After I published my blog piece that analyzed the Community College Research Center’s (CCRC) new research on online students, Mac Adkins of Smarter Services contacted me about research based upon the experiences of institutions using their services. Mac was invited to submit this guest blog, which presents outcomes that undergird some of CCRC’s findings and some the support my suggested alternative interpretations. You may wish to look at CCRC’s follow-up to the study and advice on “Creating an Effective Online Instructor Presence.” I think they adopted some of the comments made about their original work. Thank you Mac for adding to the research discussion. — Russ Poulin, WCET
Russ stated, “The biggest takeaway that I took from the CCRC research is the need to make sure that students are prepared to succeed in an online course.” This statement caught my attention as this has pretty much been my life’s work for the past decade. Since 2002 we have measured the levels of online learning readiness from over two million students with our Learning Readiness Indicator.
In the section of Russ’s blog post titled “Students Adapting to Online Learning” Russ stated that when one first experiences online learning, the student who is new to online learning must “adapt” to this learning modality. He added, “The vast majority of students spend the bulk of their education career without having taken an online course. It is an adjustment.” I fully concur with this observation.
Each year we publish for free the National Student Readiness Report (pdf). The report presents aggregate data from over a half million students each year who have taken the assessment. One of the demographic factors which we collect on the assessment is “How many prior online courses have you taken?” Sometimes a student enrolling in school A has already taken several prior online courses at school B. Most of the time, the new students have had little or no prior online learning experience. In the annual Readiness Report, we compare the means of each of our scales across persons based on their prior experience in online learning.
You Can’t Beat Experience One of the strongest findings of this section of the report is that when it comes to distance learning – experience matters. Students who have taken five or more prior online courses had statistically significant higher means (random sample of 300) than students who had taken fewer online courses on the following subscales: Persistence, Procrastination, Time Management, Locus of Control, Technical Knowledge, and Help Seeking. Students with this level of online learning experience also had statistically significant higher means in all six of the major scales measured by the assessment with the exception of reading and typing rate.
The greatest difference in means from students with no prior online course experience and those who had taken five or more courses continued to be in the area of technical knowledge. This indicates that with experience students can learn to use the technology required for online courses.
The take away for eLearning leaders is that we really need to hold the hands of students who are new to online learning. If we can closely support them and help them persist past that second online course, then the learning curve for eLearning levels out. This fact is perhaps a partial explanation of the higher dropout rates for new online students which was cited (albeit inappropriately) in the New York Times editorial.
I also concur with Russ when he stated, “The authors are off-base in suggesting that students be ‘screened’ out of an online class.” Very few of the schools which use our readiness assessment use it for screening. If they do so, then typically they recommend the student take the course through a hybrid or on-campus delivery system. No schools use it as an admissions screening device. Schools need students. Schools also need students who will remain enrolled.
In the 2012 National Student Readiness Report, the majority (54%) of students reported that they had never taken an online course prior to taking the SmarterMeasure assessment. It is worthy of note that the percentage of students who have never taken an online course is decreasing. (see graph above: 2012 = 54%, 2011 = 55%, 2010 = 60%, 2009 = 65%) This is an indicator that eLearning is becoming a more common educational delivery system. It is important to note that the CRCC study’s cohort included “degree-seeking students who initially enrolled in one of Washington State’s 34 community or technical colleges during the fall term of 2004.” The percentage of students who had never taken an online course was probably much higher nearly a decade ago.
Demographics and Online Learning
The CCRC study focused on certain demographic groups underperforming in online courses. In the National Student Readiness Report, we also cross tabulate means of our scales across several demographic factors. Aggregate data from over 690,000 online students who took the assessment over a twelve month period revealed that for the past four years in a row females have had statistically significant higher means in Individual Attributes, Academic Attributes, and Time Management. Over that same four year period of time, males had higher means in Technical Knowledge. Caucasians also had higher means in Technical Knowledge for four years in a row.
It is a fact that some learners are a better fit for online learning due to their attributes and skills. But should that imply that they not take online courses? As one of our client institutions recently stated, “You cannot change a tiger’s stripes, but you can teach that tiger to hunt in a different environment.” Through well-developed orientation courses and other online student support services, we can equip students with no prior experience with the skills to learn online.
Dr. Daniel Golman, author of Emotional Intelligence, recently blogged about the topic “It’s Modes, Not Personality Traits.” He emphasized that persons tend to behave in different ways in different circumstances. In our context, a person who is a habitual procrastinator about online course assignments may never procrastinate about other activities such as working out in a gym. As educators it is beneficial in our communications with students to talk in terms of one’s traits in the mode of learning.
By assessing an individual’s attributes, attitudes, and skills for the context of eLearning, both the individual and their school are better equipped to determine the level of readiness of a new online student so that the appropriate resources for support can be provided.
A national meeting on next steps in state reciprocity was held in Indianapolis on April 16 and 17. The purpose of the event was to serve as an initial introduction to representatives from each state about next steps in reciprocity.
Sponsored by Lumina Foundation, the meeting attendees included representatives from 47 states. Delaware, Hawaii, and New York were not represented. While they did not send participants, we know that there was interest in the first two of those states in participating. Others in attendance to this invitational event included those who had involvement in shaping the reciprocity language.
Opening Remarks and Support
The report is meant to be a framework for reciprocity with additional provisions to be detailed in the final SARA wording. The meeting started with several introductory sessions presenting the principles outlined in the report.
A letter was read from Molly Corbett Broad, president of the American Council on Education, lending her support to reciprocity. Hal Plotkin of the U.S. Department of Education had the most memorable metaphor of the night, which you can ask me about later. While the Department of Education cannot formally endorse the work, he brought a two-word message from the Secretary Arne Duncan and Under Secretary Martha Kanter: “thank you.”
Some Questions that Arose
If they can receive foundation support to begin the effort, the regional higher education compacts (Midwestern Higher Education Compact,New England Board of Higher Education, Southern Regional Education Board, and Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education) will be charged with jointly implementing the agreement in as seamless a way as possible. Regional sessions were held to cover additional fine points of reciprocity and to gather comments and questions from participants. There were many items on which there were agreement and many questions were raised. David Longanecker, president of WICHE, highlighted a few in a final plenary session:
Accreditation. There is still some angst about the efficacy of depending on accreditation for quality assurance. David sees reciprocity as a way to give us all more license to work with the accrediting community. Working together, we should be able to have more evidence to take to the accrediting agencies about any concerns.
