Here are some industry articles that caught our eye recently.
Wisconsin Lawmakers Take Aim at Tenure and Shared Governance. “In addition to eliminating tenure from state laws, the legislative committee approved a measure that would allow the university to lay off tenured faculty members without declaring financial exigency — for example, when the university discontinued an academic program. While the outlines of shared governance would remain in state statute, lawmakers voted to insert language that would make all faculty, student, and staff advice ‘subordinate to’ the authority of the campus and system leaders. ‘That’s a seismic change,’ said Mr. Radomski, because it would centralize power in the system’s president and Board of Regents and away from other groups that have traditionally shared in the decision-making process.”
Moving past summative vs. formative assessments. “But assessments are the crux of a competency-based approach. Neglecting them misses dialing in on one of the things that is so critical to CBE being transformational, robust, and rigorous: how do we know if and when a student has achieved proficiency, fluency, and mastery of a competency? In missing this, too often providers fall back on a familiar pattern by merely focusing on the summative assessments at the end of a course of study rather than valid assessments that are deployed rapidly and frequently throughout. But this isn’t simply a matter of focusing on formative assessments instead of summative. Indeed, many in the field are missing the opportunity to blow past the familiar categorization scheme of summative vs. formative assessments and move to a world in which assessments are both for learning—to drive what a student does next—as well as of learning—and thus have stakes attached to them, in the sense that students move on only upon mastery.“
Nonacademic Skills Are Key to Success. But What Should We Call Them? “More and more people in education agree on the importance of learning stuff other than academics. But no one agrees on what to call that ‘stuff’. There are least seven major overlapping terms in play. New ones are being coined all the time. This bagginess bugs me, as a member of the education media. It bugs researchers and policymakers too. ‘Basically we’re trying to explain student success educationally or in the labor market with skills not directly measured by standardized tests,’ says Martin West, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.”
Engagement and Experiential Learning. “If I look at the major changes in higher education in recent years, the increase in student engagement and experiential learning are two of the most significant. I recognize that changes in the use of technology to further facilitate learning are also very significant but I think that engagement and experiential learning may be even more impactful.”
Pushing Back on the Dismantling of Higher Ed Narrative. “Anyone who works in higher education, or who has ever been a student, knows how much room we have to innovate. Mary Meeker thinks that the Internet has had only 25% percent of the impact on higher education that it will in the future. From everything that I can observe, my conclusion is that we are living through a time of rapid change and innovation in higher education. Online and blended learning are fundamentally changing traditional lecture-based models. The emergence of open online learning has forced residential institutions to think carefully about the value and potential of face-to-face teaching. New credentialing and assessment models, from competency based degrees to badging, will both put pressure on and add diversity to traditional postsecondary models. Both competitive and cost forces are pushing change and innovation at every level of our higher ed sector.”
The End of the Experiment: Teaching My First Class (Part III). “Try something new: In the end, I think my students really did appreciate that I tried out new activities and teaching styles on them. I had never been in a class where it had flipped classroom elements, but I really wanted to try employing it. I was actually able to come up with a few activities where students worked through problems together in class, and had fantastic discussions. Trying out new teaching methods also made each class day more exciting for me. Lecturing for an hour and twenty minutes gets old very quickly—so trying to use new technology and have collaborative activities kept me more motivated to be creative.”
The Best Part of Graduation Season. “If we want to talk about institutional ‘performance,’ let’s really talk about it. Let’s talk about the folks who don’t show up in the numbers, or who show up in misleading ways. Let’s talk about the options available to many people if community colleges are not. But before doing that, let’s get policymakers and pundits to sit through a few weeks’ worth of the runup to graduation, and listen to the stories. Hear what the numbers won’t tell them. After that, maybe the conversation would be a little bit smarter.”
Social Sciences Produce Leaders. “Politicians and plenty of parents throughout the world regularly urge students to think practically, and to focus on degrees in technology or business. And colleges and universities around the world are being pressured to focus on disciplines outside the liberal arts and sciences. But a survey being released today suggests that leaders of a range of organizations internationally (including the United States) are most likely to have a degree in the social sciences, with 44 percent of leaders holding such a credential. And with another 11 percent reporting that they studied the humanities, a solid majority of 55 percent have degrees in traditional liberal arts fields. (And that doesn’t count smaller numbers who studied liberal arts majors in the physical and biological sciences.)”
