Author: WCET Frontiers

Open Educational Resources: How Broward College Online Took the Dive

By WCET Frontiers

May 1, 2014

9 Comments

Today we welcome guest author, David Shulman, Campus President, Broward College Online, as he shares with us how Florida’s Global Campus made the commitment to and implemented open educational resources and other no-cost course materials.

Background

It’s no secret that the cost of higher education and the ballooning student indebtedness have become part of the national consciousness. In numbers this is starkly represented by a rise in student loan debt from $240 billion in 2003, to a trillion dollars in 2014. Yes, you read correctly, one trillion dollars….and that’s just tuition. We haven’t discussed the cost of textbooks and digital content in the affordability equation, yet the same decade has socked students with prices increases in excess of 80 percent.

Broward College prides itself on a low cost of tuition, but controlling external factors such as textbook and materials inflation is not feasible. After all, what influence could we have against publishing behemoths, let alone the secondary economies built around book rentals, used books, shared books, and even black-market copies. Yet leave it to Clayton Christensen’s disruption theory to step in and provide an Internet-enabled market solution that addresses these ancillary expenses. Indeed, some three years back Broward College Online, the virtual campus in our system, decided to take a stand and chart a new direction in quality, affordable courses by embracing the disruptive elements of Open Educational Resources (OER) and other technologically mediated solutions.

Why are we committed to OER and No-Cost Materials?

Figure 1: Broward College Online website advertising for no-textbook/material cost classes.

Affordable education is a deeply embedded value of Broward College, and the idea of taking the path less chosen through no-cost Open Educational Resources (OERs) was too good not to investigate. After all, if the learning outcomes could be demonstrated through mastery of competencies, why not try the OER approach and begin to chip away at that annual cost of $1,234….one course at a time.

Of course student behavior is also a factor. We’ve all heard the effects of high textbook costs, such as students forgoing the materials altogether, not starting class with the textbook due to insufficient funds, problems with correct editions, access code woes, and I could add several other impediments to learning that typically hit hard at the start of each new course.

We do have purely selfish motives for OER and other cost-neutral ways of serving students. Managing textbook versions is no easy feat for on-ground or online classes. Not only do new editions need to be ordered, but so courses themselves require redesigns or a total redo overs to meet new books. The latter is particularly challenging as the cycle of textbook changes has shortened over the past decade. As an online campus managing hundreds of courses each term, we are direct beneficiaries of the efficiencies that embedded OER and no-cost content solutions offer.

Our commitment to OER is also an added efficiency in light of textbook changes being considered by the State of Florida that would require transparency in textbook information inclusive of posting details several weeks prior to the start of registration. Clearly OER provides huge advantages in dealing with the rigors of compliance. National level politics are also revealing concern over textbook affordability, with U.S. Senators Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Al Franken (D-MN) introducing legislation mitigate costs by having textbooks accessible and free. The “Affordable College Textbook Act” seeks to develop online textbook content that can be freely licensed and repurposed.

Figure 2: Broward College Online LMS advertising for no-textbook/material cost classes.

How did we get here?

Our journey started back in 2012 with a decision to host an “e-Textbook & Digital Content Symposium.” This event provided a wonderful introduction to our College of OER and other emerging content delivery options. Faculty, neighboring institutions, and many vendors (AcademicPub, Apple, Cengage, Coursesmart, Courseload, Flat World, McGraw-Hill, Pearson) provided a view into the changes and trends in content ownership and delivery. The result of this signature event was the birth of Broward College Online’s commitment to OER and other zero cost course materials.

Over the next two years Broward College Online steadily began moving from the exploratory phase to building no textbook and no cost solutions for our master courses. We also contracted with Flat World Knowledge to use their library and authoring platform to embed OER and develop custom e-books, primarily in general education courses.

How are we doing?

Broward College Online is seeing an impact as our OER and no-cost catalog grows. Winter/Spring 2014 students saved over $250,000 and Summer 2014 is running at close to 30% OER and will far exceed the quarter million dollar mark. What’s even more encouraging is that success and retention are positive in these offerings, and enrollments are strong.

No cost and textbook free courses are now routinely advertised to prospective enrollees through LMS announcements, website advertising, and social media. Every new OER or no-cost material course that emerges from our course development process is heralded through these media to increase awareness of these courses and to drive enrollments to Broward College Online offerings.

Figure 3: Broward College Online Facebook advertising for no-textbook/material cost classes.

What have we learned?

Building quality OER and no-material cost courses is not a simple task. Part of the learning curve at Broward College Online has been the realization that the process needs structure and support. Our approach has now evolved to include professional development and the services of our campus’s full time librarian. Apart from in-house training, Broward College Online also contracted with Lumen Learning to conduct OER workshops for staff and developers, as well as from Flat World Knowledge.

There are certainly pain points in the process, including the difficulty of replacing commercial adaptive and artificial intelligence technologies. Additionally, some content areas are simply far more intense and difficult to design OER-based courses. Examples of this have been Mathematics, Anatomy and Physiology, and Computer Science.

Where are we headed?

Our most ambitious project launches in Summer Term 2014, as we start accelerated A.S. and A.A. programs built around OER. The savings to a graduate of either degree will be at least $2,000. In addition, Broward College Online will continue to expand our catalog of OER and no-cost textbooks and materials, with an eye to realizing these outcomes:

Increased student engagement, retention and completion.
Students starting each online course with all requisite materials.
Financial Aid awards stretching further through the elimination of textbook and material costs.
Elimination of all publisher access codes, which currently provide significant help desk cases and obstacles (financial and logistical) for students.
Provisioning mobile solutions that seamlessly enable anywhere, anytime access to e-textbooks and digital content where possible.
Provisioning print on demand and/or hard copy options to ensure students have all media formats available.
Increasing use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) to provide high quality and affordable educational materials licensed to be used freely through Creative Commons licensing.
Almost every new course will be developed or redesigned by Broward College Online with OER.
Launching the B.A.S. Management Supervision degree in Fall 2015 with no-cost OER and digital content.
Effectively managing textbook and material needs for Broward College Online’s local and state students, as well as for our out-of-state and global learners.

We’ve just left the starting gate with this new initiative, and are on track to save Broward College Online students over three quarters of a million dollars this academic year alone. When this is combined with the lowest tuition in the state we see the value of our brand and credentials increasing in quality and decreasing in cost.

