You Don’t Need a Weatherman…..

You Don’t Need a Weatherman…..     

I recently sat in a policy discussion where people were chewing on what the next “moon shot” or “game-changer” in higher education was going to be. While there was general consensus that “moon shots” were over-rated and rarely worked, I was puzzled that there was less consensus about the “game-changer”, which I took it as a form of denial. The next game-changers are already with us and they are both transformative and disruptive. They are the web and web-enabled technology. In plain terms, these game-changers rob the university of its historical function of knowledge creation and dissemination precisely because they lie beyond the university’s reach, embedded in the larger surrounding society. And they simultaneously pierce the access, learning support, and employment guidance functions that the university historically has controlled. For the first time, universities do not control their own futures any more than do publishers and newspapers.

Here’s an example. Anya Kamenetz, whose DIY U, caught so many peoples’ attention, recently published a follow-up work, The Edupunk’sGuide to Certificates. The Guide is organized in a sequence of steps that a self-directed learner can take to understand where they are, how they learn, and how to chart and follow a learning path that they select for themselves. The Guide’s organizational structure rests on dozens of urls, apps, and programs that already exist to support learning and its validation in multiple forms at every step in the self-directed learning process. And soon enough, someone will produce a software version of the Guide and then other versions as well. It is a simple matter to imagine a variety of approaches following this general scenario with varying levels of support, guidance, and control.  

In fact, a working early-stage model of such a platform exists at KNEXT. When self-directed learners access the platform, they can reflect of what they know, what they want to know, and look at simulated degree programs and educational pathways based on where their journey is going to take them. They can also organize all the learning they have done, formal as well as informal, in a portfolio organized to place them clearly on their learning path, standing with their learning history and looking forward to their learning future. And finally, if they want to get a third party assessment of the academic value of their accumulated learning, that is available as well. In short, there is activity across the entire spectrum of learning, from pre-engineered and self-paced to open sourced and self-directed with more conventional models in between. All are enhanced and scalable as never before by the web and web-enabled technology.

What we are verging on with these developments is what I call a new “pedagogy of learning”. While this may seem like a confusion of terms to some (and I readily concede that there may be better language to describe what I see), I see that actual engagement with knowledge – what I know and am able to do and what I want to know and be able to do – and associated reflection and assessment is a teaching-learning strategy in and of itself. If reflection is the process of deducing meaning from broad experience, then the act of planning, implementing, engaging, and evaluating your learning, however you conduct it, is a pedagogical exercise that can be joined and supported by peers and experts alike.

Perhaps most exciting, this approach to learning also prepares the learner for life in the knowledge economy and information society that is so much discussed these days. The actual exercise and activity of learning becomes the personal laboratory for the learner, strengthening their abilities to synthesize and think critically, write and analyze, distinguish reliable from faulty information as an integrated part of their educational journey. It is the ultimate engaged learning experience, done right.

You Don’t Need a Weatherman…

You Don’t Need a Weatherman

As the old Bob Dylan song lyrics told us back in the ‘60’s, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowin’”. And, as I listen in on the policy conversations and read the blogs and chats today about disruptive forces in higher education, I get that feeling all over again. Too many people, good and earnest people, think the future of higher education and change is negotiable. My strong belief, stated bluntly, is that when it comes to disruptive change in American society generally and higher education more specifically, it is not negotiable. Or, referencing Dylan, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

The denial can be comprehensive. For example, some people ask, somewhat defensively, whether disrupters can meet all of the market’s needs. Respectfully, in an environment when we need to increase the college attainment rate by 75-100% over the next 10 years, that is the wrong question. It will take years for the value proposition behind the traditional model to be significantly compromised. And it will probably never happen completely. Other innovations will allow traditional colleges and universities to adapt and change and survive. Having said that, the challenge of educating those who have been failed by the system to date, will not be met by the traditional sectors and models alone. In short, what got us where we are won’t get us where we need to go.

