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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

In 2014 the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) identified three key motivators for faculty use of IT: (1) evidence of benefit to students, (2) course release time, and (3) confidence the technology will work.1

In particular, we found that faculty use of the grade center, which ECAR found that students value more than any LMS function,2 is positively related to student outcomes.

To frame our discussion, consider the following: If you could predict with 100 percent accuracy which students would succeed or fail — in classes, programs, or graduation — what would you do to intervene and change the predicted outcome? Or as Mike Sharkey, VP of Analytics at Blackboard, often says, "If you're a dog chasing a car, what would you actually do if you caught it?"

online competency-based education stands out as the innovation most likely to disrupt higher education.

As traditional institutions struggle to innovate from within and other education technology vendors attempt to plug and play into the existing system, online competency-based providers release learning from the constraints of the academy. By breaking down learning into competencies—not by courses or even subject matter—these providers can cost-effectively combine modules of learning into pathways that are agile and adaptable to the changing labor market.

The fusion of modularization with mastery-based learning is the key to understanding how these providers can build a multitude of stackable credentials or programs for a wide variety of industries, scale them, and simultaneously drive down the cost of educating students for the opportunities at hand. These programs target a growing set of students who are looking for a different value proposition from higher education—one that centers on targeted and specific learning outcomes, tailored support, as well as identifiable skillsets that are portable and meaningful to employers.

In this new world, providing students smarter pathways into and through higher education will be critical. All learning should count. Everyone should know what degrees represent so they can be put to use most effectively, whether it’s for employment or further education, and everyone should know the next step they need to take to move toward their personal goals.

At its root, we need to rethink and reimagine the entire premise of higher education. We must ask ourselves what type of product we want to be sold and produced by the nation’s colleges and universities and other providers of postsecondary learning.

“Many of those who have lived and learned in colleges as we know them cherish their memory and institutions,” Carey writes, “But the way we know them is not the only way they can be. Our lifetimes will see the birth of a better, higher learning.”[11]