Author: WCET Frontiers

Attacking Exam Cheating and Instilling Academic Integrity in Students

By WCET Frontiers

June 29, 2016

1 Comment

I have always enjoyed the “Spy vs. Spy” section of Mad Magazine. If you are not familiar with it check out this animated version. In the wordless comic strip two spies battle it out against each other. The spies are identical except for one is dressed in black and the other in white. The comic strip is entertaining because every time one spy is confident that he has foiled the plans of the other spy some new technique or technology will be introduced to reverse the outcome.

Technology Can Enable Learning (and Cheating Too)

Those of us in the industry of exam proctoring can identify with this. Just when we get good at preventing cheating with one strategy, the students come up with another strategy. Once it was sufficient to not allow students to have their cell phones with them during testing. But now there are various forms of wearable technology that can be used to cheat. Sometimes it seems that even our best efforts only serve to keep the honest students honest. When a student is intent on cheating, they often seem to find a new way.

Just as technology can be a great tool for learning, it can be an effective tool for cheating as well. Some of the ways that students have indicated that they cheat include texting answers to other students during an exam, snapping pictures of an exam using their phone, using their phone to search the Internet for answers during an exam, purchasing term papers online, and creating fake test scores or letters of recommendation for college admission.

Many Students Admit to Cheating

The Josephson Institute on Ethics surveyed 23,000 American high school and college students about their frequency and perception of cheating. More than half (51%) admitted to cheating on an exam one or more times in the past academic year. Students were asked if they agreed with this statement, “In the real world, successful people do what they have to do to win, even if others consider it cheating.” Fifty-seven percent of students agreed.

When asked by the Josephson Institute why they cheat, the leading responses included – peer pressure, to help a friend, the gains outweigh the penalties, low chances of being caught, pressure from expectations, and not enough time to prepare. As we prepare learners to be competent professionals in their careers, one very important aspect is to instill in them a mindset of integrity. To foster this culture of integrity, schools are using services that authenticate learner identity and monitor student performance during examinations.

Survey on Test Proctoring Perceptions

To contribute to the body of knowledge about academic integrity SmarterServices administers the Annual Proctoring & Learner Authentication Survey. The purpose of the survey is to collect data about good practices and perceptions using learner authentication and testing integrity services. While the Josephson Institute survey and others have focused on the event of cheating, this survey focuses on efforts to monitor student behavior in an effort to discourage cheating.

Responses were received from 365 persons representing the following stakeholder groups: Faculty (21%), Learners (15%), School Administrators (20%), Proctors (12%) and Test Center Administrators (32%).

The following findings from the survey are relevant to current practice:

The four most common proctoring modalities reported by faculty and school administrators are an approved human proctor (HR Director, School Principal, Librarian, Notary, etc.), local test centers, instructor as proctor, and live-virtual proctoring.
Faculty are most satisfied when they proctor their own exams or use a corporate testing center, and faculty reported the lowest level of satisfaction with automated virtual proctoring.
Faculty perceived an instructor proctored exam as being the strongest psychological deterrent to cheating and virtual proctoring as the weakest.
The proctoring modality which students perceived to be the strongest form of psychological deterrent was an approved human proctor. Automated, virtual proctoring was perceived as the weakest form of psychological deterrent. It is not surprising that students reported that their preferred proctoring modality was automated virtual proctoring. Students also reported that the proctoring modality in which it would be the most difficult to cheat is instructor as proctor.
Students rated comfort and convenience as much stronger factors in their decision about a proctoring modality than cost.

Complete survey results are available on our website.

How Can We Foster Academic Integrity?

So what can be done to foster a culture that promotes academic integrity? I have had several conversations recently with faculty and proctors about the matter. Here are some actionable suggestions from those conversations:

CURRENT TECHNOLOGY – Rest assured that students will take advantage of the latest technology in their efforts to cheat. Faculty and proctors must stay informed about emerging technologies and their impact on testing integrity.

HONOR CODE – Each educational institution which measures mastery through assessment should issue an honor code to their students so that the students understand the expectations relative to academic integrity. One of the most common excuses that students make when confronted with a testing integrity violation is that “no one told me that doing this was wrong.” Students must understand how they should act with honor and integrity as well as the rules of what is and is not allowed. A part of the honor code should be the ramifications and punishments for violations.

INTEGRITY TRAINING – Students have differing perceptions about which behaviors are acceptable. A training program should affirm and encourage those actions which are honorable and inform students about the actions that are not honorable and the ramifications both professionally and academically. Orientation courses or new student experiences are great places for such training. Some faculty members have students sign an integrity statement as an early assignment in their course.

FACULTY INVOLVEMENT – When a faculty member is actively engaged in a course then the student is more likely to feel that cheating is a violation of that relationship. When an online course is taught in a fully automated fashion then the human element is removed and the student may feel that that they are not letting any particular person down if they cheat.

MULTI-MODAL APPROACH – Just like the spies, when students take all of their exams in the same context, they will begin to notice weaknesses and attempt to exploit them. It is a good practice for a school to provide several modalities of proctoring and not allow students to do all of their testing with one modality. Examples of testing modalities include – instructor as proctor, testing in a testing center, testing with an approved proctoring professional (I.e. a human resources officer in a corporation), automated-virtual proctoring, and live-virtual proctoring. Tools such as SmarterProctoring.com facilitate the work flow management in a multi-modal environment.

If you have ideas, war stories or success stories about fostering a climate of academic integrity, I would like to hear from you.

Dr. Mac Adkins
CEO and Founder
SmarterServices.com
mac@smarterservices.com

Photo Credit: ini budi setiawan

Academic Integrity, Student Authentication

Uncategorized

Behind the Curtain: Lessons from a Modern Digital Marketer

By WCET Frontiers

June 9, 2016

Higher education has undergone a dramatic shift over the last 10 years, and so too has the world of marketing. In 2014, the Harvard Business Review stated that it could not think of another discipline that had evolved so quickly, except for possibly information technology. Those of us in higher education marketing, then, are at the crossroads of these two rapidly transforming industries.

The dramatic shift in marketing can be attributed to both the availability and rapid adoption of technology and the volume of data now available to marketers. Since marketers need their messaging to be where their customer target is, the adoption of digital marketing has skyrocketed. In Mary Meeker’s recently released annual 2016 internet trends research, she stated that U.S. internet advertising spend grew more than 20%, from $50 billion in 2014 to $60 billion in 2015. McKinsey reported that digital advertising was the fastest growing marketing spend category, increasing approximately 16.1% annually from 2009 to 2014.

Clearly, digital marketing is a vital channel for the modern marketer, but for many, it remains a mystery. My goal is to help pull back the curtain on digital marketing and share some lessons I have learned while leading the online marketing teams at Learning House, which in 2015 generated more than 65k prospective online student leads.

Increasing Brand and Program Awareness

Within digital marketing there are many different types and formats available to advertisers depending on the objective of the marketing tactic. If the goal is awareness of your college or university and the specific university programs, below are the most often used online marketing products.