As new inventions emerge to shape and support learning in unforeseen ways, however, a new balance between old and new will emerge. And the collective impact of these disruptive activities on the academic value proposition among “alternative providers” is impossible to predict. In short, cannot predict the future shape of learning and learning support any more than Justin Morrill could have predicted the shape of land grant universities in America today. I do believe, however, that it is practical and possible to predict that, over the next 10-15 years, good, then better, and then best practices will emerge and be embraced. Quality will be defined and embraced. I also believe that cost/price structures will change while users’ behaviors will continue to evolve based on further IT and software developments in the broad society. Ultimately that is a chilly north wind for the traditional higher education model.

Then comes the tornado. There is a traditional response in the academy to change: hunker down and out-wait it. Hide in the cellar. The problem this time is that the academy, collectively and individually, does not control the change than the family in the storm shelter controls the tornado. So the traditional academic and economic model is not in charge of and does not control in fundamental ways the future in which they will live. This is unprecedented. And the consequences include that “waiting it out” will only lead to a bigger gap between practice and promise down the line. We cannot channel disruption, but if we are adroit and tenacious, we just might be able to surf it the way board riders catch wave after wave.

And finally comes the soft summer breeze. What technology and disruption will give us is unparalleled consistency and personalization in a multi-dimensional and mobile environment. We will be able to customize, adapt, and respond to the expressed needs of learners in a learning-centric environment. On-line seminars and self-paced instructional models will be two of many choices, not the main stream. And consistent learning outcomes will allow multiple forms of pedagogy towards the same end.

As an educator, what excites me about this trend, however unknowable the ultimate “destination” remains, is the potential it contains. The potential, among other things, to combine liberal with career-oriented learning, to integrate knowing a lot about selected areas of knowledge with refined higher order intellectual capacities like team-work, ethical thinking, problem-solving, critical thinking, to focus on learning, not teaching. So, consistency of learning outcomes actually can permit far more comprehensive reflection about what is being learned if we are smart about it.

These are just a few of the myriad possibilities that are available in the emerging “learning” space of high education, enabled by disruptive forces. My core point, however, is that the direction is set, the wind is blowing.  

Blog - the frog and the scorpion

Blog -  the frog and the scorpion        

There is the old story of the frog and the scorpion. It goes like this. There is a wide river and the scorpion, needing to cross to the other side but not knowing how to swim approaches a very hesitant frog. Will you let me ride on your head as you cross this river?” asks the scorpion. “But why, Mr. Scorpion, should I trust that you won’t sting me when we get to the other side?” asked the frog. “Because”, said the scorpion, I give you my word and also, if there are threats en route, I can scare them away, assuring your safe passage”.

The frog agreed, with some trepidation, to carry the scorpion and they set out. Once or twice along the way, they were approached by a fish or a diving bird of prey, but in both cases the scorpion scared them away. Eventually they neared the other side of the river and, as the frog carried the scorpion out of the water, the scorpion jumped down and promptly stung the frog. Mortally wounded, the frog moaned, “Why did you sting me? We had an agreement.” And the scorpion replied, “Because that’s what scorpions do.”

Granted, the imagery may be a little extreme. But I see that “frog” of higher education being seduced and then stung by the twin foes of performance distortion and academic tradition. This is happening exactly when higher education needs to break free of the damaging aspects of tradition and develop new forms to educate the learners on the 21^st century in the numbers, at the levels, and at a price that society and individuals can afford.

In this week’s Chronicle of Higher Education innovation section, Richard Vedder blogs about the “scandal” of having between 40-50% of all Pell recipients graduate. And he opines that the more Pell recipients there are in an institution, the lower the graduation rate, thus blithely skipping by a) the whole reason Pell grants were instituted (to provide financial support to poor students needing financial grant assistance) and b) the known fact that children (and adults) from more affluent families do better  and receive higher allocations of resources in higher education than those who are 1^st generation college-goers. Furthermore, he ignores the important fact that even some success in higher education without the award of a degree is better than none at all when it comes to economic participation in the society.

In last week’s blog, ………, I discussed at some length the emerging data on what tuition really pays for and the “back room” economics of higher educational institutions that bear, in too many cases, little connection to the actual costs of teaching.

