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"Beware: Alternative Certification Is Coming January 23, 2012, 4:42 pm By Richard Vedder The announcement of agreements between Burck Smith's StraighterLine and the Education Testing Service (ETS) and the Council on Aid to Education (CAE) to provide competency test materials to students online is potentially very important, along with several other recent developments. A little economics explains why this is so. In the first week of beginning economics courses, professors usually make this fundamental point: If the price of something rises a lot, people look for substitutes. Resources (dollars) are scarce, and individuals want to make the best use of them. They "maximize their utility" by shifting away from high-priced good or service A to lower-priced good B. With regards to colleges, consumers typically have believed that there are no good substitutes-the only way a person can certify to potential employers that she/he is pretty bright, well educated, good at communicating, disciplined, etc., is by presenting a bachelor's degree diploma. College graduates typically have these positive attributes more than others, so degrees serve as an important signaling device to employers, lowering the costs of learning about the traits of the applicant. Because of the lack of good substitutes, colleges face little outside competition and can raise prices more, given their quasi-monopoly status. As college costs rise, however, people are asking: Aren't there cheaper ways of certifying competence and skills to employers? Employers like the current system, because the huge (often over $100,000) cost of demonstrating competency is borne by the student, not by them. Employers seemingly have little incentive to look for alternative certification. That is why reformers like me cannot get employer organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to take alternative certification seriously. But if companies can find good employees with high-school diplomas who have dem

March 18, 2012 A Boom Time for Education Start-Ups Despite recession investors see technology companies' 'Internet moment' By Nick DeSantis Harsh economic realities mean trouble for college leaders. But where administrators perceive an impending crisis, investors increasingly see opportunity. In recent years, venture capitalists have poured millions into education-technology start-ups, trying to cash in on a market they see as ripe for a digital makeover. And lately, those wagers have been getting bigger. Investments in education-technology companies nationwide tripled in the last decade, shooting up to $429-million in 2011 from $146-million in 2002, according to the Na­tional Venture Capital Association. The boom really took off in 2009, when venture capitalists pushed $150-million more into education-technology firms than they did in the previous year, even as the economy sank into recession. "The investing community believes that the Internet is hitting edu­cation, that education is having its Internet moment," said Jose Ferreira, founder of the interactive-learning company Knewton. Last year Mr. Ferreira's company scored a $33-million investment of its own in one of the biggest deals of the year. Enlarge Image A Boom Time for Education Start-Ups 2 Mark Abramson for The Chronicle Huge advances in computing power at colleges have created a fertile ground for companies offering technology services, like the computer-learning group Knewton (above), where staff members recently gathered for a meeting. The scramble to make bets on a tech-infused college revolution has led to so many new companies that even Mr. Ferreira can't keep track. Udacity, Udemy, and University­Now all have plans to revolutionize online learning. There's the Coursebook, a young online-learning start-up. And Coursekit, a nascent challenger to Blackboard in the market for learning-management software. And Courseload, the Indiana-based digital-textbook enterprise. And CourseRank, the cl

"MITx: 3 Cheers and 3 Questions December 19, 2011 - 8:00pm By Joshua Kim MITx is very big news. For a great overview of MIT's plans, check out Audrey Watters' excellent writeup MITx: The Next Chapter for University Credentialing? The MIT student paper The Tech also has a great article. The MIT press release and accompanying FAQ also go into detail about MITx. 3 Cheers and 3 Questions for MITx: Cheer 1 - Leadership: All of us in higher ed should take a moment to recognize and commend MIT for the institutions continued bold leadership in higher education and the open education movement. The wonderful thing about higher ed is that when one institution innovates it grows the pie for all of us - we all benefit. Cheer 2 - Risk Taking: What I love most about MITx is MIT leaders' willingness to learn as they go. Rather than endlessly talk about the next innovation that will make it possible to offer high quality postsecondary education to large numbers of people at affordable prices, MIT is actually doing something. I have no doubt that the MITx model will change and morph over time, but the only way to figure this out is to run lots of experiments and be willing to fail, learn, and evolve. Cheer 3 - Recruiting: A program like MITx raises my opinion of MIT as a parent (my kids launch in 2015 and 2017), potential donor and even a potential employee. The market for higher ed talent is worldwide, and the best people are motivated by mission and culture. MITx is a clear stake in the ground about MIT's values. Question 1 - Platform?: From what I understand from the articles, MITx will run on a new platform that MIT is developing on its own, and that will be made open source. Is this a totally new platform? Are existing open source LMS platforms like Sakai or Moodle utilized at all? What platforms will be utilized for course videos? Again, a new platform, or an existing open source lecture capture and video management platform like OpenCast? Question 2 - Partnersh

