#tsummit2016 New models in higher education with @_ChristineOrtiz (MIT) Richard Miller @OlinCollege
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T-Summit 2016, Transformational Approaches to Creating T-Shaped Professionals, National Academy of Sciences Building, March 21-22, 2016
Moderator introduction by Jim Spohrer, IBM
Moderator: Katherine Frase (IBM), VP of Education Business Strategy
IBM’s second moon shot, should see more Watson in education
Panel about new models in higher education
Panelists:
Christine Ortiz (MIT)
Richard Miller (President, Olin College of Engineering)
[Christine Ortiz (MIT)]
“The Research University in the New Millennium”
“MIT Dean Takes Leave to Start New University Without Lectures or Classrooms” | Jeffrey R. Young | Feb. 1, 2016 | Chronicle of Higher Education at http://chronicle.com/article/MIT-Dean-Takes-Leave-to-Start/235121 .
Youtube video from SXSWEDU last week https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYlXObCah5Q
Four components:
Flipped curriculum, no classrooms
Transdisciplinary research, not departments
Powered by technology (developing by Jason Wong)
Societal platform, university more embedded in society
Looking holistically, systemically.
A personalized flipped curriculum
Student comes in, has a project-based core
No distinction between undergraduate and graduate
All content pushed online
Use open educational resources (in early days, looking at 4 to 5 years to launch)
Want university to be embedded in the university and society: students are freed up to engage outside of the university
Virtual knowledge scaffold as personalized
T-shaped student: how to integrate personal and professional capital with F2F project core, virtual knowledge scaffold and ecosystem
Building platform for virtual metacurriculum
Allows more personalized learning pathways
Rather than a T, thinking of the Tree-Shaped Students
Computationally-assisted precision curriculum design, throwing out disciplines
How to design all of the branches of the tree for an emerging body of knowledge
Can unbundle, curate
Challenge: national framework for open educational resources, advocating for that
Want to build the design process for students
Faculty would be curating and approving with external stakeholders
Examples of potential transdisciplinary learning pathways
e.g. intelligence = cs + math + physics + bio/bcs + ee+ hass
Looking at course-based undergraduate research, to structure younger students and move them to self-directed
Could have thousands of templates in pathways
Would like to build a database of open educational resources
From MIT, three programs to be integrated:
Students can go in and out
Had started 3 years ago in Israel
Project-based class, students working with team with companies in Israel
How to integrate social, cultural, historical with technology on the ground
Would like to have embedded
At MIT, large center Alfred P. Sloan University Center of Exemplary Mentoring
Want mentoring to be primary in pedagogy
Cross-cultural cohort mentoring
At MIT, Engineering Leadership Curriculum, to leading creative teams
Project-based, hands-on
Guest lectures
Self assessment
Case studies
Would like to integrated in project-based core
[Richard Miller (President, Olin College of Engineering)]
Was the first employee of Olin College in 1990
Were 4 founders, philanthropists, but none were engineers or worked in higher education
No tenure, no tuition fees, things having an expiration date
Did as an experiment at 2001
Brought in 15 boys and 15 girls, who lived on construction trailers while campus was being build
Called them partners, they weren’t students
Did experiments every 5 weeks
Designed experiments to fail, can’t design to fail in real schools
Learned: kids are way more capable than you expect
Things don’t happen, because universities structure to prevent failure
What could you remember from your undergraduate education?
Little, except the project done in senior year
So, then have to have 2 years of calculus and physics before?