Fees. The report was relatively silent on fees. The current plan for fees includes:
State fees to institutions. The state might decide to charge an institution for the process of authorizing it to participate in SARA. States raised questions about their own ability to charge institutions (this might be currently prohibited in some states) and the reorganization of duties required.
Institutional fees to join SARA. Institutions participating in SARA will be charged a yearly fee on a sliding scale based on overall institutional FTE: $2,000 for those less than 2,500, $4,000 for those 2,501 – 10,000, and $6,000 for those more than 10,000 FTE. Due to the current high variance in how “distance education” enrollments are counted, overall institutional FTE is the current proposed metric.
State fees to join SARA. States in a regional compact will not be charged. For those states and territories not in a compact (District of Columbia, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico), they would be charged $50,000 to affiliate with a regional compact for this one purpose. (UPDATED: 04/18/13 – Delaware is part of SREB, while Pennsylvania is not in a regional compact)
Legislative and Regulatory Language. States will need assistance with the proper language. While the regional compacts can’t lobby, they plan to provide some help in crafting language and in connecting states to learn from each other both about legislative language and in handling the fees issue raised earlier.
Determination of Home State. There are several examples of complex relationships and the details on those outliers needs to be considered. It is clear that institutional shopping for a state will not be tolerated.
Professional Accreditation. There was a proposal to have more restrictions on education offered in fields of study in which licensure or other professional accreditation is required in a state.
Metrics for Holding a State Accountable. Clear metrics will need to be developed as to what a state reports.
The Physical Presence Limit of 25% of Course Instruction. More justification, details, and metrics were requested.
Again, these are all questions. Some reflect items on which this is considerable work, but either additional details, subtle nuances, or more justification is needed. A few of the items will need much more work.
Next Steps
Recordings of the meeting will be made available in the next few weeks. When I receive the links, I will post them to the blog. Watch for additional follow-up information from the Presidents’ Forum and the Commission.
The regional compacts are very optimistic about receiving grant support to move forward on this work. Once they do, they will hire staff and hold regional meetings to discuss these issues.
Finally, A Note about Tone
While much of the meeting was very positive, there was significant regulator bashing during the meeting. Some of those with regulatory roles let me know of their displeasure.
While there are regulations that are real head-scratchers, there is real purpose behind many of these regulations. We should not paint everyone charged with overseeing authorization in the states with the same brush. They are charged with upholding their laws. They are charged with protecting students.
Reciprocity is asking them to make significant changes in their work, to go out on a limb and trust others, and to accept the risk of those changes. Since they will face much of the impact, the least the rest of us can do is respect them and listen to them.
Russ
Russell Poulin
Deputy Director, Research and Anaylsis
WCET – WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies
rpoulin@wiche.edu
This week both the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Ed have reported on a developing issue with the federal regulations on state authorization. From your emails to me, these stories have been a bit confusing and confounding to many of you. Some people are worried about losing their federal financial aid for students. This gave me an opportunity to do my best to clarify the issue and relieve (I hope not heighten) your concerns.
Before getting into the details, let me start with two main points:
The current focus on state authorization is not about distance education.
The Department of Education does not intend for this current focus on state authorization to lead to students not getting aid.
Institutions depend on the state agencies that authorize them to make them eligible for federal financial aid. If the Department of Education finds some of those agencies out-of-compliance, will their institutions find themselves in shallow financial aid water?
The current issue is related to the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter that was released by the U.S. Department of Education earlier this year. At that time, I blogged that this issue is NOT about distance education. That remains the case. I talked to Sophia McArdle, the Department’s point person on authorization issues, recently and she reconfirmed that point with me. In brief, the distance education section of the regulation (§ 600.9(c)) has been vacated by the federal courts and cannot be enforced unless the Department takes further action. They have yet to do so.
If not about distance education, who does it cover?
It’s mostly about on-campus instruction. The actions cited by the Chronicle and Insider Higher Ed are about federal regulations § 600.9(a) and (b), which cover what the state must do to be able to authorize institutions that are headquartered (my term, not theirs) or have a physical location in that state. Among other requirements, the states must have third-party complaint processes and must identify authorized institutions by name.
States were expected to have their authorization processes in compliance with these regulations by July 1, 2011. They could request two extensions, which means the final deadline is July 1, 2013.
With the final deadline approaching, the recent concerns being raised by the Department are aimed at some types of institutions over others. From here it gets complex and I will not explore every possible option, but I will highlight the two broad categories into which the regulation divides institutions. The following table provides the definitions of the two types of institutions and the approval processes that may or may not be used for that type of institution. Note that in the column headings I provide the regulatory sections and my own titles for each category.
Column A
§ 600.9(a)(1)(i)
Public (and, Perhaps, other) institutions
Column B
§ 600.9(a)(1)(ii)
Proprietary (and, Perhaps, Private) Institutions
Defining the type of institution
“established by name as an educational institution by a State through a charter, statute, constitutional provision, or other action issued by an appropriate State agency or State entity and is authorized to operate educational programs beyond secondary education…”
“established by a State on the basis of an authorization to conduct business in the State or to operate as a nonprofit charitable organization, but not established by name as an educational institution under paragraph (a)(1)(i) of this section.”
Allowable approval process
“complies with any applicable State approval or licensure requirements, except that the State may exempt the institution from any State approval or licensure requirements based on the institution’s accreditation by one or more accrediting agencies recognized by the Secretary or based upon the institution being in operation for at least 20 years.”
“may not be exempt from the State’s approval or licensure requirements based on accreditation, years in operation, or other comparable exemption.”
Public institutions receive more latitude in state approval processes
For the most part, Column A is aimed at public institutions. This is debatable as the phrase “or other action issued by an appropriate State agency or State entity” could cover a wide range of activities used by the state to recognize other institutions. In any case, I have yet to hear of an instance in which a public institution has been mentioned as having its authorization questioned under this regulation.
Proprietary (and perhaps, private) institutions need to take note
Column B definitely covers proprietary institutions and may cover some private institutions. Any concerns that I have seen raised by the Department have been for the processes for approving these types of institutions. But, I have not seen all of the concerns that they have raised.
What types of concerns have been raised?
