eLearning Roadtrip

Alan Greenberg: Blackboard Reboots

I admire and respect Wainhouse Research analyst Alan Greenberg, so was quite interested to read his recent post in which he reflects on changes that Blackboard introduced at this year's Blackboard World. I, too, was impressed with the "new Blackboard" while at Blackboard World this year, and am really looking forward to diving into some of the work we (the PAR team) will be doing with the Blackboard team.

Please refer to Alan's newletter for the complete article and especially for his take on why Blackboard's changes are a big deal.

Here are a few "nuggets" from his post to whet your appetite for more......

Blackboard Reboots @ Blackboard World
Alan D. Greenberg 

In an effort to give institutions and schools more value and greater exposure to its technology sets, Blackboard has completely revamped its product line, now integrating together its product portfolio with a totally new user experience (UX) and a declared focus on learners. All teaching and learning solutions will now include Blackboard’s “base” learning management system (Blackboard Learn) and provide a full-featured online environment with course delivery, synchronous collaboration tools, mobile apps, and integration with and access to content. Technology adoption services are also included.  

A tiered set of solutions are aimed at helping the educational user community address challenges such as retention, student engagement, learning analytics, communications and standards preparedness. There are four higher education teaching and learning solutions, four higher education campus commerce and security solutions, and five K-12 solutions that center on teaching and learning and community engagement. The company is considering adding more solution sets for international markets.

Blackboard also plans to launch a new version of its learning environment that is delivered via the public cloud. Now the company is providing customers a full set of options: self-hosted, hosted in Blackboard’s private cloud, or via the public cloud. Word is this public cloud offering will be fully available sometime this month or in September. Being piloted in the public cloud is Blackboard’s Open Education powered by Blackboard, also announced at Blackboard World. This is a course platform that allows teachers and faculty to run public online courses and/or Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

The company has created a customized learning and analytics offering available to the 259 higher education Internet2 members. The Internet2 NET+ offering will not only provide access to Blackboard’s solutions, but also will include robust analytic and learning outcomes tools, a cloud-based, cross-institutional content repository that supports most competitive LMS’s, and help desk and adoption services. Cornell University; the University of Nebraska — Lincoln; the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; the University of Texas at Arlington; and Virginia Commonwealth University had representatives who guided and shaped the Internet2 NET+ certified solution.

At the core of the offering, which is fully deployable now, is Blackboard’s Learning Insight solution, which is a full-featured online and mobile version of Blackboard Learn LMS and Blackboard Collaborate.

(Ellen's aside: yes, this means that Collaborate works in the browser. NO more Java downloads!)

FOR MORE, click here and scroll down for Alan's full article.

Since You've Asked: More About the PAR Framework

The December 15, 2011 Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus blog by Marc Parry shared news about a groundbreaking project we have taken on at WCET.  It describes our efforts to create a single, federated database of de-identified student records contributed by multiple universities and colleges. Six forward-thinking WCET member institutions have worked together this past six months to see if it was possible to analyze variables common across these institutions to look for patterns that can inform us about student loss and momentum. I'm pleased to say that we have succeeded. Baby steps. But still.

We've received a lot of questions. Here are a few answers. There will be more.

This is a multi-phased project. We are concluding our work on Phase 1. The best is yet to be.

Our first phase focused on demonstrating that it is posssible to get multiple postsecondary institutions here in the US to contribute their data to create a single unified data set. We are now applying a variety of descriptive, inferential and predictive analyses to look for patterns showing variables likely to affect student success. 

Phase 1 = Proof of Concept. Creating a single federated data set from the de-identified student records from six unique institutions has never been done before. 

We've started with 6 schools. We are adding additional schools as we continue our efforts to build out the federated data set. While 640,000 students records and 3.1 million course records are a lot more than most of us are used to working with, it is still just a sample from 6 schools. 

We've started with 34 variables that are common across each of the institutional partners. Much of our current work has focused on establishing common definitions of these variables to ensure that comparisons and aggregations are valid, reliable and repeatable. There will be more variables.

We are currently focused on online programs. Just about every single transaction associated with an online program is digitally captured and stored somewhere. It seemed the obvious, self-evident place to begin.

We've focused on pattern strategy exploration, not null hypothesis testing (at least not in the conventional sense). 

We're really not trying to answer research questions using big data analysis techniques. Not yet. We'll get there. First things first. The journey of a thousand miles begings with the first steps.

