eLearning Roadtrip

WCET Stands up for eQuality in Online Learning

You may remember that my June 28th post reported on some of the fire and brimstone being directed against the education industry sector in the business of running colleges and universities. Generally speaking, these institutions are aimed at adult students, generally offer their courses and programs where significant components can be completed online, and are typically aimed at providing students with flexible means of completing academic courses, certifications and degrees. They are often generally lumped into the category known as "for-profits".

In recent weeks there have been a lot of shots taken at the for-profit education industry: Frontline "exposed" College Inc. Investors have howled that for profit education is the next sub-prime crisis. Congress has held hearings. 

Frankly, I have been a little concerned about the vitriol being aimed at my for-profit institutional brethren in recent weeks. Lots of broad brush strokes being used to swipe. So I was particularly interested in these remarks from Russ Poulin, my WCET colleague,  that come from a posting he distributed to our members this afternoon.  (Note: yes, I have done some editing. For space, not for substance):

"We ALL need to be paying attention.

 

"If you have not heard about it, there are several links below to coverage of the U.S. Senate’s hearing last week regarding for-profit institutions. I could not make it to DC for the hearing, but I followed the tweets and watched most of the testimony online. Committee Chair Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa raised concerns about the growth in for-profit institutions and some of their practices. 

 

"My concern is that there are times when those testifying painted with a broad brush.  Some for-profits have engaged in questionable activity, but not all.  Worse yet, there are times where all online education is lumped in as having the same dubious practices.

 

"I agree that regulation to stop the ‘bad actors’ needs to be considered at this point.  All of us in the WCET family are for integrity and stopping fraud.  What we do not want are regulations that punish the innocent more than the guilty.

Thank you Russ. You're right. WCET will stay on top of this.

For-Profit Education Companies Face More Scrutiny

For-profit education companies running virtual / distributed / adult serving colleges and universities have come under increasing fire. The most recent volley of criticism was made last week in a 17-page report from Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who chairs the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.The Obama administration is proposing tougher regulation of the for-profit industry because of concern that recruiters are signing up unqualified students and leaving them with loans they may be unable to repay.

 

According to Harkin’s report, the number of students attending for-profit colleges rose to 1.8 million in 2008, from 550,000 in 1998, Federal aid to for-profit colleges has jumped to $26.5 billion in 2009 from $4.6 billion in 2000, according to the Education Department. The five largest publicly traded for- profit companies received 77 percent of their revenue from federal financial aid programs in 2009, up from 63 percent in 2002, the report said. Eight publicly traded companies -- those that break out such data -- spent half their budgets on education, 31 percent on recruiting and marketing and 15.7 percent on undefined administrative expenses, Harkin’s report found. At least one company spent more on marketing than on education.

 

For-profit colleges are more expensive than comparable non- profit schools and leave students with heavier debts, the report said. “Staggering” numbers of student leave for-profits each year, presumably without degrees, according to Harkin’s report. Default rates on government loans in the industry are also higher than similar public and nonprofit institutions, the report found.

Investors and analysts had previously ripped the for-profit education industry sector a new one during the May, 2010 Ira W. Sohn Investment Research conference. Hedge-fund manager Steven Eisman gave a presentation entitled “Subprime Goes to College”  during which he reflected that he thought he’d never see a scandal equal to sub-prime mortgages, but he’s found it in today’s for-profit education companies.

 

This past Thursday’s Congressional hearings once again featured testimony from Eisman. In his written testimony, Eisman once again compared for-profit colleges with the sellers of subprime mortgages. Both left customers with heavy debts they can’t repay.  “If nothing is done, then we are on the cusp of a new social disaster,” Eisman said, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. 

Reposting mLearnCon Flash vs HTML5 Debate Slides

Several people have asked about obtaining copies of the slide deck I referenced during the mLearnCon MOSH Pit debate on Flash vs. HTML5 earlier this month. As noted in my June 24th blogpost, I was fortunate that my friends  from the Adobe Systems, Inc. Flash Platform team shared a copy of the "evangelist deck" that contains a lot of useful information about the Flash Platform. I have integrated several of their slides with some of the other materials I compiled to support my position in the Great Debate. Apparently there are some for whom scrolling to the end of the post takes too long. No prob. I have posted a .PDF version of the deck here for your viewing pleasure. 

Download Final mLearn Con Flash and HTML5. for distrib

Even though it is fairly obvious that I am a bit of an Adobe fangirl on this topic -  I am first and foremost a technology-mediated learning  advocate. Interactive learning  experiences and apps continue to depend on Flash.  I just want to be sure that elearning professionals have a clearer picture of how this particular debate is likely to affect the products, assets and services we provide for our stakeholders.We know that will evolve, and we know that it is more likely to look like an RIA than a .SWF.  Even though iPhone 4.0 and iPads are selling like crazy...we're still talking about less that 1% of mobile subscribers on an iOS device. Even though HTML5 offers great experiences, it's still not taking over the world. Yet...

Thinking about mobile learning? Ask yourself these questions

I recently had the opportunity to write a short article for ELearning! Magazine on the topic "When Mobility Meets Learning". It gave me an opportunity to share a series of questions that I have been asking my clients over the years whenever they have started thinking about whether or not a technology learning project makes sense for their organization. 