In this case, the “scorpion’s bite” lies in the law of unintended consequences. The tack that Vedder has taken in his recent blog, and the drag of the traditional higher education economic model on the need to provide higher quality, lower cost learning opportunities, is that each points the country, its quality of civic and social life, and its workforce in the wrong direction, towards 2^nd class citizenship in an increasingly global and information-driven economy. Even as it is unintended, this sting is, ultimately, just as problematic.

The conversation we need is about quality, effectiveness, and efficiency. Currently that  conversation being driven by, among others, the Gates Foundation with its work in metrics and the Lumina foundation with its Degree Qualifications framework organized around learning outcomes. When those conversations can be merged with the power of the Open Education Resource movement and emerging socially net-worked support services, we will be on a revolutionary cusp of a new education age. Our focus must be forward and upward to success for many more learners with the capacity to succeed.

When the Tide Goes Out

When the Tide Goes Out  

In their recent article, “The Debt Crisis at American Colleges” published in The Atlantic Online (8/23/11) and drawn from their book, Higher Education?,  Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus strip away the camouflage that covers up the reasons for the dramatic increases in college tuition and costs over the last 20 years. They reveal an assumptive arrangement in which students (and their parents) pay for the research agenda and myriad other hidden costs that have little or nothing to do with the actual teaching and learning enterprise they think they are enrolling to get. Furthermore,  the authors calculate and introduce into the equation the massive loan debt that accumulates as a consequence, beggaring future generations and weakening the economy.  I addressed this issue in passing in Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent, but Hacker and Dreifus really hit the ball out of the park.

I have heard it said that …”it is only when the tide goes out that you see who isn’t wearing a bathing suit”. And the current economic situation with downward pressure on Pell grants, dropping state appropriations, sagging endowments for those lucky enough to have them, and massive unemployment certainly qualifies as “the tide going out”. Here’s what the “no bathing suit” picture looks like.

Institutions, which for years have raised tuition by the approximate or exact amount of increases in state and federal student aid programs, are caught short with artificially high costs and equally high tuition relative to their sectors. And the learners who for years had only incrementally increasing out-of-pocket costs thanks to the same increases in financial aid and loan availability are now squarely under the gun to meet rising tuition costs with higher personal debt. For the institutions, further tuition increases are the only tool left in the traditional toolbox.

As the article closes, Hacker and Dreifus offer several suggestions about “what you should do” for students and parents going forward. And correctly, they give examples of community college – state university articulation paths and great, low cost campus programs that have escaped wider notice because of our infatuation with what Jane Wellman calls the “medallion” universities and colleges.  I would like to offer two additional suggestions that call on institutions to make changes in order to hold up their end of the bargain.

First, take a page out of Michael Crow’s playbook at Arizona State University. He is committed to dramatically increasing the student population without increasing the University’s footprint. How? By institutionalizing blended learning and requiring all undergraduates to take an increasing portion of their program on line.

Second, do what Kaplan University has done. Give new students the first 5 weeks free to see if they want to and are able to do the academic work required. Dismiss those that are failing or choose to withdraw and assign them to other avenues. And bill those who are engaged positively with the curriculum. This approach, the “Kaplan Commitment”, has cost the university a great deal of money. But it is the right thing to do and has led to a significant increase in academic quality.

I have heard others, usually from the public sector, say that they cannot afford to do this. Not accurate.  In fact, it will cost them less than it costs Kaplan because where our tuition constitutes 100% of the revenue, their tuition is net of other public appropriations. The traditional tool box, and the assumptions within it, need changing. Thanks to Hacker and Dreifus for getting this argument aired in public.

Using IT to increase educational effectiveness 3: Personalized services

Using IT to increase educational effectiveness 3: Personalized services

The KNEXT (Knowledge Extension) program is an online teacher-led or self-paced diagnostic program. Using a portfolio development approach with an independent third-party evaluation of credit claimed, KNEXT provides a comprehensive assessment of learning gleaned from prior life experience. Enrolled students are actively encouraged to make use of all prior learning – degrees and certificates earned, past college experience, professional seminars, and applicable work and life experience.

KNEXT is a form of pedagogy as well as a powerful diagnostic for the learner. Participants learn how to actively and consciously reflect on their experience defining the learning that has been generated by that experience.

