A New Year's Day educational message from Seth Godin

I've had an enjoyable break from Twitter over the Christmas break. But having switched on the computer on New Year's Day I came across this thought-provoking video from Seth Godin in which he outlines the reforms he believes are needed for compulsory and post-compulsory education. In questioning the fundamental philosophy which informs current approaches to pedagogy, Godin's observations echo those of Sir Ken Robinson in highlighting the need for a fundamental reevaluation of the educational system.

Why aren't more governments and educational policy makers listening to people like Seth Godin and Sir Ken Robinson? History shows that resistance to change never succeeds in preventing change from occurring. It seems evident that the sooner governments, universities and schools embrace 21st century educational thinking the more likely they are to ride (and potentially profit from) the wave of change. And yet report after report is written highlighting the problem of entrenched views hampering the uptake of new pedagogical approaches (see, for example An Avalanche is Coming, Innovating Pedagogy 2013).

Why is there so much fear of change, particularly in the Higher Education sector which for centuries has been at the forefront of intellectual thought and new knowledge?

We are already entering a post-digital world where ubiquitous access to information should inform a fundamental reevaluation of 19th and 20th century working and pedagogic practices. MOOCs represent the tip of the iceberg in terms of a new view of education, and Thomas Friedman has issued a stark warning to universities that they should strongly consider moving away from a model of 'time served' and towards one of 'stuff learned'. Friedman believes that "increasingly the world does not care what you know. Everything is on Google. The world only cares, and will only pay for,  what you can do with what you know". Those institutions that are able to adapt their provision successfully will most likely lead educational innovation well into the the next decade and beyond.

Seth Godin, Sir Ken Robinson and all those offering an alternative view of education for the 21st century should be congratulated for continuing the march on the ivory towers of educational practice.

Higher Education, MOOCs and global fluency

What is the purpose of Higher Education? I don't pretend to have the answer - after all, it isn't a simple question. But having read George Siemens' recent assessment of the debate around MOOCs it strikes me that the unwillingness of Higher Education to respond to the networked environment is at the heart of its existential crisis:
 

University of Wisconsin-Madison from gsiemens

Today's students are in some way connected almost every hour that they are awake. But while they (and we) are using 21st century technologies to access knowledge the majority are being forced to learn according to 20th century delivery models.

According to Siemens (2013)...                  ...but from what I'm reading...

That's not to say there aren't some interesting innovations. The adoption of competency-based learning frameworks at several US universities is just one example of an innovative response to the challenges of higher fees. But these are tempered by worrying stories of entrenchment, such as the recent news from Duke University that Faculty have rejected a plan to enable graduates to gain credits for online courses. Then again, if it is true that "digital literacies are still too chaotic and random a concept... to deal with at a senior level" then it is unsurprising that the paradigm shift represented by MOOCs is a conceptual leap too far for many universities at present.

But in business, if your customers get networked, social, self-organised, adaptive and global, and you don't, you days are numbered.

Remaining relevant

If Higher Education is to remain relevant to the future needs of its students it will have to accept the fact that a new delivery model is needed, perhaps even several. Bonnie Stewart observes that MOOCs are a symptom of the change currently taking place in HE rather than the source, and makes a strong argument that universities should be seeking to adapt in response to the new ways of knowing and learning that the networked era has created. We've already been warned that an avalanche is coming, and MOOCs currently represent the first flurry of snow. But whether the snow settles or not, MOOCs will be followed by innovation after innovation, each potentially more disruptive than the last, until traditional models of Higher Education disappear under a glacier. Grainne Conole's paper calling for a new classification of MOOCs is a positive step towards convincing university decision makers of their value in terms of pedagogy and social inclusion.

50 years ago the top 5% of school leavers went to university to become professors and push the boundaries of knowledge. In today's society the top 50% of school leavers go to university to avoid being in the bottom 50% of wage-earners. But despite this, many Higher Education Institutions are clinging to an operational model that belongs in the previous century and are unwilling to accept the changes that digital technology has forced upon the music and publishing industries. And look what happened to them.

The purpose of Higher Education

It is clear that universities fulfil a complex function in today's society. Although it can be argued that the traditional view of Higher Education as a public good unto itself is largely outdated, nobody is advocating that universities' sole focus should be on employability. But it is important to realise that the overwhelming majority of students go to university in order to access more highly paid jobs than would otherwise be possible.

