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Vicki Davis

Professor tries improving lectures by removing them from class | Inside Higher Ed - 7 views

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    This case study in Inside Higher Ed about Professor Mike Garver (Central Michigan University - Marketing) shows how this professor is giving lectures by no longer giving lectures. Interestingly, he talks about how Bloom's Taxonomy impacted his change in style. This article ALSO includes a video and I totally applaud the journal of higher ed for including a video. There are so many articles talking about a "great teacher" doing this or "great professor" doing that - SHOW ME. This article did just that. Applause to Inside higher ed and Steve Kolowich - give us more articles like this. If you're in higher ed or a teacher in high school - this is a great read. "It's a good way to, in his words, 'Put a movie in your mind,'
Ed Webb

What Cliff? Data and the Destruction of Public Higher Ed | Just Visiting - 2 views

  • That higher education institutions are facing a “demographic cliff” in the coming years has become conventional wisdom. But what if there is no cliff? What if we’ve instead been subjected to a narrative rooted in limited data that serves the interests of corporations and is doing real damage to our public institutions?
  • Currently, the NCES projects relatively constant numbers of high school graduates through 2030, with total graduates expected to increase in the mid-2020s, followed by a modest decline, making the projected 2029–30 number slightly greater than in 2016–17. Further, it is important to note that since the 1970s, the total number of high school graduates in the U.S. has declined several times before. More importantly for higher education, the NCES projects modest increases in higher education enrollments through 2029.
  • WICHE is an interest group with an explicit policy agenda—“focus areas”—which includes “developing and supporting innovations in technology and beyond that improve the quality of postsecondary education and reduce costs.”
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  • The purported demographic crisis is being used around the country to fundamentally remake higher education. For example, this is the main argument being advanced by Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature seeking to radically reshape the University of Wisconsin system. This plan calls for the significant expansion of online education, regionalization of the comprehensive campuses, increased campus specialization and program consolidation and elimination, among other long-standing priorities.
  • The current context of higher education provides fertile ground for the uncritical acceptance of the demographic cliff. Higher education enrollments have declined since reaching historic highs in 2010. And decades of political decisions have made higher education tuition-driven, one state budget cycle at a time. We are vulnerable to the demographic cliff framing because of the politically imposed financial crunch in which we exist. Enrollments dictate everything we do.
  • the demographic cliff is an austerity-driven narrative that assumes that public funding will never—and should never—come back
  • Programs must be eliminated, online education must be expanded and, if necessary, even entire campuses must be closed. Higher education must be agile because tax increases are off the table, even as stock markets reach new highs and the income and wealth of the highest earners skyrockets. The interests of corporations and the wealthy will dictate public policy.
  • official population and education data—which come with no political assumptions, narrative or products for sale—show a slowly increasing population, including higher education enrollments, in the coming years.
  • demographic cliff is a manufactured crisis
  • takes advantage of a tuition-dependent higher education system to implement even greater austerity while imposing an education policy agenda that could never be adopted through normal political means
Ed Webb