Gave them a challenge: 5 weeks to create design the sensor that put on the finger, start with the patent literature
Get the information, make it work
At the end of 5 weeks, we’ll kill this, and find out where people got stuck
In 5 weeks, they had it working
Brought in the hospital version, calibrated, both did the same thing
Learned:
No, don’t need 2 years of calculus and physics to pick up a wrench: A lot of technological advances didn’t require theory
Exceeding own expectation made them 2 feet taller, had a can-do attitude (as compared to the first year math death march)
If you’re starting something new, don’t be afraid to experiment
Learned from Howard Gardner:
Intelligence has 7 types
More with context and narrative, then mathematics
Developed a new definition for an engineer: imagines what hasn’t been, and then do with it takes to make them
Engineering is more about vision, than about mathematics
Every February, NSF proposals
Just-in-case engineering
Was a trustee at Babson College
They use the word innovation all of the time, without science, no NSF grants
Innovation as about doing things and framing things, that it changes the way people live
People can’t imagine how the world was, before that
e.g. credit card
e.g. iTunes, doesn’t include Nobel prize in physics
A graduate is high up in leadership of Facebook: sells and opportunity to tell your personal story to people you care about
You become important in someone else’s life
Maslow: belonging
Facebook allows us to do this when it’s otherwise inappropriate
To be an innovation today, need more than math or science
Go beyond knowledge to address attitude, values and motivations
Piaget: what’s left over
Not just teaching calculus, teaching attitudes values and motivations
Frase: role of art
Decade of design, importance to motivate
Olin was there already
[Katherine Frase]
P-tech program
What about employable skills, what happens in 2-years colleges and higher high school
P-tech in NYC
School in Brooklyn, so bad, city let IBM play
Partnered with CUNY, 6-year program
IBM promised to interview with
Not a charter school, it’s someplace local
Principal believed in students
Courses could take Gen-X and technology
First group of students has now graduated
Can-do attitude
Answer is not that industry should take over education
Most education still done by professionals in school
Model now picked up in Chicago, Connecticut, Australia
Ties together pathways to employment and pathways to employable skills
Not everyone should be on an IT path
However, not just a T-shaped engineer will need soft skills, everyone will need some computing and data skills
[Questions]
When we blow up the traditional structure, what do we do about accreditation, what the diploma says, and how they get interviewed for a job.
Richard: For first 5 years at Olin, got this question from parents
Can’t accredit until the first students graduate
In the end, Olin was accredited
Have reinvented curriculum 3 times before the first class graduated
Accreditation board: define mission, define outcomes you expect, define process, then feedback to continually approve
Christine: A model at UT Austin
MIT has been approved for micro-masters
Converting from MITx into credits
Doing it from beginning
Will probably not have accreditation for the first parts
Will probably do what Olin did
How to maintain, from broad portfolio of educational options, now everyone wants to be engineer or do math. Where does it fit in higher education suite? What about students that only want to study one thing.
Christine: some elements transferrable
Focus on science and technology (technology in the broadest sense, with technology and humanities and social scientists)
Innovations that could be transferrable
Thinking about how to bring down costs
Our specific focus in on science and technology
How can we can’t find engineers who walk and chew gum, take 3 years to train. EC2000, Engineer 2020. Part that seems to be missing is corporations. There are 20 companies (like IBM, Dell, Cisco) that get this. If you have to start the conversation, you won’t get there.
Richard: Can only teach what you know.
If start from individual performance (towards a Nobel), don’t know what it’s like to teach in a group
Change the way Ph.D.s are prepared
Bring students into a candidates weekend, put them in groups of 5, they’ve never met before
Evaluated on attitudes, values and motivations
Need to capitalize on the people around you, and the people around them
Universities need a comfort level around this
Engineering is almost unique in the way we ignore experience in industry
Faculty in medicine get most of the pay in clinics
Law school faculty have mostly passed bar, dean
How many engineering deans came from industry: much closer to science than to professions
Christine: MIT has committee structure
How can industry be involved at the more granular level: faculty creating pathways and endorsing curriculum
Want more pathways relevant to industry
e.g. crowdsourcing and social media
Can we do this using technology?
For every pathway, there are many more sub-pathways, for different job areas
Some companies are using machine learning to analyze job descriptions and roles
Thinking about how we use technology to do this
UNC Charlotte trying something similar, but different. Engineering, Ph.D. then 15 year in an architecture department, studio. Problem was it doesn’t scale up, need a relationship with students. UNC Charlotte gets a wide range of students. Starting from private, not public?
Richard: started a new institution, but only because scale of change not welcomed
First partner was U Illinois Champaign, 40,000 students
Have worked with them for 3 years, have integrated into the first 2 years
Book: A Whole New Engineer http://wholenewengineer.org/
Even U. of Illinois is selective, not open enrollment
Last 2 year working with U. Texas El Paso, open enrollment, 2/3 Hispanic students
They’re taking elements, and getting results
Methods will be adopted at all levels, not just elite
Christine: Have been looking at UT Austin, scaled up to 900 students, tiered model: undergraduate, graduate, faculty
Graduate education model, MIT
Have had architects, like studio interaction, drawing interaction
Have faculty sit in the classes they assign to the students
When you hire new faculty, make sure they work in teams with people from other disciplines
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