David Shulman, Ph.D.

Campus President

Broward College Online – Florida’s Global Campus

dshulman@broward.edu

online.broward.edu

Collaboration/Community, Cost of Instruction, Open Educational Resources, Teaching, Textbooks

Practice

Originality Matters: Making Academic Integrity a Teachable Moment

By WCET Frontiers

February 20, 2014

2 Comments

February 20, 2014

If not handled well, accusations of cheating or plagiarism, could have a huge impact on a student’s academic journey. We welcome Dr. Michelle Warn, Program Chair, Masters in Teaching and Learning with Technology at Ashford University, to share with us how she and her colleagues make academic integrity a teachable moment for students…and perhaps for some faculty as well.

One afternoon a distressed student called asking for advice. She was despondent and was considering dropping out. She said she had been accused of cheating and lying. As the story unfolded, she had been informed by her professor that she had plagiarized and was receiving a zero on her assignment. Further, the professor reexamined several earlier assignments and reassigned zeros to those as well. This student was essentially failing the course.

Extensive email correspondence between the student and instructor consisted of Turnitin reports, resources and tutorials pushed out to the student by the instructor. The student spent hours reading through the materials but couldn’t understand what was wrong in her own writing.

In addressing plagiarism, this tale speaks to several factors common to the online university setting, including reduced opportunities for students and faculty to develop collegial relationships and reliance on asynchronous instructional strategies that may or may not address the need when coaching writing skills. Further, the assumption by many faculty that students in college should “know this” (meaning how to properly cite and use APA) is often unrealistic when applied to the nontraditional online learner. Many online students come from humble educational backgrounds, with below average writing skills. Simply asking them to sign policies of academic honesty does not address the truth of how well they understand or are able to meet the expectations implied by those policies.

Academic Integrity as a Gradual Internal Process
If we re-envision academic integrity as a gradual process of acculturation and growth, we see the student in a new light. Internalization of academic ethos is the result of the steady and transformative experience that is higher education. As part of that transformative process, students begin to find their own academic voice among the throng of authors and scholars they are presented with in the classroom. Confidence in one’s own voice is typically nurtured in a community of support and collegiality, and is hindered in an environment of sanctions and compliance.

As the taskforce continued its evaluation of the organizational response to plagiarism, there became an increasing sense that the current model of compliance was not contributing to a culture of academic esprit de corps so integral to the vision of the university. The taskforce sought opportunities for a fundamental shift by identifying four key areas: finding the student voice, instructor as coach, a virtual environment for the academic community, and a process for consistent and appropriate intervention.

Finding the Student Voice – Pedagogy before Policy
Moore Howard (1995) suggests that pedagogy be considered as a first line of response to plagiarism rather than sanctions. She and others use the example of patchwriting, where portions of readings are copied and pasted together into a single document. Patchwriting can be a technique used by writers when synthesizing new concepts and terminology. She states, “Most patchwriters, far from being immoral members of the academic community, are instead people working their way through cognitive difficulties” (p.801).

Based on the description of types of plagiarism developed by Moore Howard, the University of Michigan created a table breaking out intentional versus unintentional plagiarism. Although not always so, I would venture to suggest that the category “unintentional” does open the door for speculation and giving the student the benefit of the doubt.

Moore Howard’s Categories of Plagiarism
Intentional	Unintentional
		Non-Attribution
Fraud	Patchwriting	Failure to Cite	Failure to Quote
Intentional use of other authors’ material as one’s own.	Often unintentional plagiarism. Uses direct works and ideas from a variety of authors and sources throughout without use of quotes, and often without citation.	Paraphrasing other’s works without proper citation. May include some reference to the source but formatting is improper.	Use of exact language from another author without properly quoting and citing the work. May include some reference to the source but formatting is improper.

Table adapted by the University of Michigan (2013), from work by Moore Howard.

In our university, we estimate that many students cited are being processed for unintentional plagiarism. The university definition of plagiarism is as follows: “Plagiarism occurs when a student deliberately uses the ideas, language, or another writer’s original material (that is not common knowledge) without acknowledging the source” (Ashford University, 2014, para. 7).

I believe the words “deliberately” or “intentionally” are too often ignored by instructors and policy offices when addressing plagiarism. But how do we know if a student is unintentionally plagiarizing? Gerald Nelms, Academic Writing Director of Wright State University suggests that “Not all plagiarism, even intentional plagiarism, rises to the level of academic dishonesty” (Turnintin Webcast, 2014). In his informative webinar, Nelms recommends that the student should first be queried prior to any further action. He cautions that assumptions of cheating can lead to dire consequences for some college students who may be impressionable and vulnerable. Nelms goes on to suggest that once a student is interviewed, opportunities to coach should be considered first. (Click to view the Gerald Nelms Turnitin Webcast).

State of the Art Coaching Technology
Ashford University believes in the exponential power of instructional technology. Turnitin has been implemented within every course for quite some time. Currently the College of Education is experimenting with Pearson Writer to develop and improve student writing skills. It is conducting research in the classroom to see what types of writers use the tool and how it is used. From there we can identify strategies for taking an active approach to building college writing skills in those who need them most.

Technology also serves as first line of support when assessing type and degree of plagiarism. It can provide targeted and adaptive interventions along with guided instruction. Short multimedia tutorials and interactive resources can also provide specific means for addressing a variety of writing needs. It is critical that the creation of these tutorials should include the end user (student or instructor) early in the design and development process, to better ensure responsive and appropriate interventions.

Instructor as Coach
Strong writing skills help to counter plagiarism. The taskforce is recommending that the instructor assume a greater role in coaching writing skills. Because this philosophy could entail more time on the part of the instructor, faculty development along with the provision of a suite of targeted tools, technology, and resources would be provided. As a second line of support, our writing center is ramping up with staff who will work one on one with students asynchronously as well as synchronously via office hours and phone calls.

Targeted Response Based on Plagiarism Type and Degree
Lang (2013) suggests that “it makes much more sense to think about our responses to cheating in the way that we respond to crimes in our legal system. We take the time to consider the nature and degree of the offense, and we give out an appropriate punishment” (p. 209).