Higher Education should therefore aim to prepare Bachelors students for the changing world of work, while at the same time providing postgraduate students with an environment in which they can develop the base knowledge of their disciplinary area. Graduates should leave feeling confident that their investment has prepared them for a wide range of jobs, rather than fearing their degree was a waste of time. Business should be able to have confidence that the majority of applications they receive will come from candidates who are literate, capable and appropriately skilled.

Universities could be better at aligning some aspects of their provision more directly with the needs of the global economy. The Higher Education Academy highlights the value of skills such as creativity to employers, but at the same time states that universities need to articulate more explicitly the 21st century skills that students are learning during their course.Students considering a Bachelors degree should have a clear understanding of how the course will equip them with the skills and abilities to obtain a good job. Graduates at Bachelors level should then be able to demonstrate the skills and literacies they need in order to be globally fluent and able to succeed in the global economy, incorporating:

• creative & critical thinking
• collaboration
• network and social media literacy
• information literacy
• knowledge management
• connected leadership

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Could Competency Based Learning give MOOCs longevity?

Just came across an interesting post on Edudemic explaining how competency based learning (CBL) works. Essentially, a CBL-based curriculum requires students to demonstrate competency in the required areas of learning regardless of the amount of time spent on a given task. This means that students can determine their own rate of progress, moving rapidly through certain areas of the curriculum if they can demonstrate their mastery of the required content.

This seems to me to be an ideal academic framework for MOOCs to thrive. A curriculum designer would create the learning tasks that students have to master, and then it would be up to the student to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to demonstrate their competence in the specified areas. As the Edudemic posts suggests, the role of the tutor then becomes that of a facilitator, providing 'office hours' for students in which they can discuss their progress.

The spiralling cost of Higher Ed in the West is causing many students to question the value of a university education unless they leave with the 21st century skills necessary to make them employable. MOOCs have already demonstrated the potential to offer a low-cost alternative to the spiralling cost of Higher Ed, and even if MOOC providers were to introduce a nominal fee it would be much less than the cost that students currently face. A CBL curriculum would enable students to use MOOCs to gain the knowledge they require to learn the competencies they need, and provide a reason for Higher Ed institutions to keep providing them. A university would then split its core function of teaching and assessment: it might not accredit the students who participate in its MOOCs, but could provide accreditation to students who have participated in the MOOCs of another university.

I'm thinking off the top of my head here, so feel free to add your thoughts and comments...

Massive Opportunity Of Course: transforming global learning with MOOCs

This article first appeared on the International Mircosummits website.

MOOCs? Bit of a fad, aren't they? We'll probably be talking about something else this time next year. Or will we? The continual appearance of new MOOCs and growth of platforms such as Cousera and Udacity suggests that they might be around for some time to come. But what does this mean for Higher Education, and what could be the potential impact of the MOOC on global learning?
 
As the cost of higher education in the western world continues to rise, even parents with deep pockets are beginning to question its affordability and value. And with Ivy-League universities such as Harvard charging upwards of $70,000 a year, who can blame them? In the UK there have been calls to reduce fees for students who attend a local university in order to make the cost of obtaining a university degree more bearable. But if an aim of a university degree is to help you become a 'global citizen', then the spiralling cost of Higher Education risks denying many students the opportunity of a global, inter-cultural learning experience. Faced with the prospect of crippling debt, there is a risk that the overseas students who would contribute to the development os a university's global community will instead choose to study in their country of origin.
 
Enter the MOOC. Although their honeymoon period is only just drawing to a close, MOOCs have already demonstrated their potential to facilitate learning on an international scale, drawing together hundreds of thousands of learners across the globe. If global citizenship is an aim of a university degree, then surely having an ambition to bring teachers and students together globally is a good place to start? Although awarding credit for participation in MOOCs is still an issue, some institutions such as the UK's Edge Hill University are already developing mechanisms to offer credits for studies completed through a MOOC.

Those educators who have embraced the concept understand that for their students, the opportunity to participate in a global community of learners is too good to pass up. The connected nature of learning in a MOOC provides enormous opportunities to expose students to global attitudes and diverse opinions that are not solely derived from a western perspective. Research has indicated that some of the main non-monetary benefits of global learning include a reduction in xenophobia and cultural stereotyping, creation of international good-will through collaborative team projects, and the development and nurturing of intercultural and social capital.
 