Display – Display is the billboard of the internet. The most common formats are either image or text ads (see examples below.) You can purchase display advertising for a specific website (such as Social Work Today or Scrubs) or on a display network (the largest being the Google Ad Network, a.k.a. the GDN, which allows your display ad to possibly be seen on more than two million different websites). Using a display network allows marketers to start with a wide net of potential eyeballs and then narrow down sites based on either keywords or topics. One tool that can be helpful in display advertising is com’s free tool, which allows you to see what display ads competitors are running.

Social – Social media sites can be used to reach potential students both as a paid and an organic, or free, avenue. The majority of social ads are image ads with limited text. Social ads typically add an additional layer of demographic and psychographic targeting options not available with display ads, such as interests, employer, age, gender and more. On the organic, or free side, of social media, providing interesting, relevant, shareable and on-brand posts are another way to grow brand awareness. On the paid side, more social media sites are offering advertising products. While Facebook has been offering paid advertising for years, more sites, such as Pinterest and Instagram, are also adding the capability. In addition, social sites that already offered advertising are expanding the kinds of advertising products available. For example, Facebook recently began incorporating forms in their ads as well as multi-image ads called carousel ads (see example below).

Content Marketing – With content marketing, relevant original content is created and used to boost brand recognition and increase traffic to your website both from referrals to this content and from internet search engines. The content developed is based on strategic keywords related to the degree programs the university offers. This content is then promoted either through paid tactics utilizing vendors such as Outbrain or Taboola or through free outreach to bloggers and other relevant websites. Some examples of this type of marketing include Home Business Magazine publishing Rivier University’s article “Working Remotely Works” and the Huffington Post article linking back to Touro University Worldwide’s article “The Divorce Rate and the Need for Marriage and Family Services.”

Digital Radio and Video – These marketing tactics are akin to offline radio ads and television commercials but moved online and with better audience targeting capabilities. Digital radio ads can be placed on streaming sites such as Pandora and Spotify. The top digital video advertising platform is YouTube but many other social media sites are adding video advertising, such as Facebook and Instagram.

Generating Prospective Student Leads

If the goal of your marketing campaign is student lead generation, you will want more targeted advertising that will reach individuals further along in their college decision-making journey. This type of advertising includes:

Search
- Paid – Paid search advertising features text ads that appear on a search engine results page (example below), and is conducted through an auction where advertisers bid on specific keyword searches. Search advertising is hugely popular, accounting for 50% of all digital ad spend in 2014. It is often separated in to two categories: non-brand or brand searches.
  - Brand searches involve search queries that include a college or university’s name (i.e. “University of Kentucky degrees”, “Concordia University nursing”). Brand searches are typically cheaper to buy as universities other than your own would not be trying to advertise to these individuals and thus, there is low competition for these search terms. The audience reached is usually further down the sales funnel as well since they are already searching for your university specifically. The market for this type of search may be reaching saturation, however; according to Google, the volume of brand searches in education have continually declined quarter over quarter for the last several quarters. Their most recent Q1 2016 Education Search Analysis shows a 5% decline in brand education searches in Q1 YOY.
  - Non-brand search is when the search queries being bid on are those other than ones involving the school’s name (i.e. “nursing degrees in KY” or “online counseling degrees”). Competition can be fierce for non-brand search queries as these individuals are looking to go to college but have not yet selected an institution. According to Sparkroom, the average cost per click (CPC) for higher education branded terms is $3.25, compared to $20.83 for non-branded terms.

Non-Paid – Paid search is not the only option for marketers. Organic, or non-paid search marketing, can be extremely effective and provide a significant ROI. This type of marketing involves continually optimizing websites to appear as high as possible on the search engine results page for those keywords that are most relevant to the programs they offer. This is also known as SEO or search engine optimization.

Social – Lookalike – A few years ago, Facebook expanded its advertising offering to include the ability to target individuals who had similar characteristics to another audience, whether it be your most recent graduates or individuals who had visited your website. This type of advertising allows marketers to strategically expand your advertising reach to prospective students that “look like” those who have already successfully converted (i.e., current students).

In-Market Display – Google offers the ability to advertise to individuals who are actively searching and visiting websites that indicate they are currently looking for post-secondary education. These users should also be further along in their decision to go to college.

Retargeting – Retargeting is an advertising technique to try to convert those who have demonstrated interest but have not yet taken the step of becoming a lead. By adding a tag or pixel to your website or specific website pages, you are able to present advertisements to visitors as they go to other sites after yours. Some publishers also are able to retarget to a list that you upload to their site. There are many types of advertising available to target this audience. They can be shown display ads or even on future searches the individual submits on Google. Not only does this keep your brand top of mind for this audience, but you also can tailor the retargeted ads based on the user’s behavior. For instance, if the individual visited the financial aid page of your website, then the ad displayed would talk about the financial aid options your university offers.

Website Optimization – Each year in the Learning House and Aslanian Market Research Online College Students survey, online students tell us their primary avenue for gathering detailed information about a school is by going directly to the university website. In the past couple of years, the data has also shown that unlike traditional college students, online college students only request information or contact two or three schools, so it is critical to provide a good experience to those visiting your site. There are many tools available to help improve website performance. For data about evaluating page design and page content, we use Optimizely and Crazy Egg. Google Analytics is a free tool to analyze your website traffic and behavior. Another more qualitative resource I like for website optimization is Bob Johnson’s Link of the Week. Each week Bob provides examples to some of the best college websites for specific objectives or goals.

The Future of Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is ever evolving as the search engines change their search algorithms, the publishers expand their digital advertising products and consumers change their behavior online. One increasingly important area is mobile advertising. As consumers continue to increase their mobile utilization, it is critical that your website and your digital ad creative is friendly to those visiting from a mobile device, both in look and also content. Messaging platform usage (i.e. Slack, Facebook Messenger) are also expanding and will likely play a role in future digital marketing efforts. And of course, as consumers become savvier, it is up to marketers to work harder. Adblocking tools, for example, are expanding and hampering the efforts of digital marketers. Methods to combat that will be increasingly important.

Resources

I leave you with a few of my favorite resources to learn more about each of the above types of digital marketing.

Google provides free AdWords fundamentals and certification training
Google also provides free Analytics certification training
Market Motive is a digital marketing training platform. They offer free webinars and also paid self-paced training
Moz Academy provides some short free videos on organic digital marketing
The Wishpond blog writes short but very helpful blogs on digital marketing

Wendy Parrish is the Vice President of Marketing for The Learning House, Inc. She has been in higher education marketing since 2007. Prior to that, she spent several years in both the real estate and consulting industries, including positions with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) and McKinsey & Co. She has a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University and an M.B.A. in Marketing and Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. You can connect with her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/wparrish or follow her on twitter @wendillpb.

Digital Learning, Managing Digital Learning, Marketing

Uncategorized

The Case for CACE: The Consortium for the Assessment of College Equivalency

By WCET Frontiers

June 2, 2016

7 Comments

Sometimes in higher education common sense and doing the right thing for students supersede competition, policies, and politics (SARA may quickly come to mind). An example, the newly-minted Consortium for the Assessment of College Equivalency (CACE), formed officially in 2015, demonstrates how those sentiments provided the impetus for six adult-focused colleges and universities to pool together their time, talent and resources. These colleges joined together to create a collaborative effort to facilitate the awarding of academic credit for workplace training and industry credentials among and between their institutions.