Bill Maher vs. higher ed | Bryan Alexander - 1 views

  • First, Maher gets certain things wrong, and many people share those errors, so addressing them might be beneficial. Second, several of his criticisms point to more broadly held American attitudes.  Better understanding them can help higher ed as it tries to navigate an increasingly challenging battle for public support.
  • Accurately, he points out that published prices have risen faster than inflation for a generation. However, setting aside the reasons for that inflation, this misses two key points. First, the tuition amounts cited are published prices, not what institutions actually charge most students.  Widespread tuition discounting means only the richest tend to pay full price, which subsidizes everyone else, who pay less.
  • ignoring the wide range of low cost colleges and universities
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  • Maher gets some points dead right, like the general – and especially Democratic – idea that everyone should get some post-secondary schooling.  This is still the default American idea, with persistent popularity.
  • not all of higher ed is about those teenagers, and it’s a mistake to assume it is
  • Ignoring these swarms of campuses with low (sticker!) prices in favor of complaining about the most expensive slice of American academia is, alas, a popular mistake.
  • He wants the college and university sector to shrink back in size and influence.  He advises an end to college for all, wanting instead college for even fewer.
  • Maher reminds us of the power of economic populism, and not just in the ways Trump mobilized it. Academia’s sometimes intention of mitigating inequality runs smack into our role in making inequality happen
  • to whatever extent Bill Maher is representative, the public has woeful gaps in its understanding of how higher ed works.  Our elite institutions stand in for the entire sector too often. Our high tuition, high discount strategy just looks like very high tuition.  Adult learners are nowhere near visible enough.
  • the cost of today’s education is likely to be somewhat higher than what I paid 30 years ago, but the price is definitely dramatically higher because today’s students aren’t enjoying the taxpayer support that I did. The price went up for sure. How much the cost went up is less clear
Vicki Davis

Rebranding: "MOOC" to "CaS" | Inside Higher Ed - 3 views

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    Another alternative is to not use the term "MOOC" and call it a Cas". (another hat tip to Stephen Downes for this article). I'm not sure that changing the name really will change what is a movement to learn online. Yes, it needs to be verifiable and so many things need to happen, but sometimes I find it odd how higher ed flees from anything that sounds trendy. Why not just Make Moocs better. Anyway, realize that higher ed has woken up and realized something significant is happening, how they will respond is yet to be seen. Says the author: "The thing formerly known as a MOOC will now be called a CaS.   CaS:  Course at Scale."
Vicki Davis

Why Technology Will Never Fix Education - Commentary - The Chronicle of Higher Education - 11 views

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    Interesting article in Journal of Higher Ed with Many Great Points "The real obstacle in education remains student motivation. Especially in an age of informational abundance, getting access to knowledge isn't the bottleneck, mustering the will to master it is. And there, for good or ill, the main carrot of a college education is the certified degree and transcript, and the main stick is social pressure. Most students are seeking credentials that graduate schools and employers will take seriously and an environment in which they're prodded to do the work. But neither of these things is cheaply available online. Arizona State University's recent partnership with edX to offer MOOCs is an attempt to do this, but if its student assessments fall short (or aren't tied to verified identities), other universities and employers won't accept them. And if the program doesn't establish genuine rapport with students, then it won't have the standing to issue credible nudges. (Automated text-message reminders to study will quickly become so much spam.) For technological amplification to lower the costs of higher education, it has to build on student motivation, and that motivation is tied not to content availability but to credentialing and social encouragement. The Law of Amplification's least appreciated consequence, however, is that technology on its own amplifies underlying socioeconomic inequalities.
Ed Webb

Wikispaces - Create Your Free Higher Education Wiki - 2 views

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    Now free for higher ed
Dave Truss

Seth's Blog: The coming melt-down in higher education (as seen by a marketer) - 4 views

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    For 400 years, higher education in the US has been on a roll... the amount of time and money and prestige in the college world has been climbing. I'm afraid that's about to crash and burn. Here's how I'm looking at it.
Ben Rimes

U. of Notre Dame Reports on Experiment to Replace Textbooks With iPads - Wired Campus -... - 7 views

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    Preliminary report on Notre Dame's iPad experimentation. Not definitive, and rather brief, but a decent window into what's happening in high-ed.
Vicki Davis

Esther Wojcicki: Give Yourself A Free University Education at University of the People - 1 views

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    University of the people, a site offering free degrees in business administration and computer science continues to gain momentum as leading the effort to "democratize education." Things are underfoot that will radically change the expensive landscape known as higher Ed. The bottom line is that universities without solid online platforms won't be ready for the changes they will need to made. Their greatest commodity will be excellent teachers who can now be beamed from one end of the planet to the other. This crazy upheaval in education is only beginning and the competition is no longer limited by geography.
Vicki Davis

Questioning the Future of the Open Student (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE - 1 views