The two main concerns that I have seen (there may be others) raised by the Department are:
It appeared that some states were exempting institutions that the Department felt should have fallen in the Column B definition above. Florida has been in the news about this, but I believe that they were able to show that there was more to their process than a simple exemption. This is a problem with the regulation as it disallows several exemptions for institutions defined in Column B, but is silent on what additional authorization actions would suffice.
Some states licensing procedures did not distinguish between secondary and postsecondary institutions. The states needed to be more specific as to whether the institution was authorized for postsecondary education.
My advice
If you think your institution might be in Column B above, check the wording in the regulation and check the procedures of how you were authorized in your state. If you have a concern, work with the authorizing agency in your state. If there are sufficient concerns, have your authorizing agency contact Dr. Sophia McArdle at the Department of Education to ask for a review of their procedures.
VERY IMPORTANT: Sophia is about six weeks behind in responding to these queries. Let’s help her out, which will help you out. Only the authorizing agency should contact her, not each institution. She’s trying to respond to each institution, but that is setting her way behind. Also, make sure that the agency has done the research it can and has very specific questions to ask Sophia. Following these steps will expedite the process for everyone.
This is not about denying aid to your students
Finally, I’m returning to the second bullet in my opening. Dr. McArdle assured me multiple times that the Department of Education does not intend for this current focus on state authorization to lead to students not getting aid. You would not know that from reading the Chronicle or Inside Higher Ed articles. Sophia assured me that she is more interested in getting state processes into compliance than in punishing institutions and students. I believe her. Could the Department have handled this better and provided clearer guidance? Definitely. It’s not time to panic, but authorizing agencies should take this seriously.
So what about distance education?
As you may recall, the federal courts vacated the regulation regarding the federal state authorization requirements for distance education. The Department said that it will not enforce that regulation. We should remember that the regulation was struck down on a technicality and the Department could decide to reinstate it. The decision on when (or if) to do so has been delayed due to the massive turnover in the postsecondary leadership at the Department. As these decisions are made, WCET will keep you informed.
The bottom lines for distance education…
I keep getting asked about the July 1, 2014 or July 1, 2013 federal deadlines for state authorization institutional compliance for distance education programs. Since the distance education regulation was vacated, there is no regulation and, therefore, there IS NO DEADLINE.
As was true before the Department got involved and continues to be true today, states expect you to follow their regulations prior to serving students in their state.
Watch for my coverage from the national meeting on state authorization reciprocity that will be held on April 16 & 17.
This keeps getting more fun, eh? And I got to use the word “kerfuffle”!!
ADDENDUM APRIL 6, 2013: This post has sparked several conversations in the last day. A couple points to clarify:
Column A v. Column B: I may have been a bit too subtle in my classifications. There could be a public institution that is not in column A, but most are. Alternatively, there are several private institutions that have state charters (especially older institutions when that was a common way of recognizing them) or others like Western Governors University that have special recognition in a state. For your institution, be sure to read the language for federal regulations § 600.9(a) and (b) and carefully determine where your institution fits.
Proceed in All Haste in Getting Clarification from the Department of Education: While Dr. McArdle is very clear that the Department is not interested in seeing institutions and students lose aid, it’s a bad idea to have your institution or students having any exposure at all on this issue. If your authorizing agency is not sure that its rules are acceptable, it should request an opinion from the Department. Alternatively, we need another extension or more clarification on the regulation as a whole.
We had planned this blog to run today, but did not know that the U.S. Department of Education would choose March 19 to release its new “Dear Colleague” letter on “Applying for Title IV Eligibility for Direct Assessment (Competency-Based) Programs.” In the letter, the Department says: “This letter provides guidance to institutions that wish to have direct assessment (competency-based) programs considered for title IV, Higher Education Act (HEA) program eligibility. The letter outlines how institutions can have competency-based programs approved under the current regulations on direct assessment programs.”
While you are absorbing that new guidance, we welcome Fred Hurst as our guest blogger. He shares with us the vision and lessons learned in Northern Arizona University’s pursuit of “personalized learning” through competency-based programs.
Fred Hurst, Northern Arizona University
We continue to move forward to implement our Personalized Learning initiative this spring. For those of you who may not be familiar with it, Northern Arizona University’s Personalized Learning enables motivated students to earn a high quality degree more efficiently and at a lower cost by customizing coursework to fit individual learning styles and previously acquired knowledge.
What is Personalized Learning?
Our education system, from Kindergarten through college, is designed like an assembly line – every student is treated the same. The problem is that every student is different. For example, even in Kindergarten, some children can read, others can’t read at all. The gaps in ability only get worse over time and they vary for every student. In high school, I didn’t understand grammar but I was a math whiz.
Using technology to create self-paced online programs allows education to be personalized to each student in a way that would be prohibitively expensive in our current faculty-led model. Competency-based education can ensure that each student gains true competency, not just squeaking by with a “D.” Research tells us that most students are turned off to learning by middle school. Competency-based education can bring back the joy of learning to many students.
We designed our Personalized Learning program from the ground up. We threw out all our current approaches to pedagogy, student support and business processes and reinvented them using the latest techniques and technologies. Students have multiple instructional options to help them master the material: video lectures and documentaries, simulations, games, and even textbooks. Each student has a faculty mentor to tutor them to ensure they master the material. Additionally, we want to utilize adaptive learning powered by big data to steer students to the learning options – and developmental and supplemental materials – which will most efficiently allow them to be successful.
Personalized Learning is based on a subscription model. Like Netflix, the student pays for time, not by the credit hour. The flat $2,500 cost per six months is all-inclusive for all the courses the student can master – no extra charges for textbooks/materials, IT or climbing walls. Can you imagine going on Amazon.com and having a long list of the costs that make up the price of an item you want to buy: $14 for manufacturing, $10 shipping from China to the U.S., $4 for marketing, etc.? The student may start any day of the year and their personalized semester is six months long, regardless of when they start.
Implementation Challenges We Faced
Sounds great, huh? Well, being a change agent isn’t always easy. We had originally hoped to implement Personalized Learning on January 2nd of this year. A number of factors have slowed us down including campus discussion, technology glitches and regulatory requirements.
Discussions with campus offices and departments about why and how Personalized Learning can work are ongoing and not without some controversy. This was expected, and, in the end, we have the support to move forward.
