Author: Russ Poulin

The Audacity of MOOCS

By Russ Poulin

September 30, 2013

28 Comments

After last week’s blog posting from David Cillay, Richard Katz (former WCET Executive Council member) and I had a great discussion via email. I invited Richard to provide his viewpoint. Richard served 14 years as vice president of EDUCAUSE and was the founding director of the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR). Through Richard N. Katz & Associates, Mr. Katz also consults on strategy, technology, and performance and compliance management with governments, corporations, and colleges and universities worldwide. Thank you to Richard for moving the discussion forward.
Russ Poulin

I read David Cillay’s thoughtful blog encouraging a redirection of the lively conversation that swirls about us related to MOOCs. David is most certainly right. For better or for worse, MOOCs are the current darlings of the media. More important, they now dominate a great deal of the discussion about higher education among political leaders, regents, foundations, regulators, and others – including students and their parents!

Like David, we can wonder how to re-center the discussion on the deeper insights about online learning that we have won through two decades (or more) of hard work and lessons learned. This is surely valuable and even necessary, though we must exercise great care to avoid sounding like the “we-got-here-first” gang.

photo of news trucks with satellite feeds — The “news” will flock to the “big audacious goals” of MOOCs over the “no significant difference” aspirations of traditional online courses.

We rightly consider ourselves pioneers and innovators and – as such – we carry the burden of cheering on the next generation of innovators – even as we cringe. And there certainly will be cringing. MOOCs today remain in the stratosphere of Gartner’s hype cycle. Inevitably, they will either traverse the trough of disillusionment, or their blanched bones will provide teachable moments for their successors. It is too early to tell.

So Why Have MOOCs Monopolized the Conversation?
I’ll leave the debate about whether or how to redirect the conversation to others. Where I’d like to contribute is to pull a thread that arose out of my reading of David’s essay. The question that came to the forefront as I read and re-read this piece was “why?” Specifically, why have MOOCs captivated so many, so quickly, and so deeply. It seems to me that until and unless we understand why MOOCs have cornered the conversation, we will not know whether or not to re-direct that conversation, or how to re-direct it.

I can think of many reasons for this imbalance, but launching a quiver of arrows seems distracting. When I think deeply on it, I think the root ‘stolen thunder’ is the (mutual) mistaken belief that MOOCs and GOFOCs (good old-fashioned online courses) are solving the same problem. Easy mistake to make. It seems to me that while David is correctly notes that “not all online education is massive,” our understatement or outright failure to understand the centrality of both massiveness and openness in the educational policy debates surrounding MOOCs may consign us to important but secondary roles in an epochal change that is underway. MOOCs, in my opinion, while likely important, are merely catalysts of the changes ahead.

Audacious Goals Make MOOCs Newsworthy
MOOCs are not hot news because they showcase revolutionary technologies. They don’t.

MOOCs are not news because they are evincing better rates of course completion. They aren’t.

In my judgment, MOOCs now dominate the broad debate about higher education because they are focused on higher education’s two biggest problems.

First, the “massification” of instruction challenges traditional educators’ most cherished belief (and argument) that quality is unalterably bound up in intimate (face to face or virtual) interactions between students and teachers and with one another. The student-faculty ratio is a hugely weighted factor in any ranking of colleges and universities. If one can achieve quality – with mass – (note the Open U of the UK accomplished this using a different delivery paradigm) then one can directly attack the twin challenges of higher education accessibility and affordability. This, in a nutshell, is what Jim Collins called a “big, hairy, audacious goal.” Let’s call it a neat trick, if you can pull it off! What’s important here is that those of us who have worked to promote and develop traditional online learning have spent much of the past 20 years promoting the less audacious goal of having our work show “no significant difference”. Not a magical sound bite, even if – in 1980 – it was considered audacious by many. How do you talk about success? Is it “our courses are no better than …” or “our courses are no worse than.”? To accomplish the goal of demonstrating “no significant difference” we generally hewed to (and the performance data supported us) the belief that low (online) student-faculty ratios were an unmistakable marker of online course quality. In doing this, we also established that traditional online learning had no significant difference in cost to the taxpayer or tuition payer. In fact, if one fully loaded the costs of infrastructure, design, and so forth, there likely is a difference and we don’t want to talk about it.

Second, “openness” in the context of MOOCs is really code for nearly free to the consumer not the institution as David correctly reveals. The freemium business model of the MOOCs promises to shift the cost burden of learning to someone or somewhere else. While sustainability may be elusive, some very smart people are chasing it. And we have all become accustomed to free things on the internet that we used to pay dearly for. Between openness and massification, MOOCs are promising to deliver “Ivy caliber” lectures over a state-of-the-art (and improving) infrastructure, through private capital, and free to the student. Again, audacious goals. And newsworthy. Surely we must all agree that to the casual reader the prospect of a free Ivy League education must have the sex appeal of Cold Fusion-in-a-Box.

Audacity is defined as bold or insolent heedlessness of restraints, as of those imposed by prudence, propriety, or convention. Audacity, in my experience, is not a common part of the gene set that comprises a lifelong higher education faculty or staff member. Maybe it needs to be. I shook my first to the heavens when Google announced that it would scan the collections of our great research libraries. And monetize them! For years I had argued that this is exactly what should be done – and that we should do it. Somehow we do not have the audacity, the discipline, the courage, or some other quality that we need. And maybe that’s okay. Stanford’s leadership has demonstrated again and again the benefits of turning our ideas over to others who understand better than we, how to commercialize them.

Will MOOCs usher in a revolution? I don’t know. My guess is that they will secure a valuable niche and will ultimately be socialized by our institutions precisely because they do lower the cost of instruction. And as a graduate of 3 large public universities, I for one am prepared to believe that they will lower the cost of those courses that for me had 300, 400, 500 or more students. I can imagine what Plato might have to say about some of the on-ground lectures that MOOCs hope to replace. And recall that Plato warned us of the educational erosion that would happen were we to allow the insertion of writing into the learning experience!

Will MOOCs substitute for a seminar at Amherst or Williams? Not likely. Nor do a great many of our ‘traditional’ offerings — online or on-ground. Again, higher education is today solving a different problem. Our state and national leaders know that our competitiveness depends on a highly educated work force. Today – and perhaps forever – we cannot afford to make a higher education the public good it was – or should be. We as a community must really begin to put our shoulders to the wheel to drive the cost of education down so that this education can be available and accessible to anyone who can benefit from it. I think that this needs to become an obsession – one that permits or even encourages us to challenge things we have come to hold sacred.

They are our Children. We Need to Nurture Them.
In the end, while we love our institutions, we need to love our students more. The role of online education is secure and there is likely a real and meaningful place for MOOCs. We need to be the ones to help our institutions find that place. Of course we need to stand for quality and we need to root out schlock wherever we find it. But experiments do fail and we need to learn from them, not shut them down. And our colleagues who are making the MOOCs and making the news? They are in fact our colleagues and not our competitors. We need to be the bridge to them and if we succeed, we will accomplish re-framing the dialog as David rightly hopes we should.

President
Richard N. Katz & Associates
richard.n.katz@gmail.com

Photo credit: Morgue File

Competency-based Education, Cost of Instruction, Credentials, MOOC, Open Educational Resources, Outcomes, Research

Practice

It’s Time to Redirect the Conversation about MOOCs

By Russ Poulin

September 26, 2013

26 Comments

So many exciting things are happening in higher education these days, it could make a guy’s hair fall out (see my photo at the bottom of this post). Most of the headlines have been about “massive” education and the stories may have left some people confused, or even a little worried.

Let’s look past the hype—and the hyperbole—and focus on the central question we should ask about any educational innovation: Are MOOCs about a better educational experience for students? Or are they about efficiency and cost savings? Taken independently either is good and achieving both is better. But if the former is sacrificed for the latter, then I see long term systemic problems for higher education.