It started with an idea and two visionary administrators, one from Thomas Edison State University and the other, SUNY Empire State College, both well-established pioneers in the prior learning assessment (PLA) field. They invited colleagues from four sister institutions – Granite State College, Charter Oak State College, the Community College of Vermont, and Excelsior College – to join in their effort. Each an innovator in the recognition of college-level learning from non-collegiate settings, the six founding members of CACE developed – over the course of two years – an agreement to increase the availability of credit to their students and establish standards for the review and recommendation of credit for workplace training and industry credentials.

woman working at computer with code on screen — © European Union 2013 – European Parliament

Differing from an individual student portfolio assessment for prior learning, the work of the Consortium focuses on the academic credit evaluation or review of structured training programs offered by public or private providers (corporation, municipalities, etc.) and of established industry credentialing or licensure programs (IT, Radiologic Technologist, etc.). Such evaluations result in credit awards accessible to any student/employee who successful completes the course, exam, or program.

Simply put, CACE allows each institution to share with its competitors what is often regarded as proprietary information–academic credit awards and official reports- as a means to better serve students. Members of CACE refer to this ability to offer credit for employer training and industry certification exams through an internal evaluation process as the “secret sauce.” It’s one of the best ways CACE institutions can serve working adult students (and employers), and this benefit may likely have helped to land some CACE members on the recent Forbes Ten Great Colleges for Adults Returning to School list.

When the founding members first assembled and gingerly shared these “secret” policies and procedures with one another, a not-so-surprising thing happened: they found they were all approaching the academic evaluation of external learning in much the same way. Still, that fact alone did not make collaboration an easy process; lively debates about semantics often stole entire afternoons. Ultimately, six institutions came to agreement on a common set of standards and a process by which ostensibly to share student recruitment and enrollment access from hard-won corporate partnerships…culminating in the procurement of signatures from six different provosts and presidents.

Why Collaborate?

Yet, the need to work together with like-missioned colleagues was apparent. With a fast-growing interest in the now forty-plus year old practice of recognizing learning that takes place outside of the classroom, both employers and students have become educated and savvy about partnering with and enrolling in institutions offering academic credit for their workplace training and other forms of prior learning. But to award credit for credentials that have not already been evaluated by the American Council on Education (ACE) or the National College Credit Recommendation Service (NCCRS, formerly PONSI) can be a resource-laden process for institutions; hence, the idea of sharing academic evaluation reports was born.

That is not to suggest that resources were the primary driver behind the decision to collaborate. Enormous benefits – for student, employer, and institution alike – are inherent in the work of the Consortium:

Eliminates Transcript Barriers and Facilitates Transfer: CACE reduces the need for a student to enroll in and obtain a transcript from one institution in order to transfer workplace training credit to another participating institution. The six institutions have agreed to accept each other’s credit assignment directly – although each institution reserves the right to either deny and/or process the acceptance of those credits according to their own internal processes. At Excelsior College, for example, any credit recommendations for workplace training and industry certification that come from CACE must pass through the same faculty voting process as those resulting from an internal review. Once accepted, the courses and programs are loaded into the student information system so students can benefit from the credit awards by supplying the required verification from the partnering employer, rather than an official transcript from the originating institution.

Increases Employee Motivation and Access. Employers wishing to extend the low-cost, high-value benefit of academic credit for their training programs will be able to offer their employees access to potentially all of the member institutions of CACE, not only the one institution conducting the original evaluation. This practice results in motivation for their employees to further their education, saving them significant tuition and time to completion by avoiding costly duplication of learning, and allows them to select the institution that provides the best fit for their interests and needs. In the near future, CACE members also plan to conduct joint evaluations with representation from two or more institutions’ faculty to facilitate important employer partnerships.

Offers Guidance to Other Institutions: Institutions new to the credit for prior learning arena can access – via creative commons licensing – the set of standards developed by CACE as they look to develop their own policies and procedures for conducting academic evaluations of external learning experiences for credit at their own institutions. Just as institutions look to the time-tested PLA standards issued by the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) when developing a portfolio assessment process, these open standards will save them time. As CACE expands, it is likely that institutions without the infrastructure or desire to conduct their own evaluations will be able to join the consortium and gain access to the members’ evaluation reports and credit findings.

Lends Credibility to External Learning through a Standard Approach. The consortium lends credibility and further validity to the sound practice of extending academic credit for alternative, structured learning experiences. Building on the foundation set by CAEL, ACE, and NCCRS, the Consortium helps to dispel the belief that institutions are simply giving away credit for life and work experience. A standardized approach helps to reduce variations in the amount of credit awarded for similar training programs and lends transparency to the process of determining credit for alternative learning. In addition, the documentation CACE’s work produces can also inform an institution’s traditional credit offerings in light of new requirements from accrediting agencies calling for evidence supporting the application of credit hour policies (as an example, see MSCHE (2016), pp.11-14).

Improves Internal Policies and Practices. Last, membership in a consortium such as CACE has provided the opportunity for member institutions to review their own policies and procedures in comparison to the established standards, assess where they fall short, and introduce best practice. For example, two institutions recognized the need to implement a more formal appeals process for providers to challenge the credit findings and resubmit new or updated information when appropriate. The result of Consortium membership has been improved processes at each member institution.

What’s Next?

The Consortium members recognize the significance of what has been accomplished and share a vision of serving as a regional, national, or even global model for other institutions with the potential to reach major employers and, ultimately, to better serve adult students. Within the next six months to one year, CACE has crafted a hefty to-do list for itself: create by-laws, agree on best practices, develop criteria for new membership, continue the conference circuit, seek grant funding, establish a web presence, and create a way to easily share information, among others.

The group currently exists on the beneficence of each institution and relies on voluntary participation from the respective staff or faculty overseeing the academic evaluation process. Each institution sets its own fees for evaluations and covers its own administrative costs. Consortium costs have been limited to travel expenses and donated meeting space (and sometimes lunch!) at a given member institution. Moving forward, there is a pressing need for a designated staff member to coordinate efforts of the Consortium, create and maintain a website and database for sharing evaluation reports, vet new members, and ensure longevity of this worthy effort.

For more information:

To receive a copy of the CACE Standards for the Assessment of Non-Collegiate Instruction or to inquire about future membership opportunities, please send an email to CACEinquiry@gmail.com. In addition, the CACE concept and resulting standards will be accessible soon on the Presidents’ Forum website.

Founding individuals and current staff involved in CACE include:

Linda Wilder, Charter Oak College; Elizabeth Gauffreau and Leslie Paul, Granite State College; Nan Travers and Patricia Pillsworth, SUNY Empire State College, Marc Singer and Jeanine Nagrod, Thomas Edison State University; Gabrielle Dietzel and Melissa DeBlois, Vermont State Colleges; Tina Goodyear and Tanya Scime, Excelsior College.