" MIT Expands 'Open' Courses, Adds Completion Certificates December 19, 2011 - 4:28am The Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- which pioneered the idea of making course materials free online -- today announced a major expansion of the idea, with the creation of MITx, which will provide for interaction among students, assessment and the awarding of certificates of completion to students who have no connection to MIT. MIT is also starting a major initiative -- led by Provost L. Rafael Reif -- to study online teaching and learning. The first course through MITx is expected this spring. While the institute will not charge for the courses, it will charge what it calls "a modest fee" for the assessment that would lead to a credential. The credential will be awarded by MITx and will not constitute MIT credit. The university also plans to continue MIT OpenCourseWare, the program through which it makes course materials available online. An FAQ from MIT offers more details on the new program. While MIT has been widely praised for OpenCourseWare, much of the attention in the last year from the "open" educational movement has shifted to programs like the Khan Academy (through which there is direct instruction provided, if not yet assessment) and an initiative at Stanford University that makes courses available -- courses for which some German universities are providing academic credit. The new initiative would appear to provide some of the features (instruction such as offered by Khan, and certification that some are creating for the Stanford courses) that have been lacking in OpenCourseWare. 35 Disqus Like Dislike Login Add New Comment Image Real-time updating is enabled. (Pause) Showing 1 comment william czander In 1997, Peter Drucker made a profound prediction he predicted that in 30 years the mortar and brick university campuses would be driven out of existence by their inexorable tuition, He did not predict the financi

"January 23, 2012 Invisible Gorillas Are Everywhere By William Pannapacker By now most everyone has heard about an experiment that goes something like this: Students dressed in black or white bounce a ball back and forth, and observers are asked to keep track of the bounces to team members in white shirts. While that's happening, another student dressed in a gorilla suit wanders into their midst, looks around, thumps his chest, then walks off, apparently unseen by most observers because they were so focused on the bouncing ball. Voilà: attention blindness. The invisible-gorilla experiment is featured in Cathy Davidson's new book, Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn (Viking, 2011). Davidson is a founder of a nearly 7,000-member organization called Hastac, or the Humanities, Arts, Sciences, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, that was started in 2002 to promote the use of digital technology in academe. It is closely affiliated with the digital humanities and reflects that movement's emphasis on collaboration among academics, technologists, publishers, and librarians. Last month I attended Hastac's fifth conference, held at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Davidson's keynote lecture emphasized that many of our educational practices are not supported by what we know about human cognition. At one point, she asked members of the audience to answer a question: "What three things do students need to know in this century?" Without further prompting, everyone started writing down answers, as if taking a test. While we listed familiar concepts such as "information literacy" and "creativity," no one questioned the process of working silently and alone. And noticing that invisible gorilla was the real point of the exercise. Most of us are, presumably, the products of compulsory educational practices that were developed during the Industrial Revolution. And the way most of us teach is a relic of the s

"Pulling for Better E-Textbook Prices January 18, 2012 - 4:50am By Steve Kolowich In a session at the 2011 Educause conference in October, Bradley Wheeler, the chief information officer at Indiana University, issued a challenge to his colleagues. Unless universities assert their power as customers, the vendors that sell them products and services will continue squeezing those institutions for cash while dictating the terms under which they go digital. That conversation revolved around expensive, institution-level investments such as learning-management platforms and enterprise resource planning software. Now Wheeler and his colleagues are looking to apply the same principles of "aggregated demand" to help students save money on electronic textbooks. Internet2, a consortium of 221 colleges and universities, which last year brokered landmark deals with Box.com and Hewlett-Packard that gave its members discounts on cloud computing services, announced today that it had entered into a contract with McGraw-Hill, a major textbook publisher, aimed at creating similar discounts for students on digital course materials. Students have less ability than universities to pool their power as consumers, says Wheeler. The ascendance of e-textbooks means, among other things, that the secondary market for used books -- the one area where students can exercise power over textbook pricing -- could soon disappear. Universities would do well by their students to exercise leverage on their students' behalf, Wheeler says. "If somebody [does not] speak up for students in the move from print to digital, the students [are] going to get killed," he says. Beginning this month, five major universities - the University of Wisconsin at Madison, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, the University of Virginia, Cornell University, and the University of California at Berkeley -- will start a pilot program in which certain courses will use only electronic texts. The texts will be a