Massive has had a place in higher education for quite some time. It would be hard to argue that a large lecture hall of 300, 400, 500+ students is any different than a MOOC. In fact, the MOOC might be a better experience for students given the technologies used to provide feedback and connection. But a degree program comprised of MOOCs-a MOOP? This requires a bit more thought.

Not All Online Education is “Massive”
As part of a university system that has delivered online courses, programs and degrees for a very long time, I am troubled by what appears to be the inseparable link between online education and massive online education–that is, that “massive” is THE way to deliver online programs. Most online degree programs are not MOOP(rograms)s. Like WSU’s Global Campus, they incorporate academic counseling to determine if the program of study is compatible with the student’s ability to succeed. They offer robust student support services to break down the isolation that often accompanies study at a distance. They require close student to student interaction through peer based assignments to build a sense of community. But most importantly, they need an engaged faculty inside and outside the classroom to mentor, guide, counsel and befriend students. They’re not massive—our average course size is 27 students per course section.

Phot of students at a football game in WSU's stadium — Futuristic photo of students attending an on-campus MOOC at WSU’s Martin Stadium

But We are Learning from the “Massive” Experiment
While WSU doesn’t do massive courses, there are some lessons to be gleaned from other traditional universities testing the waters. The Georgia Institute of Technology announced (in partnership with Udacity and a 2 million dollar grant from AT&T) an online M.S. in Computer Science degree for under $7,000. The on-campus equivalent costs between $25,000 and $45,000. The University of Wisconsin announced an online competency-based undergraduate program that uses subscriptions rather than tuition, and allows students to complete as many competencies as they can in a three-month period. The subscription is $2,250 per three-month term.

Is this revolutionary? Perhaps. Will it upend traditional education, just like, for example, the advent of radio put a slow down on live concerts? Could be. But fanfare doesn’t always translate into longevity.

For example, Colorado State University—Global Campus made national headlines last year when it announced it would accept credit for MOOCs. Instead of paying the $1,050 CSU tuition, students could pay an $89 assessment fee and receive credit if they passed a proctored exam. As of July 2013, not one student had signed up—this fact seems to be heralded with a kazoo, rather than trumpets. In May, the California higher education system was rocked when proposed legislation would require universities to accept credit for MOOCs. A couple of months later, the plan was tabled.

The Student Experience is Often Forgotten in MOOCs
This disconnect between publicity and reality (queue Secondlife) is real and, with the “massive” hype, can be traced to such factors as funding considerations—massive means more students connected to fewer faculty, then, Kaboom, cost savings. But this conversation is often void of the most important element: The student experience.

MOOCs vary widely, but they usually involve a lecture, automated grading, and maybe a peer network to answer questions. The faculty member is often an unreachable entity who helps create the course, then steps away from the actual learning process. New York Times columnist A.J. Jacobs completed 11 MOOCs, and describes them as having “the least accessible teachers in history.”

If MOOCs are an instructional innovation, then why not bring this innovation back to our campus. We might repurpose Martin Stadium for classroom use, put a prof at the 50 yard line and well… Or if it is not, let’s focus our discussion on the student experience, creating a student centered, faculty connected undergraduate learning experience. Put bluntly, if the sole purpose of the university professor is to “act out” canned materials (live or archived) then yes, MOOCs are an instructional innovation.

Those students who have “experienced” MOOCs are often older, knowledgeable, and credentialed and, even so, many MOOCs offer an unenviable student success rate, some estimate that rate to be around 5%. Is it fair to expect a typical 18-year-old to thrive in an environment that requires academic confidence, preparation, and self-discipline? We could look at the San Jose State University experiment with Udacity to provide a partial answer–where we see a younger population of students in need of remediation, not performing well in their MOOC.

Those at Georgia Tech might have reached that same conclusion. According to a Georgia Tech FAQ, the CS online and on campus degrees are identical in outcome and rigor. If that is the case, then why would any logical person choose to pay an additional $18,000 to $38,000 for the same degree? Is it that some students might not be prepared for a MOOC environment? If that’s so, (cue the really uncomfortable question) who are those students ill-prepared to thrive in a MOOC? Might we envision a population that lacks access to effective high schools, who have had limited success in formal learning, and from a lineage unfamiliar with higher education? Is it prudent to create a system that requires the most disadvantaged students to pay more? And is it right? This may be a question that each university will need to answer independently.

The “Elite” Colleges Fascination with MOOCs
Let’s leave the pedagogical aspects of MOOPs for a moment and take a look at the current pioneers of the massive movement. Harvard and MIT (forming edX with $60 million in internal funding) have generated quite a bit of conversation around the idea of massive education. We should be clear, they are not advocating replacing their current curriculum with MOOCs. This movement appears to be a not-for-profit venture, looking to make money, as opposed to an extension of their current brands.

To be direct, these universities do not see this educational product as a suitable menu option for their current and/or future students—the pomposity of such a proposal is something worthy of a much more thorough exploration. This exploration might start with Sir John Daniel’s statement that this policy is consistent but stupid and then MIT’s acknowledgment of “magic” in the learning process. A colleague who I admire greatly says it this way “they talk about brining the courses to the masses for free. But they do it in a way that I liken to going to the local pond and throwing breadcrumbs on the water for the ducks. It’s really not a solution to feeding the ducks, but a few of the more aggressive ducks get a nice treat.”

All that said, this is not unfamiliar ground–an “elite” expedition into massive education. Columbia University, for example, lost millions of dollars in its Fathom project. “Although Columbia invested $25 million in the venture, and 65,000 people created accounts, Fathom failed to turn a profit, partly because few customers paid for any of the courses.” And consider AllLearn, a failed joint venture by Oxford, Yale and Stanford.

What is the Price of “Free”?
Then there is the cost of these free courses. Not to the student, but to the university. The cost to a university to play with edX is substantial. To offer a course through edX, is $50,000. If a university wants edX assistance building an online course, that’s $250,000, plus $50,000 every time it offers the course. I wonder at the sustainability of this type of investment in “free” courses.

On the corporate side, we have pioneers Coursera and Udacity. (it will be interesting to watch the recent partnership of Google and edX). These are for-profit companies with deep pockets and I imagine expectations of making them deeper. Coursera was able to attract $48 million in venture capital recently. Can you imagine that pitch? “We plan to give away higher education for free and we need $48 million to do so.” Hmm … maybe they worded it differently.

While many for-profits do work to create an excellent product, we should ask a larger question. Is it wise to look to business to facilitate financial and social equity within our educational system? To answer in the affirmative, you have to ignore the fact that some of these companies have made an outsized contribution to the staggering growth in student debt.

Let’s Learn from MOOCs and Recapture the Microphone
There are certainly innovations and advancement to be gleaned from all these ventures and experiments, even the failed ones. There are new tools we can use to enhance on-campus education through flipping and blending, opportunities for remedial education with adaptive learning, increased access to educational opportunities through interactive online learning, improved student retention with early alert systems. That said, I think the most important development of all of this experimentation is a re-awakening to the purpose and nature of a college education.

These new technologies should be used to enhance the positive—supporting engaged faculty mentoring connected students participating in an interchange of ideas–and not to exacerbate the negative by removing the content and educational expertise (the faculty) from the student experience. Place the highest value not on the newest technological options, but on the very oldest element of instruction: the give and take of ideas between faculty and students. At WSU Global Campus, all our online programs are built on the premise that technology can enhance that interaction, but should never be used to replace it.

I think it is time for those of us that have been leaders in “traditional” online education to wrestle the microphone away from the for-profits and latecomers—and begin to lead once again.

David Cillay
Vice President
Washington State University
david.cillay@wsu.edu

Photo Credit: Washington State University Athletic Communications

See the follow-on blog post: “The Audacity of MOOCs“

Assessment, Competency-based Education, Cost of Instruction, MOOC, Open Educational Resources, Regular and Substantive Interaction, Student Success, Teaching

Practice

Wisconsin’s Flexible Option: A System Approach to Competency-Based Education

By Russ Poulin

September 19, 2013

2 Comments

In earlier Frontiers blog posts, we heard about developing competency-based programs at Northern Arizona University and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. WCET is also currently partnering with Mozilla, Blackboard, and Sage Road Solutions in offering a MOOC on badges as a new currency for professional education. Continuing our interest in alternative credentialing developments, our guest bloggers are Rebecca Karoff and Laura Pedrick introduce us to the University of Wisconsin System’s Flexible Option.

