Group items tagged

Perhaps the most important piece I've read recently. Yes must be our answer to Adelman's last challenge: It is time for us to disseminate what and why we do what we do.

Vander Ark was the first Executive Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. From his post: "There are plenty of theories about how to improve education. Most focus on what appear to be big levers--a point of entry and system intervention that appears to provide some improvement leverage. These theories usually involve 'if-then' statements: 'if we improve this, then other good stuff will happen.'" "One problem not addressed by these theories is the lack of innovation diffusion in education--a good idea won't cross the street. Weak improvement incentives and strong bureaucracy have created a lousy marketplace for products and ideas." "Key assumption: teacher effectiveness is the key variable; more good teachers will improve student achievement" "I'm betting on social learning platforms as a lever for improvement at scale in education. Instead of a classroom as the primary organizing principle, social networks will become the primary building block of learning communities (both formal and informal). Smart recommendation engines will queue personalized content. Tutoring, training, and collaboration tools will be applications that run on social networks. New schools will be formed around these capabilities. Teachers in existing schools will adopt free tools yielding viral, bureaucracy-cutting productivity improvement."

"Key assumption: teacher effectiveness is the key variable; more good teachers will improve student achievement" Vander Ark was the first Executive Director for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. From his post:"There are plenty of theories about how to improve education. Most focus on what appear to be big levers--a point of entry and system intervention that appears to provide some improvement leverage. These theories usually involve 'if-then' statements: 'if we improve this, then other good stuff will happen.'" "One problem not addressed by these theories is the lack of innovation diffusion in education--a good idea won't cross the street. Weak improvement incentives and strong bureaucracy have created a lousy marketplace for products and ideas." "I'm betting on social learning platforms as a lever for improvement at scale in education. Instead of a classroom as the primary organizing principle, social networks will become the primary building block of learning communities (both formal and informal). Smart recommendation engines will queue personalized content. Tutoring, training, and collaboration tools will be applications that run on social networks. New schools will be formed around these capabilities. Teachers in existing schools will adopt free tools yielding viral, bureaucracy-cutting productivity improvement."\n\n\n

the conflation of feedback with ranking confounds this. What is not done and needs to be done is to compare the motivational impact of providing constructive feedback. Presumably the study uses ranking in a strictly comparative context as well, and we do not see the influence of feedback relative to an absolute scale. Still, much in this piece to ponder....

"The emergence of the networked information economy is unleashing two powerful forces. On one hand, easy access to high-speed networks is empowering individuals. People can now discover and consume information resources and services globally from their homes. Further, new social computing approaches are inviting people to share in the creation and edification of information on the Internet. Empowerment of the individual -- or consumerization -- is reducing the individual's reliance on traditional brick-and-mortar institutions in favor of new and emerging virtual ones. Second, ubiquitous access to high-speed networks along with network standards, open standards and content, and techniques for virtualizing hardware, software, and services is making it possible to leverage scale economies in unprecedented ways. What appears to be emerging is industrial-scale computing -- a standardized infrastructure for delivering computing power, network bandwidth, data storage and protection, and services. Consumerization and industrialization beg the question "Is this the end of the middle?"; that is, what will be the role of "enterprise" IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions? This volume examines the impact of IT on higher education and on the IT organization in higher education."

Consumerization and industrialization beg the question "Is this the end of the middle?"; that is, what will be the role of "enterprise" IT in the future? Indeed, the bigger question is what will become of all of our intermediating institutions? This volume examines the impact of IT on higher education and on the IT organization in higher education.

This was an MRG 7/15/09 what struck me was the idea of understanding property that becomes more valuable with wider use.

A largely sensible strategic look at LMS in general. "The LMS, because of its integration with other major institutional technology systems, has itself become an enterprise-wide system. As such, higher education leaders must closely 7 monitor the possible tendency for LMSs to contribute only to maintaining the educational status quo.40 The most radical suggestion for future LMS use would dissolve the commercially enforced "course-based" model of LMS use entirely, allowing for the creation of either larger (departmental) or smaller (study groups) units of LMS access, as the case may require. This ability to cater to context awareness is perhaps the feature most lacking in most LMS products. As noted in a study in which mobile or handheld devices were used to assemble ad hoc study groups,41 this sort of implementation is entirely possible in ways that don't necessarily require interaction through an LMS interface." Requires EDUCAUSE login (free to WSU)

The EDUCAUSE paper suggests "dissolv[ing] the commercially enforced 'course-based' model of LMS". How about dissolving the "course-based" model of higher education on which the commercial LMS is based?

It is not clear here that reputation is a salient factor in student choice.

Kimberly said of this: The focus on activity deals directly with the learning process - one that pushes students to take a more active role - while assessment supplies faculty members with the feedback necessary to diagnose and correct learning problems. Technology allows such active learning processes to be expanded to large courses and, as learning software and databases become better, to use faculty time more effectively. Relates to clickers and skylight learning activities/assessments, in the large class context, as well as the elusive LMS.

It's All Happening at the Zoo School: Innovative Education with Practical Applications At Minneapolis's School of Environmental Studies, learning is about becoming an expert and solving real problems.

"Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of "institution" as a "mobilizing network"-emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change-and explore the implications for higher education."

A new book by Cathy Davidson.

"It is hoped that, in some small way, this blog can both engage and challenge faculty and administrators alike to become more intentional in their program assessment efforts, creating systematic and efficient processes that actually have the likelihood of improving student learning while honoring faculty time."

As recommended by Ashley. Apparently Dr. Rogers' blog is just starting up, so you can "get in on the ground floor".

Maybe they can support a Theater and Dance program

17 states, including Nevada, Texas and Washington, have allowed community colleges to award associate's and bachelor's degrees, and in some, the community colleges have become four-year institutions. Others states are considering community college baccalaureates. Ms. Coleman [a B.A. student] now recommends the [community] college to family members. "It's much cheaper, the teachers are good, you can do it in the evening while you work, and everyone's very helpful," she said.

"Based on current estimates, to reach the 60 percent level by 2025, the U.S. higher education system must produce 23 million more college graduates than are expected at present rates of production. The actual size of the gap will shift annually, as we make progress and new data become available. Obviously, we can't close this gap overnight. But, for example, if we can start to increase the rate of attainment each year and produce 150,000 more graduates than the year before - an annual increase of about 5 percent - we will reach the big goal by 2025."

adding 150,000 more college graduates/year each year from now to 2025 is a significant scaling up. Spread over 5000 institutions its only 30/institution on average, which many could manage. Or perhaps Western Governors could absorb many of them.

"What we want is for assessment to become a public, shared responsibility, so there should be departmental leadership." George Kuh director of the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment.

Kuh also says, "So we're going to spend some time looking at the impact of the Voluntary System of Accountability. It's one thing for schools to sign up, it's another to post the information and to show that they're actually doing something with it. It's not about posting a score on a Web site-it's about doing something with the data." He doesn't take the next step and ask if it is even possible for schools to actually do anything with the data collected from the CLA or ask who has access to the criteria: Students? Faculty? Anyone?

"Dr Ebbinghaus' experiment revealed we suffer an exponential 'forgetting curve' and that about 50% of context-free information is lost in the first hour after acquisition if there is no opportunity to reinforce it with practice."