In supporting learners in seeing anew what they know and where and how they learned it, the KNEXT process personalizes the degree planning and educational design process for each learner, transforming aspiration and motivation as a consequence. As a result, learners who complete the course enjoy three significant educational benefits.

First, they save time and money on their way to earning the degree. Data from the recent CAEL report, “Fueling the Race”, indicated that students who received credit through a prior learning portfolio process persisted to graduation within seven years at more than twice the rate of those who did not. Our data for KNEXT participants indicates a similarly favorable success ratio.

Second they perform significantly better than other students in the ensuing courses they take. As we track student performance inside Kaplan, KNEXT “graduates” consistently better in each course that they take subsequent to their portfolio completion.

And third, they persist to completion at significantly higher rates. In both CAEL report data and our internal data at KNEXT, students with portfolio assessment persist significantly longer than those who do not. Data gathered from over 1000 students who enrolled in the KNEXT assessment course indicate that more than 80% completed the course successfully, while more than 75% of those who enrolled in the course have either graduated from Kaplan or are still enrolled.

Historically, campus-based programs like KNEXT have been hamstrung by the available communication and information processing systems. There has been no way to scale the programs because of the volumes of accumulated information in each portfolio that could only be processed by hand. Put another way, logistics required that such programs be small and of a boutique nature.

Today, thanks to the tools available through technology and social networking, assessment of prior sponsored and non-sponsored learning can be done to scale with rigorous third party quality assurance. Furthermore, the student, with her portfolio, can then “shop” her transcript at any college electronically, dramatically reducing the time involved in finding out which credits will transfer and which will not at each institution. This technologically-enable approach is a major shift towards the student in pedagogy (active reflection), access (knowing college standards), and responsibility (shopping for the best college fit). 

Using IT to increase educational effectiveness 2: Curricular Matrixing

Using IT to increase educational effectiveness 2: Curricular Matrixing

Our use of technology at Kaplan gives us the capacity to embed certain learning outcomes across the curriculum in a matrixed approach. So, in a single course experience, we can evaluate the student’s mastery of the substance of the course. We can also, however, evaluate other knowledge development such as writing, team-work, or critical thinking as well.

For example, General Education at Kaplan is taught through a core curriculum of six courses with other outcomes distributed throughout the undergraduate curriculum. The overall program goal is for the student to be literate and knowledgeable in the following nine areas.

• ·         Arts and Humanities
• ·         Communication
• ·         Critical Thinking
• ·         Ethics
• ·         Mathematics
• ·         Research and Information
• ·         Science

The distribution of outcomes allows us to “double up” the learning in our undergraduate courses, getting added value for the learner and increased effectiveness and efficiency for the institution. In this approach, the vast majority of courses contain a communication course outcome, key to our writing across the curriculum approach. All required courses also contain course outcomes in Critical Thinking, Ethics, or Research and Information, while elective courses contain evenly distributed course outcomes in Arts and Humanities, Mathematics, Science, or Social Science. Technological literacy is reinforced throughout a student’s program.

As mentioned above, this method provides several other advantages including:

• ·         Centrally managed curriculum ensuring consistent learning objective distribution,
• ·         Consistent course outcomes across course sections and faculty,
• ·         Consistent faculty training on rubric use to ensure inter-rater reliability. And
• ·         Universal learning objectives with common rubrics to evaluate student learning.

To date, we have conducted two studies on this approach.

In a 2009 cohort study, we used three courses in sequence, with all students remaining enrolled. We reviewed the percentage of students achieving “practiced” or higher in the communication outcome: demonstrate college-level communication through the composition of original materials in standard American English. Students achieving “practiced” or better increased from 76% in the first course to 85% in the third course, documenting steady improvement in core academic skills of students as they progress through courses.

In the 2010 ethics and communications study, the sample included 2581 BS in Psychology students learning at the 1-, 2-, and 400 levels. They were each assessed in ethics and communications. In ethics, the average scores on the 0-5 rubric scale for students were 2.72 (100 level), 3.54 (200 level), and 3.64 (400 level). In communications, the average scores improved from 3.20 (100 level), to 3.49 (200 level), to 3.54 (400 level). Our initial conclusions were that the general education program was resulting in documented student improvement of core general education skills in the areas of ethics and communications.