Leading Higher Education Transformation as a System

It’s become commonplace to reference the period in which we higher educators find ourselves as one of “disruptive innovation”—usually referring to MOOCs, as evidenced by the significant attention being paid to them on this blog and other higher education sites, not to mention in mainstream media as well.

We recently heard Dennis Jones, The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) President, say that the real disruptive innovation is not MOOCs but, rather, credentialing by competencies. We agree, and it is in competency-based educational (CBE) delivery that the UW System is committing significant resources in order to serve a population of students we—indeed all of higher education—have not adequately been serving to date.

Since Fall 2012, the UW System has been building a self-paced, competency-based model called the UW Flexible Option. It is a high-profile and transformative undertaking designed to provide quality educational offerings to returning adult students with some college and no degree, of which there are hundreds of thousands in Wisconsin, and millions across the United States. The Flexible Option will serve as an important contributor to the UW System’s goals to help more Wisconsin residents attain college degrees and address the state’s workforce needs. While a number of other American universities—Western Governors University, Southern New Hampshire University, Northern Arizona University, and Capella University, to name a few—have developed or are working on developing competency-based educational (CBE) programs—and we are learning a lot from these pioneers—the UW System is the only public university developing a CBE program at the system level.

What does it mean to do this as a system? The model we are developing involves remarkable collaboration across different kinds of UW institutions, including, in this first cohort, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (one of the System’s two doctoral institutions), the University of Wisconsin Colleges (a single institution comprising 13 freshman-sophomore campuses), and the University of Wisconsin-Extension (through the Division of Continuing Education, Outreach, and E-Learning).

When the invitation to UW institutions went out to participate in this new delivery model, a self-selected group of UW-Milwaukee and the UW Colleges programs and departments stepped forward. They viewed the opportunity to participate as one that would build on their access missions, commitments to better serve already large non-traditional student bodies, and their records of online and other kinds of curricular innovation.

UW System President Kevin Reilly also convened immediately an advisory group comprised of faculty and instructional academic staff to establish systemwide guidelines and principles for what CBE should look like to ensure that Flexible Option programs would have the integrity and quality of other academic programs in the UW System. This first advisory group was followed by the establishment of an administrative advisory group, and then an operational advisory group, each with clear charges to ensure that the business and operational models we were developing for UW Flex were appropriately vetted systemwide, regardless of which UW institutions decided to participate in the first cohorts of academic offerings.

What Kind of CBE Model Are We Building?

In fact, the model we are building involves an unprecedented level of collaboration between the System’s UW-Extension and the System’s degree-granting institutions. It is one that we have collectively determined is essential to creating the economy of scale to make this academically, operationally, and financial viable throughout the System and—most importantly—to serve students well.

The Academic Model
The academic development is being done by the UW System’s high-quality current faculty, and the academic degrees and certificates offered through UW Flex will be offered by UW institutions. They will be approved and awarded by the same accreditation and faculty governance policies as all UW degrees, which decree that academic control of a UW Flex program remains under faculty and administrative shared governance within the offering UW institution. Program faculty and instructional staff determine the competencies, assessments, and appropriate levels of mastery for UW Flex programs. The big change comes in removing the classroom and seat time as currency for student learning, removing faculty entirely from the traditional “sage on the stage” role to being “guides on the side,” and generating both anxiety and excitement for the faculty pioneers who have signed on to the first cohort of Flex offerings.

At UW-Milwaukee, beginning late this fall, we will be offering:

an R.N. to B.S.N. completion program;
a bachelor of science degree in Biomedical Sciences offering degree completion in Diagnostic Imaging;
a bachelor of science in Information Science & Technology; and
a certificate in Business and Technical Communication.

The UW Colleges will offer liberal arts, general education courses in the Flexible Option format, with the goal of offering the associate’s degree by 2014-15. For the second cohort of Flex Options, more degree and certificate programs are under development by another four UW institutions.

This graphic explains the academic model and student pathway to a Flex degree.

The Administrative Model
And if the academic structure is entirely different for UW Flexible Option programs, so is the operational domain: without seat time as the basis for awarding credit, every administrative function operates differently, including how students are admitted, enrolled, receive financial aid, pay their fees, and are transcripted. UW-Extension is supporting the administration of UW Flex at each institution, and will ultimately house admissions, registrar, financial aid, and bursar functions, among other units. As a cost-recovery unit with expertise in online learning, learning management platforms, and alternative programming, UW-Extension’s Division of Continuing Education, Outreach and E-Learning is particularly adept at thinking outside the credit box to envision and build the operational infrastructure necessary to ensure the economy of scale that will make UW Flex financially viable and sustainable. UW institutions and UW-Extension are working collaboratively to ensure that UW Flex students receive the academic and other support they need to help them succeed, and one of the signature features of the model is the role of the Academic Success Coach, who will work closely with each student as he or she navigates through the curriculum and the operational systems.

Toward a New Currency for Student Learning, Beyond the Credit Hour

Are there challenges in this multi-institutional collaborative model? Yes—although we are all part of the UW System, participating institutions have different cultures, policies, and practices. All involved are working diligently to confront differences and work through them, guided at all times by the focus on providing quality academic programs, serving the needs of the adult students we will enroll, and resulting in demonstrable student learning and other measures of success.

In fact, one of the most exciting prospects in developing CBE as a system is the impact we can have in identifying a different and new set of metrics for what success means to our target population, e.g., metrics that establish competency and certificate completion as important measures of success for working adults who need more education to advance professionally but maybe not a degree, or metrics that demonstrate learning with student work as the evidence, not the mere completion of credit hours. From President Obama, to the Department of Education, to major funders, to our accreditors, to our peers also pioneering CBE programs, we are being watched closely and we look forward to working with many of these colleagues in identifying these new measures of student success.

The University of Wisconsin System educates over 182,000 students, on 26 campuses and through a host of residential and online degree programs. We will continue to offer what we believe to be quality educational experiences through our traditional “bricks and mortar,” as well as more traditional online programs. Still, we believe that competency-based programs, such as the UW Flexible Option, are the next step in the evolution of delivering college degrees, especially to those students underserved by more traditional offerings.

By focusing on knowledge mastery rather than seat time, competency-based programs do more than just pay lip-service to higher education’s growing focus on outcomes. Competency-based programs enable adult learners to demonstrate what they know, and identify what they need to learn and how to move toward mastery. The multi-institutional approach to developing competency-based programs we are undertaking in the University of Wisconsin System is complex and our framework requires close coordination among the partner institutions. We believe the result will be a high-quality, cutting-edge program, one that takes its place among the System’s other quality academic offerings and leads the transformation of higher education into a future where the credit hour is no longer the sole currency for student learning.

For additional information, go to http://flex.wisconsin.edu/.

Rebecca Karoff is Senior Special Assistant to the University of Wisconsin System Office’s Senior Vice President for Academic and Student Affairs and has been working on the development of the UW Flexible Option since fall 2012. She is the founder and director of LEAP Wisconsin, the UW System’s Liberal Education Initiative, which is focused on engaging the public with core questions about what really matters in college; connecting educational leaders to policy-makers outside the academy as they make the case for the importance of quality education in the global economy; and helping all students achieve those learning outcomes essential to success in a diverse democracy. Dr. Karoff also served for many years as secretary to the Board of Regents Education Committee and staff liaison to the UW System Provosts, involved in setting academic agendas and policy directions on a variety of public higher education fronts. Prior to joining the UW System Administration, Karoff taught Comparative Literature at UW-Madison, from which she received a Ph.D. and M.A. She has an A.B. in Literature and Society from Brown University.