Transforming the College to Manage Enrollment Decline. “Having every single department, group and program on campus go through this budget-focused process individually really helps to start to build the culture that this is an issue that we all need to face together and that the budget is something we’re going to watch and monitor across the college itself. We finished that campus-wide review in winter 2014. At this point we had a numeric score for every program, department and group on campus. Recognizing clearly that this wasn’t sufficient, we developed an ad hoc budget team to really look at how we would find between $2 million and $5 million. We had four faculty members on the team of 12 and we had a representative from every bargaining unit across the campus. We worked for four months to come up with revenue enhancements and expense reductions. We really wanted three groups of recommendations: a list of recommendations that could be implemented immediately, another list that could be implemented if our enrollment continued to decline further than we had projected, and finally we wanted a list of recommendations that were forward-thinking and for the future.”
Shaping Radical Librarianship: (brief) Interview with Rory Litwin. “ocialists and anarchists in the profession tend to view libraries as a good example of what they envision for society more broadly, and they advocate for libraries and practice librarianship on that basis. At the same time, they tend to oppose neoliberal trends in libraries and the adoption of the business model in library management. They promote the interests of front-line librarians, and view their autonomy, their work lives, and their role in shaping policies in their libraries and in the profession as fundamentally important. Additionally, radical social movements are tied to theories in pedagogy and social service that librarians are applying to specific areas of library practice.”
Colleagues as Guinea Pigs. “In short, what looked to me like chaos in that conference room was actually student-driven learning. We must teach problem-solving, not answer-getting. Lecturing, linear explanations, teaching isolated topics that seem unrelated, multiple-choice tests: Those are the tools of an age expired.”
Phase Two of Completion. “However, the college has begun pruning its student success portfolio, to sharpen its focus and concentrate on what works. One recent trim has been its participation in Achieving the Dream, a national nonprofit with more than 200 community college members. The college’s various completion initiatives fit into seven categories, Cleary said. They include teaching and learning, student engagement, K-12 partnerships, student orientation and advising, career exploration and workforce connections, streamlining the pathway to a degree and student support services. Last June Sinclair released a completion plan that describes the various pieces and overarching strategy.”
Students Are Increasingly Anxious, but We Can Help Them. “When I think about my approach to teaching, I often consider the barriers standing between my students and what I want them to learn and experience. What do they know? What can they do? I think about the gaps I need to fill, where skills may be strong, or the opposite. I consider these barriers so I can set up appropriate challenges for students that will help them learn to scale these obstacles. Increasingly, I think there’s a barrier I haven’t previously considered that needs addressing if my students are going to succeed: anxiety.”
Early Feedback from Florida. “Not surprisingly, enrollments in remedial courses dropped by about 40 percent. And pass rates in the college-level math classes students took instead dropped by about five points. I’m inclined to read the combination as positive. Yes, the pass rate in college level classes dropped, which isn’t a great sign. But the drop was much smaller than the number of students skipping developmental coursework would suggest.”
Accreditors Back Joint Approach to Competency-Based Education. “A group representing the seven regional accrediting agencies has developed a common framework for assessing and approving competency-based education programs proposed by their member institutions. The Council of Regional Accrediting Commissions, known as C-RAC, released the framework for the emergent form of higher education program late Monday. A news release about the framework notes that there has been relatively little guidance about the characteristics of high-quality programs and the expectations that accreditors and the federal government have for institutions that seek to establish the programs.”
Dept of Education to Fund Study on Online Course Effectiveness. “A previous study presented at the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in Chicago this April found students at community colleges within California to be 11% less likely to complete a course online when that course was offered both virtually and in a traditional classroom setting. Researchers from University of Michigan, Stanford and University of California, Davis will look at data from both the Florida Virtual School and the Miami Dade County Public Schools from both the 2003-04 and 2013-14 school years, in addition to information collected from surveys completed by teachers and students. The data will be used to look at ‘how virtual schooling options affect students’ course progression, academic achievement and teacher effectiveness,’ according to researchers from the University of Michigan.”