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    Students need to be open and use open content, however, there are still questions that haven't been answered about open content that need to be addressed. How long will it take to bring these issues to the forefront? Will many higher ed institutions have to become irrelevant first? Do colleges realize that there are things they can do that will make them more attractive (intellectual property rights, for example.)
Lisa M Lane

Some faculty distressed by Pawlenty's online ed vision - USATODAY.com - 8 views

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    When Jon Stewart asked Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty last week for some examples of how he intended to administer "limited and effective" government, the Republican governor did not roll out boilerplate rhetoric on welfare or farm subsidies. Instead, he took square aim at traditional higher education. "Do you really think in 20 years somebody's going to put on their backpack, drive a half hour to the University of Minnesota from the suburbs, haul their keister across campus, and sit and listen to some boring person drone on about econ 101 or Spanish 101?" Pawlenty asked Stewart, host of "The Daily Show."
Ed Webb

Brainstorm: Junk Analysis of Higher Ed by the 'Times' - Chronicle.com - 0 views

  • This isn’t good for anyone’s education: The only virtue of the arrangement is its cheapness, and that cheapness hasn’t lowered tuition; it’s simply served to provide money pots for high-rolling administrators to spend on favored projects and the expansion of the business curriculum. It’s also created a need to expand the ranks of management to train and supervise the constantly-churning mass of student and other casual workers.
  • journalists are living the same permatemping as the faculty, under the same quality management gutting the public sphere under both Republicans and Democrats
  • four decades of student casualization
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  • What about Joel Westheimer, who they illegally fired for supporting the grad student union, despite having the support of his entire discipline? Or any of the grad students themselves, who are doing better analysis of their employment than Stimpson.
Kelly Faulkner

Resources | EDUCAUSE - 13 views

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    mostly for higher ed, but useful
Ed Webb

Do universities liberalise students? Why education should be taken seriously in politic... - 0 views

  • data at the individual level has repeatedly shown that having a degree level qualification is the strongest predictor of a Remain vote
  • UKIP’s support was concentrated among those with education levels below degree level, gaining 16% of the votes of this group in 2015. The Liberal Democrats, in contrast, have historically been better at securing the votes of the degree-educated section of the electorate. In 2010, the party secured one in three votes among this group and were the most popular choice of party for voters in this group.
  • Between 2010 and 2015 the Labour share of the vote among the degree educated rose while its share of those without degrees fell. A result was the move of (some of the) ‘not degree’ group to UKIP while the degree educated deserted the Liberal Democrats after the formation of the coalition government. It is important to stress this happened while Ed Miliband was Labour party leader and before the EU Referendum – this is neither a Corbyn nor a Brexit effect.
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  • the relationship between political values and voting behaviour. While the traditional ‘left-right’ value dimension which focuses on economic justice and power barely distinguishes Leave and Remain voters, there are much larger differences according to ‘cultural’ values which relate to issues of authority, tolerance, and the rule of law.
  • This suggests that there is something specific about the experience of higher education which produces more liberal values. This appears to be something which is independent of the subject of study
  • A more fruitful line of enquiry is to seek a deeper understanding of the connections between education and values: to understand how education liberalises
Ed Webb

The Progressive Stack and Standing for Inclusive Teaching - The Tattooed Professor - 2 views