Laura Pedrick is Special Assistant to the Provost for Strategic Initiatives and Executive Director of UWM Online at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She oversees UW-Milwaukee’s online and blended programs and is currently the campus lead for UWM’s Flexible Option programs. She also manages an EDUCAUSE Next Generation Learning Challenge grant on UWM’s innovative “U-Pace” instructional model. For the past year she has facilitated the UWM’s Digital Future planning process, which is focused on emerging technologies and their impact on higher education. In the area of instructional technology, Laura is a co-author of “Policy Practice for Social Workers: New Strategies for a New Era,” which features virtual case studies, and Social Work Skills Demonstrated, a multimedia textbook, both published by Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. Pedrick’s background is in mass communication, and she holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Minnesota.

Assessment, Competency-based Education, Cost of Instruction, Credentials, Credits, Practice, System/Consortia

Uncategorized

The Colorado Flood – WCET Staff are Fine, the Annual Meeting is On!!

By Russ Poulin

September 16, 2013

8 Comments

Thank you to everyone who has been contacting us with concern for our safety in the great flood of 2013. Let’s start with:

This is a BIG deal. Northern Colorado will be dealing with the aftermath of this flooding for days, months, and years to come.
The WCET staff are well and safe, but we each have our own challenges to face.
We’re moving ahead with work and this won’t have any impact on the WCET Annual Meeting. Come join us!

About a week ago, we had a stretch of hot, dry weather including four days in which we tied or set record highs in the upper 90s. Some rain was a welcome relief. But, then it kept raining!!

Picture of a car and van in water and on top of something structure. — This is in Longmont (one of the hardest hit areas) a few days ago.

The greater Boulder area usually receives about 14 inches of precipitation in a year. Boulder had almost seven inches in 24 hours and had about 13 inches in a three day period. Some locations reported as much as 18 inches in a few days.

Outlying Areas Received the Most Damage, but Staff are Safe

While Boulder had enough problems to cancel the University of Colorado football game (now you know it was serious!!), the mountain communities and the areas downstream received the most impact. There are many small towns in the mountains that are accessible by only a few roads. As examples, Lyons and Jamestown were completely cut-off. The resort town of Estes Park, had only one way in and out…the windy road that goes west through Rocky Mountain National Park.

Most affected on our crew was Marianne Boeke of NCHEMS. She helps with the WCET State Authorization Network. She and her family had to be airlifted out of Jamestown. Her young boys loved the ride. Marianne said, “tons of fun for them, scary for me!!!” At this time it is unclear when her family can return to her house.

WCET Annual Meeting is a Go!! Come Join Us!!

The press tends to make it sound like all of Colorado is under water. Denver fared well. Most of the damage is in northern Colorado. You probably won’t be able to tell anything happened in downtown Denver. Come join us at our 25th Annual Meeting.

Flood streets for several blocks. — This is the St. Vrain Creek in Longmont. It usually is about 20 feet across and it grew to be about 5 blocks wide. The closest bank is supposed to be on the other side of the building that is way down the street in the middle of the picture.

In Conclusion…

WCET staff are battling leaking in their houses, loss of internet, and figuring out which roads are still open. Some roads are gone and will take months to replace. More than 1,000 bridges need to be inspected. The biggest problems are in crossing what used to be tiny creeks.

WCET staff will move forward, but please have some patience as we might not be as responsive as we like. Commuting may get really interesting with lots of road closures and everyone trying to use the same roads. Good thing we can work at a distance!! We’re still figuring this out.

If you would like to help those in need (at least 19,000 houses were damaged or destroyed and clean up will take months), please see your options at:

http://www.helpcoloradonow.org/

We’ll keep you updated. The story is just beginning.

See you at the Annual Meeting!!

Your WCET staff.

Disaster Planning/Recovery, WCET Annual Conference

Uncategorized

State Authorization: Updates on SARA, the Military, and the USDOE Regulation

By Russ Poulin

September 13, 2013

1 Comment

In the last several weeks there have been several developments regarding state authorization of distance education courses and programs. Here is a summary of those activities.

State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement
The four regional higher education compacts (Midwestern Higher Education Compact, New England Board of Higher Education, Southern Regional Education Board, and the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education) are moving forward with implementing the agreement with financial help from Lumina Foundation. Watch for a new website (www.nc-sara.org) to be announced in the future with more information on reciprocity.

photo of Marshall Hill — Marshall Hill directs State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA) activities.

SARA Executive Director Named
Marshall Hill, former executive director of Nebraska’s Coordinating Commission for Postsecondary Education, assumes the post as the new executive director of the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA). Marshall has been involved in all of the reciprocity efforts and is very knowledgeable on the issues. He has had the regulatory role under his supervision in both Texas and Nebraska and is a long-time friend of WCET. Marshall will provide steady, reasoned leadership.

NC-SARA Council is Announced
The members of the initial National Council for SARA have been announced. Twenty-two were selected from more 80+ nominations. The Council will: “oversee regional efforts to ensure that all SARA entities meet the expectations that have been established for reciprocity and will also establish common operating procedures.” Members represent the state regulators, different higher education sectors, the four regional compacts, the accrediting community, and other interested constituencies.

Regional SARA Directors
Each of the four regions will have a director to organize SARA activities in their region. MHEC recently named Jenny Parks as the director of the Midwestern State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement. Mary Larson is currently handling these duties for both the SECRRA agreement and SARA. NEBHE and WICHE are searching for directors.

The Department of Defense Proposes a New MOU Including a State Authorization Requirement
On August 14, the Department of Defense (DoD) published a proposed new rule that institutions offering education programs must meet if they wish to have their military students enjoy DoD Tuition Assistance. The rule is in a comment period with a deadline for comments of September 30, 2013.

One of the criteria proposed for the new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is that the institution must be in compliance with all Department of Education’s “program integrity issues, including State authorization.” Regulation 600.9 is specifically cited. Since 600.9(c) (the distance learning provision for state authorization) has been vacated by the courts, it is doubtful that they can enforce this regulation for distance education offered to students in other states.

While the DoD is interested in state authorization, it is good news for institutions that they did not decide to create their own rule. That could only have further confused the issue. This action by the DoD (relying on Education’s regulation) re-enforces our belief that the Department of Education will most likely bring back the federal regulation.

And What is the Status of Reinstating that ‘Vacated’ Department of Education Regulation?
This give us a chance to remind you that currently THERE IS NO FEDERAL DEADLINE for compliance with state authorization regulations. Even so, the states still expect you to be in compliance prior to serving any students in their state…regardless of what the status of any federal regulation might be,

As you may recall, the federal regulation was ‘vacated’ by court order on procedural grounds. The Department of Education can reinstate it by following notification rules that it did not use in introducing the regulation. As to the future of 600.9c…in a chat with a Department of Education staffer, it was clear that:

a) the Department would like to reinstate the regulation making it a federal requirement that institutions have authorization in each state in which it serves students. Don’t forget that the Department took the first steps toward reinstating the regulation with its “negotiated rulemaking” announcement earlier this year.

b) given the many holes in leadership at the Department (key positions remain unfilled) and the focus on the “gainful employment” rulemaking process, there is currently no clear timeline for moving forward.

We will continue to monitor and report on any progress made by the Department.

State Authorization at the WCET Annual Meeting
At WCET’s Annual Meeting to be held in Denver, CO, there will be several sessions on Thursday November 14 regarding state authorization:

Marshall Hill, SARA executive director, will give an update on implementing SARA. We hope to have all of the regional SARA directors in attendance, as well.
Sharyl Thompson, Southern New Hampshire University, and Pam Shay, Franklin University, will give practical advice on how institutions can manage their authorization compliance processes from beginning to end.
Patricia Milner will have a poster session describing her research that examined influences on the adoption of polices that regulated the distance education operations of out-of-state, higher education institutions.