But what about the learning? Well, if you haven't seen it already this video features the opinions of leading ecuationalists and thinkers about the changing nature of learning in a networked society:



 

New skills

 

Higher Education's monopoly on credibility could also be in the early stages of decline. Michael Ellsberg points out that while for many years employability has depended upon the credibility of obtaining qualifications (preferably from a fancy university), the business world is increasingly measuring credibility by a changing yardstick. Companies now take very seriously a candidate's ability to build professional networks, write informed and informative blog posts, and develop legitimate, healthy followings on Twitter and other social media platforms. These skills are precisely those that participation in a MOOC support as they drive learners to be independent, inquisitive and informed.

The Open Educational Resources that feature in many MOOCs have come under scrutiny in recent months, with questions being raised about the general level of quality and sustainability of OERs. This is a valid point - who will monitor and update these OERs in the same way that textbooks are updated? But to criticise OERs for their quality is to miss the point: ten years ago it was difficult to find anything like the quality of resources that can now be accessed online. Admittedly the quality can vary, but shouldn't we then as educators not be focusing on helping our students develop digital literacies so that they have the skills to critique and evaluate the quality of these resources for themselves? To continue thinking in a 20th century mindset where 'someone else' is responsible for evaluating and updating educational resources is dangerous. If we are truly to prepare students to succeed in the 21st century they will require the ability to take control of their own education and teach themselves the skills and knowledge required for their new world or work.

Much has been written about the failure of technology to have a significant impact on transforming learning. But ask the international students who are accessing top quality resources via a MOOC whether technology is failing and they may well provide a different viewpoint. There continues to be much debate about the impact MOOCs will have on the current model of Higher Education. But what has already been demonstrated is the desire of many educators to give away their knowledge for free, sharing it with anyone who is interested for the altruistic benefit of educating humanity. It may be that the concept of the MOOC is a passing fad, and we may well be talking about something else this time next year. But for the time being MOOCs have the potential to bring about a paradigm shift in the delivery of Higher Education at a global level. And for a lot less than $70,000 a year.

Truly awesome: Daphne Koller explains Coursera

There has been much discussion in recent months about the impact of MOOCs and online courses on the traditional model of Higher Education. Coursera, an online platform where you can take a range of online courses for free, has caused much hand-wringing about the future of the university in an increasingly online world.

But this TED talk by Coursera founder Daphne Koller should go a long way to calming the fears of all those who truly believe that education can make the world a better place. For anyone working in Higher Education, this short video is well worth 20 minutes of your time:

e-Learning and Digital Cultures

This excellent blog post by David Hopkins provides a useful summary of the activity in the short #edcmooc currently being run by Coursera and the University of Edinburgh. David also draws attention to the near-future of education and technology and provides a useful critique of 'utopian / dystopian' discourse (Hand and Sandwell, 2002) and provides links to some interesting videos:

Impact of MOOCs on Higher Education

An interesting discussion from the recent TIME conference on the future of Higher Education - this particular clip explores the impact of MOOCs on HE delivery:

Why, Blackboard, why?

Our institution (as I suspect do many others) has a love/hate relationship with Blackboard. Two years ago we had almost no engagement, now we have over 75% of courses using it to some degree to support student learning. Tutors have begun to love it a bit more, students have begun hating it a bit less. And just when it's starting to get better the management announce a review of the university's online learning provision which could well end in a move to Moodle.

Life, as they say, is never easy.

But the looming review of Blackboard has obliged me to consider the available technologies for supporting student learning, and I found myself asking the question 'why hasn't Blackboard embraced social learning'? Having participated in the recent change11 MOOC, and as a regular participant in Jane Hart's excellent Social Learning community it is clearly evident that undergraduate students are researching, obtaining and sharing information in a way that has changed significantly in even the last 2 - 3 years. To me, incorporating a social element into any online learning experience appears to be a no-brainer, so why isn't Blackboard evolving to incorporate such features as activity streams to facilitate communication and information-sharing on a university course?

To add insult to injury I recently discovered that their Facebook Sync application is no longer supported. Why? I can only assume one of the following is true:

1. They are so removed from their user base that they genuinely have no idea of the importance of social learning
2. They genuinely believe that social learning is a fad that will pass and the one-way transmission of information between student and tutor will soon make a comeback
3. They are so enormously wealthy that they genuinely don't care about the changing nature of online learning 

So in addition to managing a Blackboard upgrade I'm now faced with the prospect of investigating the potential for a Wordpress/Buddypress VLE to enable tutors and students to explore more collaborative ways of learning.

It's not as if I had any plans for the summer anyway...

Open Online Courses as New Educative Practice

A presentation by George Siemens, Feb 29th 2012

Open Online Courses as New Educative Practice

View more PowerPoint from gsiemens