Not So Quick on Canceling Debt. “Thus, students are going to continue to face increasing tuition costs and will continue to need student loans to help meet those costs. A call for forgiving all student loan debt would presumably also entail getting rid of, or strictly curtailing, future loans as well — otherwise we’d find ourselves in exactly the same situation down the road. Eliminating student loans will not rein in increasing prices; tuition prices have continued to rise even as federal loan limits have not.”
Let’s Knock Down the Silos. “This means marketing officers become partners in product development. Sometimes that may mean bringing a marketing focus to bear on new programs, as happened when Gettysburg College launched its Garthwait Leadership Center. But it may also mean reinventing an existing program.”
Time for a Teaching-Intensive Tenure Track. “We therefore propose, as a way of undoing the deprofessionalization of the profession of college teaching, a teaching-intensive tenure track for nontenure-track faculty members with Ph.D.s and good teaching records. We know it is difficult to measure teaching, and we do not recommend that departments rely solely on student evaluations. Teaching can and should be evaluated not only by students but by extramural peer observation, by review of syllabi and course plans, by examples of professorial feedback on student work, and by careful review of professors’ own accounts of their classrooms.”
Setting Boundaries on Your Workload. “No one is surprised to find that workers performing physical labor require breaks, and eventually reach a limit past which their work performance begins to suffer. We understand that as muscle exhaustion, and although it’s not fully understood, we do know that it is related to prolonged periods of use. We also know that our brains are the single largest consumer of energy in our bodies, and we are all familiar with the feeling of mental exhaustion. Science does not fully understand mental fatigue any better than muscle fatigue, but the idea that we can demand infinite work from our brains, with no decrease in performance quality, makes no sense to me. It also runs counter to my experience as a project manager: I have often witnessed people — who are past what I call their “work limit” — make avoidable mistakes that wreak havoc on project timelines. I have also noticed this effect in myself.”
How to Promote Educational Innovation. “Scalable: Innovations need to be replicable or scalable if they are to be truly worthwhile. For our innovations to pay off, they must produce content, programming and technology assets that can be used widely. Also, at scale, data pools grow larger and insights grow correspondingly richer, allowing us to personalize learning pathways and produce data sets unprecedented in the history of educational research.”
In Praise of Academe. “Planning for my online course this summer has taken much more of an investment of time. I have not implemented the backwards design approach with as much fidelity and intentionality as I have this year. I keep asking myself not only about the knowledge and skills but also about the affects and dispositions I want them to acquire, and the impact that I want the course to have on them professionally and personally as they continue to develop as leaders.”
Unbundling the Organization. “No, college tuition bills are not just like cable bills. Jeff Selingo argues that they are. In a piece in the Washington Post this week, he focuses on ‘bundling’ as the common denominator. He notes that on most four-year campuses, students are billed by the semester, rather than by the course or the credit. Therefore, students either take too few credits per semester, or too many credits per degree. (To his credit, Selingo notes the apparent contradiction.) Consumers routinely complain about paying for cable channels they don’t watch in order to have access to the ones they do; Selingo argues that students have the same issue. I don’t know if Selingo is right about most four-year colleges, but I’m pretty sure the observation doesn’t apply to most community colleges.”
Polytechnic Resurgence? “Enrollment at the University of Akron is declining, and revenue is down. To many prospective students, the institution is indistinguishable from the handful of other regional universities in northeast Ohio. Top officials this year surveyed the trajectory of the college and weren’t happy with what they saw. A change was in order: a rebranding and a rethinking of mission. Earlier this month Akron rebranded itself as ‘Ohio’s Polytechnic University.’ … Yet Akron President Scott Scarborough says that while it’s a significant change, it’s not as risky as remaining the same.”
Corporations Go to College. “Whatever the reason why more companies are offering tuition assistance, the development is a positive one, said Nicole Smith, a research professor and senior economist at the Georgetown center. ‘What we might be observing is a changing tide from an employers’ market to an employees’ market,’ Smith said. ‘There’s finally a recognition of employees as human capital worthy of investment.’ Compared to 30 years ago, colleges and universities are taking a greater share of the money that goes toward employee training, Smith said. But higher education is now training a larger and more diverse population — including workers who require remedial education or for whom English is not their first language — so the comparison is not perfect. Neither is a shorter-term comparison, due to the recent recession and the budget cuts that followed.”
