change is required in two vast and interwoven domains that permeate the deep structures and operating model of the university: (1) the value created for the main customers of the university (the students); and (2) the model of production for how that value is created. First we need to toss out the old industrial model of pedagogy (how learning is accomplished) and replace it with a new model called collaborative learning. Second we need an entirely new modus operandi for how the subject matter, course materials, texts, written and spoken word, and other media (the content of higher education) are created.
10More
Innovating the 21st-Century University: It's Time! (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE - 4 views
-
Research shows that mutual exploration, group problem solving, and collective meaning-making produce better learning outcomes and understanding overall. Brown and Adler cite a study by Richard J. Light, of the Harvard Graduate School of Education: "Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students' success in higher education . . . was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own."
-
Second, the web enables students to collaborate with others independent of time and geography. Finally, the web represents a new mode of production for knowledge, and that changes just about everything regarding how the "content" of college and university courses are created.
- ...7 more annotations...
-
As Seymour Papert, one of the world's foremost experts on how technology can provide new ways to learn, put it: "The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a [student] of the pleasure and benefit of discovery."14 Students need to integrate new information with the information they already have — to "construct" new knowledge structures and meaning.
-
Universities need an entirely new modus operandi for how the content of higher education is created. The university needs to open up, embrace collaborative knowledge production, and break down the walls that exist among institutions of higher education and between those institutions and the rest of the world.To do so, universities require deep structural changes — and soon. More than three years ago, Charles M. Vest published "Open Content and the Emerging Global Meta-University" in EDUCAUSE Review. In his concluding paragraph, Vest offered a tantalizing vision: "My view is that in the open-access movement, we are seeing the early emergence of a meta-university — a transcendent, accessible, empowering, dynamic, communally constructed framework of open materials and platforms on which much of higher education worldwide can be constructed or enhanced. The Internet and the Web will provide the communication infrastructure, and the open-access movement and its derivatives will provide much of the knowledge and information infrastructure." Vest wrote that the meta-university "will speed the propagation of high-quality education and scholarship. . . . The emerging meta-university, built on the power and ubiquity of the Web and launched by the open courseware movement, will give teachers and learners everywhere the ability to access and share teaching materials, scholarly publications, scientific works in progress, teleoperation of experiments, and worldwide collaborations, thereby achieving economic efficiencies and raising the quality of education through a noble and global endeavor."17
-
Used properly, wikis are tremendously powerful tools to collaborate and co-innovate new content. Tapscott wrote the foreword for a book called We Are Smarter Than Me (2008). The book, a best-seller, was written by Barry Libert, Jon Spector, and more than 4,000 people who contributed to the book's wiki. If a global collaboration can write a book, surely one could be used to create a university course. A professor could operate a wiki with other teachers. Or a professor could use a wiki with his or her students, thereby co-innovating course content with the students themselves. Rather than simply being the recipients of the professor's knowledge, the students co-create the knowledge on their own, which has been shown to be one of the most effective methods of learning.
-
The student might enroll in the primary college in Oregon and register to take a behavioral psychology course from Stanford University and a medieval history course from Cambridge. For these students, the collective syllabi of the world form their menu for higher education. Yet the opportunity goes beyond simply mixing and matching courses. Next-generation faculty will create a context whereby students from around the world can participate in online discussions, forums, and wikis to discover, learn, and produce knowledge as networked individuals and collectively.
-
But what about credentials? As long as the universities can grant degrees, their supremacy will never be challenged." This is myopic thinking. The value of a credential and even the prestige of a university are rooted in its effectiveness as a learning institution. If these institutions are shown to be inferior to alternative learning environments, their capacity to credential will surely diminish. How much longer will, say, a Harvard undergraduate degree, taught mostly through lectures by teaching assistants in large classes, be able to compete in status with the small class size of liberal arts colleges or the superior delivery systems that harness the new models of learning?
-
As part of this, the academic journal should be disintermediated and the textbook industry eliminated. In fact, the word textbook is an oxymoron today. Content should be multimedia — not just text. Content should be networked and hyperlinked bits — not atoms. Moreover, interactive courseware — not separate "books" — should be used to present this content to students, constituting a platform for every subject, across disciplines, among institutions, and around the world. The textbook industry will never reinvent itself, however, since legacy cultures and business models die hard. It will be up to scholars and students to do this collectively.
5More
Response to critiques of Open Course Educause article and the free economy generally @ ... - 1 views
-
what is the difference between the MOOC model and the commodity model.
-
And what is the difference between a Massively Open Online Course and a community exploring a shared problem? There is a time factor (perhaps) but communities may run hot and fast. There is a leadership role (perhaps) but a community could galvanize around a leader for its work. There is an institution and a tie to the historical other meanings of course.
