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RT COLLABORATIVE NETWORKS ENHANCED WORKFLOW   x—–x—–x—–x—–x Designed by our Guest Blogger, Arun Pradhan Arun Pradhan has over 17 years’ experience in digital and blended learning. He currently works as a senior Learning & Performance consultant at DeakinPrime, helping to deliver 70:20:10 inspired solutions for some of Australia’s largest telcos, retailers, banks and insurers. In his spare time Arun blogs about learning, performance and 70:20:10 solutions at Design4Performance. x—–x—–x—–x—–x Copyright of posts written by our Guest Bloggers are their own. Published on 19-May-2016   Tin Can API & the Future of E-Learning

the "4 Rs" that have emerged as the dominant metrics in higher education: Rankings Research Real Estate Rah! (Sports)

as Purdue University President Mitch Daniels has said: "Higher education has to get past the 'take our word for it' era. Increasingly, people aren't."2

the market is no longer viewing the 4 Rs as proxies of excellence.

Advocates say competency-based ed puts the focus on students’ capabilities rather than how many hours per week they spend in the classroom. The benefit for employers, they say, is that prospective employees can be judged more easily, based on their demonstrated competencies rather than guessing how their grades will translate to real-world work. By

In September, an audit by the department’s Office of Inspector General found that the department was not adequately addressing the risks posed by competency-based/direct assessment programs, increasing the likelihood that schools would create programs that didn’t meet criteria to receive Title IV federal financial aid.

Learner agency is characterized by a pedagogy that builds on the passions of learners and also has real world relevance. We are seeing numerous examples of this in our schools, and the school structure is also beginning to change to accommodate this transition. Schools are adopting more flexible schedules, new and more personalized methods of reporting are being adopted, and examples of hands-on experiences from outdoor learning to community business partnerships are flourishing. Many do see learner agency as being key to the future of schooling.

Kids are learning many STEM skills, but it's not happening in schools.

Wozniak experienced inspiration from his high school electronics teacher, who provided foundational instruction that set him on a path of self-directed learning which would revolutionize personal computing.

what's not to like about innovation?

Yet as 2014 churns on, the glow is wearing off. Today, innovation is increasingly conflated with hype, disruption for disruption's sake, and outsourcing laced with a dose of austerity-driven downsizing. Call it innovation fatigue.

Audrey Watters has noted the essentially apocalyptic flavor of what she describes as "the myth and the millennialism of disruptive innovation" — mythic in the sense that it prophesies "the destruction of the old and the ascension of the new" and constitutes a narrative that "has been widely accepted as unassailably true." When applied to education, disruptive innovation promises nothing less than "the end of school as we know it."

Children's brains need to acquire memory associations that link pleasure with learning

learning,

creating.

The “Amazon effect”

Even in businesses that are not direct competitors of Amazon, such as industrial conglomerates, aerospace companies and defense contractors, we regularly hear about changing customer expectations, shaped by the new realities of the consumer space, influencing requirements.

While commercial businesses are clearly experiencing the changes brought about by the “Amazon effect,” there are many other sectors of the economy that are being impacted as well. For instance, higher education is beginning to reevaluate its own value propositions and business models in light of changing customer expectations, new budgetary realities and the explosion in online learning.

With a number of leading for-profits beset by legal and financial woes, enrollment in online education leveling off, and MOOCs off the front pages, one might reasonably conclude that the threats to higher ed posed by what was hailed as “disruptive innovation” have abated. 

No so. At this point, institutions are disrupting themselves from the inside out, not waiting for the sky to fall. True disruption occurs when existing institutions begin to embrace the forces of transformation.

The innovations taking place may not seem to be as dramatic as those that loomed in 2012, but the consequences are likely be even more far-reaching, challenging established business and staffing models.

David Schejba

dean of continuing education, outreach and e-learning at the University of Wisconsin-Extension

his career has been driven by a desire to make education flexible, affordable and accessible for working adults, some of whom have degrees and are looking for new skills, some of whom have no prior postsecondary experience, but all of whom have real commitments outside of schooling

They need continuous, just-in-time support that includes professional development, mentors, and informal collaborations.

roughly half say that lack of training is one of the biggest barriers to incorporating technology into their teaching.

Institutions responsible for pre-service and in-service professional development for educators should focus explicitly on ensuring all educators are capable of selecting, evaluating, and using appropriate technologies and resources to create experiences that advance student engagement and learning. They also should pay special care to make certain that educators understand the privacy and security concerns associated with technology.