More information about CACE founding member institutions:

http://www.tesu.edu/degree-completion/Professional-Training-Programs.cfm

http://www.esc.edu/degree-planning-academic-review/prior-learning-assessment/credit-for-learning/

http://ccv.edu/explore-ccv-programs/credit-for-what-you-know/

http://www.granite.edu/academics/pla.php

http://www.charteroak.edu/prior-learning-assessment/index.cfm

http://www.excelsior.edu/transfer-more-credits

Tina Goodyear
Chief Operating Officer
The Presidents’ Forum at Excelsior College
Former Executive Director, Center for Assessment of Post-traditional Instruction, Training and Learning, Excelsior College
tgoodyear@excelsior.edu
518-464-8567

Access, Assessment, Completion, Credentials, Credits

Uncategorized

Engagement and Leadership

By WCET Frontiers

April 28, 2016

1 Comment

Transforming Your Practice as a Pathway to Fulfillment and Student Success in State Authorization Careers

Please join us in welcoming Jason Piatt, Director, Online Compliance and Communication, Kent State Online Kent State University to the Frontiers blog as he shares an important leadership message with us today. Thank you Jason for sharing your insight with us.

Like all of us, when travelling or attending business and social functions, I am often asked about my career. Normally, I simply answer that I do compliance work in higher education related to online programs. When pressed for more details, I often provide an elevator pitch on consumer protection and state authorization. However, after reflecting on these conversations, I’ve come to the realization that the work we do in state authorization is really about relationship building; the heart of which involves complex and intense collaboration with a wide variety of professionals in compliance and regulatory fields, as well as internal and external stakeholders.

And although we can argue that our work serves to mitigate risk for our respective institutions, at its core, compliance work serves a nobler purpose – to participate in the process of providing fellow citizens with a quality educational experience so they can achieve personal and professional success. By proxy, this success contributes to the greater good of our world.

It is within the spirit of these ideas that I offer suggestions on how we can balance the need for career fulfillment via engagement and leadership while simultaneously serving our students and actively contributing to our profession.

Fearless engagement
Over the last few years, I’ve had positively wonderful experiences within the world of state authorization – experiences that have changed me as a professional and as an individual. I have had the distinct honor and privilege to work alongside some of the most dedicated, smart, tenacious, and fearless professionals I’ve ever known. I attribute my growth and willingness to step outside my comfort zones to my incredible friends and colleagues.

These individuals showed me that fearless engagement is a key component of growth. But, what do I mean by fearless engagement? Fearless engagement is simply the process of being willing to put yourself out there, of becoming a knowledgeable and confident resource, of being comfortable with ambiguity, and being willing to think outside the box to find solutions. It involves asking questions, learning how to really listen, and contributing fully to an extensive and powerful support system.

There are a variety of ways to fearlessly engage. Some include contributing to digital and in-person discussions with colleagues, while others involve commitment to collaboration, curating knowledge and information, and even taking on leadership or volunteer roles. Organizations such as WCET and the State Authorization Network (SAN) provide platforms for such contributions and a variety of opportunities for professional growth.

By forging connections with friends and colleagues, you build and contribute to an incredible network of experts in areas as diverse as business, professional licensure, finance, law, curriculum, technology, and other related fields. The act of participating in this knowledge collective undergirds fearless engagement and challenges us to fully embrace our responsibilities as 21^st century compliance professionals.

Leaving your ego at the door
State authorization can be some of the most frustrating, nuanced, complex, exciting, and layered work one can do in his or her professional career. It demands a vast array of skills and competencies, challenges our expectations, and pushes us to solve problems in creative ways. Our long-running joke about “it depends” succinctly describes the overt ambiguity we deal with on a daily basis and underscores the need for patience and constant diligence.

Like all professionals, knowing when to ask for help is a key component of success and is acutely true for state authorization. While engaged in compliance work, we must possess a healthy dose of humility. When it comes to state authorization, you can never make too many phone calls, get too many opinions, or seek too much counsel.

However, this willingness to approach your work in a humble manner goes beyond asking for help. We often have to check our ego at the door and be comfortable taking a backseat to another expert or admitting we cannot be all things to all people. Only by embracing our limitations can we give ourselves room to grow and the impetus to become full contributors to our knowledge collective.

Cultivating leadership
Although the word “leadership” is casually bandied about in the workplace, it plays a central role in the success of state authorization professionals. The kind of leadership I reference is not predicated by title, position, or status but rather, by action. The very act of representing your institution, interacting with program coordinators, deans, directors and external regulators makes you a leader. Providing consultative services to internal and external stakeholders makes you a leader. Participation in and contribution to professional organizations and the knowledge collective makes you a leader.

Leaders function to drive ideas and provide information so others can make informed decisions. And although you may believe you are not in a clear leadership role, you are in essence providing leadership and performing a valuable service for your institution. At the end of the day, adopting a leadership mindset can help overcome obstacles and provide opportunities to benefit your institution and students.

If you have not already, I would encourage you take advantage of any institutional training and development in leadership as it will no doubt enhance your ability to make connections, recognize opportunities, overcome obstacles, and grow professionally and personally. I would also highly recommend participation in the aforementioned State Authorization Network (SAN) and its related professional development opportunities. I have found participating in SAN to be critical to my professional and personal growth; the contributions I can make and the opportunities for connections to other SAN colleagues are exceptional.

Anaïs Nin wrote that life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. So, let’s make a commitment to push those boundaries. Let’s deeply engage and step far out of our comfort zones. Let’s collaborate and contribute, and help keep our knowledge collective a strong and robust resource for years to come.

Piatt Jason headshot Jason Piatt
Director, Online Compliance and Communication,
Kent State Online
Kent State University

Leadership, State Authorization

Practice

What I Learned About Adapting Content – Working with Vendors & Publishers

By WCET Frontiers

April 13, 2016

2 Comments

So you have decided you want to adapt a course and you are just beginning to learn more about the process and work involved. In this blog post, I will share my personal experience of working through the adaptive process, focusing in on the content issues of working with vendors (adaptive learning platform providers) and publishers. It is important to realize right away that no course can be adapted without a substantial amount of content. Content is key.

To begin, let’s briefly break down the key steps you must work through in preparation for adapting a course before we address content. The first step in the process is to write out the overall goal for the course, that is, what one or two skills learners should know and be able to do at the end of the course or semester. Next, you must write the 3-5 objectives learners need to accomplish in order to reach the overarching goal of the course. The third step is to think through each objective individually and determine the skills or subskills learners must develop in order to achieve each objective so they can ultimately demonstrate proficiency of the overall goal for the course. Now, you are ready to begin breaking down your entire course into small 10-15 minute chunks, or learning segments, that will become your learning map and eventually become individualized so learners can have their own pathway through the course.

At this point in the design process, you are ready to begin scouring through the content for each 10-15 minute learning segment you have listed on your course map. Before you dive into this time-consuming process, you must consider a couple of things with regards to content. First, do you have your own content that you have developed or do you plan on using publisher content? If you have your own content and are contracting a platform provider to do the heavy lifting of building out the course for you, you will simply provide the platform vendor the content and then get out of the way. You are well on your way to moving right through the adaptive process. If, however, you do not have your own content, you will need written permission from the publisher to access their content you need for the course, regardless of who authors, or builds out, the course – you or the platform vendor.