The taskforce sees a critical need for consistent and directed responses based on data. Using the model developed by Howard Moore (1995), we feel that different types of plagiarism should warrant different responses. Every time plagiarism is detected, an incident report would be filed after which instructors would be guided to specific tools and resources based on which of the four types of plagiarism was presented by the student – fraud, patchwriting, failure to cite, and failure to quote. Our student database would be modified to include details on types of writing interventions provided at each incident of plagiarism. Such historical data would allow better decision making when plagiarism recurs. We believe that through tracking of writing interventions across time, along with consistent procedures and targeted instruction, students have a much greater opportunity for growth across time.

Virtual Community Space
The most powerful opportunity to infuse academic ethos within the university is to create a virtual community for both students and faculty. A virtual academic community can offer relationship building, collaborative writing and research, and scholarly discussion. In such an environment, academic writing would be prevalent, serving to model critical thinking and the process of synthesizing others’ work to formulate one’s own original ideas and concepts.

In addition to building writing skills, a virtual community offers opportunities to observe ethics in practice, and could eventually provide a system of equilibrium for weighing and responding to ethical dilemmas. Those who may stray toward opportunities for cheating would be steered toward more principled decisions through peer watchdogs and faculty presence. Gallant (2011) suggests that once academic integrity becomes institutionalized, students could take their exams outside without faculty concern for cheating.

Where Are We Now?
The Originality Matters Taskforce has completed its initial analysis. Currently we are sharing findings with university administrators. Next steps are being identified, with the expectation that sub-committees will be formed of individuals and students university wide to effectively address each of the key areas described above. With the increasing expansion of higher education into the international and military arenas, it is critical that universities identify online strategies to address plagiarism and provide targeted approaches to ensure student growth and development rather than failure and embarrassment.

The approaches described here are not designed to relax academic standards and principles, but rather to integrate them at a deeper, more holistic level university wide. Through conceptualizing and implementing respectful and supportive systems and procedures, faculty, students, and universities have the opportunity to encourage and institutionalize academic integrity in the online higher education arena.

Questions to Colleagues:
One of the most difficult challenges the taskforce expects is convincing faculty to take on the “Teachable Moment.” In the narrative we have identified some ideas for how we would make this less onerous for faculty. We would appreciate any feedback or recommendations for encouraging faculty to be motivated in this role as first line writing support. We also welcome any other suggestions that may be viable toward our effort of institutionalizing academic integrity in an online university.

Michelle Warn, Ph.D.
Program Chair, Masters in Teaching and Learning with Technology
Ashford University

References

Gallant, T.B. (2011). Building a culture of academic integrity. Magna Publications, Inc. Retrieved November, 2013:
http://www.depts.ttu.edu/centerforcampuslife/downloads/academicintegrity-magnawhitepaper.pdf

Howard, Rebecca Moore. Plagiarisms, authorships, and the academic death penalty. College English 57.7 (November 1995): 708-36.

Lang, J.M. (2013). Cheating lessons: Learning from academic dishonesty. Harvard University Press, Harvard, MA.

University of Michigan (2013). Types of plagiarism: Plagiarism activities Retrieved November 2013: http://www.lib.umich.edu/shapiro-undergraduate-lib

Academic Integrity, Student Success, Teaching, Technology

Practice

Choosing the Right Mobile Device to Fit Your Needs

By WCET Frontiers

December 16, 2013

Today WCET Frontiers welcomes Dr. Robbie Melton, Associate Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs, with the Tennessee Board of Regents, eLearning Initiative, as a guest blogger. In the following post she shares with us the research she conducted on the top educational mobile devices. The following is not an endorsement but rather information to help you, our members and readers, determine which mobile device is right for your needs.

Happy Holidays. This is the season for purchasing mobile devices.

overwhelmed by devices by lukew on flickr cropped — Feeling overwhelmed by the choices for mobile devices for learning?

To assist you in purchasing a mobile device I have researched and outlined the top two – three ranking mobile devices for iOS-Apple, Androids, Windows8.1 and eReaders.

Best Tablets of 2013 Holiday Season Tested by Consumer Reports:
http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/story?section=news/consumer&id=9339621 (video)

*Apple iPadAir and Mini
Consumer Reports’ highest score for any tablet ever (2013). Consumer Reports just completed testing it and found plenty to like. Weighing in at just a pound, and with a super slender profile, the iPad Air is the lightest full-sized tablet tested. That makes it easy to hold for reading or watching movies. “Even though Apple made the iPad Air thinner and lighter, they didn’t sacrifice screen quality at all. This screen looks just as good as the screen on the iPad 4,” said Donna Tapellini with Consumer Reports. The Mini with the new retina display starts at $399. The iPad Air with 4G earned starts at $629 and at $500 for Wi-Fi only.
**Note: Apple devices (iPads, iPodTouches, iPhones) have the largest collection of educational and workforce mobile apps from preschool to college to the world of work.

*The Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 Tablet is one of the best tablets according to CNET thanks to its brilliant display and ultra-sharp 2560 x 1600 resolution (339 PPI) display that’s been winning raves as the current best-in-class display for a tablet. The Amazon tablet itself is also compact and very light — weighing less than Apple’s iPad Air — but still performs well thanks to a quad-core processor. Plus, for those who are new to tablets, Amazon has included a unique ‘Mayday’ button. Tap it and within 15 seconds, an Amazon support rep will appear in a small video chat window to help out. The service is available 24/7, 365 days of the year. And it’s free, making this the best tablet to buy for beginners. Starts at $379.