Technological issues include how do we fit an innovative program with 365 semesters per year (366 in leap years) into a student information system that is designed for three semesters per year? How do you provide federal financial aid to students when they are not enrolled in a specific number of courses in a semester? If a student is in the middle of a course when their subscription/semester ends, how do you assess their progress for financial aid and how do you transcript their work? These sorts of questions are difficult to answer and even more difficult to implement in a rigid student information system.
The North Central Association’s Higher Learning Commission has a pilot program in place to assess five institutions including Northern Arizona University to authorize the offering of competency-based programs. The first programs will be considered for approval in May. When approved by our accrediting body, Northern Arizona University will apply to the U.S. Department of Education for authorization to offer Title IV federal financial aid. As of this writing, the first and only institution to apply, Southern New Hampshire University, believes their approval is imminent.
Northern Arizona University is in the process of final quality assurance on the degree programs – Computer Information Technology, Small Business Administration, and Liberal Arts. The business processes and the user interface will be in place in April. We will implement this spring after the Higher Learning Commission approves us to offer the three degree programs. Personalized Learning students will not have federal financial aid available until later in the year when it is anticipated that the Department of Education will authorize us to offer it.
I close with the following quote by Victor Hugo, “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”
Fred Hurst
Senior Vice President of Extended Campuses
Northern Arizona University Fred.Hurst@nau.edu
If there was ever any doubt that we are in the midst of a new dot.com boom for education, that doubt was removed at last week’s SXSWEDU. The event brought entrepreneurs and educators to Austin, Texas for four days of panels and a competition for education start-ups. I had the great fun of participating in a panel discussion on “Are Courses a Commodity?” with Myk Garn, Mickey Revenaugh and Michael Horn. Vanessa Dennen and I helped Curt Bonk rehearse his “cage match” answers while sharing beers and ribs at one of the Cengage social events. I enjoyed hearing Bill Gates speak to the crowd about his vision for a transformed education system. It was definitely an interesting mix of energies.
Ellen Wagner, Executive Director of WCET
Gotta say, not all of it felt all that good. The Chronicle of Higher Educationcovered the event with a headline that explicitly named the tensions between entrepreneurs and educators: “At South by Southwest Education Event, Tensions Divide Entrepreneurs and Educators.”
While I was there, I kept hearing that THIS dot.com is different because it’s about education, and because the tech is better and data will inform us and investors are smarter and the market is ready and there are business plans and people aren’t just throwing exuberant ideas at the wall and hoping that something sticks.
Really?
I have to say that the confident assurances that this educational technology boom is different just didn’t make me feel any less skeptical. Because in the same way that there are some who really DO believes that MOOCs are the birth of online learning, it is clear that there is an entire generation of investors and entrepreneurs who really DO seem to believe that the ideas thrown against the wall of the 1990s are somehow less legitimate than some of the ideas that are currently being thrown against the wall today.
So let me tell you why this particular new EDU.dot.com isn’t as different as visionaries and investors would have you believe.
Ready?
It’s because no matter how new your tech is or how great the idea is, or how impressive the possibilities are, or the circumstances, or the bandwidth, or the platform, or the operating system we won’t figure out how to crack the code on transformation until we change the most important part of the equation. And that is the human factor. Eventually it comes down to people being ready to embrace the change. The ability to ride out the hype cycle and get oneself to a true plateau of productivity will all come down to the degree we can induce people to change their ways, completely rethink their practices, and help them figure out how to use new tools toys, apps, and the like to deliver on their promises.
The excitement around innovative technology futures for teaching and learning has energized educational researchers to think broadly and deeply about the possibilities they represent. The venture capital communities’ recognition that education may be ready for its “Internet moment” has also generated massive interest in developing promising ideas for products with commercial consideration.
Between these two exciting arenas of exploration live equally important opportunities for transformation that come from practice-focused solutions contributing to demonstrable improvements in student engagement, faculty performance, and institutional accountability.
People. We’ve got to get ready, too.
Ellen Wagner
Executive Director, WCET
This is a version of a blog post that originally appeared on Ellen’s eLearning Roadtrip blog.
There are plenty of activities on the State Authorization front this week. Below are announcements about:
State Authorization Network Year 3 — Call for Members
State Authorization Compliance Workshop — April 21, 2013
Latest State Authorization Reciprocity Draft Released — Give Your Feedback
Watch for an update on the military and state authorization later this week.
State Authorization Network Year 3 — Call for Members
WCET invites new members to join its State Authorization Network (SAN) for the program year that runs from April 1, 2013 to March 30, 2014. The Network was developed to assist institutional personnel who are trying to comply with state regulations and wish to keep current with the different regulations of each state and the federal government. The Network is based upon a simple premise:
Working collaboratively, institutions can navigate the state regulatory processes more efficiently than working on their own.
Since reciprocity is probably at least a year away from reaching a large number of states, there still is a need to pay attention to state-by-state compliance. SAN members are systems, consortia of institutions, or individual institutions. Each SAN member appoints two ‘Coordinators’ and WCET provides training on the regulations, access to experts on the issues, strategies on how to proceed, and networking among participants so that they can share what they learn when exploring each state’s regulations. One of the greatest benefits has been the sharing that occurs when Network members identify problems that they encounter when seeking compliance in a state. SAN gives you an early warning on upcoming bumps in the road to compliance. By sharing expertise, your institution can save time by learning from others.
State Authorization Compliance Workshop — April 21, 2013
In connection with the NASASPS meeting (the national gathering of state regulators), WCET will be hosting a workshop focused on assisting those who are charged by their institution in complying with state authorization regulations. The main outcomes of the meeting will be:
Sharing among participants on best practices in organizing for and pursuing compliance.
Learning from guest state regulators about complying with their own state regulations and receiving general advice on how to interact with regulators.
Obtaining an update on the reciprocity agreement.
While this event is sponsored by the State Authorization Network, it is open to all. It will be held:
Sunday April 21, 2013
8:00 am – 4:00 pm
Sacramento, CA
Reciprocity is coming together and you will hear more about it in the coming weeks. Efforts to educate representatives from each state on how to implement reciprocity and institutions on how to participate in the agreement will begin next month.