See you in Denver!! Meanwhile, have fun complying with authorization regulations.

Russ

Russell Poulin
Deputy Director, Research and Analysis
WCET (WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies
rpoulin@wiche.edu
wcet.wiche.edu

Military and Veterans, Regulation, SARA, State Authorization, U.S. Department of Education

Uncategorized

Academic Integrity: Florida Virtual School’s Systematic and Scalable Solutions

By Russ Poulin

August 21, 2013

4 Comments

Welcome to our guest blogger Angela Anastacio who is Academic Integrity Manager at Florida Virtual School. While she is focused on academic cheating and plagiarism in the K-12 realm, I find that she has some lessons for us in higher education. FLVS has to handle integrity issues at scale and they do so with clear expectations, frequent student/teacher discussion-based assessments, and many other efforts that keep them ahead (or not far behind) their students. Thank you Angela!! See additional academic integrity and student authentication resources from WCET.
Russ Poulin

For five years, I have been a part of the Academic Integrity (AI) Department of Florida Virtual School ^® (FLVS^®). I began as an investigator, researching student violations, and eventually moved into the role of manager. While a primary goal of the AI team is to identify and intervene when incidents occur, we also strive to prevent violations from happening. To do this requires a joint effort between all departments, including Professional Learning, Curriculum, Community Relations, and Technology.

Advances in technology have allowed us the wonderful capability of creating learning opportunities virtually. There are those, however, who will take advantage of technology in an effort to gain credit for work they did not do including plagiarism, students sharing work, and student brokering via social networking and sales sites. At FLVS, we work together to support our faculty and students in achieving quality education with the highest levels of integrity.

photo of two students, one is on the computer and the other is helping him — The Florida Virtual School is a public, online school that served about 148,000 students in 2011-12.

We Believe Academic Integrity Begins with Professional Development
Ensuring appropriate learning is taking place begins with Professional Development. During the new hire process, all receive training on the appropriate prevention, identification, and handling of integrity violations. Training continues through monthly sessions.

One of these sessions is dedicated to our student/teacher discussion-based assessments (DBAs). The highly regarded DBA provides opportunities for engaged interaction and assessment between the instructor and student. The instructors take this time to speak with the students to assess their understanding of the content and to verify identity through the use of profile questions. The frequent DBAs are a requirement, occur with each module, and are graded. Failure to show DBA comprehension comparable to the work submitted is a red-flag that integrity concerns are apparent. The FLVS Curriculum Department has been instrumental in ensuring higher level DBA questioning. We also work with Curriculum to identify assignments which have frequent integrity concerns, so that they may enhance content and discourage future incidents.

A monthly training session is also dedicated to the web-based identification detector system used by FLVS, Turn-It-In. Every assignment that can be processed through Turn-It-In has been integrated with our learning management system (LMS). So, when a student submits work to the LMS, it is automatically routed through Turn-it-In before an instructor receives it. The student’s work is compared to a multitude of Internet sites as well as every other assessment already processed through Turn-It-In. If there is a concern, we are able to identify the source whether it’s a website or another student. Approximately 400,000 to 450,000 assignments are processed monthly through Turn-It-In, giving us assurance that student work is original.

We Established Non-Negotiable Expectations for Students, Parents, and Teachers
Many colleges and other education entities have clearly established expectations when it comes to academic integrity. The policies are provided by the school itself as well as by each instructor. The FLVS policy document is called our Non-negotiable and contains the expectations for students, parents (since we are a Kindergarten-12 organization), and teachers. The Non-negotiable provides a matrix for consequences and steps to prevent additional incidents. The matrix helps ensure we are consistent in the consequences issued for the nature of the offense. If a student has prior offenses, or an extensive violation, then the consequences and interventions increase.

Our Academic Integrity page and Non-negotiable document are openly available. We want the expectations for our students to be clear before any type of infraction is attempted. Our site also includes a Virtual Library where students can see examples and non-examples of how to cite work properly, providing another valuable resource in the prevention of integrity violations.

We Monitor Social Media and Illicit Websites
Back to advancements in technology – as it is for many educational organizations, keeping our content protected by keeping it off of various websites is challenging. We use to “report abuse” or email the sites directly, but most websites have become savvier. For the past few years, we have had success utilizing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in an effort to have our content removed. Educause has great information and resources on the DMCA.

Advances in technology with social media has created the need for us to monitor comments to identify student brokering concerns. We work with our Community Relations Department to check sites, such as Twitter and Tumbler, for comments referencing paying others to complete their work. As of July 1, 2012, this is a second-degree misdemeanor in the state of Florida.

When a Student is Identified, We Require Proctored Exams
Students identified, if allowed to continue with their course, are required to take proctored exams. Our Community Relations Department is quick to comment back, reminding them of our Integrity Policies and including a link to our integrity page. Ultimately though, we know that our discussion-based assessments will help our instructors identify those who have had others do their work for them.

We not only proctor exams for students who may have used brokers, we also proctor exams for other integrity violations and we randomly require proctored exams – a huge incentive to encourage students to legitimately learn the material.

We Need to Continue to Share Best Practices
I am truly proud to be working for an organization, where we work together to prevent, identify, and handle integrity concerns. In an effort to continue the quest of protecting education through on-line learning, it is important that we work together to educate one another about the rising concerns and the best practices to address them.

Angela Anastacio
Academic Integrity Manager
Florida Virtual School
aanastacio@flvs.net

Photo credit: Morgue File.

Academic Integrity, Assessment, K-12

Uncategorized

Confessions of a MOOC Reviewer

By Russ Poulin

August 13, 2013

5 Comments

In our on-going series of blog posts on MOOCs, Elizabeth Allan shares her experiences as a reviewer of the “credit-worthiness” of a science MOOC. Previously, Patricia Book gave us her insight into the overall ACE review process. In this post, Elizabeth gives us the point-of-view of a faculty member who conducted the review. WCET thanks them both for the insights into this process.

As an American Council on Education (ACE) CREDIT reviewer, I had the unique privilege of being on the team that reviewed the first MOOCS (Massive Open Online Course). The experience was unique due to the course delivery. In the end, the process was the same used in every other review for ACE.

Photo of Elizabeth Allan — Elizabeth Allan, Associate Professor, Biology, University of Central Oklahoma

I’m often asked about the process and how the review was done. Most of the time the person asking is really wanting to know how a faculty member can be confident in the recommendation. The answer, I believe, is in the process. The faculty review team was led by a national coordinator with extensive experience in teaching and evaluation and consisted of faculty current in the academic discipline under review. We all had extensive experience in reviewing online courses and in essence, this was a review of an online course – with obvious differences. More on that later.

What Happens In A Review?
For all ACE reviews, we consider student learning outcomes, the intensity of the course, pre- and post-course assignments, qualifications of faculty, and academic and work-related experience of the participants. Reviewers work together to review the Content, Scope, and Rigor of the course including: course syllabi, textbooks, assessment methods, student and instructor guides, student projects, instructional materials, and instructor qualifications to name just a few.

One thing we keep central in our focus is that we have the charge to consider recommendations based not on our institution, locale, or region but to critically appraise materials from a national/professional perspective. It’s not our job to review a program based on what we do at our local campus, but instead to review each course in light of the ACE guidelines and best practices. It is not an easy thing to do, but that’s where having a team and coordinator is vital.

How Did MOOCs Differ From Other Courses?
So what was different about the MOOC? Not that much. The course was reviewed using the ACE review criteria, no special considerations were given – the courses had to meet the requirements for Content, Scope, and Rigor. A credit recommendation was given because the team determined that the course met the requirements.

There were, of course some obvious unique issues to address. With so many students, how was feedback given to students? How were student issues addressed? How do you ensure the integrity of the assessment process? And I’m sure you can imagine the discussion the team had as well as the questions we had for the course designers and instructors.

