The Star Alliance model of higher education

Image source: thaicargo.com

I read a great piece, Jailbreaking the Degree, in TechCrunch the other day (courtesy of Meetali Mukherjee).

In essence the author — @davidblake, founder of Degreed — makes the point that a university degree continues to be the most meaningful ‘unit’ of education in the eyes of employers, notwithstanding its inherent inefficiencies (e.g. compulsion to study courses irrelevant to one’s interests or, indeed, those of a prospective employer), yet it need not be so, or at least not in its present form. Sadly, online education providers have yet to make any serious inroads into the higher education monopoly controlled by universities because, as @kevincarey points out, while the business models of these institutions may be different, ‘their product — traditional credentials in the form of a degree — is not’.

But what if you could accumulate credits (courses) towards a degree a bit like you buy music on iTunes? As the Blake article observes, people tend to buy songs not albums. In the same way, it is not possible for an individual to collect different courses from different institutions from around the world, rather than spend three of four years stuck in one place taking what’s on offer from a monopoly provider?

The problem here, of course — as some of the commenters on the Blake piece point out — it’s all about recognition of the qualification. Who would be the awarding body and would employers accept its validity? The solution — with due credit to @gsiemens (see here) — may be the ‘Star Alliance’ model, in which there is a common currency (air miles/ course credits) and all the brands are recognisable in their own right. This may have been what Universitas 21 had in mind ten years ago when U21Global was launched. But this, of course, is history.

Maybe it’s time for a ‘U21Global 2.0′.

Kevin Carey

PeerIndex39

–AUTHORITY 33

–ACTIVITY 40

–AUDIENCE 58

government

Introverts: Why their time has come

I heard about this TED talk, and the first thought that came into my head was this (thanks to @shluthra) and I realised I didn’t have anything more to add!

I do have an anecdote, though, dating back to 2003 when @joannejacobs and me tried out a group blog for the first time with an MBA class (we published a paper on the subject in AJET the following year). In this class, one individual developed quite a following because of the high quality of their posts. The person in question had a Chinese name and I’m ashamed to say that — at this time — I did not know if they were male or female. It was quite a large class, and it only ran for six weeks, so I didn’t get to put a face to everybody’s name. At the end of the term, the mystery blogger — a mainland Chinese woman — stayed behind at the end of the last class to personally thank me for allowing her to participate! She was a very intelligent individual who had not been game enough enter into the verbal jousting with the group of extrovert Australian males that had tended to dominate proceeedings during in-class discussions.

The lesson I learnt from this is that, online, everyone has an equally loud voice. Importantly, people get to contribute who might otherwise not, and others in the group benefit considerably from their insights.

The Five Minute University

This classic clip from a Father Guido Sarducci stand up routine was shown a couple of times as a conference I attended recently. Unfortunately, this caricature of the extent and depth of learning at university is not too far from the truth. Ideally, learning experience should translate into competence, but so long as assessments focus on testing memories rather than skills, the probability of this happening remains low.

This problem has become particularly acute in recent times as the gap between university curricula and the knowledge and skills required in a digital age has widened. It has been a hot topic in India for a while now, but as a quick Google search demonstrates, it is a global problem.

The solution? Well, Father Sarducci may have the right formula. Start by asking what a graduate should be able to do once they finish.

Hopefully, this should take longer than five minutes.

The adoption of digital pedagogies in Singapore

I have blogged about Singapore’s FutureSchools projects in the past, and this latest clip from Edutopia would seem to indicate that serious progress is being made. The true success of this initiative, of course, will be the extent to which these practices will be rolled out to all schools in Singapore, and in this respect, professional development will be critical.

An interesting point to emerge from this video is that the approach taken to professional development in the FutureSchools project is to embrace the same participatory learning culture they are nurturing in their classrooms. Using technology, there is group peer observation of class sessions with the dual objective of learning from one another and providing constructive feedback.

More formal education and training in the use of ICTs in the classroom (in K-12 or higher education) is not that widely available. The Asian International College in Singapore is aiming to fix this with the launch if its Postgraduate Certificate in Education (Digital Pedagogies) this year.

The Indian International University 2017: A Retrospective

iHigherEd: A new paradigm requires new language

The infographic below (produced by OnlineUniversities.com) contains some interesting data that lends considerable weight to the argument that we are now in the midst of a major paradigm shift in the higher education space.

I was also pleased to see that there is no reference to ‘lecturer’ or ‘instructor’ (or even ‘teacher!). This is a major gripe of mine as despite the increasingly technology-enabled, learner-centric environment we work in, many of us don’t seem to be able to let go of the old terms and labels. Is it appropriate to use words like these when they connote a very different type of pedagogy?

Also, why do we persist with the ‘e’-prefix? This might have been apt in the 1990s, but e-learning just seems so passé to me. Around the time the term arose, we also used to talk about e-banking, and nowadays people just talk about doing their banking. Maybe it’s time we also just talked about learning.

The reference to ‘e-books’ is also starting to grate on me, not least because they’re not really books. When the higher education student reaches for their iPad to access their e-books, they do so to access an interactive learning community in which they are a participant, and in the process they will be contributing in the capacity of both consumer and producer of content. Does this mean they are both reader and author of the ‘book’?

The iPad and other tablet PCs are tools with the capacity to completely revolutionise education to the extent that the lexicon of terms we have used to describe learning for generations (e.g. lecturer, book, classroom — and even LMS — no longer apply.

When, as educators, we internalise this then perhaps we will truly have experienced paradigm shift.

Source: mashable.com

The open education movement: What does it mean for your institution?

Image source: thechronicleherald.ca

I came across a nice post (via @catspyjamasnz) today that gathers together some of the themes I have been blogging about in recent weeks. Roland Sussex succinctly defines ‘open education’ and then goes on to contextualise what this now means in the wake of the new models of delivery that have been attracting a lot of attention of late. He refers, for example, to the founding of Udacity following the successful trial of a course in artificial intelligence delivered completely free online:

The course attracted 160,000 enrolments (roughly the total enrolment of the UK Open University) from 190 countries, and 23,000 completed it. It provided frequent feedback and tests, with two examinations (mid-semester and end-semester), all handled by software. Students who passed the course received a letter of completion. And all this was totally cost-free to the student.

The students also provided creative input. They established two large Facebook pages for course discussion and interaction, and nearly 2,000 of them translated the course materials into 44 languages. And the solutions to the very frequent quizzes, now on Youtube, provided feedback and commentary. The course designers implemented a version of problem-based learning and made it work online.

As Sussex goes on to point out, Udacity is an extension of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), where a university course is made available online to anyone free of charge, but only the paying students get feedback on assessment and certification.

The key question is whether a point will be reached where the monopoly power of formal education will be broken up because the market value of a course completed with the likes of Udacity will be equal (or close) to the value of a traditionally certified programme. As outrageous as this might sound to some, the longer educational institutions continue to resist change, the more likely it is that their service will become increasingly less valuable.

At the very least, I anticipate that some institutions will start reconsidering their business models along the lines of a ‘study now, pay later’ approach, offering MOOCs with fees being paid at the end of the course by students wishing to exercise the option of certification (assuming they believe it constitutes value for money).

The MITs of this world can continue to potter around experimenting without worrying too much about how it might impact on their ‘core business’. The same cannot be said, however, for those institutions facing competitive pressure because of funding cuts, the economic downturn, and dissatisfied clients.