-
-
Earlier this year, while George Siemens and I were working our way through teaching the Edfutures course, we were contacted by the fine folks at the Educause review and asked to contribute an article on ‘the open course.
-
see http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume45/NeverMindtheEdupunksorTheGreat/209326 MOOC below refers (I think) to Massively Open Online Course
-
2More
Strategic Directives for Learning Management System Planning | EDUCAUSE - 1 views
-
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?
1More
TLChallenges09 | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - 0 views
-
After four months of spirited discussion, the EDUCAUSE teaching and learning community has voted on the, "Top Teaching and Learning Challenges, 2009." The final list for 2009, ranked by popularity, includes (click on individual Challenges to visit their wiki page): 1. Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation. 2. Developing 21st-century literacies among students and faculty (information, digital, and visual). 3. Reaching and engaging today's learner. 4. Encouraging faculty adoption and innovation in teaching and learning with IT. 5. Advancing innovation in teaching and learning (with technology) in an era of budget cuts.
9More
Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUC... - 1 views
-
More than one-third of the world’s population is under 20. There are over 30 million people today qualified to enter a university who have no place to go. During the next decade, this 30 million will grow to 100 million. To meet this staggering demand, a major university needs to be created each week.
-
Open source communities have developed a well-established path by which newcomers can “learn the ropes” and become trusted members of the community through a process of legitimate peripheral participation.
-
Lectures from model teachers are recorded on video and are then physically distributed via DVD to schools that typically lack well-trained instructors (as well as Internet connections). While the lectures are being played on a monitor (which is often powered by a battery, since many participating schools also lack reliable electricity), a “mediator,” who could be a local teacher or simply a bright student, periodically pauses the video and encourages engagement among the students by asking questions or initiating discussions about the material they are watching.
- ...2 more annotations...
-
The Faulkes Telescope Project and the Decameron Web are just two of scores of research and scholarly portals that provide access to both educational resources and a community of experts in a given domain. The web offers innumerable opportunities for students to find and join niche communities where they can benefit from the opportunities for distributed cognitive apprenticeship. Finding and joining a community that ignites a student’s passion can set the stage for the student to acquire both deep knowledge about a subject (“learning about”) and the ability to participate in the practice of a field through productive inquiry and peer-based learning (“learning to be”). These communities are harbingers of the emergence of a new form of technology-enhanced learning—Learning 2.0—which goes beyond providing free access to traditional course materials and educational tools and creates a participatory architecture for supporting communities of learners.
-
Kramer's Plant Biotech group could be one of these. It needs tasks that permit legitimate peripheral participation. One of those could be peer assessment. Another could be social bookmarking. I now see it needs not just an _open_ platform, but an _extensible_ one. Here is where the hub and spoke model may play in.
-
I infer that you are referring to this research group. http://www.officeofresearch.wsu.edu/missions/health/kramer.html I am curious to learn why you selected this lab as an example.
-
2More
Above-Campus Services: Shaping the Promise of Cloud Computing for Higher Education (EDU... - 0 views
-
In the early 1990s, Mike Zucchini, formerly the CIO of Fleet/Norstar, saw four possible reasons for outsourcing information technology. He explained these reasons in his "4-S" model: Scale — the desire to access economies of scale and efficiency that an institution could not achieve alone; Specialty — the desire to access specialized expertise that is too expensive to staff; Sale — the desire to turn nonproductive assets of capital facilities and IT equipment into cash to improve a balance sheet and reduce headcount; and Surrender — the desire to simplify the IT agenda by essentially giving up and hoping that a contract for service yields the outcomes an executive desires.7 Zucchini argued that Scale and Specialty are functional reasons for outsourcing and that Sale and Surrender are ultimately dysfunctional. History supports his insights: the big Sale/Surrender outsourcing deals of Kodak, American Express, GM, and Xerox all proved transient as the complexities of managing by contract and service-level agreements led to the eventual re-creation of internal IT service capabilities
2More
From Vision to Innovation (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE - 0 views
-
public colleges and universities are dealing with a customer base of students who invariably are among the earliest adopters of emerging technologies. As a result, institutions of higher education, and particularly public colleges and universities, must adopt a strategy to overcome institutional inertia and a shortage of readily available resources while keeping pace with students for whom the latest technology quickly becomes the minimal level of expectation when choosing a place to pursue a degree.
11More
Through the Open Door: Open Courses as Research, Learning, and Engagement (EDUCAUSE Rev... - 0 views
-
openness in practice requires little additional investment, since it essentially concerns transparency of already planned course activities on the part of the educator.