Most of the answers to the above are part of the huge proliferation of articles, etc. about MOOCs and don’t need reviewing here. What is significant is that the MOOCs I reviewed were science courses and did not have to address much more difficult issues that would have arisen from a course requiring essays, etc. As is probably true for a great number of science courses (both online and face-to-face) on your campus and mine, the grade was predominately based on test scores and homework. There are companies that can be used to help validate identities and help in test security and the MOOCs employed one for these courses.

I Was Pleased With What I Saw, But the Proof Is In The Student Learning Data
So, in the end, the review was very similar to those conducted on other online courses.

There was certainly pressure (to be sure) to be thorough and exact in our review as well as being sure to have as much data and evidence to support our recommendation. But, in the end, the course did a good job with instruction in the content, the content was accurate and at a level that matched the stated learning objectives, was of an appropriate scope for an introductory course, and was a rigorous course. To be honest, the content and delivery of the courses were such that I would be happy to see these elements in more courses that we review.

Some will say that MOOCs are the ‘death” of teaching as we know it, some say they are going to ‘transform’ education. Maybe. Maybe not. Those are questions that have yet to be determined.

In reviewing these courses, I saw an online course that gave students the opportunity to learn content in an engaging manner. The downside was the limited student interaction with faculty. Perhaps the answer for faculty, as has been discussed many other places (i.e., George Mehaffy’s Red Balloon Project) is something in between.

As a faculty member, I’m waiting to see what the student learning data tell us. For me, the proof is in the pudding.

Elizabeth Allan
Associate Professor
Biology
University of Central Oklahoma

Dr. Elizabeth Allan is an Associate Professor of Biology at the University of Central Oklahoma and the Coordinator of the Secondary Science Education Program. She serves as the Director of the Central Oklahoma Science Fair. Dr. Allan has developed and taught on-line, blended, and face-to-face courses in both Biology and Science Teaching Methodology.

Before returning to Oklahoma in 2005, Dr. Allan was the Director of the Western Carolina Center for Mathematics and Science Education, a part of the North Carolina Mathematics and Science Education Network. She has been a classroom teacher in Oklahoma, California, and North Carolina.

Dr. Allan is the Retiring President for both the National Science Education Leadership Association and the Oklahoma Science Teachers Association. She has been an ACE reviewer for the MIVER program, ACE CREDIT, and a Military Evaluation reviewer. She was part of the team that reviewed the first MOOC to be awarded an ACE CREDIT recommendation.

Dr. Allan earned her Bachelor of Science at the University of Oklahoma and her Masters and PhD from the University of California, Riverside.

Assessment, MOOC, Outcomes

Practice

MOOCs are Maturing

By Russ Poulin

August 8, 2013

2 Comments

Our next guest blogger in our series on MOOCs is Ray Schroeder, who, until recently was the Associate Vice Chancellor of Online Learning at the University of Illinois Springfield. Congratulations to Ray on his new position with UPCEA. Ray has been very active in MOOC development and research over the past few years. He shares his excitement for MOOCs and his insights on how they might mature.
Russ Poulin

MOOCs are the adolescents of higher education. Actually, they have been around for less than a decade through which they have undergone an evolution that is marked by the growth spurts and changes in priorities that many of us have noted in the maturing of our own children, nieces, and nephews. As adolescents, it is not yet fully clear where MOOCs will go when they mature.

The Birth of MOOCs?
MOOCs date back half a dozen years with early experiments in teaching larger online classes in the U.S. and Australasia. The OERu Foundation documents some of the early efforts.

Photo of Ray Schroeder pointing to an iPad — Ray Schroeder

These early MOOCs were different in several respects. “Massive” was defined in hundreds rather than hundreds of thousands of students. Early MOOCs were truly open educational resources. The materials of the classes were freely available even after the class was completed. And, the early MOOCs were associated with non-profit universities, they were not associated with entities seeking a revenue stream to sustain themselves, such as Coursera and Udacity.

I led my first MOOC in the summer of 2011 – eduMOOC – Introduction to Online Learning Today and Tomorrow. At the time it was the largest MOOC conducted, ultimately with some 2,700 participants in 70 countries worldwide. There was, of course, no LMS for massive courses, so the MOOC delivery system was cobbled together with Google Sites, Google Groups, Wikispaces, Twitter, streaming media servers, blogs, and more. Some participants added Moodle and others added Google Hangouts. There were educators and education students participating around the world. In Christ Church New Zealand, for example, a group of participants met at the local MacDonald’s (because of the free WiFi) and discussed the readings and weekly live/recorded panel discussions.

The early MOOCs live on today. Every day, even these two years later, I am notified that students are entering the discussions and accessing the resources. While some of the materials are becoming dated, much remains relevant and useful. Anyone can use / re-use the materials for their own classes. If I had the time and energy, it would be possible to keep this MOOC fully updated, but given realities my updates continue through the Online Learning Update blog .

MOOCs in Childhood
In many respects, eduMOOC represented the end of the infancy of MOOCs. Just days after our final session, Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig launched the artificial intelligence MOOC that bested the reach of our MOOC by a factor of 60 or more, enrolling 160,000 students. And MOOCs moved into their childhood years. In the intervening two years hundreds of MOOCs have been launched and we have seen enormous potential blossom. Just as with a developing adolescent, MOOCs are far from complete. We cannot yet tell what this precocious child will become when fully mature. We see glimmers of growth in the Georgia Tech experiment and other initiatives.

Research on the Growth of the Adolescent MOOC
I am now embarked on leading an ambitious research project for the American Council on Education (ACE) and the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA), to assess the pedagogy of MOOCs and collect data on how students who have received college credit for MOOCs progress in their academic careers.

We are early on in the project, applying a pedagogy/practices tool developed by Professor Karen Swan of the University of Illinois Springfield to a group of MOOCs. We hope to correlate pedagogies and practices with success rates and satisfaction levels of students. Our research continues with the tracking of students enrolled at seven UPCEA member institutions that grant credit for ACE CREDIT recommended MOOCs. UMUC, one of those institutions participating in this study, recently announced their approach to offering credit .

We hope to have some early results in the spring term.

What Will MOOCs Become When They Grow Up?
The ACE/UPCEA research follows just one of the several paths that we may see MOOCs take – students choosing to take individual MOOCs and applying them for credit. Other paths may be the MOOC-delivered degree approach such as Georgia Tech has outlined. Current MOOC providers such as Coursera and Udacity may become MOOC universities. Perhaps we will soon see an IPO offered to create a commercial base for such an initiative.

Or, imagine an accredited university offering degrees that instead of collecting tuition are supported by advertising such as we have seen Google successfully apply in its ventures. International providers have begun to organize in Europe and Australia such as FutureLearn and Open2Study – they may provide MOOC products that will be competitive with American MOOCs. Will the delivery model of the Minerva Project extend to a more open university? The possibilities abound.

What will this adolescent, MOOC, become when it grows up? Some key traits are apparent even at this early point in the development of this movement. MOOCs, by definition, reach massive audiences. Where there are massive audiences, there are efficiencies that may be had, and there is money to be made through advertising. MOOCs are pioneering new modes of assessment that may be applicable across all of education.

Adaptive learning has been given a boost by open online initiatives. The hundreds of millions of venture capital dollars attracted by the potential of MOOCs are a significant incentive to make some version of massive open online learning work. If there is one thing that MOOCs have shown us, it is that there is a huge international appetite for learning. Empowering a world through education may most efficiently be done through MOOCs. And, the ramifications of that could make for a remarkable outcome, indeed.

We have a precocious adolescent with a lineage of “traditional” online learning, correspondence, professional, and continuing education. Where this child’s future will lead is uncertain. MOOCs are a product of the 21^st century; they will ultimately be shaped by the technologies, forces, and needs of our worldwide society. Those of us who are parenting fledgling MOOCs in these early years can contribute much to their future, we can test different pedagogies, practices and approaches. But in the end, we may well be on the sidelines as MOOCs mature into the future of higher education. We cannot yet imagine all of the possibilities that lie ahead.

