Here are some of the industry articles that caught our eye recently.
America’s (quality) jobs creator: Community colleges. “But three factors are now coming together in a way that may finally force real progress toward addressing the jobs crisis facing America’s next generation of workers. First, some employers, particularly from small to medium-sized firms, complain they can’t find workers with the right skills needed to fill some of their technical jobs. Then we have a large pool of underemployed young people, such as those highlighted in the above stories, who are eager to do whatever is needed to shift directions and learn the skills employers need. Finally, this nation has a rich infrastructure of community colleges, vocational schools, and universities available to help match these two groups with each other.”
Learning From Others. “There are at least two views of human nature with regard to learning. The first, the ‘classic’ view, suggests that classroom learning is motivated by carrots and sticks. The carrot is the desire for a better material life in the future. The stick is the fear that doing poorly leads to harsh evaluations from the teacher, embarrassment in front of peers, and potential punishments from parents. The acquisition of new knowledge requires effortful thinking and the creation of mental hooks that can help us to later recall and use what we’ve learned. A second approach to learning is the “social” view. When I was a graduate student, our comprehensive exam was the most daunting task on the way to getting the Ph.D. Rather than setting about to memorize endless content, my colleagues and I shared the load. We divided the topics and were each responsible for teaching our own topics to the others. Using this peer-teaching strategy, we all passed the exam. It was the single best learning experience of my life.”
Rethinking the Role of College Career Centers for Humanities Graduates. “Numerous studies indicate that the skills produced by a quality liberal arts education correspond precisely to what employers seek beyond technical training. The ability to articulate, write, apply quantitative methods, use technology and work in a collaborative setting will continue to shape the parameters of the skill set needed in the 21st century. So, why do liberal arts graduates, especially humanities majors, suffer from inaccurate and inconsistent portrayals of their attractiveness to employers?”
Proactive on Prior Learning. “The university’s plan — which faculty will vote on during an April 24 meeting — involves creating a challenge exam that tests students on a series of core psychology concepts to be determined by the department. Students who know the material can take the test for a small fee and earn three credits, or they can pay about $150 for an accompanying MOOC, also in the works, which uses adaptive course material to guide them through those concepts. The face-to-face class, by comparison, costs $610.77. Offering more than one path to earn credit for the introductory psychology course is something the university already does, said Nichols-Lopez, listing Advanced Placement tests, dual enrollment and transfer credits.”
From MOOCs to Dragons. “But the reality, whether we like to admit it or not, is that much of higher education is fundamentally premised on and built around a transmission model of teaching and learning (i.e., knowledge retention) and a throughput model of institutional success (i.e., student retention). As such, I believe that the second generation of MOOCs will force three distinct yet related disruptions exactly because the technology driving ‘MOOCs 2.0’ – such as automated assessment, adaptive learning, and data analytics – are almost perfectly aligned to such models of education.”
How Much Regulation Is Just Right? “Does ‘well-served’ for example tie out to a minimally acceptable four- or six-year graduation rate? What about open-access institutions whose mission is to prepare underserved students to succeed at a different kind of institution? What about institutions in a situation where graduation may not be the most important goal? ‘Well-spent’ raises similar questions.”
Outrunning the Bear. “But a non-elite, high-cost institution needs a distinctive hook. That could be a religious identity, if the campus has a relative monopoly on that one. It could be a single program in which it’s widely considered a national leader. It could be a unique location. But it has to be something, and the something has to be clear, easy to explain, and attractive to a non-trivial number of people. You can get a business degree anywhere. Why pay extra for it?”
No Silver Bullet. “Policy makers often fail to understand that the majority of remedial courses are taught by adjunct faculty who, although they may possess content expertise, often have no idea how to teach underprepared students. Many of them do not understand the principles of adult learning and development and they are offered no support or training to help them learn techniques to teach these students. Although learning laboratories, tutoring and other support services are often available, few systematic efforts are made to ensure that those enrolled in remedial courses participate in them. The services designed to help students succeed in course work are seldom integrated into the courses they are supposed to support. In addition to this, underprepared students are often placed in some sort of computer-based or online remedial course, frequently without assessing their levels of computer access or literacy.”
Remediation Is Badly Broken. “In these approaches, institutions are not eliminating remedial education, as some have suggested. Instead, they are shifting it from a prerequisite requirement to a corequisite, where students receive support while enrolled in the gateway courses. By delivering corequisite remediation alongside the college-level course, we eliminate attrition points — the moments where students are most likely to fall out of the system — and give remedial education instructors a framework in which many, many more of their students can succeed.”