Here are some industry articles that caught our eye recently.
Say What? Buzzfeed follows up on D2L story with solid reporting. “Molly’s article included discussions with three former D2L employees, an interview with CSU Channel Islands CIO Michael Berman, and a D2L official response (in a manner of speaking). Who would have thought that Buzzfeed would be the source of valuable reporting that challenges the all-too-easy headlines provided through press releases? Me, for one. If you follow the Buzzfeed education articles, you’ll notice a pattern of this type of reporting – mostly focused on the business of education.”
Credential Creep Confirmed. “First and foremost, the Burning Glass analysis confirms that upcredentialing is real and widespread. In many fields and for many positions — insurance claims clerks, executive secretaries, many human resources roles, and the people who supervise mechanics and installers — employers are growing much more inclined to try to replace workers who do not have bachelor’s degrees with employees who do.”
Open-source texts take root at Md. colleges. “The voluntary pilot, which was conducted during the spring 2014 semester, involved 11 faculty members at seven colleges in Maryland, including two non-university system schools. Each professor assigned open-source online materials for at least one course, together reaching about 1,100 students. The majority of participating students and faculty reported an overall positive experience and said they’d work with open-source materials again, according to the system’s recent review of the program, which was launched in collaboration with Lumen Learning LLC, an Oregon-based provider of open-source educational materials. Students saved a cumulative $130,000 in textbook costs, based on the prices of books that would have been assigned for those 11 courses.”
Tugged in Two Directions. “A surge in new competency-based degree programs has created challenges for the accreditors tasked with approving them. They must seek to ensure academic quality without quashing promising ideas, while also dealing with sluggish and sometimes confusing guidance from the federal government. That was the message from top officials of three regional accrediting agencies, who spoke to a group the Council on Adult and Experiential Learning (CAEL) brought together here.”
Numbers: Administrative Costs Soaring? Maybe not. “Since 2004 The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) financial survey of colleges and universities has reported the costs of Institutional Support in a standard form. This broad category includes “general administrative services, central executive-level activities concerned with management, legal and fiscal operations, space management, employee personnel and records, … and information technology.” In business this is often called ‘administration.’ Data from NCES’s Digest of Education Statistics 2012 shows decreases in cost per student from 2003-2004 through 2010-2011 except for public 4 year colleges and universities that increased expenses by 4.1% as shown in Table 1.”
Project Seeks to Ease Path to 4-Year Degree for Nontraditional Students. “The American Council on Education announced on Wednesday a project intended to make it easier for nontraditional students to earn four-year college degrees. Financed by a $1.86-million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the new program will create roughly 100 free or inexpensive general-education courses that will earn students as much as two years’ transfer credit at some 40 participating colleges.”
Umbrella Group Backs Unbundling. “On Wednesday it announced the creation of a pool of about 100 online courses that will lead to credit recommendations. The courses will be low-cost or free. They will be general education and lower-division, ranging across up to 30 subject areas. And the pool will not include a full curriculum for a bachelor’s degree. The council, which is higher education’s umbrella group, plans to partner with about 50 institutions that will agree to issue credit for the course recommendations. The idea is for students to be able to enroll in those colleges with up to two years of transfer credits from the pool of courses under their belts. ACE said the project is aimed at the 31 million Americans with some college credits but no degree. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is funding the work with a $1.86 million grant.”
College in a Box. “Creating online courses from scratch is expensive and time-consuming. When universities try to do it themselves, the results can be erratic. Some online classes wind up being not much more than grainy videos of lectures and a collection of PowerPoint slides. Publishers have rushed in to fill the gap. They’ve been at the game longer, possess vast libraries of content from their textbook divisions, and have invested heavily in creating state-of-the-art course technology.”
A New Obstacle for Students With Disabilities. “Federal laws mandating equal access in the classroom for students with disabilities were written long before digital technologies were integral to the educational experience, but their meaning has not changed. Four years ago, the U.S. Departments of Justice and Education clarified the expectations for institutions of higher learning by stating that requiring the use of ‘an emerging technology in a classroom environment when the technology is inaccessible to an entire population of individuals with disabilities—individuals with visual disabilities—is discrimination…unless those individuals are provided accommodations or modifications that permit them to receive all the educational benefits provided by the technology in an equally effective and equally integrated manner.’ Since that guidance was issued, countless universities have upgraded or rebuilt core technology systems, but few have done so with consideration for this accessibility requirement. What lost opportunities! And those that attempt to wedge the paper-based accommodation model into today’s digital ecosystem are simply leaving disabled students in the dust.”