Publishers, at least the ones I have worked with, have not been willing to provide the amount of content needed to develop an adapted course. For example, the course I am currently working to adapt, needs content from nearly 16 of the 30 chapters in the book (although not the entire chapter) – so close to half of their content. Contrary to popular belief, professors do not have unlimited access and use of copyrighted material, or content, such as a textbook, regardless if you have adopted the text. The 2002 Teach Act addresses this issue and guides professors in the legal use of copyrighted material. Essentially, access to a high quantity of publisher content is not acceptable. Written permission is required. This is a big deal and one in which platform vendors are working hard to address by working with university professors to develop their own content and allowing them to own the IP or receive royalties.

I am a proponent of working with platform vendors and building out your own content for two main reasons. First, from a pedagogical/andragogical perspective, textbooks are and should be supplements for your course and not the core of your course. Far too long, educators have relied on the publisher’s textbooks as the core of their course and allowed the use of such to cripple the quality of their courses for their students. Instead of working to develop current and relevant strategies to meet the needs of their learners, educators fall victim to the ease of use of textbooks and allow that use to dictate their instructional decisions. For example, I could easily assign students to read a chapter, or chapters, of their required text and assign them to answer the questions located at the end of the chapter or a set of questions I have drafted myself. That’s the lazy way of teaching and a very disconnected, unmeaningful way to learn. Or, maybe I could assign students to read only a small section of the text (or better yet, a block of text freely found on the Internet), watch an appropriate video clip of a current event related to the topic (one that maybe I, through the use of free adaptive technologies, insert guiding questions or other interactions to ensure students actively engage with the content), and then further engage them in a debate or discussion on the topic in class where I ask them how they might apply this to a particular situation and why. Obviously, the second option is more engaging and provides a better learning experience for my students. But, this option also requires me to do more work on the front end to plan and prepare my lessons, whereas the first option is much easier and, quite frankly, ineffective.

My second reason for moving away from the use of publisher content is to reduce costs for students. Honestly, how much of the textbook do you really use in your course? If a student pays over $100 for a textbook and you use only half of it, and usually it is much less than that, can you really justify it? It’s time to break the status quo of expecting students to purchase very expensive textbooks when there is so many free resources available for us to use. According to The College Board, the average full time undergraduate student spends $1,200 on books and supplies each year. Really?? If used as it should be used, as a supplement to a course, does it make sense to require students to spend so much money for a textbook that will be obsolete very likely by the end of the semester and when most, if not all, of the information can be found using online resources? We no longer live in the Industrial Age of behavioralism and passive learning yet surprisingly we still use Industrial Age-practices and expect our students to demonstrate the knowledge and skills to compete and perform in an Information Age world that requires learners to use technology in meaningful ways to solve problems.

Eventually, the Industrial Age will die off and educators at every level will use Information Age strategies and practices, such as adapted learning, to create meaningful learning experiences for their students. We will do so willingingly or, eventually, we will be forced to change. If you are contemplating joining those of us who are already using instructional strategies and practices for the Information Age, I urge you to begin thinking about the importance of content and make the needed changes now to free yourself from the content permissions and costs of working with textbook publishers. Do not get me wrong, I think textbooks are great – as supplements to a course, not as the core.

Want to learn more about adaptive learning? Be sure to check out the resources on our WCET adaptive learning issue page and follow along on our weekly adaptive learning twitter chats Thursday at 2pm MST (4pm EST/ 3pm CST/ 1pm PST) using #WCETAdaptive.

Niki Bray

WCET Fellow, Adaptive Learning
Instructor|Instructional Designer
School of Health Studies
University of Memphis
@adaptivechat

Content Photo Credit: Blue Diamond Gallery

Access, Adaptive/Personalized Learning, Course Design, Practice, Products and Services

Uncategorized

In Response to Opposition of the State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements

By WCET Frontiers

March 29, 2016

This post originally appeared as an opinion piece in Inside Higher Ed. Thanks to Phil Hill, e-Literate, and Russ Poulin, WCET, for debumking the myths being spread about SARA in New York.

A coalition of consumer groups, legal aid organizations and unions object to the state of New York joining an agreement that would change how colleges offering distance education courses in the state would be regulated. As coalition members asserted in an Inside Higher Ed article, the state would be ceding its authority to other states. Students would be left with no protection from predatory colleges and it would make it easier for “bad actors to take advantage of students and harder for states to crack down on them.”

That all sounds ominous. It would be, if it were true.

Map of US with Approved States Map from the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements filled in. — Approved States Map from the National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements

Even in the digital era, the regulation of educational institutions is left to each state. The resulting array of requirements confuses both students and institutional faculty and staff. The State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement (SARA) was created to apply consistent review standards across the states. An institution approved in its home state is eligible to enroll students (within limits) in any other SARA member state. As of this writing, 36 states have joined in a little over two years. That number may approach 45 by the end of 2016.

SARA means now there is a consistently-applied set of regulations over distance education when students from one state take courses from an institution in another SARA state. Chief critic Robert Shireman, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and former official at the U.S. Department of Education, cites Iowa as proof that “some states have discovered they can’t add more qualifications,” as if that were a surprise. Reciprocity agreements depend upon consistency. If Iowa wishes to change a policy, there is a process for regulators in the state to suggest a change. States enter into the agreement openly knowing that consistency is a requirement.

To be fair, New York has been aggressive in pursuing bad actors in the for-profit education sector, as evidenced by its $10.25 million settlement with Career Education Corporation. It is worth noting, however, that the lawsuit was largely based on brick-and-mortar schools that have nothing to do with SARA. In addition, this action was brought by the New York attorney general’s office and was not the result of education-based regulation. There is a relevant section in the SARA policy stating that nothing precludes “a state from using its laws of general application to pursue action against an institution that violates those laws” and another stating that “nothing precludes the state in which the complaining person is located from also working to resolve the complaint”.

The reality of SARA hardly qualifies as “ceding the ability to guard its citizens against abusive practices” as a Century Foundation letter objecting to New York signing the SARA agreement claims.

What would be lost if New York were not to sign the SARA agreement? There is certainly a downside for institutions offering distance education courses and programs for out-of-state students. It might surprise readers of the letter, but fully 70 percent of students who take all of their courses at a distance do so from public and non-profit institutions. Institutions like Empire State College, a long-time leader in distance education that is part of the SUNY system. Furthermore, the large for-profit institutions referenced in the article have the budget and history of obtaining state-by-state approval already. It is the smaller profile non-profits that have the most difficulty in obtaining authorization to serve students in different states.

A reciprocity agreement between Massachusetts and Connecticut is cited as an alternative. As best we can tell, it allows each state to continue using its own current regulations. This is not reciprocity and does not improve the consumer protection landscape for students or institutions.

Were New York to avoid signing the agreement, students who live in the state would end up with fewer choices, primarily from fewer non-profit institutions that can operate there. Under SARA, New York students actually would have more consumer protection than currently exists as well as regulatory support for any complaint process, including from in-state agencies. Additionally, states systematically working in concert through SARA will more quickly find and deal with institutions that treat students poorly. This is far better than hypothetical, unfunded regulatory oversight by New York trying to operate independently from any other state.

New York has the opportunity to sign an agreement that would expand the regulatory oversight of distance education programs, would leave the state with the same ability to go after bad actors as they have done in the past and would increase choices for resident students — particularly working adults — seeking to get a valuable degree that is only enabled by distance education. It would be a mistake to let a complaint based on hypotheticals and misrepresentations of reality derail this progress.