WINDOWS 8.1: Business Tablets Comparison: Dell Venue 11 Pro vs. Surface Pro 2: The Best Windows 8.1 Tablets for Business: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/5438-dell-venue-11-pro-vs-surface-pro-2-windows-8-1-tablets-business.html

*Dell Venue 8 Pro II: With the Venue 11 Pro, Dell has a Surface Pro 2 competitor on its hands. The company says its 10.8-inch tablet has “the power of an Ultrabook, performance of a desktop, portability of a tablet”. Like Microsoft’s “lappable” tablet, the Venue 11 Pro sports a Full HD (1,920 x 1,080) IPS display and will be offered with Intel’s Atom quad-core Bay Trail processors or a fourth-generation Haswell processor up to Core i5 — supporting up to 8GB RAM, 256GB of storage, WiDi and NFC. From a design perspective, the Venue 11 Pro is unremarkable but practical, with Dell opting for a generic form factor that includes a full-size USB port, HDMI port and a microSD card slot. Venue 11 Pro features a matte-textured rear, which allows for a firm grip in the hand but is a magnet for greasy fingerprints. Listening to feedback from its enterprise customers, Dell will ship the Venue 11 Pro with a removable battery — which will give around 10 hours of sustained usage — allowing you to hot-swap if you’re far from a charging point. Starting at $499

*Microsoft Windows 8.1: Surface Pro 2: This Microsoft tablet boasts an Intel (INTC) Core i5-4200U processor commonly found in Ultrabooks. So the Surface Pro 2 is one of the best tablets because it’s nearly 10% faster than the original and outclasses Windows 8 Pro tablets from competitors like Sony (SNE) and Asus. Anyone who wants to replace their laptop with something more portable (at 2 pounds, the Surface Pro 2 is light vs. laptops) while being able to set the keyboard aside and use the device purely as a Windows 8 tablet will appreciate what the Surface Pro 2 has to offer. Add in the ability to run Windows 8 PC software (including the Microsoft Office suite), a USB port for connecting peripherals, a full range of accessories (including a dock, wireless keyboard covers, mice and stylus) and the ability to stack the specs with up to 8GB of RAM and 512GB of storage … and the Surface Pro 2 is difficult to beat when looking for the best tablet for business use. Plus, this top tablet just got even better with a recent firmware update. The Surface Pro 2 got a 20% boost in battery life, so you can now squeak seven to eight hours out of a charge. Starting at $899.

ANDROID:

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1: Consumer Reports recommends the newest version of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1. “What’s unique about it is it comes with a stylus and a set of apps that works specifically with that stylus. The stylus is pretty advanced, and it allows you to do things like write notes within an app or draw graphics. Another interesting feature is it allows you to run two apps at the same time on the display. It starts at $550.

**2014 Best eBook Reader Reviews and Comparisons (all devices)
http://ebook-reader-review.toptenreviews.com

Here are the top ranking eReaders according to TechMedia Network (2013)

*Kindle PaperWhite: The Verdict: 9.63/10
Delivering convenience and readability that far surpasses most competitors, the Kindle Paperwhite is a fantastic eReader for booklovers. Pros: The Kindle Paperwhite boasts adjustable edge-lighting and a crisp, white E-ink display that enable comfortable reading in any environment. It also integrates with the best eBook store in the business. Cons: Lacking a headphone jack, it doesn’t support audiobooks. $119.

*Nook GlowLight: The Verdict: 9.4/10
Pros: The rounded edges and rubber coating make this reader very comfortable to use. Cons: You will not be able to listen to audiobooks with this device. $119.

*Google Nexus 7: The best 7-inch eReader and Tablet is the new Google Nexus 7 accou. The original quickly sold out and the 2013 version is even better. The Nexus tablet is a compact powerhouse with a razor sharp display.. As a Google device, it’s also a showcase for the latest Android operating system, with no third party UIs or overlays to complicate things. Mobile gaming is one of the most popular uses for a tablet and the Google Nexus 7 has the power of a quad core Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon S4 processor, a 323 PPI display, up to 10 hours of battery life and access to all the games on Google Play. Combined with its size, the powerful specs make it a portable gaming natural and one of the best tablets to buy this holiday.

Robbie K. Melton, Ph.D. Associate Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs, eLearning — Robbie K. Melton, Ph.D.
Associate Vice Chancellor, Academic Affairs, eLearning

Photo credit: Luke Wroblewski on Flickr.

Mobile Learning, Technology

Practice

A Look at the Top Tools for Learning from WCET Closing Presenter, Jane Hart

By WCET Frontiers

October 14, 2013

1 Comment

Today’s guest blog is from Jane Hart who is a world renowned edtech expert, the founder of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (C4LPT), and compiler of Top 100 Tools for Learning lists. WCET is fortunate to have Jane Hart with us at the WCET Annual Meeting in Denver on Friday, November 15th.

For the last seven years I have been running a survey of learning tools and have compiled an annual Top 100 Tools for Learning list from the votes of the contributing learning professionals worldwide.

What is a learning tool? Well I define it as one that you use for your own personal or professional learning, and/or one that you use for teaching or training.

The annual Top 100 Tools lists have now become very popular, and at the time of writing this post (mid-October 2013) the 2011 list of tools has been viewed nearly 1 million times, and the 2012 list nearly 600,000 times. Furthermore, the 2012 list was included in the KPCB Internet Trends 2013 slideset viewed over 2.5 millions on Slideshare. KPCB (Kleiner Perkins Caulfield Byers) is, by the way, a venture capitalist firm, so their presentation is used to identify worldwide trends.

Image of a toolbox — With so Many Tools in the Box, Which Ones are Really Being Used?
Some rights reserved by skistz

I released the 2013 Top 100 for Learning list on 30^th September, and this year’s list was compiled from the votes of over 500 learning professionals – from education and workplace learning – in 48 countries.

You can see the full (summary) list on this page, where there are links to pages with fuller information about each of the tools, for example its cost, availability, its past rankings, and where you can read some of the comments from those who voted for it. But here are this year’s top10 tools.

Twitter retains its #1 position for the 5^th year running.

Twitter retains its #1 position for the 5^th year running.
Google Drive/Docs moves up to #2 and takes YouTube’s place from last year.
YouTube moves down to 3^rd
Google Search retains its 4^th place position this year .
PowerPoint moves back up the list to its 2007 position of #5.
Evernote moves into the top 10 at #6.
Dropbox drops down one place to #7
WordPress drops back three places to #8
Facebook retains its place at #9 on this years’ lis
Google + and Google Hangouts moves up into the top 10 at #10.

Here are some highlights from the rest of the list:

There are 10 new tools on the Top100 list topped by Feedly (an RSS reader/aggregator) at #19 and Coursera (a MOOC platform) at #38, and there are 3 tools returning to the list, including Storify at #58.

The highest movers within the list are Skydrive (the Windows file storage service) at #43 – up 55 places since last year, and Keynote and iMovie – up 40 and 32 places respectively (which shows the increase in popularity of Apple software).