Do Learning Management Systems Actually Improve K-12 Outcomes? “So what did Kimmons find? Adopting an online management system had an extremely small, albeit statistically significant, positive effect on test scores. Specifically, adoption of a system explained 1%-2% of the year-to-year variance in test scores. Though there are surely benefits to such systems not reflected in test scores, given their potential cost it seems hard to justify their adoption with a mere 1%-2% increase in performance. The analysis also found that the adoption of general systems led to more improvement than education-specific systems, but that cost or whether the system code was open source had no effect.”
What Is the Future for ISBN? “In today’s digital supply chain, with a few dominant actors, ISBN still has an important role to play in helping to support diversity by enabling e-books to be available through different supply outlets. Encouraging a healthy supply chain is probably one of ISBN’s key purposes today. … As far as print is concerned, ISBN’s position is pretty secure. There are no obvious candidates to replace it. Digital is obviously a different matter. ISBN fits the bill for e-books, just as for print, but there are alternatives, eg using proprietary identifiers. Amazon has its own numbering system which is separate from, and not a substitute for, ISBN – it’s not a number that can be used in the general supply chain, only within the Amazon walled garden.”
More Evidence That Active Learning Trumps Lecturing. “It’s a meta-analysis of 225 studies that compare STEM classes taught using various active learning approaches with classes taught via lecture. “The results indicate that average examination scores improved by about 6% in active learning sessions, and that students in classes with traditional lecturing were 1.5 times more likely to fail than were students in classes with active learning.” (p. 8410) Carl Wieman, a Nobel-winning physicist who now does research on teaching and learning, describes the work as a “massive effort” that provides “a much more extensive quantitative analysis of the research on active learning in college and university STEM courses than previously existed.” (p. 8319) And what does he make of these results? “The implications of these meta-analysis results for instruction are profound, assuming they are indicative of what could be obtained if active learning methods replaced the lecture instruction that dominates U.S. postsecondary STEM instruction.” (pp. 8319-8320) That’s a long way from the guarded language usually found in commentaries on scientific results.”
The Condition of US Education: Fewer Dropouts, Higher Poverty and ELL Students. “In 2014, 91 percent of 25- to 29-year-olds in the US finished high school, and 34 percent had a bachelor’s or more advanced degree. These macro-level stats lead off ‘The Condition of Education 2015,’ a report from the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences loaded with stats that will find their way into policy debates and countless company pitch decks.”
Arts and Sciences Deficits. “Ohio State University’s College of Arts and Sciences faces a $10 million deficit, a shortfall of about 4 percent of its $266 million operating budget. Administrators blame trends in enrollment. Department chairs, however, charge that administrators have failed to adopt an effective strategic plan for the college, causing it to flounder financially. Some say the university places a high priority on admitting students unlikely to be arts and sciences majors and are turning away students who could provide a better financial base for the college.”
Rebooting the Career College. “Some of the work to ensure that students succeed academically will happen before enrollment, Hawn said. ‘We have to move away from admitting anybody who has a breath and can sign a promissory note. We don’t have a program for every prospective student, and we may need to refer you somewhere else.’ Zenith also plans to focus much more on remediation, and will rely on the ECMC Foundation — which has $265 million in assets from its student loan business — to make grants in areas such as college and career readiness, college retention, and research on teaching and student success. The company also will adjust curricula to see if it can get students through programs faster, where appropriate.”
Initiative Triage. “The ideal balance involves a sense of urgency of purpose, combined with a faith that if smart people keep working hard, something good will eventually happen. It might not happen on the first try, and it might not happen every time; occasional failures are the price of experimentation. If the occasional failure is safe, you’ll see much more entrepreneurialism, and much less energy directed to infighting. As this piece in Harvard Business Review notes, though, that tone has to be set by leadership. And it has to be set with deeds, as well as words. That means the leadership has to be willing to admit failure in public, when it happens, and to regroup and move forward anyway.”