A Brief History of the Reciprocity Agreement
Three groups worked on the reciprocity agreement:
The Presidents’ Forum and the Council of State Governments received a grant from Lumina Foundation to create a model reciprocity agreement in 2010. Their work started prior to the issuance of the federal regulation and their Drafting Team has worked with a variety of stakeholders (regulators, institutions, accreditors, presidential associations) to develop their model State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA).
The Presidents’ Forum/CSG work was aimed at creating a model, they never planned to be the entities to implement it. Lead by WICHE (the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education), the regional higher education compacts (including NEBHE, MHEC, and SREB) decided to build on the SARA model agreement. Beginning in January 2012, they began working on an implementation version of the agreement. The resulting implementation plan leveraged the historic missions of these compacts in creating interstate partnerships to address higher education issues.
Created by APLU (Association of Public and Land-grant Universities) and SHEEO (State Higher Education Executive Officers), the Commission on Regulation of Postsecondary Distance Education held its first meeting in late June of 2012. The Commission has reviewed the reciprocity options and obtained feedback from a wide range of institutions and accreditors that have a stake in reciprocity. Their current report draws heavily on the work of the Presidents’ Forum, Council of State Governments, and the regional compacts.
All of the groups cited above are now working together and are supporting the reciprocity report released by the Commission.
April State Authorization Implementation Meeting
With support from Lumina Foundation, the Presidents’ Forum is organizing a meeting on April 16-17 in Indianapolis to discuss steps for states to take in implementing the agreement. Attendees will learn about details of the agreement, discuss what types of legislation (if any) might be needed for a state to implement it, and identify additional steps a state would need to take to participate in reciprocity. SHEEO has been working with states to identify three-person teams from each state. Space is limited, so this will not be an open invitation meeting. Additional reciprocity, are in the planning stages but are not set at this time.
Russell Poulin
Deputy Director, Research & Analysis
rpoulin@wiche.edu
Twitter: @russpoulin
Last Sunday, a New York Times editorial educated us on “The Trouble with Online College.” When the editorial focuses on the results of a longitudinal study by Columbia University’s Community College Research Center (CCRC). While they make some good points, when they stray from the facts they have a bit of trouble.
The editorial states:”First, student attrition rates — around 90 percent for some huge online courses — appear to be a problem even in small-scale online courses when compared with traditional face-to-face classes.” This statement treats MOOCs and online for-credit courses as the same things and have the same attrition rates. The 90% attrition rate for MOOCs is in line with reports that I have heard, but the CCRC study that is cited shows attrition rates that are closer to 10% and only slightly below that of face-to-face courses. That’s just plain disingenuous.
The Community College Research Center Study
While the Times’ editorial was a bit over-the-top, the CCRC research is piece of work that we in the distance education community needs to study closely and be ready to address. The study follows students from the Washington community colleges through several years. Their research shows that:
“While all types of students in the study suffered decrements in performance in online courses, some struggled more than others to adapt: males, younger students, Black students, and students with lower grade point averages. In particular, students struggled in subject areas such as English and social science, which was due in part to negative peer effects in these online courses.”
Will online education have a negative impact on students most in need of help?
Those of us in the distance education community should welcome such research. While we would like to see the same type of attention placed on the face-to-face courses, we should be eager to learn from research and continue to improve. And we agree that online education might not be for everyone, but we would like to hear face-to-face proponents admit that the traditional classroom experience is also not for everyone.
The report cites many findings that the detractors will use against distance education. We will need to be able to discern the helpful from the hyperbole.
I have read the whole report. While I have many thoughts, below are a few that I would like to share with you. I would really like to hear your take on the research in the comments below.
Students “Adapting” to Online Learning
I agree with how they have framed the issue in terms of how students have “adapted” to online learning. The vast majority of students spend the bulk of their education career without having taken an online course. It is an adjustment. It is not too surprising that we are still in a period in which institutions are still figuring out what works and students are figuring out how to succeed in an online course.
The biggest takeaway that I took from the research is the need to make sure that students are prepared to succeed in an online course. I disagree with how they recommend addressing that issue. The authors are off-base in suggesting that students be “screened” out of an online class. They ably cite the reasons that such screening would probably not work. Instead, I suggest that we rely on education. Colleges should pay more attention to assuring that students are prepared to take an online class. Some institutions have a required short course to prepare students. I don’t know if any of Washington’s Community Colleges have such a requirement or even an optional service to help those new to online education. Such focus on those who are not ready for online education who help to address the study’s concern about certain demographic groups falling behind. If intervention were based upon need, the intervention could be applied regardless of group identity. Research on how students adapt when given the proper up-front help would be interesting.
The First Year Effect
It is very helpful that the study separates out the impact on students taking online courses in their first year at an institution. First, year students (as a whole) performed more poorly in the online environment. Many who did poorly in the first try at an online course did not enroll in such a course in subsequent years. This is good to know and lends more credence to the recommendations that early intervention is needed. Statistically, while they pulled out the first year students as a separate analysis they never pulled them out of the overall analysis. These poorly performing first year students have to be pulling down the overall performance measures. What would the differences look like if you took out the “one and done” students? The performance differences would have to be much less.
The Impact of Student Services is Missing
For further research, the impact of student services needs to be included. The assumption in the fourth recommendation is that the problem is with the “quality of all online courses taught at the college.” For the underprepared students that the study worries about most, student support services (advising, tutoring, library resource materials, study skills assistance, technical assistance) could be the differentiator. These services may be readily available on campus, but might be available on a limited basis or not at all for online students. Those differences are not measured by the study. Overlooking the importance of quality student services is mistake often made by those new to distance education.
Is “Statistically Significant” Actually Significant?
When people hear “statistically significant” they often do not fully understand the implications of that term. If I obtain a large enough sample, any difference becomes statistically significant. While some of the differences are “statistically significant,” they might not be “practically significant” enough to warrant large-scale interventions. What would have to be done to close the 1% gap in attrition rates between some groups that were cited for some groups?
Will the Figlio Study Never Die?
The Figlio study cited on page four is not about online courses it is about using video in a face-to-face course. When the Chronicle of Higher Education made a similar error in reporting the results of the study in their publication, they changed their headline after several people objected. The study is continually misused. Sorry…this is a pet peeve of mine.
In Conclusion
The New York Times reaches an unsupported conclusion:
“The online revolution offers intriguing opportunities for broadening access to education. But, so far, the evidence shows that poorly designed courses can seriously shortchange the most vulnerable students.”