The question is not how to help an adult student engage in a university-designed learning community; it’s how institutions can help students incorporate quality educational experiences and opportunities into their existing lives.

First, the need for citizens with postsecondary education could not be higher. From the White House to the Lumina Foundation, national calls are for 60 percent of the U.S. population to have a postsecondary degree by the year 2025. Currently, just 41 percent of the population has such a degree. This means we need to increase the number of graduates by about 20 percent, or almost 64 million more U.S. citizens, in the next ten years. Given that about 18 million people in the entire U.S. are seeking any kind of post-secondary education now,and the average graduation rate is less than 50 percent in six years, we simply can’t “get there” for the U.S. population to reach 60 percent with college degrees in ten years if we don’t attract more students and expand the variety of educational models that we offer people.[2]

Second, most students seeking higher education, by far, are “non-traditional” “degree completers:” adults 25 years and older, with some college and no degree, working part or full time, often with family.[3] In my state of Wisconsin, recent census data indicate that 21 percent of our state (or over 800,000 adults) fits this description. Contrast that with the fact that Wisconsin only has about 60,000 college students who are “traditional” (18 to 24, attending full time, and living in or around a university).[4]

this year's survey results point to technology as a way to increase students' participation in class and to more efficiently complete assigned work or digest course materials. Students identified other ways to improve their learning experience, including: 61% of students said that homework that is more interactive, containing elements such as video, would improve learning 48% of students said their learning would be enhanced by technology that helps them collaborate digitally with students from their class, or from other schools 61% cited the ability to exchange instant feedback with professors as something that would improve learning 55% said digital learning that personalizes their learning experience (i.e. gives teachers the ability to track student progress in real-time) would be useful

As for the actual devices students use for their studies, laptop ownership remains steady at 90% of survey respondents for 2014 and 91% for 2015, while students owning smartphones and those owning iPads or tablets both increased by 7 percentage points in 2015 vs. the previous year. The number of surveyed students owning smartphones increased from 83% in 2014 to 90% in 2015 and tablet ownership increased from 43% in 2014 to 50% in 2015.

Students' expectation for access to technology in higher education continues to increase, as does the overall cost of receiving a college degree. Accordingly, the financial burden of tuition continues to be a major concern among college students, with 81% of those surveyed agreeing that over the next 10 years, fewer students will go to college because it is too expensive. For those who do pursue a degree, the cost of doing so is a long-term commitment: 54% of students surveyed this year are worried they won't be able to pay off their college loans before they are 50, in contrast to 44% of students who responded similarly to this statement in 2014

MOOC platform providers are also “discovering” that students want to pay for credentials and not learning experiences. This means that many of those companies are tying their fortunes to the issuing of certificates and badge-like credentials. This business model will succeed as long as MOOCs are a tiny fraction of their partner university’s offerings but will run into significant headwinds once adoption grows and they compete more directly with the core institutional financial models.

“scalable educational experiences.”

bally connected and mixed-modality learning communities can be enhanced and accelerated by MOOC platforms and, more importantly, new thinking. Such possibilities more accurately reflect the thinking of the earliest MOOC pioneers, George Siemens and Steven Downes. These new possibilities will take advantage of the best of what we can do in physical and virtual spaces. Expect to see new learning genres and expanded access to the deep knowledge generated by our great universities.

On Tuesday the department announced a new round of its “experimental sites” initiative, which waives certain rules for federal aid programs so institutions can test new approaches without losing their aid eligibility. Many colleges may ramp up their experiments with competency-based programs -- and sources said more than 350 institutions currently offer or are seeking to create such degree tracks.

the federal program could help lay the groundwork for regulation and legislation that is better-suited to competency-based learning.

Supporters of competency-based education called the experimental sites announcement a big win.

The government should learn from its lessons and shift from funding based on inputs to focusing on incentivizing the outcomes it would like to see from higher education.

A better path forward would be for the federal government to encourage a variety of experiments over the coming years that try out different approaches in a controlled way, all while releasing programs from the current input-based constraints to learn what works, in what combinations and circumstances, and what are the unintended consequences.

A key tenet of all the efforts is that employers, along with students, are likely best positioned to determine program quality—and programs that align their assessments to the competencies employers need will likely be in a strong place.