To Boost Media ROI, Stop Wasting Time on 3 Things. “I know that this kind of approach represents a huge shift for a lot of communications offices in higher education, but I have experienced firsthand how it results in more meaningful placements that can truly advance image and reputation. I’m not saying you should never write another press release, because you should –particularly for major institutional news and announcements, very high-profile events and major achievements by members of your campus community. But less can be more when it comes to press releases. By drawing a line in the sand on requests that will do little to improve the public’s perception of your institution, you will have more time to devote to the tasks that will.”
Higher Ed and “Rise of the Robots”. “Creative organizations, be they universities or software developers, don’t actually employ that many people. By contrast, go visit your local Applebee’s Restaurant. You will see a fairly large number of wait staff, cooks, bus boys, and kitchen staff. Most of these jobs pay a comparatively low wage – at least in comparison to the social media specialists, web architects, and event planners that the new economy is supposed to be creating. A possible future where robots replace most jobs is a possible future that higher ed should be grappling with. How would this future change what we teach, and how we teach it? What sorts of people could we educate that would be robot proof?”
A Case for Accessible, Usable and Universal Design for Learning. “Universal design is not a substitute or synonym for ADA standards or ideas of barrier-free design. Rather, it is a broader concept for the design of products and environments so that they can be used by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialization. Sidewalks with curb cuts, ramps to buildings, and doors that automatically open when a person moves near them are examples of universally designed products in the physical environment. … In a learning environment, universal design means providing participants with multiple means of representation, engagement and means of expression throughout the learning process. It means using varied formats (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, numerical, narrative etc.) for delivering content; individual and social engagement options; and choices of modalities through which students can demonstrate learning comprehension.”
The Teaching Track. “Teaching-only positions, even at a teaching-intensive institution, where professor taught a 4/4 course load, were looked down on. That was reflected most explicitly in how little we were paid (although admittedly it was more than an adjunct). We have very strong feelings about what kinds of work should be compensated and at what level in academia, with teaching coming last. I was as full-time as my tenure-track and tenured colleagues, and yet, I was worth 10-15K less (and it is worse at other places). And when these new teaching track positions are majority-filled with women and people of color, as the adjunct ranks are currently, will this systemic imbalance be glossed over in the same way, justified with the catch-all, but you’re only expected to teach?”
CompetencyWorks Report Outlines Successful Competency Ed Implementation Framework. “The third phase, transitioning to a competency-based system, comprises preparing for leadership lifts, choosing a strategy for rollout, getting teachers ready for personalized classrooms, preparing for leveling and parent conversations, making course corrections, refining the instructional model and cycle and preparing for the implementation dip.”
Could this overlooked component be the key to MOOC engagement? “Based on numerous, current research studies on best practices for formative assessment and feedback (which are listed in detail in the report), Floratos and his team argue that formative and related assessment methods can support student engagement in MOOCs by following their specific framework of requirements. A sample of the 17 requirements includes: The course should fulfill the need of autonomy and consequently behavioral engagement that is addressed through self-assessment practices (i.e. a student to assess their own work and assignments). The course should fulfill the need of relatedness and consequently affective engagement that is achieved through peer assessment practices (i.e. a student to assess the work and assignment of other students/peers). Students should know in advance what good performance is and be able to compare assessments.”
Pilots? We don’t need no stinkin’ pilots! “That’s one approach to the scaling innovation challenge that affects not just the University Innovation Alliance institutions but most schools. This approach also raises some questions. While Phil Regier stated in further comments not in the episode that faculty were fully involved in the decision to implement new programs, are they also fully involved in evaluating whether new programs are working and whether changes are needed? Does this no pilot approach lead to the continuation of programs that have fatal flaws and should be ended rather than changed? It is, however, an approach that directly addresses the structural barriers to diffusing the innovations. Based on Phil Regier’s comments, this approach also leads to investment in and professional development of faculty members involved.”