Phil Hill
MindWires Consulting
e-Literate blog

Russ Poulin
Director, Policy & Analysis
WCET – the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies

Access, Accreditation, Reciprocity, Regulation, SARA, State Authorization, Student Success

Practice

Benefits of Preparing Faculty to Teach Online Go Beyond the Online Classroom

By WCET Frontiers

March 17, 2016

3 Comments

Today we welcome Kathy Keairns, Director of Web-Based Learning in the Office of Teaching & Learning at the University of Denver, to the Frontiers blog. Kathy has been involved in faculty development and online education for over 15 years and is a member and former co-chair of the eLearning Consortium of Colorado (eLCC). Today she shares with us the benefits of preparing faculty to teach online. Thank you Kathy for sharing your expertise with us!

Background

Dr. L. Dee Fink at the University of Denver

Why is it acceptable that most faculty come to college-level teaching without any formal preparation for teaching? University instructors teach for years in higher education with limited knowledge about how students learn or effective instructional techniques. They learn how to teach based on how they were taught over their many years as students in a college classroom.

Dr. L. Dee Fink (author and internationally-recognized consultant on college teaching and faculty development) recently visited the University of Denver (DU) to talk about course design. According to Fink, “We can all hope that someday soon university leaders will decide it is no longer acceptable practice to charge students an ever-increasing amount for tuition and then put them in classes taught by professors who know their subject matter well but are blissfully ignorant of the powerful ideas about teaching and learning that are essential for personal and societal success in the twenty-first century.” (Davis & Arend, 2013, p. 9).

The good news is that there is a growing body of research that suggests faculty development efforts to prepare faculty to teach online also has a positive impact on face-to-face teaching practices.

Instructor as a Student Model for Preparing to Teach Online

We have witnessed first-hand the extended benefits of preparing faculty members to teach and develop quality online courses. DU’s Teaching and Learning Workshop (TOW) is delivered almost entirely online over a four-week period and instructors experience online learning from the student perspective. Workshop participants learn best practices for both designing and teaching an online course.

The overwhelming majority of faculty who completed surveys in the early phases of the initiative agreed or strongly agreed with the following statements:

Learning to teach an online course has influenced how I teach my on-campus courses in positive ways (91%).
• I want to teach online again at DU (92%).
• I received adequate support from the OTL to teach online (98%).

Since 2007, over 200 faculty members (tenure track, lecturers, and adjuncts) from divisions throughout DU have successfully completed the Teaching Online Workshop. Many of the participants who completed the workshop were also vocal about how they benefitted from this training—a critical element for faculty buy-in. For example, Dr. Gregory Robbins shared this testimonial:

“While demanding, the Teaching Online Workshop is well worth the effort it takes. Beyond learning how to negotiate Canvas and being introduced to the Quality Matters Program for online course design, you receive astonishingly detailed feedback as you build your course from instructors who have terrific pedagogical instincts, who review your materials with tremendous care, and who offer invaluable suggestions and strategies for improvement.”

The success of this faculty development program would not have been possible without the support of our administration by expanding the staff in our Office of Teaching and Learning and by providing financial incentives to faculty members who completed the workshop. I’m happy to report that the Teaching Online Workshop is no longer optional; it is now an expectation for all faculty members (full-time and adjunct) who plan to teach online at the University of Denver.

Faculty Development for All Instructors

At the University of Denver, we have expanded the TOW model to other faculty development programs, not just those designed to prepare faculty members to teach online. For example, our New Faculty Workshop introduces new faculty members to the university and the resources available to them and provides an overview of the latest best practices in higher education pedagogy and educational technology. The workshop is a mostly online delivery model similar to TOW in which faculty participate in the workshop as students through a series of interactive online modules, discussion forums, and live webinar sessions. Faculty members who complete the workshop receive their choice of a teaching book and a certificate of completion. Below are a few comments from recent participants:

“This workshop was excellent for helping new instructors understand the value of learning through a variety of methods. I think we all know this is the case, but the fact that we were required to use these various methods while learning about them really was wonderful.”
“Even though I have over fifteen years of teaching experience, I have been exposed to new teaching perspectives. I like this workshop.”
“Thank you so much. It is an awesome workshop. Really. Other schools made us swim on our own.”

We also offer a 5-week Hybrid Course Design, Development, and Delivery (Hybrid 3D) workshop to prepare faculty members to design, develop, and deliver hybrid courses. We’ve observed that faculty members who participate in these intensive faculty development workshops tend to have more interest in improving their teaching and design skills, and are very engaged in the ongoing professional development workshops offered by the Office of Teaching and Learning.

For example, during our recent Teaching and Learning Week, the vast majority of faculty members who submitted presentation proposals had completed one or more of these intensive professional development workshops.

Conclusion

According to Dr. Richard Felder, co-founder of the National Effective Teaching Institute, “College teaching may be the only skilled profession for which no preparation or training is provided or required.” The good news is that this mindset is starting to change. The level of support from innovative higher education leaders and the enthusiasm and support of our online educators make me optimistic that higher education is on the cusp of a paradigm shift. We need to move beyond only expecting our faculty to be subject matter experts and researchers, they also need to be provided with opportunities to learn how to be excellent teachers.

If we continue on this trajectory, college teaching will only get better as more and more institutions see the benefits of preparing and supporting all faculty members to be excellent instructors. As distance learning professionals, we need to talk more about how online education is contributing to this transformation. Faculty development programs need to move beyond online education so that all college-level faculty members are given opportunities to learn how to be excellent instructors. Our students deserve this and so do our instructors!

Kathy Keairns

Director of Web-based Learning

University of Denver

References

Davis, J. R., and Arend, B. D, (2013). Facilitating seven ways of learning: A resource for more purposeful, effective, and enjoyable teaching. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing LLC.

Felder, R. (2016). Resources in Science and Engineering Education. Retrieved from http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/.

Keairns, K., and Tobin, H (2015). Faculty as students: One model for preparing faculty to develop and teach online. Paper presented at 2015 Distance Teaching & Learning Conference, Madison, Wisconsin.

Faculty, Online Learning

Uncategorized

Connected Credentials and the Value of Competencies

By WCET Frontiers

March 9, 2016

1 Comment

We’re happy to welcome Deb Everhart, Georgetown University, back to the Frontiers blog. Today Deb is sharing work she did with ACE on connected credentials and the value of competencies. Our own Mike Abbiatti worked on this with her and we are so excited to share the story with you. Also, don’t miss our April 17th Google Hangout where Deb and I will discuss this work. Feel free to send your questions ahead via twitter (#WCETHangout) or email. Thank you Deb, for always being so generous with your knowledge. – Cali Morrison, WCET Communications Manager

Today and for the future we are all lifelong learners. No one can expect to stay in a stable career with a known set of responsibilities, and if we’re not continuously adding to our knowledge, skills, and abilities, we’re not going to solve the increasingly complex problems we encounter in our careers—and in fact, in our world. How can postsecondary credentialing ecosystems evolve to meet these needs?