Is it really “poorly designed courses”? We need to continue to pay close attention to the quality of distance education, but even the CCRC research cites another big contributor to the differences…the students have not yet “adapted” to this type of learning. They are inexperienced with it. Additional contributing factors are the availability of student services and ability of the faculty, many of whom are also new to the online environment.
In this blog posting, I leaned toward trying to defend some distance education practices as the New York Times editorial shows us that this report will be often cited and often cited incorrectly. The CCRC research is an important advancement giving some new considerations for differences in performance by student characteristics and by academic subject areas. We will need to review the report in more depth and discern what we can learn from it.
The discussion will go on. What’s your take on it?
Russell Poulin
Deputy Director, Research & Analysis
WCET – WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies
rpoulin@wiche.edu
Twitter: @russpoulin
With all this talk about MOOCs, we wanted to hear from someone who had deep experience with open courses long before the idea was discovered by the elite universities. Guest blogger Alan Levine most recently was instructional technology specialist at the University of Mary Washington, following leadership positions at the New Media Consortium and the Maricopa Community Colleges. Currently he is exploring new options under the banner of his own creation CogDog.it. Through his Open Digital Storytelling class, you find concepts that can be used by an educator to reach a “massive” (or as large as you wish) audience.We appreciate Alan’s humor and the titular reference to the closing line of the film “The Maltese Falcon.” In response to the question “What is it?”, Humphrey Bogart answers “The stuff dreams are made of“.
Many people do not quite know what to make of the Open Digital Storytelling course ds106 (http://ds106.us/), an open online course since January 2011:
Started in 2010 by University of Mary Washington (UMW) instructional technologist Jim Groom, this course broke away from the typical digital storytelling approach of video personal narrative, to framing storytelling as something that is based on and part of the culture that is the world wide web. Students at UMW are tasked with setting up their own domain and managing a WordPress blog, part of the personal cyberinfrastructure idea envisioned by Gardner Campbell.
The course explores not only the methods of creating visual, audio, and video media forms, but explores issues of digital identity, copyright, remix, and internet culture. It is less a statement of what digital storytelling is then an exploration of what it is as an ongoing query.
After presenting at the 2010 Instructional Technology Council’s eLearning conference, Jim was asked “why don’t you open up this course for others to participate?” Influenced by the open network structure of the 2008 Connectivism and Connective Knowledge course (which gave birth to the MOOC acronym) thus was born ds106, the open course. Built on a platform of open source technologies WordPress and the free FeedWordpress plugin, ds106 operates in the very distributed manner of the internet itself. Our primary channel of communication is a #ds106 hash tag in twitter plus our own internet radio station, built by participants,.
All participants in the experience, registered students at UMW and several other institutions plus open participants, submit a URL for their blog that is syndicated into ds106. Currently, courses at the University of Michigan, Kansas State University, and York College/CUNY run parallel courses that tie into ds106. This means whenever someone publishes new content on their own site, ds106 gets a copy and all links on the ds106 site point back to the source. Our site currently subscribes to over 600 external blogs, and unlike your garden variety LMS, we never throw away previous work. We have aggregated over 23,000 blog posts.
Unlike other massive online open courses that are all the rage, ds106 does not attempt to replicate the same learning experience for every participant – nearly all MOOCs attempt to scale arithmetically. What our UMW students do overlaps with the other courses and what open participants choose to do, but there is no single ds106 course for all. In fact, it is more community than course. The syndication bus is a distributed network model, not a centralized one. There are no registrations or logins required to access ds106 content.
I found a much better image that represents the way ds106 is designed.
creative commons image from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_map_1024.jpg
The very essence of ds106 is that it is made of the same stuff that the web is made of, a distributed, open, decentralized connected network managed by participants in the space it inhabits. You will hear people talk about their organizations or projects being on the web. but there is more than a shade of difference of ds106 being of the web.
When Paul Baran proposed the radical idea of a communications network based on data being broken down into small packets, and routed through this distributed network, assembled on the receiving end, his ideas were ridiculed by conventional engineering wisdom of the day. The telephone companies that had built existing networks insistedthat connections needed to be open point-to-point to be reliable for the duration of a communication transaction. Luckily for us, the packet switching model won out over the long run.
In an environment that has proven its resilience, growth, and capability, should we not emulate the very ideals of the internet in the learning experiences we create? For the most part, while being on the web, the majority of MOOCs are operating via a structure that is not built by nor cared for by its learners. The truly open, syndicated model of ds106 works because it acts like the web itself.
I am not just arm waving at the stars here; see a timelapse reconstruction of the ds106 galaxy created by Martin Hawksey, a JISC/CETIS researcher, who created a visualization based on the export of our WordPress database processed with NodeXL.
This is not to say ds106 is one single model to serve all types of learning, but it is one that takes more of a networked approach– scales are for lizards! . At ds106, we are not posing on the ground in front of a shiny jet built by someone else, we are building it as we fly. If you want to find out how you can be a part of this or help yourself to relevant pieces of the course, see
Dr. Christine Geith, Michigan State University, has been pioneering new approaches in higher education for more than 20 years using educational technology, online learning and entrepreneurial practices. Dr. Geith has experience in research, teaching, small business, internet start-ups, online and adult education, peer learning and open educational resources. She is an advisor to several educational software start-ups, has served on for-profit boards, and has held leadership roles on higher education association boards.
How the course catalog killed education
Commoditization of the course catalog is underway. Ten-thousand dollar degrees, three credits for under a hundred dollars – the roots of this sweeping change started over a hundred years ago when the Carnegie Foundation created the credit hour to compare faculty workload across institutions.
For decades, our society’s demand for degree qualifications in mass has devolved to a laser focus on the course. The course is the building block of learning outcomes. The course credit is a transferable unit across institutions. And guess what? Everyone’s course catalog looks the same! From Stanford to Saylor.org the catalogs look the same.
The institution’s brand is the only thing on the course catalog that represents the full bundle of outcomes it achieves for society and for individuals. It’s the only thing on the catalog describing the difference between a $3,000 course, a $30 course, or a free MOOC.
Where do I sign up in the course catalog for unique living experiences and for contributing to leading-edge research? Where do I sign up in the catalog for transformational relationships with world experts? Where do I sign up for life-long relationships and the value they bring? Where do I sign up in the course catalog to work on real problems like ending global hunger?