Ray Schroeder
Director
Center for Online Leadership and Strategy
UPCEA

Assessment, MOOC

Practice

Crafting an Effective MOOC: One Community College’s Experience

By Russ Poulin

August 6, 2013

14 Comments

As part of our series on MOOCs, WCET asked Pat James Hanz of Mt. San Jacinto College to provide an overview of their experience in developing and offering their first course. We also asked her to provide some lessons learned in case your instituion is interested in joining the fun.
Russ Poulin

In May, Mt. San Jacinto Community College conducted the first basic writing MOOC for Coursera. Our intention was primarily to provide a resource for students who did not assess into college level English. We also thought that anyone who needed to brush up on grammar and language usage skills could make use of the course. The title of the course is “Crafting an Effective Writer: Tools of the Trade.”
The next offering of the course will begin on Sept. 21, 2013.

We encourage you to view a Youtube video of a sample lecture or view our “Good-Bye” video.

———————————————————

Where are we going with this MOOC stuff?

Photo of Patricia James Hanz — Patricia James Hanz

This is not a question I ask lightly. There has been a huge buzz about MOOCs and how they will be either the savior or downfall of education and/or civilization! I’ve been here before. The first connectivity in the early days of the Internet made many of my colleagues think the end of the teaching world surely had arrived. I remember hearing them say that they would no longer have jobs!

Most of them, if they haven’t retired, still have teaching jobs. Ahem–what are we hearing now? The same cries. For many teachers the MOOC methodology is frightening. For me, it’s exciting! Each time we step out and try something new, we become more alive. Each time we reinvent the way we teach, we become more aware of learning. I welcome the new ideas and grab the opportunities to experiment and grow. This philosophy is responsible for my journey into MOOClandia.

There’s always a story!

This one starts in the Spring of 2012 when I was asked to participate in a meeting of state level officials the purpose of which was to consider how online course delivery, including MOOCs, could provide greater access to California students. The conversation was about how to offer courses more broadly across the educational sectors of the state and particularly how the California Community Colleges could use their over ten years of distance education expertise to make something happen.

I came home from that meeting with an idea that I called “The Perfect Storm.”

We were experiencing a state-wide economic crisis that left students waiting at the registration door without enough classes to go around. Cuts were being made at every college. At ours, the entry level courses that meet the needs of students needing to remediate into college level courses were cut in favor of the transfer level courses. Our big concern was what do people who don’t assess into college level classes do now?

I sat down with two of our English faculty members and we decided to try to put together an open course designed to help students assess into freshman composition or at least, into the next level down instead of three levels below the transfer level comp course!

I was put in touch with Daphne Koller at Coursera through the people at our state chancellor’s office and had a series of conversations with her about “educating the world” and serving students such as ours in the process. She agreed to have Coursera host our course, if we could build it. We started planning.

Within weeks, there was a request for proposals from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that addressed just what we were trying to do, build entry level classes. We applied and were funded for $50,000 to develop and implement a basic writing MOOC in partnership with Coursera.

The Production:

I immediately began to research the style of courses in Coursera and realized that our expertise in creating quality “traditional” online classes would really help in this new effort. Course design was primary in my mind as a direct route to building a quality class. The classes in Coursera were as diverse in their design as in their topic areas. I saw everything from the “only video lecture” courses to incredibly detailed interface designs that would be daunting to a beginning online student. Our design experience was well suited to the beginning level student we imagined would enroll in our grammar and language usage course.

The team was assembled and included our own video production faculty (2), English faculty (4), instructional designers (2 part time faculty with expertise), and me. I realized about a month in that I needed a project manager who could get things done and one of our designers became the PM. I switched to design support!

The development went slowly, too slowly! Lots of time was spent on the video production of the lectures and the written content. We weren’t done with the whole course when it opened! That’s hard to manage and not what I would recommend.

We trained seven of our writing center tutors to help us monitor the discussion forums when the course opened and all of the rest of us were involved there, too. There were a total of 14 staff members involved in answering discussion post questions.

The Students:

Map of the location of students. There are many dots indicating the wide disribution of enrolles from throughout the world. — Students in the course came from throughout the world.

Holy cow!!!! We watched in amazement as our Google map grew to show that our students were coming from every corner of the world. For almost a month, enrollment grew by 1,000 people per day!

We wondered who these students were and about 10,000 took a survey in the beginning with the results shown on the right.

We also found out that over 65% were English as a Second Language (ESL) students. We thought we’d have some, but the number was a bit startling.

The Results:

We ended up with over 40,000 enrollees with about 30,000 active users of the course. More than 3,500 completed the final peer review assignment (required to pass) and about 2,700 actually received a certificate of accomplishment.

The data that was available from Coursera was difficult to format and we are still trying to correlate students to answers from both the entry and exit surveys. We have asked Coursera to consider the problems we have had and said we are more than willing to work with them to develop solutions.

Amazingness!

The good stuff that has come of this would take days to write about. We received compliments from students for about every aspect of our course. The design was easy to follow and many appreciated our first unit on being a successful online student.

The big favorite, and tone setter, was the quality of the video lectures in the course. Both the production and content were great, but it was the interaction and personalities of the two professors, Ted Blake and Larry Barkley that made the class so wonderful. We had them talking together in the video lectures and it really was a good format for delivery. Students loved both guys and commented often about their humanness.

Another big compliment from students was that we were so responsive. With 14 people able to participate in the discussions, students felt tended to. We stand by our decision to be as present as possible in the discussion forums. Our reading material was an excellent supplement to the video lectures and the discussions were interesting and prolific.

When one student from Jordan said, “Before this kind of opportunity, education for me was just a dream,” we were hooked. Another young girl in a discussion of ages of the students noted that, “Knowledge has no age.” My favorite comment was that we had infected the class with a virus and that now everyone had the “grammar flu”. I understood exactly what she meant as I struggled to correct every bit of my writing in the responses I provided in the forums! We received 180 thank you letters posted in an album style cloud website that was organized by another student. We just received an envelope filled with souvenirs from Australia from a student in appreciation for our team.

Lessons Learned

You have to be thick-skinned. The three students who like to complain about everything in a small class, are magnified by thousands in a huge class. Let the other students shut down the complainers. You don’t have to do anything!
It is good to have online teaching experience before you start this kind of course, but designing one of these is different in many ways. What’s the same? Organization is EVERYTHING.
Many of the professors from major institutions who are now teaching in MOOCs, have little or no prior online teaching experience. We think the MOOCs, with their huge public relations potential, appeal to the university administration, but the joyful and exciting experience of teaching thousands of students from all over the world grabs the imagination of the teachers.
Grading is impossible so you have to rely on machine grading and you have to have detailed rubrics developed for the peer reviewed assignments. The Coursera platform randomizes and creates the groups, the highest and lowest scores are dropped out of the final grade.
Even if a course is not for credit, students are crazy about points.
Being available and human is a must.
Be prepared for a life changing experience.

During a presentation to teachers, I was asked, “Isn’t this just passing on information rather than educating people?” My answer was that we absolutely educated people. There is no doubt in my mind that the course we offered was education, complete with interaction, innovation, inspiration, and, yes, information, too.

What do you think we should be doing now? Should we investigate or castigate? Consider MOOCs in light of all of the other technology innovation we have experienced in the past 15 years. How is it different? How is it similar to other changes? Where are we going?

Pat James Hanz
Dean of Instruction: Library and Technology
(and Distance Education, too!)
Mt. San Jacinto College
pjames@msjc.edu

Access, Collaboration/Community, Course Design, Instructional Design, MOOC, Teaching

Uncategorized

MOOCs & Beyond: Update on California Government-Driven Online Initiatives

By Russ Poulin

August 1, 2013

8 Comments

As part of our current series on MOOCs, we had planned to have Phil Hill (co-founder of MindWires Consulting and co-publisher of the e-Literate blog) as a guest blogger to update a January 2013 post for WCET in which he outlined how the California government was trying to drive higher ed. Given today’s news about the controversial bill (regarding MOOCs, third-party providers, and credit), the additional insight is timely. Phil Hill is a consultant and industry analyst covering the educational technology market primarily for higher education. Catch Phil on twitter @PhilonEdTech.