The American Council on Education’s (ACE) Center for Education Attainment and Innovation has just published two interrelated white papers that address this critical question, Communicating the Value of Competencies and Quality Dimensions for Connected Credentials. Scores of experts from higher education, policy, workforce, and national organizations worked together to analyze:

How employers value and assess students’ competencies;
The quality dimensions of connected credentials (transparency, modularity, portability, relevance, validity, and equity);
How educational institutions can improve their credentials and clearly articulate competencies to provide greater value and meet the needs of stakeholders.

Why is this work important, and why now?

Because credentials have rapidly proliferated to meet the needs of the 21st-century knowledge economy, including not only degrees, but also certificates, certifications, licensures, and badges.

Here are just a few facts to give you a sense of the magnitude of change:

over 26,000 educational programs in the U.S. now offer certificates; (McCarthy)
Associate degrees have doubled since 2002; (Lumina)
the share of workers licensed by states has increased five-fold since the 1950’s, and now more than 25% of workers require licensure to do their jobs. (U.S. DOL)

The proliferation of credentials and new types of educational opportunities is not, per se, a bad thing. The highly diverse array of credentials reflects the strengths and ingenuity of U.S. education, training, and professional development systems in response to changes in our economy. The evolution from an industrial to a knowledge economy has naturally created a world in which more jobs (and the majority of good jobs) require critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, and in general, higher levels of ever-changing skills and abilities.

But the diversity of credentials isn’t meeting the needs of students, educational institutions, and employers, and unfortunately it’s causing confusion. There’s a lack of shared understanding about what makes credentials valuable, how that value varies across different types of credentials for different stakeholders, what constitutes quality, and how credentials are connected to each other and to opportunities for the people who’ve earned them.

These big picture concerns play out in the individual struggles students face when they try to apply their educational achievements to employment and career advancement. Students struggle to articulate their knowledge, skills, and abilities. Employers often don’t understand what is included in credentials, so they make assumptions about what certain credentials mean and what graduates should know and be able to do. Improved communication about the competencies that are included in credentials can help address these problems.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYQvQgLIrk]

Right Credentials for the Right People at the Right Time

Many creative approaches are emerging that could potentially scale and evolve to help more people gain and articulate the competencies they need for successful careers, contributions to communities of practice, and solving problems large and small. But this potential depends on stakeholders’ ability to understand and utilize the right credentials for the right people at the right time.

WCET’s own Mike Abbiatti was one of the major contributors to the ACE work, and he frames up how the white papers can help us tackle these issues:

“Higher education stands at a crossroads. We are reviewing and revising our core standards and processes in order to align the investments in time, people, and money with the true needs of complex and ever-expanding learner populations. These ACE white papers are a critical asset as we make the transition from merely assuming our students are getting the preparation they need, to actually demonstrating outcomes that provide immediate and future opportunities for the learner.

Created by leaders in the academic, regulatory, and employer markets, these white papers represent a thorough analysis of the current status of traditional credentialing and propose the desired future state. Furthermore, they provide stakeholders with actionable recommendations that will empower higher education to keep pace with the burgeoning digital economy.

The future of our nation depends upon a highly educated, personally motivated, and sustainable workforce. The era of generating credentials by evaluating input is over. We must base our credentials upon output and outcomes. The ability to demonstrate the skills, attitudes, and intellectual growth promised by the educational system must be quantifiable, verifiable, and scalable to specific standards. The ACE white papers are a ‘shot across the bow’ in a dynamic campaign to streamline the process of preparing America’s current and future citizens to be productive citizens of the global economy.”

To promote dialogue and action, the white papers include:

definitions of key terms,
research insights,
descriptions of stakeholders and the problems they encounter,
dimensions of quality that support connected credentials and competencies,
descriptions of types of credentials with regard to how they address the quality dimensions,
challenge questions to stimulate discussion and visualize potential futures,
a fictitious scenario that depicts one possible journey from current state to future benefits,
and specific calls to action.

Positive change will flourish when we articulate and implement specific improvements that address relevant problems. We need to visualize potential futures, act, and continually refine our approaches to create dynamic systems that combine rigor and agility to produce credentials valued by all stakeholders– employers, government, educators, job seekers and learners.

Dr. Deborah Everhart

Georgetown University

@ariadne4444

Accreditation, Competency-based Education, Credentials

Practice

What Colleges Should Be Doing with Open Educational Resources, At Scale!

By WCET Frontiers

February 26, 2016

Today we’re honored to welcome TJ Bliss, Program Officer, Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to share with us the learning the Foundation has garnered in over 15 years of supporting open educational resource projects. Thank you, TJ for sharing how to scale OER with your cooperative!

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been supporting Open Educational Resources (OER)[i] since 2001, when the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology requested support to make the content from MIT’s roughly two thousand courses available freely online. This landmark investment resulted in the MIT OpenCourseWare project (MIT OCW). Soon thereafter, Hewlett supported the establishment of Creative Commons [ii], which is an organization that develops and releases licenses for any copyrightable content, including instructional resources in higher education.

The Hewlett Foundation originally conceived of the MIT OCW grant as an important, but one-time investment. As the foundation considered alternative educational technology investments, MIT’s powerful moral and ethical stance became more compelling, and by late 2002, technology-related grants became more focused on providing open content and making it available. Thomas Jefferson captured the spirit of what Hewlett wanted to accomplish in a letter he wrote in 1813: “He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.”^{^[iii]}

The Impact of OER Keeps Growing

In the intervening years, Hewlett and other private funders have invested at least $120 million to support the development and dissemination of OER throughout the world and at all educational levels.[iv] This investment has resulted in remarkable progress, especially in higher education. The extent of coverage for higher education from MIT OCW and its many translations into different languages is enormous. More than 100 million unique visitors, including scholars, teachers, and students, have explored content on the MIT site, and millions more who speak and read in languages other than English have visited the sites of the 250 higher education institutions from all over the world in the Open Education Consortium, which grew out of the MIT OCW project.

As another startling example of the impact of OER in higher education, OpenStax College, which began as Connexions and was one of the first Hewlett OER grantees, has successfully developed high-quality, openly licensed textbooks for the 16 highest-enrolled college courses. These books have been adopted by faculty in 20% of all U.S. colleges and universities, and these adoptions have saved students nearly $40 million[v]. Many other important open-textbook and open coursware efforts continue to gain traction throughout the world.

The Z Degree: Creating Entire Degree Programs Based on OER

Despite these incredible accomplishments, many in the OER community are not satisfied with just encouraging adoptions of open textbooks by individual faculty for individual courses. A growing movement has begun around the idea of entire degree programs based on OER. The first successful implementation of such a program occurred in 2013 at Tidewater Community College in Virginia. Dubbed the “Z Degree,” faculty and administrators at Tidewater worked together to adopt and adapt OER for sections of every required and most elective courses in their two-year Business Administration program. Students at Tidewater can now complete this degree program without ever paying for a textbook – a total cost savings of nearly 25%.

Source: http://tcc.mycareerfocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/tcc_zdegree_graphic.jpg

More importantly, students in the Tidewater Z Degree have completed their courses at higher rates and faculty have reported high levels satisfaction with the opportunity and support they received to redesign their courses. The idea of the Z Degree has begun to spread throughout the North American continent, most notably within the broader Virginia Community College System itself. On the global front, the OER Universitas is working to create a general education degree that is fully articulated across more than 30 institutions in countries ranging from Russia to South Africa to New Zealand.

