its Boulder campus is an AAU institution and existing Coursera partner, but its three other campuses are not."

The State University of New York (SUNY) has 64 campuses, which makes it one of the largest systems in the world. They are already making an effort to enroll 100,000 new students over the next several years as part of their own Open SUNY initiative.

When Instructional Technology and Information Technology Overlap

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 14:39:21 -0400

When I was the Manager of Instructional Technology at NJIT, I asked my staff to emphasize the "instructional" prt of our name. We were IT, but not the information technology folks who had very different concerns. My department was housed under an umbrella with media services. Before I arrived, instructional technology was the smallest group and the campus community often saw all of us as one big tech group. I wanted the emphasis to be on how to instruct using technology rather than how to jam technology into instruction. We joked so often about having solutions to problems that didn't exist that the IT people were sometimes the first to say it before introducing a new technology to us.

Of course, we were not anti-tech or anti-IT at all. We led the emerging technology group and sought out new instructional technologies all the time. I was introduced to EDUCAUSE in 2001 and I admit that at first I saw it as a very information technology organization without enough concern for instruction for my purposes. They still are closer to that IT side, but over the years I have seen the two IT groups - information and instructional - move closer to the center of that Venn diagram.

Every year, EDUCAUSE puts out a top issues report and I always viewed it as one way to think about what we might address in the new academic year come September.

Here are their Top Ten IT Issues for 2013:

Leveraging the wireless and device explosion on campus
Improving student outcomes through an approach that leverages technology
Developing an institution-wide cloud strategy to help the institution select the right sourcing and solution strategies
Developing a staffing and organizational model to accommodate the changing IT environment and facilitate openness and agility
Facilitating a better understanding of information security and finding appropriate balance between infrastructure openness and security
Funding information technology strategically
Determining the role of online learning and developing a sustainable strategy for that role
Supporting the trends toward IT consumerization and bring-your-own device
Transforming the institution's business with information technology
Using analytics to support critical institutional outcomes

You can read more about each in the latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review or online, but I was actually more interested to see a section on "New Strategic Priorities." Noting that "The boundaries between academia and the rest of the world have never been more porous," they chose four priorities in particular.

1) Contain and reduce costs. The bleak economic outlook and reduced funding sources are making it imperative to reduce or at the very least contain the growth of costs. Efficiencies are sought, and business best practices are often viewed as the best path to achieving efficiencies.

This first one interests me (from the instructional side of the house) the least, although I know it may be the number one concern on a campus.

But I am interested in the three other priorities, all of which would be on my list of things we need to be addressing in the new academic year.

2) Achieve demonstrable improvements in student outcomes. The practice of measuring, improving, and reporting student outcomes is moving from highly desirable to imperative. The window of opportunity for colleges and universities to shape how they define, measure, and improve student outcomes—rather than react to external requirements—is shrinking.

3) Keep pace with innovations in e-learning, and use e-learning as a competitive advantage.3 Whether driven by the explosive interest in open educational resources (OERs), most notably Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or by explorations in using technology to develop and implement new academic credentialing models like badging and competencies, presidents, chancellors, and provosts are eager to use technology to help inform and transform postsecondary education.

4) Meet students' and faculty members' expectations of contemporary consumer technologies and communications. Students and faculty not only expect that they will be able to use their smartphones, tablets, and consumer-based apps in their academic work but also expect that their institutions' services will work as elegantly and effectively as commercial services.

The article offers that higher education institutions have been building systems for years that gather, process, and report institutional data, but that is is usually siloed into finance, human resources, facilities, research activities, and student performance. Even with all these siloes, the university itself probably is another larger silo (towring, and made of ivory?) that doesn't connect with other universities data, systems, processes, or services.

And that is a shame, because so many of our strategic priorities have become the same that we need the instructional side and the information side to work together, and to work with other institutions.

OpenCourseWare Consortium Announces Winners of 2013 Course Awards for Excellence

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 01:11:13 -0400

At the recent OCW Consortium meeting in Bali, Indonesia, awards were given in two categories of open courses – text-based and multimedia.

Text based courses include written materials for the course, including lecture notes, assessments, syllabi, calendars and readings.

Multimedia courses also include video, audio or other type of multimedia presentation of materials.

These courses are produced in a variety of languages and developed by institutions committed to increasing access to high quality higher education for everyone.

America certainly does not dominate the winners.