"Tue, Jan. 31, 2012, 3:01 AM Global contest will lead to help during heart attacks By Marie McCullough Inquirer Staff Writer SEPTA station manager Garry Deans saved a man´s life this month because he knew the location of an AED. MICHAEL S. WIRTZ / Staff Photographer SEPTA station manager Garry Deans saved a man's life this month because he knew the location of an AED. Do you know where the nearest defibrillator is located? Yes No View results Post a comment RELATED STORIES Join the MyHeartMap challenge PHILLY.COM's TOP FIVE PICKS Mayor Nutter outraged at suspect's bail Media misled about whereabouts of Santorum daughter Parents: Disabled daughter's transplant could happen Where's the school choice, Chaput? Contest's 1st clue: Find the pig Around the world, the hunt is on for thousands of lifesaving portable medical devices that are hanging in public places - in Philadelphia. Why would someone in, say, Abu Dhabi care about finding devices in Philadelphia? Because a University of Pennsylvania project to map the locations of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) throughout the city has mushroomed into a global "crowdsourcing" competition fueled by the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, smartphones - and the chance to win cash prizes up to $10,000. The ultimate prize, of course, will be saving the lives of cardiac-arrest victims. Penn plans to create an interactive online AED registry that will, for the first time, enable the city's 911 system, emergency responders - and any bystander with a phone - to quickly locate an AED. Beginning Tuesday, participants in Philadelphia will use a free app downloaded to their phones to transmit photos and locations of the city's estimated 5,000 AEDs. These backpack-size machines can assess a cardiac-arrest victim and, if appropriate, deliver an electric shock to restart the heart. Studies show even sixth graders can follow an AED's step-by-step audio directions. But in this age of cyber collaboration, the contest, called "

"A recent Inside Higher Ed article discussed the experimental work of Duke University's Cathy Davidson, involving students grading themselves. According to Davidson, when students are held responsible for assessing their own - and their peers' - writing performances and products, they learn to take more responsibility for their own learning, and consequently apply themselves much more energetically to their work. In response, Leonard Cassuto of Fordham University points to the fact that at least 15 of Davidson's 16 students in this experiment earned As for the course. Cassuto sees that as a problem and argues that professors need to be the ones saying "You did good work, but not the best in the class." I think I may have somewhat of a compromise when it comes to assessing student written work. I was in the same situation as many writing instructors for years. Students write, write, write. Then I would spend about five minutes per page supplying written commentary individually on each of their papers. But about a year ago I started doing things differently. And I don't plan on going back any time soon."

"June 13, 2010, 08:00 PM ET Pennsylvania's 14-Campus State System to Explore Shared Degrees Pennsylvania's State System of Higher Education is considering pilot distance-learning, collaborative-degree programs across its 14 campuses in fields that are underenrolled on individual campuses, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. System leaders will present a plan to the faculty union on Monday that is expected to recommend such "shared programs" in areas like physics and foreign languages. Karen Ball, the system's vice chancellor for external relations, said officials would not identify the specific programs in the proposal before the faculty briefing."