Christine Geith, Assistant Provost & Executive Director MSUglobal, Michigan State University
These unique experiences may not give me academic credits, but they are critical to my personal success and the ultimate value of my degree. They are essential to achieving programmatic and institutional learning outcomes. They are also difficult to commoditize because they depend on a scarce resource – deep, trusted relationships. And, these experiences are expensive to offer!
Five ways to protect your brand
What can an institution do in the face of commodity courses? Here are five possible ways to protect your brand:
Get rid of the course catalog. Given the education “market” and funding mechanisms, this would not be wise, but partially commoditizing your own course catalog through OpenCourseWare or MOOCs could be a strategy to emphasize intangibles by focusing your value on your credentials and your solutions to grand challenges.
Put unique experiences into the course catalog. This may be one way of making them tangible: turn them into courses and measure their outcomes with learning analytics.
Create something with peer brands that makes the intangibles visible. An example is the University Research Corridor in Michigan where the three research universities join forces to demonstrate their state economic impact
Try and protect the definition of “university” to exclude certain types of institutions and protect the market of others.Ken Udas, Deputy Vice Chancellor and Chief Information Officer at the University of Southern Queensland, has written about this on his blog.
Create more value. Develop tangible add-on products and services that are not sold through a course catalog. Better yet, make the course catalog the add-on.
Three questions to uncover more tangible value
What can you do to create more value, especially if you’re an institution like a land-grant or a research university where a big portion of your value is not listed in the catalog? You can look deeply at yourself and ask these three questions.
Who do you have that is in scarce supply? These assets might be experts, networks of experts, and the people that flow through your specialized facilities. Michigan State is leveraging the talents of its Spartan community to solve world challenges through its Spartans Will campaign.
What value might there be in the data that you have, or could have? What flows of activities create data that could be of value?EdX is an emerging example of leveraging big data and learning analytics to create evidence-based learning experiences connected with high-quality institutional brands.
The dialog created by these three questions could lead to leveraging who you are as an institution – beyond courses and credits; beyond what the media tells us our value is to the “postsecondary market.” Use the results along with one or more of the five strategies to not only protect, but to strengthen, your brand. Don’t slip down the slope, oblivious to your full purposes and values; looking at your peers.
For how long will we continue to let our most visible outcomes be courses and credits? I invite you to share your thoughts by making a reply to this post.
Christine Geith, Ph.D
Assistant Provost & Executive Director MSUglobal
Michigan State University
Email:geith@msu.edu | msuglobal.com |@christinegeith on twitter
A few weeks ago we asked you to: “Predict something that will happen this year regarding teaching, learning, technology, business of e-learning, policy, regulations, student behavior, or other related items.” Some people see big changes for higher education. Will higher ed be changed significantly? Will 2013 see some issue that captures the media hype that was showered on MOOCs?
Thank you to all who submitted your prognostications, which included these academic outcomes:
better academic integrity technologies, and
demonstrated competencies will begin to trump degree
Several people saw it as the “year of” some activity, including:
hyflex learning,
mobile learning,
the importance of faculty and the teacher student relationship, and
higher ed providing better defense of its practices in the face of mounting criticism.
In policy and operations, we can look forward to:
Will 2013 Turn Our Institutions Upside Down?
more emphasis on affordability of higher education for students,
more real collaboration with our K-12 colleagues,
a shift in distance enrollments from for-profits to non-profits,
student support will improve, and
state authorization will go away (although this was expressed as a wish rather than a prediction).
Of course, if we’re looking at the future, someone has to opine on MOOCs:
MOOCs will award credit,
will become monetized, and
for some institutions, will no longer be massive, no longer be free, and will not be open. (Hmmm…isn’t that a distance education class?)
Corey Davis of Our Lady of the Lake University, had some of the most amusing thoughts about hype including this tongue-in-cheek-I-think prediction: “Some university will create the first online course to be delivered entirely through text-messaging.” Someone could do it! Maybe they already have??
As for my thoughts, I think that we are seeing just the tip of the political iceberg on the issue of keeping college affordable for students. Legislators, Congressional representatives, Governors, and even the President have talked about this issue and more of them are taking action. The question “how can technology help?” will continue to be asked. We better be ready with an answer.
Below are the full submissions that I referenced above, as well as links to lists of predictions from several other sources. If you would like to comment on this post with your prediction, please do so. Enjoy!
ACADEMIC
We’ll Curb Student Cheating Online student authentication biometric technologies and online proctoring systems will become more reliable and affordable. Andrea Henne — San Diego Community College District
Credentialing will Change Non-Degree offerings will change Master’s Degrees, particularly for professional degrees in Business, Technology, or Teaching where the workplace is no longer looking for a degree but need specialized competencies. Sue Talley — Capella University
The Faculty Strike Back The coming year will be one when faculty rise up in response to the completion agenda, more budget cuts, the implications of MOOCs on adjunct and even tenured faculty, credit for prior learning and issues related to curriculum control and outsourcing. Unions will be prominent in the news. New spokespeople for the importance of faculty and the teacher student relationship will emerge. Gary Brown — Portland State University
MOOCs Become Credit-worthy My prediction is that there will be an increase in the number of institutions having a policy and a process for awarding/accepting college credit for MOOCs or other free or low cost courses such as from straighterline.com. Frances Rowe — Quinnipiac University Online
The Year of HyFlex The redefined traditional student – the part-time student, full-time worker, parent/caregiver – and the US economy will force many urban public institutions to consider HyFlex as a primary delivery mode. HyFlex will trend toward the norm. Yolanda Columbus — University of North Texas at Dallas
TECHNOLOGY
The Year of Mobile With a fast new wifi standard about to be released, and the inundation of BYOD, including the usual ios and android devices, and ubuntu making a grand entrance, and Microsoft trying to regain attention, this will be the year of mobile computing. Jacques du Plessis — UW Milwaukee
Organized Technology in Education Chaos will Continue and Get Worse for Some
Schools that embrace the organized chaos will succeed in bringing a new world to their students and teachers. Those schools that yield to students’ knowledge of technology and allow them to guide where time and effort is spent, will reap great rewards. Administrators will watch and listen to their students to discover where to meet them. The most popular social network, the most user friendly mobile device, and the best terminology that relates to your students’ demographic will be key in managing the plethora of “latest and greatest”. Less time will be spent on small talk with acquaintances and more time on cultivating relationships (so to speak).
