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The following are several specific examples of what the open standards and services must enable to make this new architecture for learning a reality: Digital content and applications must be easily, quickly (ideally, within a few minutes versus months), and seamlessly integrated into any platform that supports a set of vendor-neutral open standards and, importantly, are not trapped inside a single platform. User, course, and context information must be synchronized among selected applications so that neither the manual transfer of information nor multiple logins to different applications are required—thus making set-up and use of new software much easier for all concerned. Data that describes usage, activities, and outcomes must flow from learning content apps to the enterprise system of record, learning platforms, and analytics platforms. Systems, services, and tools must be virtualized and must increasingly move toward the elastic computing model that enables sharing scenarios across systems or other federations of users.Imagine what would happen if CIOs could safely add services and applications in a matter of days instead of months, if instructors could seamlessly combine these tools into their courses with one click, and if analytics data would begin to flow immediately thereafter. This new IT architecture would revolutionize the support for academic technology in the same way that the app movement has revolutionized what is available on mobile devices. A key difference with the new IT architecture, however, is that these educational apps are built using standards adopted and managed by the educational community and would be connected into the educational enterprise IT infrastructure.

The rise of the MOOC illustrates how important innovations often happen outside of established channels: by faculty who, interested in innovation, put together their own technology solutions outside their college or university. This should be a wake-up call for the higher education community to do better. Enterprise IT organizations need to enable such innovation, not stand in its way.

test-based accountability is “doing untold damage to the profession of teaching.”

The main thing that works is treating teaching as a profession, and teachers as professionals.

That means that teachers are as well paid as other professionals, that they have a career ladder, that they go to elite schools where they learn their craft, and that they are among the top quartile of college graduates instead of the bottom quartile.

When I suggested that American cities couldn’t afford to pay teachers the way we pay engineers or lawyers, Tucker scoffed. With rare exception, he said, the cost per pupil in the places with the best educational systems is less than the American system, even though their teachers are far better paid. “They are not spending more money; they are spending money differently,” he said.

Tucker would not abolish tests, but he would have fewer of them.

And they would have a different purpose: In the high-performing countries, the tests exist to hold the students accountable, rather than the teachers.

When a school falls short, instead of looking to fire teachers, the high-performing countries “use the data to decide which schools will receive visits from teams of expert school inspectors. These inspectors are highly regarded educators.”

Tucker envisions the same kind of accountability for teachers as exists for, say, lawyers in a firm — where it is peers holding each other accountable rather than some outside force. People who don’t pull their own weight are asked to leave. The ethos is that people help each other to become better for the good of the firm. Those who successfully rise through the ranks are rewarded with higher pay and status.

Would the teachers’ unions go along with such a scheme? The unions would certainly have to shed some of the things they now have, such as control of work rules.

fixation with test-based accountability

every other successful country has

Micro-Colleges are any form of concentrated post-secondary education oriented around the minimum entry point into a particular profession. With literally millions of people needing to shift careers every year, and the long drawn out cycles of traditional colleges being a poor solution for time-crunched rank-and-file displaced workers, we are seeing a massive new opportunity arising for short-term, pre-apprenticeship training.  Many Micro-Colleges will fall into the category we often refer to as vocational training, a term poorly suited for the professional craftsmen, artisans, and technicians they will be producing. Since status and credentialing are critical elements of every career choice, any training producing specialized experts will need to come with industry-recognized certifications and titles.

The Micro-College approach to training brewmasters would be an intense 2-4 month training program with a designated apprenticeship period learning on the job.

Since my coursework happened in the pre-computer era, most of the skills I needed after computers were introduced were primarily self-taught.

Perhaps the most valuable courses with long-term relevance were classes in writing, English, speech, art, design, and the special research projects that forced me to find my own answers and write a final report. The art helped me understand that engineering was a form of creative expression.

If the school were tied to an industry-specific apprenticeship program with a near-perfect handoff between academia and real-world work happening inside the industry, what would a super-lean engineering program like this look like?

It’s easy to imagine that as traditional colleges see their student base decline, many will begin to partner, merge, and purchase fledgling Micro-Colleges and begin incorporating these new areas of study into their own catalog of course offerings. 

Since existing colleges bring with them credit-granting accreditation, along with status, credibility, and the ability to offer student loans, in-house Micro-Colleges will likely become a rapidly growing part of campus life. Many colleges will find the Micro-College niche they take on to be the key differentiator between them and other schools.  Using the school-within-a-school approach, core Micro-College programs will become feeder mechanisms for additional types of credentialing.

I assume that individuals will enrol in this course to pursue a personal need/ambition

Both these examples illustrate how students are taking control of their learning with the result that many currently perceived novices are actually becoming silent experts in how, where, and by whom they want to be educated (Alexander, 2003; Schmidt et al., 2009, on the emergence of peer-to-peer interaction)