As students progress through their programs of study, their progress on achieving these outcomes is monitored. CLAs provide feedback to students, faculty, and administration about specific knowledge and skills acquired by a student during the course of his or her education. We use this feedback to improve the quality of our courses and to support our faculty’s ability to improve the proportion of students who achieve proficiency and mastery.

The ability to employ technology to matrix learning outcomes within a single learning experience also has implications for reducing the time and cost to degree without reducing learning. If, for example, the outcomes embedded across the curriculum amounted to the equivalent of 45 quarter credits, we could consider increasing the credit award per course and decreasing the number of courses required for graduation. For a real-life example of this kind of “degree-shortening”, see Southern New Hampshire University’s three-year, 90 semester credit hour Business Baccalaureate.

My thanks to colleagues Kara Van Dam , Jason Levin, and John Eads who conducted this research.  

Next Week’s blog: Using IT to increase educational effectiveness 3: Personalized services

Using IT to increase educational effectiveness 1: Course level assessments

Recently, I completed an article for the SloanC Journal on Asynchronous Learning Networks entitled “From Scarcity to Abundance: IT’s role in Achieving Quality-Assured Mass Higher Ed

In an increasingly mobile society, with burgeoning opportunities to learn throughout life, the accuracy, clarity, and transparency of learning assessment at the course and program level is essential. Academic outcomes that are consistently and rigorously assessed by the institution and validated by third parties will be seen to have integrity in the 21^st century, earning the respect of learners and employers alike.

Course level assessment (CLA) is one of our answers to this emerging need at Kaplan. CLA measures student learning and informs our continuous academic improvement process with processes that have been developed to identify and assess learning outcomes. CLA measures student mastery of stated course level learning outcomes in an objective way. It is criterion-referenced, not norm-referenced.
The scores obtained measure the student’s current skill mastery and knowledge described by the outcomes. CLAs support program-level outcomes while providing the framework for assessing specific learning objectives and activities within a course. Outcomes also share the following characteristics:

·         Each describes one primary area of knowledge or skill.

·         Each reflects specific behaviors underlying the knowledge or skills for which students should be able to demonstrate mastery by the end of the course.

·         Each is written in a style that reflects the appropriate level of complexity of the underlying cognitive tasks required for given levels of mastery.

The learning outcomes are supported by rubrics at the course level. For each course, faculty members assess student success in all of the course’s outcomes using standardized rubrics. Rubrics are developed for each outcome based on specific criteria, identifying student progress towards mastery. Scores on outcomes are then analyzed to determine if students are gaining the desired mastery. We evaluate on a 0-5 scale with 0 = no progress, 3 = “practiced”, and 5 = “mastery”. The objective is that each learner will reach mastery of discipline course outcomes by the end of the course and mastery of the general education outcomes by the time the degree is completed.  

And, as students progress through their programs of study, their progress on achieving these outcomes is measured. In an initial analysis done in 2009 and 2010, showed a steady increase of the number of students being evaluated as “practiced” or better improved steadily, climbing from 77% to 87%.

Tracking student learning outcomes at the course level allows us to gauge both the effectiveness and the career relevance of our instruction and our curriculum – and to engage in a continuous improvement process. And the rubric structure allows us to look at the “profile of learning” within a section or across all sections of a particular course to identify anomalies and success rates as well as levels of learning.

In conclusion, technology is the key differentiator in being able to gather and analyze this kind of data.

·         First, an IT-based consistent approach to course and outcome design creates an environment where comparability is possible.

·         Second, technology allows us to scale this research to all of our learners, ultimately collecting information on hundreds of thousands of student/courses per year.

·         Third, technology allows us to collect consistent information across every section, something that would be impossible in a traditional institution’s classrooms.

·         And fourth, we know that we have clear control over the means and structure of learning assessment, leading to a high degree of consistency in that process as well.

My thanks to my colleagues Jason Levin, Kara Van Dam, and John Eads who contributed to this work.

Next week: Using IT to increase educational effectiveness 2: Curricular Matrixing