Schools that have a well-balanced staff and faculty, who are grounded in ethical standards, have genuine concern for students, and willing to be pioneers will use the opportunities that the 2013 world of technology provides. School officials who lead by example in embracing technology, rewarding initiative, and providing flexibility to make it work will help their school and students rise to the top. Small school size and slashed budgets will no longer be considered road blocks in having a strong technology component in education.
Julie Owen — Smarter Services
POLICY
More MOOCs, but Not Massive and Not Open I predict that MOOC’s will gain in popularity, but they will no longer be free unless students apply for and are accepted into the college that offers them, and that they all will require proctored exams. They will simply become the new recruiting mechanism for universities to attract new students and get them in the door. (As this is already happening, it may not count as a prediction at all.) Lisa Ciardulli — Broward College Online
MOOCs Monetized Some company will monetize MOOCs and the fervor will shift to competency-based models. Luke Dowden — University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Shift from For-profit to Non-profit This year we’ll see a greater emphasis on transparency in higher education which will contribute to a decline in the number of students enrolled in for-profit institutions. Non-profit institutions will increase their share of the online/distance sector as faculty become more engaged and students opt for well-established programs at institutions with solid reputations. Gera Burton — Mizzou Online
We Will See Unprecedented K-12 Collaboration My prediction for 2013 is that we will see unprecedented collaboration and cooperation across the K-20 continuum. This will be much different from the historical brand of collaboration that is more focused on either securing or distributing funds. The new collaboration will be based in the realization that our basic tenets of K-12 and higher ed will only be fulfilled if we leverage shared infrastructure, common teaching/learning resources, and an open data environment that will truly allow for turning data into knowledge, and knowledge in to action to improve the overall teaching/learning experience. This marriage of the technology and expected outcomes based upon common resources will begin a process that will see investments based upon a data-driven K-20 decision process. In short,we will see a coalescence of the discussion of broadband, Common Core, Predictive Analytics, Teacher Preparation, Research collaboration, etc., and a focus on using what we know to do what we need to do for our students and faculty. This process is unification, not centralization. 2013 is the beginning of the new era of education that will focus on construction of a much more individually tailored educational environment that is open, and shared, not closed and based upon silos and the limits of proprietary tools. Mike Abbiatti — Arkansas Research and Education Optical Network
Student Affordability Forces Changes in Collegiate Business Models In 2013 budget-minded, fiscally-conservative students will offer significant resistance to loan debt. This will lead to a rise in discount educators – a Walmart version of higher education. Mid-level schools will feel the financial strain. A polarizing effect will stretch higher education between the discount schools and the top-tier, and top-dollar, schools. Both ends of the polarity will thrive but schools in the middle will begin to fail at an increasing rate. This will force more collaboration and innovation at the mid-level range leading to the adoption of novel business models and novel educational models. Chad Maxson — Travecca Nazarene University
Higher Ed Strikes Back Progressives in higher education will begin to push back hard against all the criticism targeted at our industry. Luke Dowden — University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Distance Learning Institutions that Pay Attention to Processes Will Succeed The University of Alabama wins its third National Championship in a row. How is that prediction relevant to distance learning? The head coach of the Crimson Tide has one main message to his players – “Process.” He emphasizes constantly the importance of the process. A well-defined process that is followed closely by everyone in the organization will produce winning results. For his football team this process includes everything from nutrition, weight lifting, conditioning, studying film and rest. Educational leaders, especially in the field of distance learning, can easily be swept along by every fad and new technology. But at the end of the day, those things often do not yield lasting, consistent results. Leaders must identify the process that is most appropriate for their organization to yield measurable results in student learning. Then they must constantly “coach” everyone in the organization to consistently follow that process. My prediction is that the distance learning programs which are the most successful will be those will well defined processes for everything from marketing, enrollment, advising, student services, instructional design, instruction and assessment. Mac Adkins — Smarter Services
Lower Costs/Increased Quality in Higher Ed As it turns out, our CEO recently posted his own thoughts on what will come to the forefront in 2013, and I thought that I would share: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-devine/the-cost-vs-quality-conun_b_2346940.html. You will notice that he predicts five major trends in 2013, all under the umbrella theme of lowering costs while increasing quality in higher education:
Proliferation of educational analytics
Increased functionality of campus technology infrastructure
Growth of hybrid classes
Evolution of the Flipped Classroom
Open Source Moves from No Cost to Low Cost
Nani Jansen — CourseSmart
State Authorization Goes Away The end of state authorizations for online learning. Oops, I thought you were asking for our 2013 Wish List. Angela Auzenne — Dallas County Community College District
STUDENTS
Improved Student Support Beyond the Classroom Over the last 10 years or so, the distance learning sector has grown exponentially. Institutions have done an excellent job adapting to the changing learning environment. Several different learning technologies have made learning online better. We’ve seen the development and advancement of learning management systems that give online students the feeling of being in a classroom. We’ve seen tutoring go online so that online learners have access to that integral part of learning as well. These are just a couple examples of how distance educators everywhere are getting smarter about doing online learning to give the student the best chance to succeed. My prediction for 2013 is that you will see institutions continue to improve the way they do distance learning by identifying student weaknesses and better preparing those students for the experience. Many institutions are now seeing that student success in an online course is more dependent on non-cognitive factors than in a traditional classroom. I think that institutions will really focus on addressing these factors to give their students the best chance to succeed. Alan Manley — Smarter Services
Hype Will Go Hyper I predict:
Some university will create the first online course to be delivered entirely through text-messaging.
Some other device or technology will overtake the iPad as the go-to-device for mobile learning.
Universities will funnel most of their general education courses and/or remedial education through home-grown or boutique massively open online courses (MOOCs) – or at least one university will announce their plans to do so.
Mobile learning will rule the world (and by “world” I don’t just mean the United States, which is where most predictions are located. I literally mean the world.)
😉 Corey Davis — Our Lady of the Lake University
PREDICTIONS FROM OTHER SOURCES
Gartner Predicts Cloud, Social, Mobile, and Information Forces Will Shape 2013
Russell Poulin
Deputy Director, Research and Analysis
WCET – WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies rpoulin@wiche.edu
303-541-0305
Twitter: wcet_info and RussPoulin
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