  • There are two fundamental truths about Inclusive Pedagogy: it is an eminently desirable set of practices for teaching in higher ed, and it is an eminently difficult set of practices for teaching in higher ed
  • Put simply, the Progressive Stack is a method of ensuring that voices that are often submerged, discounted, or excluded from traditional classroom discussions get a chance to be heard
  • There are personal, cultural, learning, and social reasons people don’t speak up in class.  Students of color and women of all races, introverts, the non-conventional thinkers, those from poor previous educational backgrounds, returning or “nontraditional students,” and those from cultures where speaking out is considered rude not participatory are all likely to be silent in a class where collaboration by difference is not structured as a principle of pedagogy and organization and design.   Who loses?  Everyone.  Arguments that are smart and valuable and can change a whole conversation get lost in silence and, sometimes, shame.  When that happens, we don’t really have discussion or collaboration.  We have group think–and that is why we all lose.
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  • Taking “stack” just means keeping a list of people who wish to participate—offer a question or comment—during the Q & A. Rather than anxiously waving your hand around and wondering if you’ll be called on, if you would like to participate, signal to me in some way (a gesture, a dance move, a traditional hand-in-the-air, meaningful eye contact, etc.) and I will add you to the list. However, we’re not just going to take stack, we are going to take progressive stack in an effort to foreground voices that are typically silenced in dominant culture. According to Justine and Zoë, two self-identified transwomen who were active in the movement, progressive stack means that “if you self-identify as trans, queer, a person of color, female, or as a member of any marginalized group you’re given priority on the list of people who want to speak – the stack. The most oppressed get to speak first.” As I take stack, I will also do my best to bump marginalized voices and those who haven’t yet had a chance to participate to the top.
  • As with any tool that confronts the effects of privilege and power head-on, the Progressive Stack makes some people uncomfortable
  • In a complete social and historical vacuum, level-playing-field equality is an excellent proposition. But in the actual lived world of our history, experiences, and interactions the idea of treating everyone uniformly “regardless of gender” or without “seeing color” simply strengthens already-entrenched inequalities
  • As the increasing number of targeted online harassment campaigns has shown us, once a concept or issue has traveled through the right-wing Outrage-Distortion Complex, there is little hope of reclaiming rational discussion. It’s been permanently stained. One might dismiss the frothing lamentations of white-genocide-via-classroom-pedagogy that bubble up from a subreddit, but the insidious trope of “reverse racism” has put its thumb on the scale enough to have distorted the conversation around the Progressive Stack
  • because the Progressive Stack calls attention to existing structures of inequality by replacing them with another structure entirely, it forces those of us who identify as white (and, particularly, male) to confront the ways in which we have been complicit in maintaining inequality
  • When you’re accustomed to privilege, even the suggestion of equality will feel like oppression
  • google “progressive stack.” Almost every result you get will take you to the fever swamps of right-wing Reddit and warmed-over piles of gamergate droppings. The common denominator is that “Progressive Stack” is simply anti-white “racism” dressed in fancy intellectual clothes
  • Giving up power, it turns out, is hard for some people. Especially when that power has been historically-constructed to be so pervasive as to render it unquestioned and indeed unseen in its hegemonic sway. Pierre Bourdieu calls this symbolic power: “For symbolic power is that invisible power which can be exercised only with the complicity of those who do not want to know that they are subject to it or even that they themselves exercise it”
  • It means there will be times when people who are not accustomed to their identity being a source of discomfort and exclusion will have to learn–in a managed and intentional space–what that feels like.
  • there will be friction and messiness and uncomfortable adjustments, because any education worth the name involves friction and messiness and uncomfortable adjustments
Ed Webb

Admission Officials' Tweets Fall on Deaf Ears - Wired Campus - The Chronicle of Higher ... - 3 views

  • Evidence has shown that teenagers rely on college visits and Web sites to learn about colleges, rather than social-media outlets. When it comes to Twitter, students are barely on the site at all, let alone for college research purposes.
  • Rebecca Whitehead, assistant director of campus visits and engagements at Winthrop University, maintains the admissions office’s Twitter account, which currently has 373 followers. She says she uses it largely to connect with other higher-education professionals, to find out about upcoming events or research.
Ben Rimes

The current state of Mac use in higher education - 5 views

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    TUAW blog post about the resurgence of Apple in the high education market. Information gathered from surveys at large institutions (10,000+ students).
Ben Rimes

How To Get Students To Stop Using Their Cellphones In Class : NPR Ed : NPR - 14 views

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    Good look at how one professor has managed to turn cell phone distractions into positive participation with the help of student's input in the classroom. Sometimes the phones just need to go away.
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