Reauthorizing the Higher Education Act: Ensuring College Affordability. “The most direct way to examine whether borrowers are using debt to finance investments that will pay off is to measure the financial return that their investment will yield in terms of lifetime earnings (relative to what they would have earned if they had not enrolled in a program of higher education) and compare it to the upfront cost of enrollment. Despite the recent recession, the significant economic return to college education continues to grow, implying that many of these loans are financing sound investments. In 2011, college graduates between the ages of 23 and 25 earned $12,000 more per year, on average, than high school graduates in the same age group, and had employment rates 20 percentage points higher. Over the last 30 years, the increase in lifetime earnings associated with earning a bachelor’s degree has grown by 75 percent, while costs have grown by 50 percent (Greenstone and Looney 2010). There is also an earnings premium associated with attending college and earning an associate’s degree or no degree at all, although it is not as large (Greenstone and Looney 2013a). These economic benefits accrue to individuals, but also to society, in the form of increased tax revenue, improved health, and higher levels of civic participation (Baum, Ma, and Payea 2013).”
Re-evaluating the Risks of Public Scholarship. “Bringing social media and public scholarship values into the classroom can obviously reap many rewards: however, I have moved away from requiring any sort of public participation of students, and before I suggest students engage in these type of activities I believe it is essential to address the risks and realities of these spaces. Patrick Klepex at LifeHacker has a basic guide to protecting your information from the Internet that I recommend to students, and I’ve written in the past about updating your web security and considering two-factor authentication.”
Office Hours: Leading from Within in Higher Education. “Remembering, respecting, and lending attention to the humanity is important particularly because attention to this detail seems to have gotten lost. Although, recognizing, respecting, and honoring the humanity of those we are leading has the ability to produce a more comfortable environment for employees, students, followers, and so forth to feel appreciated and validated. Such an environment can foster increased productivity. While paying attention to the humanity is not brand new, or even new, as this concept has ‘been said many times many ways’ as the legendary singer Nat King Cole versed, reminding leaders of the importance of the affective can have many benefits. For example, when humanity is lacking, morale can dip. The leader, when some genuine and authentic focus is given the individual, not just their productivity, can be refreshing and rewarding for the follower.”
Schooling for Scandal. “Ever since the news broke about Science pulling a political science paper after graduate students called attention to problems with its methodology and one of its authors asked for it to be retracted, I’ve been mulling over how to talk about this episode with students. It says something about how peer review works, but doesn’t always. It suggests things critical readers should look out for when skimming a methods section. It illustrates how even highly reputable publications (perhaps especially those with the greatest prestige) can be seduced by a startling finding that will attract attention. It raises questions about the importance of replication and shows that students can shake things up by raising questions about a study that was not only published in a major journal but was reported in lots of news outlets – even This American Life gave it airtime. But here’s the problem I run into: how can you raise these issues without making students completely cynical?”
Colleges and Graduates, Survey Says… ”Ed Koc, the director of research, public policy and legislative affairs at NACE, said a panel made up of career service experts, statisticians and other relevant experts helped to create the methodology for collecting the data from recent graduates, including both what colleges should collect and what the organization would ultimately report. He said the committee added many different kinds of ‘other employment’ in the survey, including joining the military or some other kind of public service like the Peace Corps, working as a contract employer or doing freelance work. Of those graduating with bachelor’s degrees, 62 percent were found to be employed, but only 58.4 percent had ‘standard employment.’ Others fell into categories like ‘entrepreneur’ or ‘postgrad fellowship/internship.’”
Why Wisconsin Matters to You. “What happens in Wisconsin will not stay in Wisconsin. Lawmakers here are moving quickly to hollow out the definition of tenure and strip away due process rights for faculty members and academic staff. For legislators in other states who want to dismantle public higher education, they might look here to find new plays for their playbooks.”
Amid Fast Change, Group Seems Slow to Enhance Colleges’ Control of Online Courses. “The group has since attracted six new member colleges, with additional members slated to be announced this month, according to Bradley C. Wheeler, vice president for information technology at Indiana. The consortium has also agreed on a standard software framework, pledging to use the learning-management system Canvas, which is open source. Some people involved in digital education say the group’s goal is timely and important. The idea that universities should be more fully in charge of shaping their online content has a lot of power to it, said Cynthia J. Cyrus, vice provost for learning and residential affairs at Vanderbilt University, which is not a member. But others say that tangible and publicized results remain to be seen.”