Can You Hear Me Now? August 19, 2010 That is the logic Georgia Gwinnett College employed when it decided to offer its more than 300 full- and part-time faculty members cell phones and encouraged them to respond to any calls or texts from students within 24 hours. Under the program, professors are offered a state-of-the-art smartphone and a Sprint data plan that includes the most sophisticated wireless Internet coverage. It is part of a several-tier effort by Georgia Gwinnett - a public, four-year, noncompetitive-admissions college founded in 2005 - to defy the historically low retention rates typical of colleges that set such a modest bar for admission (Georgia Gwinnett admits any Georgia high school graduate). And so far, they say, it is working. The retention rate for returning sophomores at Georgia Gwinnett stands at 75 percent. That is about double the average rate for noncompetitive-admissions colleges in Georgia, according to Tom Mundie, dean of the school of science and technology at Georgia Gwinnett, and on par with many public institutions that have competitive admissions. In engagement surveys, Mundie says, students have reported "feeling that faculty care about and are accessible to them." These plaudits and retention numbers are not driven solely by invitations to call or text professors and expect a reasonably swift response, Mundie says. Other aspects of the college's retention effort probably contribute as well, including small class sizes and a mentoring program that arranges for professors to advise students on academic, career, and personal matters. But professors and administrators at the college seem to believe there is a substantial correlation between the cell phone program and the young institution's impressive retention numbers -- enough that the college, which has grown its student body and faculty by leaps and bounds since its founding five years ago, is preparing to spend $350,000 on faculty cell phones and data

"Holding Presidents Accountable for Learning September 23, 2010 In an uncommon strategy to improve graduation and retention rates, the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia summoned the presidents of its 35 colleges and universities, one by one, to account for problems at their institutions and present three-year plans outlining how they hope to boost the measures of student success. The systemwide challenge was issued earlier this year by Willis J. Potts, Jr., the straight-talking chairman of the Board of Regents and retired paper industry executive. "We have a funding system here in Georgia that financially rewards institutions based on [enrollment] growth," Potts said. "Having been in manufacturing, I know the factor that needs to be studied is what kind of finished product is coming out the other end. Less than 60 percent of the students in our system graduate within a six-year period. I know of no other process that would achieve 60 percent [success] and go out and brag about it." Reflecting on this, Potts said, he and his colleagues were driven to find out what was holding the system's institutions back. So they went straight to the top - at each institution."

A new project, unveiled at the Educause conference here today, plans to provide college students a similar experience on academic Web sites. It's called Sherpa, like the guides who lead climbers up Mount Everest. The goal of the software, developed by the South Orange County Community College District, is to mine data about students to guide them to courses, information, and services.

"October 6, 2010 How to Help Students Complete a Degree on Time By Jennifer Gonzalez Speakers at a conference that opened here (Baltimore) on Wednesday discussed policies and practices that states and colleges are using or considering to help more students complete an undergraduate degree or credential in a timely way. The conference, "Time to Completion: How States and Systems Are Tackling the Time Dilemma," was organized by two nonprofit organizations, Jobs for the Future and the Southern Regional Education Board, whose goals include broadening college access and making higher education more affordable. At the opening of the two-day event on Wednesday, officials with the Southern Regional Educational Board said they planned to start tracking the length of time it takes students in the organization's 16 member states to earn credits toward graduation. Officials with Jobs for the Future announced new online tools the group is putting together to help institutions, system officers, and policy makers better understand different aspects of time-to-completion issues."

"Push for Performance November 2, 2010 The Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board wants Gov. Rick Perry and the state legislature to adopt an outcomes-based funding formula for its community colleges and public universities next year. Faculty groups in the state, however, are dubious of the proposed changes and worry it could water down quality. As the completion agenda takes hold - spurred by President Obama's goal of the United States having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by 2020 - a number of states have introduced or are considering funding formulas that reward student completion, instead of simply student enrollment. Still, those few states that have adopted performance-based appropriation only let it constitute a small percentage of their higher education funding formula, usually around 5-10 percent. If the Texas plan goes forward, it would represent one of the more dramatic changes in funding formulas to encourage completion. Last week, the Texas board released a set of recommendations for such a funding model - one for the state's universities and another for its community and technical colleges. The board argues that introducing some outcomes-based funding is one of the important ways it can help Texas reach its Closing the Gaps goal of graduating 210,000 more students annually at all degree levels by 2015. The board wants 10 percent of the baseline funding formula for university undergraduates to "be based on measures of the award of bachelor's degrees at institutions." The remaining 90 percent of undergraduate funding, in addition to all graduate and professional student funding, would continue to be allocated based on enrollments. Several factors would be used to allocate the 10 percent, including the total number of bachelor's degrees awarded, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded in "critical fields" such as STEM and nursing, the number of bachelor's degrees awarded to "at-risk students"