With laptops, notebooks, netbooks,  tablets, feature phones, smart phones, iPods, iPhones and iPads at the ready, the question may not be if one is going to look for opportunities to try a mobile learning initiative, but when it is going to be time to “go mobile”. When thinking about adding mobile services to your enterprise’s learning technology portfolio, it is useful to give some serious thought to WHY a mobile learning initiative makes sense. Without establishing a baseline for assessing and evaluating costs relative to outcomes the likelihood of being able to demonstrate value and impact will be compromised.

With this in mind...

Why a mobile learning project? What is it that a mobile learning project will allow you to do that you could not do before?

What do you really want to do? Is the fascination with the attraction of offering learning stakeholders something new and different? Are there people in the field who won’t have the resources they need without a mobile learning solution? Are you simply curious, and just want to see what happens?

How you know when you have met your goal? How will you know if your mobile initiative made a difference?

What unique result do you want your mobile learning effort to achieve?

What technologies do you need to get started? What devices will you support? What network will you use? What carrier will you choose? Will you establish strict selection policies, or will you try to integrate everyone’s devices regardless of operating system?

For whom is your mobile initiative intended? Will it be for everyone, or will you focus more on the needs of traveling staff, or will it be aimed more at remote, distributed and field based personnel?

What will your stakeholders need to be successful? Will they know what is expected? Will they need training or orientation sessions to understand what they need to do?

How are you going to fund it? How are you going to sustain it, and for how long?

How will you evaluate your effectiveness? What will you tell your sponsoring executives when you go back for next year’s budget request and they ask you to justify your program?

Although mobile learning certainly brings its own unique challenges, the good news is that many of the antecedents of mobile learning have prepared learning technology stakeholders for the journey ahead.  In reflecting upon Christiansen’s notion of disruptive innovations, Penny Wilson has described mobile wireless devices—such as cell phones, handhelds, and notebook computers—as “tools of mass disruption” that are going to help spark a period of innovation for learning technology stakeholders of all kinds. While these devices may not yet be completely ubiquitous, reliable or rich, it is already clear that mobility is changing life as we know it. Our challenge as learning professionals is to make mobile learning so compelling that stakeholders continue to see possibilities, not problems.

 

mLearnCon Trip Report

Kudos to the eLearning Guild for last week's exceptional inaugural mobile learning conference in San Diego. Having been actively following mobile learning developments during the past 6 years or so (and wondering what it would take to tip this obvious, self-evident next step of connecting people to information when and where they want it into general practice) it was enormously satisfying to see, feel and hear the energy and enthusiasm. Thank you Brent, Mary, Juli, Steve, Luis, Heidi, David and Bill for a great event.

Aaron Silver (@mrch0mp3rs) was a most excellent host and facilitator of the mLearning Future Zone, while Neil Lasher (@neillasher) was "Cage-master extraordinare" in the MOSH Pit (and thanks to both for including me among their cast of characters :-) Both Aaron and Neil convened a great group of people who have been innovators on the edge (both leading and bleeding) of mlearning. As with any new technology applications, there are lots of little things that practitioners can't anticipate until they get into the middle of rolling out a new program. So many great conversation, discussions and debates....I know I came home a lot smarter.

Highlights of the conference for me included a great panel discussion about future directions for mLearning with Kris Rockwell (@hybridkris) from Hybrid Learning Systems, and Judy Brown (@judyb) from the ADL. It was super excellent to spend time with Silke Fleisher and Eric Converse from ATIV (This is the company that developed the great mLearnCon conference program app. I like it so much I am getting one like this for the WCET conference in November.) Silke is a friend and co-conspirator from my Adobe eLearning days, and it is very exciting to see the success that ATIV is having as a mobile app development shop. It is always a treat to see Michelle Lentz (@writetechnology), Jeff Tillet (@mojotillet) and Mark Chrisman (@badsquare).  Watching Allison Rossett (@allisonrossett) falling in love with the new iPad that she bought on her way to the conference was particularly amusing.

One of the best parts of my conference experience was having the opportunity to go toe-to-toe, "mano-a-mano" with Clark Quinn, (@quinnovator) in The Great Debate: HTML5 or Flash? Not surprisingly, I took the pro-Flash position. It's not so much that I love Flash, per se - It's just that I have been really irritated at the lack of accurate information about the current state of Flash and HTML5 as it affects elearning designers and developers. Having spent several years inside Adobe, I know the Flash platform story fairly well. Perhaps more importantly, I know how much elearning people currently depend on Flash. For the past 13 years Flash has been the gold standard for creating interactive online content. Our industry has been and will continue to be highly dependent upon .SWFs, at least in the short run and probably for longer than that. While we are all certainly moving away from our dependence on SWF animations toward more rich internet applications (RIAs), apps and richer video and audio experiences, there is going to be a period of time where we will need to be aware of what our customers and stakeholders need for dealing with the needs of their customers and stakeholders. If they can't play their content and launch rich web experiences we produce when and where they need it it really doesn't matter how we feel about the tools that we think we should use, does it??

My friends from the Adobe Platform group shared a number of slides with me to help tell the Flash side of the HTML v. Flash story. I've included some of their info and a number of other slides (including a few funny screen shots of how Apple and Adobe to continue to poke at each other as they position around these issues) that you can download here. Download Final mLearn Con Flash and HTML5. for distrib

Enjoy!