More to the point...if we do our work right, then perhaps some day YOU will be answering YOUR research questions using the federated data set using big data analysis techniques.

The team working on this effort brings expertise from institutional research, statistical analysis, quant and qual research, cognition and instruction, online learning, higher ed administration, educational public policy, project management, and commercial software development. They come from the public and for-profit sectors. Then are from community colleges and 4 year comprehensives. Several of our institutional partners are already award-winning, acknowledged practice leaders in the hot, hot, hot domain of learning analytics. These are some of the smartest, most dedicated, creative, committed people I know. 

None of us - not WCET, not the core team of experts, not any of our fabulous institutional partners - are making any kinds of reccommendations from our findings yet. You may have noticed that my quote in the Chronicle was about as non-specific as one can possibly be. But be assured, there are going to be some very interesting implications for practice and policy that will emerge as the new patterns we are finding are more sharply focused in the coming weeks and months. 

Yes of course we are going to share our findings. Sharing is a core WCET value. We exist to share. That's what Cooperatives do.

 

Are YOU the Chief Online Education Officer at your Institution?

If so, we'd like to ask you to invite you to participate in a survey research project.

For the third year, WCET is partnering with the Campus Computing Project to conduct the Managing Online Education survey.  The survey focuses on the instructional, operational, and technology infrastructure of online education programs of institutions throughout the U.S. and Canada.

My colleague, Russ Poulin, has written an eloquent post on the WCET Frontiers blog, encouraging your particitation in this survey. To save you the hassle of clicking all the way through, I have excerpted part of his message, below. Please click here for the full post.

YOUR INSTITUTION NEEDS TO RESPOND TO THE SURVEY.

 <Sorry for yelling at you>

To avoid confusion, we would like one response from each institution. Given that some institutions are centralized, some are decentralized, and some laugh at the notion of organization, it is often difficult to know who is the correct person to invite to take the survey. There is no common position of “chief elearning officer” like there is with a CIO.

How Do You Participate?

Review the 2011 Managing Online Education survey to see what questions are being asked. If you are not what passes for a “chief Elearning officer,” ask around at your institution to see if someone has received an invitation and is completing the survey.  If you need an invitation or have other questions about the survey, contact Casey Green at[email protected].  He will help you out and get you access to the survey.  Survey responses must be submitted through the online survey software and not by completing the .pdf linked earlier in this paragraph.

I’m looking forward to your participation, seeing the results, and sharing them with you!  NOTE:  THE SURVEY DEADLINE HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO DECEMBER 16.

Thanks!!

My "10 Commandments" for Online Learning

Just imagine how online learning might evolve if we ever-so-engaged online learning professionals inscribed the following "commandments" somewhere on one of our personal digital tablets:

• Thou shall provide prospective students with respectful responses to expressions of interest. Listen before you preach.
• Thou shalt not use a one-size-fits all approach to admissions. Personalize your advice.
• Thou shall use data to inform decisions. There is no excuse for not using the information we have in hand to improve programs and practices and experiences. Deal with it.
• Thou shall offer degrees and certificates offering up-to-date curricula that make your graduates competitive and relevant in todays' evolving workplace. Snap.
• Thou shall be mindful of student demographics, and consider advisement, programs and support that is relevant for interests, circumstances and motivations. Extend.
• Thou shall respect online learning faculty as knowledgeable contributors to professional practice. Respect. Let me say that again. Respect.
• Thou shall raise the bar high, for students and instructors alike. Expect big things.
• Thou shalt not subject students to "that's the way it has always been done" thinking. Unless you really believe your brand is so mighty that you can afford NOT to think about being proactive, forward thinking, and focused on student success. Stretch.
• Thou shall leverage technology in exemplary, innovative ways. Shine.
• Thou shalt not embarrass your students by being part of a cheesey institution that nobody respects. To be a school that embarasses its students is truly an abomination. Seriously. Knock it off.

 

 

 

 

 

The "Dirty Little Secret" of Online Learning

The University Professional Continuing Education Association and the Association for Continuing Higher Education recently convened a summit of education leaders to talk about the phenomenon of online learning, described in summit literature as "the biggest thing to ever hit higher education."