The big news today is that the controversial bill seeking to allow for-credit partially-outsourced online education in California has been put on hold until at least 2014. As reported today by Inside Higher Ed:

Photo of Phil Hill — Phil Hill has been following the proposed legislation, gubernatorial wranglings, and higher education reactions on how to use technology to reach more students in California.

The plan’s chief backer, Democratic State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, is no longer trying to advance the measure and will not do so until at least August 2014. Rhys Williams, the senator’s spokesman, said Steinberg is waiting to see the results of new online efforts by the state’s three public higher ed systems – the California Community Colleges, California State University and the University of California. The public college systems are working to expand their online offerings internally and without outsourcing their students to ed tech start-ups with little to no track record offering for-credit courses.

“The UC, CSU, and Community Colleges plans for online course access are a welcome and positive policy outcome,” William said in an e-mail Wednesday evening. “Senator Steinberg is willing to see how they develop and assess whether they’re effective, before making a decision on whether SB 520 remains necessary.”

To understand this news in context, it is worth looking at the broader set of initiatives on online education in California. In January I wrote a post for WCET that described the new efforts from California state government to expand the usage of online education in the three public higher education systems.

In past years the primary role of state government was to take the lead on funding while working with statewide systems on enrollment policies to serve workforce and general educational needs. Last week in California we witnessed the state government, both from the governor’s office and the legislature, become the driving force of change for determining the role of educational technology and online education to transform the public systems. State officials are no longer content with encouraging and hoping that postsecondary institutions will develop a strategy for systemic change on their own.

The primary methods of state government involvement have been the following:

Using the bully pulpit of the governor and legislative leaders to focus the discussion on the cost of education and helping students get degrees with lower total costs;
Providing $36.9 million in new funding ($16.9 m for CCC, $10 m for CalState, $10 m for UC – see page 38) to encourage innovative usage of online education; and
Proposing Senate Bill 520 (SB520) to create a pool of third-party provided for-credit online courses available to students at all three systems.

Disclosure: I, along with my business partner Michael Feldstein, actively participated in the Re:Boot California Higher Education conference in January and also wrote a white paper on the subject for the 20 Million Minds Foundation. The multi-pronged approach to support student access is broadly one that we at MindWires endorse, but we have recommended changes to the budget and SB520 to make them more effective.

Resistance to SB520
As can be expected in the current environment, most of the public discussion has centered on SB520 and whether it is a route to allow for-credit MOOC courses. Even though the language of SB520 was and is not specific to MOOCs, there have been wink-wink nudge-nudge suggestions to this being a MOOC bill on both sides of the debate. This assumption has partially been fed by the public involvement of Sebastian Thrun, CEO of Udacity ~~Coursera and Udacity executives~~ in the legislative process. (NOTE: Update to this paragraph on 08/12/13: I have removed the previous reference to Cousera involvement in the legislative process. Coursera executives were not involved in discussions with state leaders prior to introduction of SB 520 and they have not testified before the state senate in support of the bill. The error was my own. – Phil Hill)

There has been tremendous pushback on the original conception of SB520, mostly coming from faculty unions and the CalState and UC systems. The deliberations as part of the legislative process led to significant amendments to the bill in April and May. The amended version was passed by the senate in June (follow link for summary of changes).

The changes are significant. Originally envisioned as a third-party platform with a common pool of courses, the bill has been transformed to a grant program for each system to implement. SB520 changed from a stick to a carrot. The rewritten bill addresses many, but not all, of the issues that faculty and system leaders have had with the bill.

In terms of SB520, there remains significant opposition to the amended bill.

Faculty unions, such as California Teachers Association (CTA), are still opposing the bill;
UC has come out officially opposing the bill;
CalState is studying the bill before taking a formal position (currently ‘pending’, see p 17); and
CCC has taken no public position on the amended SB520.

It is unclear if SB520 will be revived, but it is clear that the bill itself never gained enough buy-in from higher education leaders to justify moving it forward this year.

Removal of Conditions for Additional Funding
The other legislative method that has changed is the additional funding for online education. The original plan was to tie the funds “to increase the number of courses available to matriculated undergraduates through the use of technology, specifically those courses that have the highest demand, fill quickly, and are prerequisites for many different degrees”.

In a somewhat surprising move, Governor Jerry Brown used a line-item veto to remove his own earmarks for the $10M each to the CalState and UC system (the funding remains, but the conditions have been removed) – effectively saying that the systems could use the money however they saw fit. According to Brown, “Eliminating these earmarks will give the university greater flexibility to manage its resources to meet its obligations, operate its instructional programs more effectively, and avoid tuition and fee increases”. The earmark for CCC to use its $16.9M of additional funding for educational technology remained in the budget.

Watering Down Initiatives or Negotiated Progress?
On the surface, it appears that higher education insiders might have defeated state government efforts to take a leading role in online initiatives. SB520 is on hold and possibly dead, and most conditions on the additional funding have been removed.

If you look under the surface, however, the outcome is not as clear. It turns out that the systems are in fact changing their priorities and investing in online to help matriculated students complete degrees at a lower cost, which was the original goal of state government leaders.

As briefed to the Board of Regents on July 18th, the UC provost (starting at minute 28 of recording) described their plans to use the $10M for Innovative Learning Technology Initiative. From the ILTI web site, ILTI’s strategy will stem from four interconnected components:

Funds will be available to UC faculty to create new online courses and enhance existing online courses.
Department and campus support for the courses will also be provided, to ensure that courses developed will be offered for multiple years on multiple campuses.
A cross-campus enrollment system with a searchable database of online courses will help students find and enroll in needed classes.
Evaluation of how well the initiative is performing will provide key accountability data.

These goals very closely match the original goals from the state government. There is a long way to go, however, as the UC provost mentioned in the Board of Regents meeting. Currently there are only 33 undergraduate for-credit online courses in the entire system during the academic year (not including summer courses or extension non-credit courses).

The change is significant, however, in that just a year ago UC was pushing UC Online as its primary online initiative, and the goals of that program focused mostly on revenue-generation from non-matriculated students.

The CalState system announced today their plans for a new cross-enrollment online program, as reported in the Oakland Tribune:

This fall, for the first time, the nation’s largest public university system will offer the option of online courses to all of its students, using digital technology to overcome pervasive space shortages in real-world classrooms.

A program revealed Wednesday by the 23-campus California State University includes more than 30 courses approved systemwide, from Elementary Astronomy to the History of Rock and Roll.

This means a student from San Francisco State can sign up for a microeconomics course taught at CSU Northridge, while students from that Southern California campus can learn all about U.S. politics from a professor who teaches in San Francisco.

“It’s radical for our system,” said Mike Uhlenkamp, a CSU spokesman.

Effects of SJSU Plus Program with Udacity
We should not ignore the recent news out of San Jose State University (SJSU), where they ‘paused’ their pilot program based on an adaptation of Udacity MOOCs due to low passing rates (more here on the news, here on the findings to date). While this ill-fated program was not technically part of the state government legislation or budgeting, it certainly was tied to the bully pulpit of the governor. The poor results of the program will likely be used as an argument against further experimentation with MOOCs and even with online education expansion, but as I point out in the linked blog posts, the fact that SJSU is analyzing the learning outcomes data to revise the program is significant in itself.

Keep Watching
The situation in California is still fluid, and there are key issues to watch as they unfold. But behind the messy legislative process and headline-making pushback on state government involvement, there is a significant change in priorities occurring in California. The new focus on using online education as a tool to help matriculated students complete their degrees clearly seems to be a result of state government involvement.

Phil Hill
Co-founder of Mindwires Consulting
Co-publisher of the e-Literate Blog
@PhilonEdTech

Cost of Instruction, Legislation, MOOC