-
This second group of learners — those who wanted to participate but weren't interested in course credit — numbered over 2,300. The addition of these learners significantly enhanced the course experience, since additional conversations and readings extended the contributions of the instructors.
-
Enough structure is provided by the course that if a learner is interested in the topic, he or she can build sufficient language and expertise to participate peripherally or directly.
- ...4 more annotations...
-
Although courses are under pressure in the "unbundling" or fragmentation of information in general, the learning process requires coherence in content and conversations. Learners need some sense of what they are choosing to do, a sense of eventedness.5 Even in traditional courses, learners must engage in a process of forming coherent views of a topic.
-
The community-as-curriculum model inverts the position of curriculum: rather than being a prerequisite for a course, curriculum becomes an output of a course.
-
They are now able, sometimes through the open access noted above and sometimes through access to other materials and guidance, to engage in their own learning outside of a classroom structure.
-
Educators continue to play an important role in facilitating interaction, sharing information and resources, challenging assertions, and contributing to learners' growth of knowledge.
1More
EDUCAUSE Teaching and Learning Challenges '09 - Debate the list, join the community and... - 0 views
2More
Innovating the 21st-Century University: It's Time! (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE - 0 views
-
Come to think of it, encyclopedias, newspapers, and record labels are a lot like colleges and universities as well. For fifteen years, we've been arguing that the digital revolution will challenge many fundamental aspects of the university.1 We have not been alone. In 1997, none other than Peter Drucker predicted that big university campuses would be "relics" within thirty years.
2More
The Tower and The Cloud | EDUCAUSE - 0 views
-
"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.
1More
Privacy and Confidentiality: Holding IT Service Providers Accountable | EDUCAUSE - 0 views
-
" This ECAR research bulletin addresses the data privacy issues that must be covered by contractual language when entering into an agreement for externally provided IT services or for external consulting about institutional systems. It covers instances in which external agents have access to data that is considered confidential and/or where data can be linked to personally identifiable records. It is based on work done at The College of New Jersey between November 2008 and May 2009"
8More
The Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet | Magazine - 0 views
-
Milner sounds more like a traditional media mogul than a Web entrepreneur. But that’s exactly the point. If we’re moving away from the open Web, it’s at least in part because of the rising dominance of businesspeople more inclined to think in the all-or-nothing terms of traditional media than in the come-one-come-all collectivist utopianism of the Web. This is not just natural maturation but in many ways the result of a competing idea — one that rejects the Web’s ethic, technology, and business models. The control the Web took from the vertically integrated, top-down media world can, with a little rethinking of the nature and the use of the Internet, be taken back. This development — a familiar historical march, both feudal and corporate, in which the less powerful are sapped of their reason for being by the better resourced, organized, and efficient — is perhaps the rudest shock possible to the leveled, porous, low-barrier-to-entry ethos of the Internet Age. After all, this is a battle that seemed fought and won — not just toppling newspapers and music labels but also AOL and Prodigy and anyone who built a business on the idea that a curated experience would beat out the flexibility and freedom of the Web.
-
An interesting perspective, goes along with another piece I diigoed in Educause Review that was exploring the turning of the tide against EduPunk. What is problematic with the graphic at the lead of this article is that it does not account for the volume of traffic, its all scaled to 100%. So while web's market share is falling as a percent of total packets, and video market share is growing, its not clear that web use (esp for tasks related to learning) is declining.
-
-
You wake up and check your email on your bedside iPad — that’s one app. During breakfast you browse Facebook, Twitter, and The New York Times — three more apps. On the way to the office, you listen to a podcast on your smartphone. Another app. At work, you scroll through RSS feeds in a reader and have Skype and IM conversations. More apps. At the end of the day, you come home, make dinner while listening to Pandora, play some games on Xbox Live, and watch a movie on Netflix’s streaming service. You’ve spent the day on the Internet — but not on the Web. And you are not alone.
-
This is not a trivial distinction. Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display.
- ...3 more annotations...
-
A decade ago, the ascent of the Web browser as the center of the computing world appeared inevitable. It seemed just a matter of time before the Web replaced PC application software
-
But there has always been an alternative path, one that saw the Web as a worthy tool but not the whole toolkit. In 1997, Wired published a now-infamous “Push!” cover story, which suggested that it was time to “kiss your browser goodbye.”
-
“Sure, we’ll always have Web pages. We still have postcards and telegrams, don’t we? But the center of interactive media — increasingly, the center of gravity of all media — is moving to a post-HTML environment,” we promised nearly a decade and half ago. The examples of the time were a bit silly — a “3-D furry-muckers VR space” and “headlines sent to a pager” — but the point was altogether prescient: a glimpse of the machine-to-machine future that would be less about browsing and more about getting.