A couple of tools made a significant descent down the list – including Google Sites (down 60 places) and Wikispaces (down 50 places), and a number of tools moved off the list this year. This included Google Reader (now retired by Google), Bing, and Scribd.

Although this list, like previous lists, is dominated by free online social tools, a number of e-learning authoring tools have made a good showing this year.

As for trends over the last seven years, well it is interesting to note that Firefox (#1 in 2007) is now at #97 on this year’s list, and Delicious (#1 in 2008) is now at #60. So what will topple Twitter from the top of the list – and when?

But what does this all mean for education?

Well in the session I am moderating at the WCET Annual Meeting, Focus on Technology, Innovation, and Adoption, I will be talking more about more what the list shows are the current technology trends for education – as well as what is coming up. Then in my closing keynote, Social Learning Revolution I will look at how the list shows that he way we learn is changing, and how we are seeing what might be considered, a social learning revolution – and what this might mean for the future of education and workplace learning.

Jane Hart, founder of the Centre for Learning and Performance Technologies (C4LPT)

jane.hart@C4LPT.co.uk.

Twitter : @C4LPT | Facebook page : C4LPT | LinkedIn : C4LPT | Google+ : Jane Hart

Instructional Design, Mobile Learning, Research, Social Media, Teaching, Technology, WCET

Uncategorized

Badges, Credits and Accreditation

By WCET Frontiers

October 10, 2013

2 Comments

Alternative credentials are a hot topic in higher education – from the new direct assessment competency based programs to badges to certify competency. Today, Anne Derryberry of Sage Road Solutions, LLC, shares with us the current thinking around how badges will play in with credits and accreditation. Thanks, Anne for sharing your knowledge with us on this emerging topic.

Digital Badges

Digital badges represent a new, innovative mechanism for verifying achievement and attainment of pre-specified skills and competencies.[1] As we’ve been learning during the “Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials” MOOC co-sponsored by WCET (badges.coursesites.com)[2], many postsecondary institutions are considering, even preparing to implement, badges within academic programs and for faculty development. As these institutions and others contemplating using badges evaluate the suitability of badges for their programs, questions come up about how badges might be encompassed within an institution’s accreditation.

Badges acknowledge that learning happens everywhere and anywhere. Badge issuers can be education providers, employers, community organizations, even individuals. By displaying the badges they have earned, badge holders can provide proof of learning even if they don’t have a school transcript to support their assertion. This enables postsecondary institutions to provide credit for prior learning to students and staff alike.

Badges are awarded when evidence-based assessment establishes that the badge seeker has attained clearly articulated competencies. In other words,

badges represent what a badge holder can do, not just what someone remembers. Further, the “doing” must be proven, not merely asserted.

Unlike degrees, badges don’t need only to represent mastery. Badges can also acknowledge skills and abilities that lead up to mastery. This granularity supports stackable credentials that allow institutions to take a modular approach to curriculum design, with badges for core competencies providing a cross-curricular foundation.

These are also the very reasons that badges challenge the way accreditation is currently designed and how it currently functions.

The Accreditation View

Accreditation matters to everyone: students, parents, education institutions, research and teaching faculty, alumni, employers, government and taxpayers. Institutions that fail to receive sought-after (re-)accreditation lose access to federal funds that support student financial aid. Unaccredited institutions are less likely to attract top faculty and administrators, making them potentially less inviting to prospective students. This can lead to loss of access to grant programs and to community and corporate donors falling away. Accordingly, accreditation is, by its nature, a conservative, deliberative, painstaking undertaking; change to accreditation policies and processes happens slowly. In addition, accreditors must gain recognition by the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) by demonstrating that they are operating in compliance with federal regulations, a requirement that can further dampen efforts to alter policies and/or processes.

During her guest presentation for the “Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials” MOOC[3], Patricia O’Brien (Commission on Institutions of Higher Education, New England Association of Schools and Colleges) suggested some issues for accreditors and institutions to address when considering badges as an alternative to grades or traditional course credits:

Is credit involved? Accreditation is primarily involved with credit-bearing experiences, although the institution is primarily responsible for all educational activities done in its name.
Is it high quality… and how do you know? Standards stress the quality, integrity and coherence of academic programs.
Who gets to say yes? Standards stress appropriate academic oversight and faculty participation in academic quality assurance.
How many? Most accrediting agencies specify limits on credit for experiential or non-collegiate-sponsored learning.
What’s involved? Demonstrable academic content for experiences for which credit is awarded or expected.
How will students know? Standards expect institutions to provide clarity and transparency with regard to acceptance of transfer credit.

The emphasis on credit, academic oversight and faculty participation, and limitations to experiential or non-collegiate sponsored learning all suggest a disinclination by the accreditation community to rush to badges. Rather, it will fall to institutions to proceed with development and recognition of badges in a way that addresses the issues that O’Brien highlights.

Before the badge discussion really takes off, the accreditation community must address the antecedent issue of competency-based learning. During a recent email conversation, Karen Solomon (Higher Learning Commission of North Central Association) offered the following recounting regarding competency-based learning accreditation to light the way for those interested in badges:

The Commission recently approved four institutions to offer competency based degrees. Due to USDE requirements, a new application and review process was developed to evaluate institutions as they redefined how degrees could be earned when they moved away from credit hours determined by seat time to competencies. Students earn degrees once they demonstrate mastery of competencies. The concept of a two-year or four-year degree does not exist since the concept of time is separated from the degree. Some students with a great deal of experience might demonstrate mastery to several competencies in a few weeks while others may take several years. Since they are not enrolled in courses, the financial aid system must be re-evaluated. Accrediting agencies will need to identify peer reviewers that can evaluate institutional preparation and resources available for degrees that are decoupled from the credit hour.

Solomon’s story (K. Solomon, personal communication, September 23, 2013) demonstrates the many factors that must be balanced during the accreditation process. As we see, a turn to competencies by postsecondary institutions can result in a disruption to financial aid, and badges have the potential to amplify this effect.