These days, online learning has come to the attention of presidents looking to find new student markets and to replace state dollars that many institutions have lost in recent years. These presidents see publicly traded companies running institutions like APUS and the University of Phoenix competing for student market share via online programs.  They see innovative public community colleges such as Rio Salado College and the Colorado Community College Online enrolling massive numbers of students via online programs.They see flagship institutions like the University of California - Berkeley gingerly dip their toes into the online learning space. And so they want to know what they can do about online learning, too.

Online learning has moved from margins to mission-critical, representing a higher profile in institutional strategic imperatives. This is all making continuing education professionals both happy and anxious. The cash-funded basis of operation that set them apart from their centrally funded colleagues is now, institutionally, a very good thing that central staff are being asked to emulate.

Except that maybe the cash is going to be someone else's cash. Students have turned in significant measure to non-traditional, for-profit providers of education programs and degrees for the flexible adult serving programs they offer. Hundreds and thousands of students, paying millions and millions in tuition, much of it funded through publicly sponsored financial aid programs.

It is not an exaggeration to say that public and private not-for-profit insitutions are seriously offended that publicly traded businesses have stepped into their space. They don't quite know what to do about competition. They hate that there is so much money involved. Quality is a huge concern. Loss of market share is making them nuts.  

And so there is fomenting about quality and interstate commerce, and railing against the bad actors whose recruitment techniques are evil and whose SEO investments are obscene and whose students drop out in great nunbers and default on student loans. On purpose.

Wait. Market share? Competition?

Why yes.

Here is the dirty little secret of online learning: Everyone is in online learning for the money. We are all competing for market share.

Think about it. Everyone who considers adopting online learning as a learning delivery option thinks about both extending reach AND generating revenue. We have to. Even open online learning has to figure out how to operate these days. WCET's Managing Online Education 2010 survey with the Campus Computing Project shows this very clearly.  It doesn't matter if you are a "for-profit" institution, run as a business -  or if you are a state-funded institution, focused on common good. Revenue is not the only reason for offering online programs. But it's becoming an increasingly important consideration, across the post-secondary ecosystem. 

So maybe this is a great moment to celebrate. Online learning has tipped into mainstream consciousness. Yes it has. It matters enough that people will pay for it. Let's celebrate the fact that there is demand for high quality, online learning programs. And let's all finally admit that we are ALL in it for the money, one way or another. These days, we have to be. It's the only way our programs will thrive.

OKAY?? DONE!

With that out of the way, perhaps we can quit worrying about our respective bases of institutional funding and we can ALL focus on raising the bar on quality and giving a lot more people a shot at achieving the dream of a college education. Time to own the secret that we all need to think about what it takes to pay our way and delight our stakeholders. Time to move on to things that matter.

When I Think of the Future of Online Learning

I am attending a Summit later this week. The University Professional and Continuing Educational Association and the Association for Continuing Higher Education are co-hosting a sold out invitational meeting to consider the Future of Online Learning. Many dozens of learning leaders will be in attendence. I am looking forward to hearing what everyone has to say.

As a long-time online learning / elearning / distance learning / teletraining kinda gal, these kinds of events please me in an odd, parental sort of way. It is quite satisfying to see how over the past more than 25 years of grinding their way into teaching practice, learning technologies now routinely extend the reach of the traditional classroom. Online learning has tipped into mainstream consciousness, even if mainstream exceptance continues to be somewhat elusive. 

Since I DO have some skin in this online learning game, let me tell you some of the things I hope we will hear about during the next few days:

• I hope we will hear that it is time to move past online learning as a technological analog of the traditional college classroom.
• I want us to talk openly about getting serious about high quality, online learning experiences that scale.
• I want to hear how more students will have the opportunity to achieve the dream of a college education.
• I want to hear more about the $10,000 degree. Or the $5,000 degree. Either one.
• I want to hear how we will make sure that online students can quit being ashamed to say they got their degree from an online school.
• I want to revisit how adult learners demonstrate that the knowledge they have accrued outside the classroom is a legitimate part of competency certification.  
• I want to hear how the campus learning portal / LMS is being deployed in new and innovative ways, 
• I want to hear how online learning professionals are going to use descriptive, inferential and predictive analysis of de-identified student records to better predict when students might benefit from a bit of extra help to stay on academic track.
• I want to hear how institutions are going to make online learning experiences more compelling,  engaging, personalized and professionally relevant.
• I want to hear that there is room for informal collaborative learning moments in every student's program of study.
• I want to see more attention paid to interactive digital learning content - PDFs and digital textbooks, apps and learning objects - that students produce and publish.
• I want to understand how OER will sustain itself.
• I want to understand how mobility is changing the online learning game, and how social media bring real-time interpersonal interactivity to our conversations.
• I want to see the use of game mechanics and gamification extend our thinking about how to motivate and engage learners without turning games into the next generation of crappy elearning.