November 5, 2010 71 Presidents Pledge to Improve Their Colleges' Teaching and Learning By David Glenn Making a public vow is a time-honored way to stick to one's commitments. If you tell your colleagues that you plan to stop smoking, you know that they'll smirk if they spot you lighting up six months later. In August, 40 American billionaires said they would give away at least half of their wealth. They, too, know that they'll be scorned if they fail to deliver. Now 71 college leaders have made some vows of their own. In a venture known as the Presidents' Alliance for Excellence in Student Learning and Accountability, they have promised to take specific steps to gather more evidence about student learning, to use that evidence to improve instruction, and to give the public more information about the quality of learning on their campuses. The 71 pledges, officially announced on Friday, are essentially a dare to accreditors, parents, and the news media: Come visit in two years, and if we haven't done these things, you can zing us."

Overview of Economic and Fiscal Dynamics 1. Tepid U.S. Growth for 2011 2. The great Recession's Corrosive Effects 3. A Turnaround in State Revenues But a Long Climb Back 4. State Budget Planning in a Pressure Cooker 5. No relief in the Fight Against the Cost-Shift in Who Pays for College 6. Moving Forward in the National Interest

"Call for 'Consumer Revolution' in Britain November 18, 2010 British students plan to launch a "consumer revolution" against a sector they see as unprepared for the consequences of marketization and high fees. The National Union of Students has demanded that sector-owned quasi-government entities be replaced by tough new regulators with the power to protect students from "collusion" on fee levels and to impose "genuine penalties" for malpractice and maladministration. With students saying that they have been let down by politicians and the "deafening silence" of most vice chancellors on the issue of the cuts facing the academy, Aaron Porter, the NUS president, said the union had no choice but to "completely change" its approach."

By Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U "Gemma and Eliana Singer are big iPhone fans. They love to explore the latest games, flip through photos, and watch YouTube videos while waiting at a restaurant, having their hair done, or between ballet and French lessons. But the Manhattan twins don't yet have their own phones, which is good, since they probably wouldn't be able to manage the monthly data plan: In November, they turned 3. When the Singer sisters were just 6 months old, they already preferred cell phones to almost any other toy, recalls their mom, Fiona Aboud Singer: "They loved to push the buttons and see it light up." The girls knew most of the alphabet by 18 months and are now starting to read, partly thanks to an iPhone app called First Words, which lets them move tiles along the screen to spell c-o-w and d-o-g. They sing along with the Old MacDonald app too, where they can move a bug-eyed cartoon sheep or rooster inside a corral, and they borrow Mom's tablet computer and photo-editing software for a 21st-century version of finger painting. "They just don't have that barrier that technology is hard or that they can't figure it out," Singer says. Gemma and Eliana belong to a generation that has never known a world without ubiquitous handheld and networked technology. American children now spend 7.5 hours a day absorbing and creating media -- as much time as they spend in school. Even more remarkably, they multitask across screens to cram 11 hours of content into those 7.5 hours. More and more of these activities are happening on smartphones equipped with audio, video, SMS, and hundreds of thousands of apps."

Organizational change can be a daunting prospect, but when broken down into manageable chunks the key factors of successful continuous process improvement can be applied. The U.S. Army confronts this issue all the time and part of their knowledge library outlines the critical success factors in planning and implementing such change. This process can readily be applied in higher education with just a bit of tailoring.

"Easing their way into awarding four-year degrees, some community colleges around the country have begun offering applied baccalaureate degrees with a technical, workforce-ready focus. Two-year colleges in Wisconsin, however, are lobbying the state system to let them offer a different kind of applied baccalaureate - one with a liberal arts focus and aimed at rural, place-bound adults. In June, the University of Wisconsin Colleges, the state's 13 associate-degree awarding institutions, plan to present a comprehensive proposal to the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents to introduce the bachelor of applied arts and sciences (B.A.A.S.) degree. If the proposal is approved by the board, the new degree program would be offered on a pilot basis, starting in the fall of 2011, at six of the system's two-year colleges in cooperation with six of the system's comprehensive universities. "