But the door is not at all closed. “Institutions regularly bundle courses from existing degree programs into certificates and Commission approval is not required. If an institution wants to offer a certificate developed independent of existing degree programs (and for it to be Title IV eligible), the institution is required to complete a brief online application and we would review the request,” says Solomon, adding, “Our intent is not to build a new system just for badges but to wrap them into existing policies as appropriate. We know that many institutions recognize learning through PLA (prior learning assessment) or transfer of credit but we do not approve the actual decisions for individual courses. Each institution is expected to have policies and processes to evaluate the quality of credits it transcripts, and we review how the institution follows its own processes. The same expectations would be in place if an institution were to award badges based on credits or competencies.”

Anne Derryberry

Producer, Designer, Reviewer/Evaluator, Market analyst
Next-generation Learning and Productivity Solutions
Sage Road Solutions, LLC

anne@sageroadsolutions.com

[1] Openbadges.org

[2] The MOOC, jointly sponsored by WCET, Mozilla, Blackboard and Sage Road Solutions LLC, is live September 9, 2013 through October 17, 2013. Archives of all live sessions, chat sessions, #openbadgesMOOC tweet stream, and all associated resources and tools are available for the indefinite future at badges.coursesites.com.

[3] O’Brien, P. M. (2013). Accreditation and Badges (PowerPoint slides). Retrieved from https://sas.elluminate.com/site/external/playback/artifact?psid=2013-09-30.1102.M.901760F77B472B12774D76D56277E3.vcr&aid=44375

Accreditation, Assessment, Competency-based Education, Credentials, Credits, Outcomes, Teaching

Practice

25 Years of Advancing Excellence in Technology-enhanced Teaching and Learning

By WCET Frontiers

September 9, 2013

1 Comment

In 1989 a group of people committed to improving access to higher education across the western region met in Denver to form a cooperative organization to leverage technology for distributed education and to advance excellence in technology-enhanced teaching and learning . These forward-thinking individuals helped develop the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, which eventually became the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, or what you know as WCET. Twenty-five years later WCET has grown into a national organization with members across the United States and even Canada.

The convening in 1989 was the first WCET Annual Meeting. The program didn’t include best practices or innovative uses of technology enhanced learning, the sole purpose of the meeting was to develop the organizational principles of WCET. The following year WICHE staff worked with the University of Wyoming and US West to get a T1 connection to the venue so that the attendees could experiment with an emerging technology called electronic mail. E-mail was not immediately embraced, why would people want to send an email when a phone call or face-to-face conversation would suffice? And fax machines were now ubiquitous.

Fast forward 25 years to WCET’s Silver Anniversary. Cell phones are in everyone’s pockets and weigh 20 ounces less than the original Motorola DynaTAC 8500XL and cost about $2,000 less! E-mail is being edged out by texting as preferred communication (phone conversations are so 2001, and please don’t leave me a voicemail as it is so time consuming to dial, enter my pin, and listen to your message). In 1988 very few of us had desktop computers and now many of us wonder why we have desktop computers when we can do everything we need to with a handheld device.

As the technology has evolved so has distance learning and the WCET Annual Meeting. The Annual Meeting is one of several fall conferences for the higher education edtech community, but the WCET event stands alone in that it is still a convening of edtech leaders dedicated to improving access to education. WCET’s meeting goes beyond the current edtech trends and informs attendees of emerging issues, trends, and national policies impacting institutions. Another nod to progress is the WCET mobile program app, who would have thought back then that you could forgo the printed program for an interactive app on your mobile device!

One of the newest evolutions of the WCET program are the in-depth sessions which bring expert panel members together for a hybrid session that is part presentation and part action-oriented small group discussions. The in-depth sessions are carefully crafted to address current issues impacting all involved in edtech. The topics are:

Another highlight of the 25th Anniversary program is the general session presentation bringing together several of the WCET friends from the first Annual Meeting during the WCET Pioneers of the Ed Tech Frontier session on Thursday, November 14. The panel will discuss some of what has changed, what has remained the same, and where we as an organization maybe headed over the next 25-years.

Whether this is your first WCET Annual meeting or your 25th, we welcome you to the cooperative and look forward to continued collaboration towards the mission of accelerating the adoption of effective practices and policies, advancing excellence in technology-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education.

What are your thoughts about where we have been and where we are headed in edtech?

Distance Education, Online Learning, Technology, WCET, WCET Annual Conference

Uncategorized

Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials

By WCET Frontiers

August 28, 2013

2 Comments

Today we welcome guest blogger, Dr. Deborah Everhart, Director of Integration Strategy at Blackboard, our partner in the upcoming MOOC, Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials which starts Sept. 9^th. Deborah shares with us the tipping point for badges and how you can be a part of the solution for helping support new systems of quality credentials.

In the past year, accelerating in the past few months, we’ve seen an increasing focus on flexible, open learning opportunities, learner achievements, and competency-based learning. Many forces are driving and supporting this, including:

President Obama’s push for affordable college education, encouraging, among other things, flexible and competency-based learning opportunities.
Numerous research and non-profit organizations arguing for fundamental changes in the delivery of education, such as the Lumina Foundation’s strategy for “new systems of quality credentials and credits defined by learning and competencies rather than time.”
The Clinton Global Initiative’s commitment to help 1 million students and 1 million U.S. workers access opportunities through badges. Non-profit organizations, universities, civic organizations, technology providers, employers, and others are teaming up to meet this challenge.
Swift changes in U.S. higher education accreditation, particularly for competency-based learning.
U.S. unemployment rates remain stubbornly high, while high-paying jobs remain unfilled; employers cite “a lack of available skilled talent as a continuing drag on business performance” (Manpower Group). In order to reliably acquire the skillsets they need, employers are looking for ways to validate job candidates’ capabilities and specific competencies.

In this context, badges that represent flexible, open, portable learning achievements have emerged as a powerful new tool. With badge achievements that can be added to online resumes and social media profiles, what we’ve learned can become – literally and visibly – part of our identity. Employers, admission officers, and other “badge consumers” are beginning to recognize the value of the detailed information provided by badges. This is in stark contrast to the opaque, minimal information provided in college transcripts and traditional resumes.

Open Badges

Mozilla Open Badges for Lifelong Learning initiative has established a framework for the scalable, stable, growth of badge ecosystems. The Mozilla framework includes a structure for defining and issuing badges that share competencies, endorsements and verifications by experts and authorities. It also lays out how to facilitate badge collection and display as part of learners’ online and social identities, and how to use badges to evaluate learners’ capabilities for employment, education, and more.