2013 Course winners – text based courses:

·       An American Constitutional History Course for Non American Students, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
·       Delft Design Guide, Delft University of Technology
·       Atomic Physics, African Virtual University
·       Fisiología Humana, Universidad de Cantabria
·       Conocimientos Básicos de Matemáticas para Primeros Cursos Universitarios, Universidad de Zaragoza

2013 Course winners – multimedia courses:

·       Thermal and Statistical Physics, National Tsing Hua University Opencourseware
·       Productos de apoyo y tecnologías de la información y las telecomunicaciones, UNED: Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia
·       Basic Arithmetic, Scottsdale Community College
·       Developmental Math, The NROC Project
·       Introduction to Aerospace Engineering I, Delft University of Technology

Rethinking Lurkers in the MOOC Experience

nospam@example.com (Ken Ronkowitz) — Thu, 30 May 2013 00:55:00 -0400

A discussion developed late in my "Academia and the MOOC" course about completion rates and "lurkers." The term lurker has been used for quite awhile online. At first, they were people who went into discussions and chat rooms and just read/watched without participating. The term had a negative connotation.

The term carried over to online courses. Of course, in a class online with 25 students, anyone who does not participate is readily apparent. All the major LMS allow you to track student usage. In fact, it's easier to monitor student participation online via the software than it is to monitor in a large face to face classroom.

In my own online courses, I will nudge lurkers. But in a MOOC with thousands of students, that may not be possible. I commented in my MOOC that at least 20% of registrants did not view any content. The LMS didn't allow for me to get percentages for discussion participation for the class as a whole (only for individuals) but I could see that at least half of the other participants only participated in one of the four modules.

I suspected that some of those who used module one and then dropped out (or lurked) had decided the course was not for them. Now, I am having second thoughts about that.

As the discussion on this topic continued (and it has continued beyond the course in other places) and based on some 1:1 messages with participants, I realized that what I saw as lurking may be better described as auditing.

Module one was on the history of MOOCs and two participants told me that they were really only interested in reading that content. Although they may have looked at some of the other materials and posts, they entered the course to find out how MOOCs developed. They found what they wanted, and they left.

So, are they lurkers? I would say the term does not apply.

I had divided the second module into the roles of the stakeholders in academia that MOOCs affect - designer, teacher, administrator, support staff and student. I had contact with several people who told me that they were most interested in seeing what was posted about their role and participating in that discussion and less intersted in the other roles. I had hoped that people would enter all the discussions about the interrelated roles, but that may have been an unreasonable discussion on my part.

Again, someone who took the course to find out more about the instructional designer's role in MOOCs may have looked at some history and looked at case studies from different colleges that touched on the designer role, but may nt have had the time or interest in the other sections.

It has been suggested that MOOCs might function more as a textbook online (content repository) that includes a way to engage with the author (teacher/designer) and with others who are interested in the topic. Since Canvas allows my course to remind online and accessible to the students who registered, it is possible for people to go in after the four week live run of the class and still read discussions (no posting allowed) that they didn't get around to reading, and view the rest of the content.

So why not leave the course open for new registrations perpetually? Obviously, anyone jumping in now would be met with hundreds aof unread posts and no chance to post themselves and expect a response from the original poster who is likely to be done with the course. But there are MOOC providers experimenting with this idea and by having new start dates on a rolling basis, you could allow new groups of participants to use the material again and again with fresh discussions. Would it be necessary to have a facilitator in the course to keep things moving and revise the content? That is probably needed. My "course" was not typical in that it did not have assignments or grades, so anyone not posting in discussions was lurking/auditing. It wasn't designed as a MOOCourse, but intended to be a MOOConversation, so not participating in the conversation would be, to me, a kind of failure. That may not be true for participants.

I came across a presentation on "Learning Theories for the Digital Age" by Steve Wheeler (see below) that contained these two slides. He suggests that lurking may be considered "legitimate peripheral participation."

Where would we place the course auditor/lurker in his "architecture of participation?"

One of the participants in my course, Ann Priestly, has posted some thoughts on this topic on her own blog. She takes issue with my comment that “being engaged in any online course of any size means being involved in the discussions. It’s like web 1.0 and web 2.0 – read only and read/write.”

She is of the belief that there are many types of engagement including reading, reflecting and creating one’s own knowledge. She may be right. I am certainly coming from having taught for decades face to face and for more than ten years online in traditional credit bearing courses with always less than 25 students - and that just may not apply in the MOOC world. I certainly have become "engaged" with books I am reading where there is no interaction between the content and myself or with other readers or the author. Was I lurking?

Ann included a link to another post on this issue of lurking that suggest these people might be called "listeners." Still, as MOOCs become more accepted as legitimate courses for credit or advancement, the issue of what level of engagement will be required to complete a course successfully will become more important.

For now, my conclusion is that we need to rethink the reasons that people enroll in MOOCs and consider that lurkers have a legitimate reason for being there, and we might want to take that person into consideration in the course design.

I wish now that I had a required survey for students to register that included more information about what they wanted from the course and what their intention was in registering. (Typically, I see the question of how many hours do you plan to give to the course, which isn't really a helpful number to me.) If 30% of registrants were there because of a particular content area or just to "experience a MOOC," that would change your completion numbers from the start.

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Learning Theories for the Digital Age from Steve Wheeler