An OER-based Degree Programs At Your Institution?

To help catalyze efforts to establish OER-based degree programs like the Z Degree at Tidewater, the Achieving the Dream National Reform Network has just announced a new initiative that will provide funding and technical assistance to community colleges and community college systems throughout North America who desire to establish such programs. The Hewlett Foundation is actively considering major funding for this initiative, along with several other funders, as we believe in the power of OER to transform both teaching and learning in higher education. At minimum, the OER-based degree increases college affordability and access to all students, and especially to the most disadvantaged students. Increased access and affordability is likely to increase student completion rates as well. Beyond this, however, there is growing evidence that when faculty adopt OER (whatever the initial reasons) their engagement in course design and attention to pedagogy increases. This is especially true when faculty receive technical and pedagogical assistance from instructional support centers, campus libraries, and other experts.

In late 2015, the Hewlett Foundation released a revised and refreshed strategy for OER, outlining how we see OER to be part of the solution to many major problems in education. Introducing this new strategy to the world, Larry Kramer—Hewlett President and former Dean of the Stanford Law School—wrote: “Clearly, open resources increase students’ access to knowledge, just as the recipients of that first grant at MIT hoped they would, but there is growing evidence that effective use of OER also improves critical student outcomes—everything from test scores to college enrollment rates. ‘No brainers’ are incredibly rare in education, where strongly held, widely disparate values all-too-often stymie potential reforms. Well, OER is a ‘no brainer’…The benefits of using OER in the classroom are too great to be embraced by only a forward-thinking few. They should be shared with everyone[vi].”

TJ Bliss, Ph.D.

Program Officer, Education

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

[i] The Hewlett Foundation defines OER as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.” This definition comes from a meeting of developing world nations at UNESCO in 2002, where the name “Open Educational Resources” itself was also adopted to describe such content.

[ii] Hewlett considers the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to be the license of choice, allowing for maximal reuse and repurposing of copyrightable educational resources while still acknowledging the creative work of the developer.

[iii] See http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/a1_8_8s12.html for the full text of Jefferson’s remarks.

[iv] This figure doesn’t include the billions of dollars invested by the U.S. government in the community college courseware grants known as the TAACCCT program or any other government funding for OER throughout the world.

[v] See this very recent announcement with details about the current reach and impact of OpenStax texts: http://news.rice.edu/2016/01/20/openstax-already-saved-students-39-million-this-academic-year/

[vi] For the full text of Larry Kramer’s blog post, see http://hewlett.org/blog/posts/sharing-benefits-open-educational-resources-everyone

Access, Cost of Instruction, Open Educational Resources, Textbooks

Practice

Embedded Digital Resources Are In, Traditional Textbooks Are Out At UMUC

By WCET Frontiers

February 18, 2016

2 Comments

During the 2015 WCET Annual Meeting, The University of Maryland University College (UMUC) received a WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) Award for their work in replacing all of their undergraduate course textbooks with Open Educational Resources. Thank you to the team at UMUC for sharing the process they undertook to make this transition a reality to increase access while lowering costs for students.

The Move Means Greater Access and Lower Costs for Students

When UMUC replaced 100 percent of its undergraduate publisher textbooks with no-cost digital resources in time for our 2015 fall term, it was the first time a major American university completed such a shift. And we’re on target for all of UMUC’s graduate classes to be textbook-free, as well, by fall 2016.

The first phase of our transition from publisher textbooks was actually completed more than a year ago in fall 2014, when about 40 percent of UMUC’s undergraduate courses began using open educational resources (OER) and other types of no-cost resources. As Provost Marie Cini explains it there had been a real push for some time to create these first-rate no-cost resources that are written and designed by content experts and faculty, so that knowledge “isn’t locked away in expensive textbooks.”

The change, though, was prompted only in part by the rising cost of textbooks combined with opportunities now available to find and access peer-reviewed content and information in specialized databases and other digital sources.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yptxAKdboGI]
In fact, the shift has succeeded in saving each UMUC undergraduate student hundreds of dollars a session—and potentially thousands over the course of the degree. And we estimate that the collective savings is in the millions for the more than 80,000 students who take classes at UMUC annually.

That’s great news, because we’re increasingly finding that the cost of textbooks is a barrier for our students, the majority of whom are working adults, active-duty military, reservists, dependent, and veterans trying to better themselves or get ahead in the work world—often while raising families.

UMUC’s Acting Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Thomas C. Bailey, who coordinated the undergraduate change-over, has confided that by the third or fourth week of class many students have told him they just couldn’t afford to buy the textbook, putting them at a disadvantage right from the start.

So aside from saving students money, the shift to no-cost embedded resources also helps UMUC fulfill its mission to ensure that each and every student has access—right from day one—to the materials they need to successfully complete every class.

No Playbook Existed

But turning our sizeable university into a textbook-free zone was no small task. We didn’t have a playbook to go by and, in many respects, we were flying the plane while putting it together.

Adapting materials to meet the needs and approach of each UMUC course took considerable thought and research. The effort of identifying digital resources was performed by teams in each discipline comprising a program chair, a faculty member or two, a librarian, and a member of the Design Solutions office, all specializing in course development.

Once resources were identified, they were released to the faculty who teach in that subject area so they could provide their own input. The work not only resulted in cost savings for students, but also gave everyone involved in the process a chance to rethink their approach to the courses and to draw on the wealth of available digital resources. Participants told us that the beauty of UMUC’s approach was the coordination between all the different areas of expertise needed; it wasn’t just one person searching to see if they could find something.

In the end, perhaps a half dozen courses require copyrighted material that is unavailable at no cost. For the rest, we found a wealth of high quality materials out there that rival some of the best textbooks.

Faculty Input Key to the Success of OER implementation

One key to the ultimate success of Open Educational Resources will be to continually solicit faculty input to find out where the bugs are and how improvements can be made.

A critical measure of their success is student performance. We tested that in a head-to-head study completed in 2015 by a team led by Karen Hogan, who is a UMUC adjunct associate professor in Information Systems Management. The study, which compared courses offered with textbooks to those offered with embedded resources, found the learning outcomes were the same.

More recently, an independent research study published in the December 2015 issue of Journal of Computing in Higher Education, supports our findings that replacing textbooks with OER’s does not diminish performance. In all, the Journal study involved more than 16,000 students—5,000 of them using OERs—enrolled in 15 different undergraduate courses at 10 institutions across the U.S. With only a couple of minor exceptions, findings indicated OER students performed as well, and sometimes better, than students relying on traditional textbooks.

Highlights from that study are detailed in a recent magazine article, by business and technology writer Dian Schaffhauser.

At UMUC, we anticipate our move to no-cost digital resources embedded in courses will continue to provide a big pay-off. Our undergraduate students are enjoying immediate access to the resources they need to succeed in their classes … and they have saved millions. Our graduate-level students are poised to fully enjoy the same by fall 2016.

Gilbert Klein, Writer
UMUC Office of Communications

Cost of Instruction, Course Design, Online Learning, Open Educational Resources, WCET, WCET Annual Conference, WOW Award