Help Define the Future of Badge Initiatives

There is enormous potential for badge initiatives to fundamentally improve the “exchange” of value between educational institutions, learners, and employers. But how is this “currency” defined? Who validates the value of badges? Who defines relevant sets of competencies, and for what purposes? To advance the answers to these and many other questions, we pulled together a team of experts from Mozilla, Blackboard, WCET, and Sage Road Solutions, as well as academic, governmental, civic, and corporate thought leaders, to provide a MOOC that fosters and strengthens emerging badge initiatives: “Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials.” This free and open MOOC is designed to help teams of people define their own badge initiatives, appropriate to their own contexts, and work through a series of challenges leading to concrete implementation plans. With this scaffolded learning experience, we aspire to broaden the awareness of the potential of badges, and more importantly, to facilitate the implementation of sustainable badge frameworks that offer concrete structures for validated badge “currency” exchange among educational institutions, learners, and employers.

We hope that you will join us in this bold venture. By collaboratively building badge frameworks, we contribute to a growing, thriving ecosystem of flexible learning opportunities, portable evidence of achievements, and environments that spur learning enthusiasm and improve learner success.

Dr. Deborah Everhart
Director of Integration Strategy,
Blackboard

Credentials, MOOC

Uncategorized

Badges: New Currency for Professional Credentials

By WCET Frontiers

August 28, 2013

2 Comments

President Obama’s push for affordable college education, encouraging, among other things, flexible and competency-based learning opportunities.
Numerous research and non-profit organizations arguing for fundamental changes in the delivery of education, such as the Lumina Foundation’s strategy for “new systems of quality credentials and credits defined by learning and competencies rather than time.”
The Clinton Global Initiative’s commitment to help 1 million students and 1 million U.S. workers access opportunities through badges. Non-profit organizations, universities, civic organizations, technology providers, employers, and others are teaming up to meet this challenge.
Swift changes in U.S. higher education accreditation, particularly for competency-based learning.
U.S. unemployment rates remain stubbornly high, while high-paying jobs remain unfilled; employers cite “a lack of available skilled talent as a continuing drag on business performance” (Manpower Group). In order to reliably acquire the skillsets they need, employers are looking for ways to validate job candidates’ capabilities and specific competencies.

Open Badges

Help Define the Future of Badge Initiatives

Dr. Deborah Everhart
Director of Integration Strategy,
Blackboard

Credentials, MOOC

Uncategorized

Texas Addresses Student Costs through Innovative Baccalaureate Program

By WCET Frontiers

June 26, 2013

2 Comments

Making college affordable is in headlines across the country. In today’s blog, Van Davis, Director of Special Projects, Workforce, Academic Affairs, and Research Division, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, shares with us the story of an innovative baccalaureate program in Texas which aims to address the issue of student costs.

Clay Christensen is well known for his work on the impact of disruptive innovation on a variety of industries and fields, including higher education. According to Christensen, higher education is at a crossroads that leaves it “both at great risk of competitive disruption and potentially poised for an innovation-fueled renaissance.” How higher education leaders respond to this crossroads seems the stuff of almost daily discussion. One response in Texas is the partnership forged between the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the College for All Texans Foundation, South Texas College, and Texas A&M University-Commerce.

Funded through an EDUCAUSE Next Generation Learning Challenges Wave IIIb grant, the Texas Affordable Baccalaureate (TAB) Program is a response to Christensen’s calls for disruption. At the heart of the TAB Program is the development of a competency-based Bachelor of Applied Sciences in Organizational Leadership that centers on the 21^st century skills outlined by the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AACU): Knowledge of Human Cultures and the Physical and Natural World, Intellectual and Practical Skills, Personal and Social Responsibility, and Integrative and Applied Learning. These mastery areas are integrated into the degree program’s three component parts– the general education core curriculum, lower-division electives, and upper-division applied coursework.

[youtube=http://youtu.be/sMQVXUFSAIQ]

The new baccalaureate has both competency-based and cohort-based levels

Unlike many other competency-based programs, the Texas model will combine a self-paced, competency-based general education and lower-division elective curriculum with an accelerated cohort-based upper division curriculum. We believe that this blend of competencies and accelerated coursework is uniquely situated to provide students with the leadership skills and knowledge that so many employers in business, government, and non-profit settings are looking for. The degree’s first 90 semester credit hours at both institutions will be available through shared self-paced online modules while the remaining 30 upper-division credit hours in the major will be available through cohort-based online instruction from Texas A&M University-Commerce or hybrid instruction from South Texas College.

Central to our program is a belief in three main principles:

Students learn better when instruction can be personalized to meet their needs and timetable.
Applied learning that involves direct faculty instruction, problem-based learning, and multiple opportunities to work with peers is especially powerful at the upper-division level.
Students need a degree and experiences that will prepare them for current and future workforce needs.

An alternative staffing model that does not rely on adjuncts

In an effort to provide students with that a level of personalization at an affordable cost, we are exploring using an alternative staffing model. At a time when many institutions are trying to reduce cost by relying more and more on adjunct faculty at the lower-division level, including those crucial gateway courses, our program is committed to a full-time faculty and staff model. Upon entering the TAB Program each student will receive a full-time professional academic coach that will help them chart a path through the competency-based lower division curriculum. Credentialed with at least a master’s degree, these coaches will help learners assess the level of their existing knowledge, work through competency-base assessments to establish mastery, and provide leadership, support, and motivation as they help their advisees stay on track and finish the degree in the most timely way possible.

Further personalization of instruction comes with using full-time academic content experts, also credentialed with at least a master’s degree, to provide students with individualized tutorial services as they work through the general education competencies. The use of deep learning analytics will help both coaches and content experts determine which students are most in need of assistance and better target their time and efforts. Although full-time, these professional staff are non-tenured and, therefore, can be more easily scaled up and down depending upon program need and student demand.

Faculty remain at the core

Faculty remain central in our program, though. In addition to leading the accelerated upper-division curriculum, faculty from both institutions have played a central role in the development of the lower-division competencies and instructional materials. We have used a variation of Lumina’s Tuning process to develop both our lower-division and upper-division curriculum. For the last eight months groups of general education and upper-division faculty members from both institutions have met to develop this curriculum. This intensive faculty involvement has allowed us to develop our curriculum from the ground up.

Although slow at times, watching faculty members from both institutions engage in the hard work of throwing courses out the window and creating a truly student-centered environment has been exciting. Freed from the constraint of courses, several of the general education disciplines created competency sets that transcended traditional discipline boundaries.

On the upper-division side faculty were joined by K-12 education representatives and area business leaders to create a curriculum that combines 21^st century skills such as leadership, team building, ethical decision making, enhanced communication skills, cultural sensitivity, information literacy, and critical thinking with knowledge in organizational behavior, marketing, management theory, applied statistics and research, supervision, and organizational change.

The first students will begin this fall

Starting this October students will have the chance to enter the program during any of the year’s six seven week terms and will pay a flat, inclusive tuition rate of approximately $750 per term allowing students to show mastery of as many lower-division competencies as possible during each term.

The thirty credits of upper-division coursework will be offered in six accelerated seven week terms that will revolve around students participating in application-based exercises that culminate in an electronic portfolio submitted to a team of faculty members and business leaders. Final cost to the student will be between $4,500 and $14,000 depending upon how quickly each student can work through the competency-based portion of the program and how much previous credit is transferred in.

Although not the right fit for every student, academic program, or institutions, we believe that the TAB Program will provide thousands of Texans with a unique opportunity to gain an affordable bachelor’s degree tuned to the 21^st century workforce.

Van Davis
Director of Special Projects
Workforce, Academic Affairs, and Research Division
Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board
Van.Davis@THECB.state.tx.us

Competency-based Education, Cost of Instruction, Innovation

Uncategorized

The Community College Journey to Predictive Analytics

By WCET Frontiers

June 5, 2013

1 Comment

This week, Luzelma Canales, Executive Director, Resource Development & Administration, Lone Star College System brings us along the path that her system has followed to adopting predictive analytics. Luzelma and others will share more about their analytics journey at the WCET Leadership Summit: Under the Sword of Data. If you’re not able to join us, watch the Frontiers blog next week for a dispatch from Salt Lake.

If I ask ten people to define predictive analytics and how it is used on their respective campuses to improve student outcomes, I am likely to hear stories about how colleges are using their data systems to provide access to decision makers. Some may go on to describe the tools that they use to provide access to data to faculty, staff, and administers. Most often, however, the definition or stories are dependent on where colleges are in their journey on building a robust and rigorous culture of evidence to improve student outcomes.

Maya Angelou once said, “Wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.” This quote got me to think about the journey that I’ve been on not only with the two colleges where I work but also the Achieving the Dream colleges that I provide technical assistance to as a data coach.

Shifting Our Thinking about Which Numbers to Track

As I reflect on the last seventeen years and how the use of data has evolved at community colleges, I think back to the early 1990s when our primary focus of data discussions was based on enrollment numbers. All of our questions where centered on whether we had sufficient sections to meet our enrollment targets. These discussions became even more critical during planning for a “base year,” which drives the funding formula for community colleges in Texas.

However in the late 1990s early 2000s, we began to hear more public criticism about graduation rates at community colleges and the push to move into performance based funding. It was during this time that I remember the dialogue at my college shifting to include more serious discussions about key student outcomes.

Nurturing an Analytical Culture

Achieving the Dream (ATD) hit our college at a time when we were ready to take our journey to the next level. When ATD announced that it would award a small grant to community colleges that committed to rethink their approach to student success by building a culture of evidence and engagement to improve student outcomes, my college jumped at the opportunity and was selected as one of the first twenty-seven colleges invited to participate in 2004. I believe that ATD gave us the framework that we needed to make the full transition from an access/enrollment driven college to a college maintaining its commitment to access while focusing on student success through a rigorous review of policies and practices.

It was during the planning year that I saw a total transformation in not only the data we requested but also the shift in how the data was collected, analyzed, presented, and discussed. For the first time, I saw institutional researchers emerge as leaders in building a student success agenda based on a basic form of analytics. Instead of walking into meetings with reports of raw data, institutional researchers brought forth synthesized reports with some analysis. I knew that we were moving in the right direction when our questions changed from how many to what impact.

A few years later (2011) we also had an opportunity participate in the planning year of Completion by Design, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Completion by Design introduced our college to the Preventing Loss, Creating Momentum Framework. This framework asked colleges to identify the critical points where we were losing students and to develop strategies to improve student outcomes by understanding student progression from Connection to Entry to Progress to Completion. This framework forces us to once again reconsider the data we were reviewing and the questions we were asking.

During our participation in Completion by Design, Jenkins and Cho (2012) introduced us to a method that community colleges can utilize to understand student progress and outcomes by analyzing student course-taking behaviors to determine when students enter a program of study. In this report, “Get with the program: Accelerating community colleges students’ entry into and completion of programs of study,” Jenkins and Cho proposed that identifying clusters of three credit bearing courses that lead to a program of study can assist colleges in redirecting support services to students as they make progress in entering and completing a program of study. They suggest that student course-taking behaviors a greater predictor of progress into a program of study than declaring a major or intent.

PAR Framework Takes Us to Deeper Understanding

It is only at this stage of the journey that I believe that we can take full advantage of the Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework. This framework takes our understanding of the student experience to much deeper level. Helping us understand where we are most at risk of losing our students gives us an opportunity to take a critical look at how our policies and practices are supporting or hindering student success. More importantly the PAR Framework gives our colleges an opportunity to place the data at the hands of those who can make the most difference in student success, our faculty and staff. The Lone Star College System joined the PAR Framework in the summer of 2012 as an institutional partner. Early participation in the PAR Framework is giving our college the opportunity to accelerate our capacity to leverage predictive analytics in a meaningful way that maximizes the use of our limited resources.

Take some time to reflect on your college’s journey in using data to understand the student experience at your respective colleges and remember that sustainable change takes time. You have to know where you are starting to develop the roadmap to where you want to get.

Luzelma G. Canales, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Resource Development & Administration

Lone Star College System

5000 Research Forest Drive

The Woodlands, TX 77381-4356

Email: Luzelma.Canales@lonestar.edu

Collaboration/Community, Completion, Data and Analytics, Outcomes

Moore Howard’s Categories of Plagiarism

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**2014 Best eBook Reader Reviews and Comparisons (all devices)
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