From everything I can see on that horizon these issues are all going to be part of the future of online learning. With respect, they are already part of the present. IMHO, it's time to make dealing with these issues part of our practice. Looking forward to what comes next.

 

WCET Receives Grant for Groundbreaking Higher Education Analytic Research

I am pleased to share the following good news.

WICHE, the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, announced today that WCET, the WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies, has been awarded a $1,000,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund an initiative to unify student data from six U.S. institutions and demonstrate the effective use of predictive analytic methods for improving student outcomes. The goal is to identify variables that influence student retention and progression, and guide decision-making that improves postsecondary student completion in the U.S.

This grant for the Predictive Analytics Reporting (PAR) Framework will aggregate data representing more than 400,000 student records from across six WCET member institutions: American Public University System, Colorado Community College System, Rio Salado College, University of Hawaii System, University of Illinois Springfield, and the University of Phoenix. Each participating institution has been exploring or implementing descriptive, inferential or predictive analytics projects on their own student data; the PAR Framework expands on this work through exploration of patterns that can be derived when the six institutional datasets are considered as a single, unified sample.

The principal investigator is Phil Ice, Ed.D., American Public University System (APUS). The project will incorporate many of the best practices and award-winning predictive analytical methods for which Phil has been recognized by the Sloan Consortium and for which project partner Dr. Vernon Smith, Rio Salado College, has won the prestigious WCET Outstanding Work (WOW) award. WCET has appointed Beth Davis, WCET, to serve as the project director.

The WICHE Cooperative for Educational Technologies (WCET) is a cooperative, membership-driven, non-profit provider of solutions and services that accelerate the adoption of effective practices and policies, advancing excellence in technology-enhanced teaching and learning in higher education. More information about WCET’s institutional membership resources, services and common interest groups can be found on here.

eBang Theory, Say "Hey" to High Quality Online Learning That Scales

Once upon a time, equity analyst Howard Block, Ph.D. wrote a report entitled The e-Bang Theory: Education Industry Overview 1999 Illuminismo, Volume 2  (San Francisco: Banc of America Securities Equity Research, Montgomery Division, September 1999). This report is the one credited with igniting the explosion of interest in financial markets that legitimized what is known today as eLearning.

In this report, Block outlined the tenets of his theory that explained why and how investing in businesses that featured technology to facilitate online learning would probably make investors and the companies in which they invested a lot of money. 

I attended a meeting at SRI International in Menlo Park, CA just after this report was released. I still remember the electricity, the "e" in the air. Probably tells you a lot about the times that everyone devoured anything from analysts that talked about investing opportunities using web technologies and the related products and services that accompany them to market, to school and to work.

In making the case that 1999 was the time for a new model of education - elearning - to appear on the horizon, Block noted that:

• "The economy is quickly becoming dependent upon human capital, which forces all of us to increase our aptitude at managing and productively employing human capital, a task incumbent upon all of our learning systems.

• "Political initiatives are inviting more businesses inside the school house door than every before in the history of public education. these initiatives include charter school legislation and voucher programs.

• "The inexorable technological revolution continuously overhauls the workplace, thereby forcing workers to treat learning as a basic part of their job description. Technology is not only a driver for more learning but it is also an enablers of electronic learning (e-learning). The intellectual demands of the economy are outstripping our capacity to satisfy it. (Block, 1999, P.3)

(Danger, Will Robinson. We seem to have slipped through a hole in the time space continuum. Isn't this the same things we are still talking about today??)

Block went on to define elearning as the convergence of the internet and education and identified 15 unique benefits associated with it:

1. Available at any time. "It's always there!"
2. Accessible from any location "I can always get to it"
3. Multimedia content: use of audio, video, interactive chat, text, etc.
4. Accommodates individual learning styles: self-paced, asynchronous collaborative, synchronous collaborative.
5. Hyperlearning as contrasted with static text, elearning has the capacity to link with the other resources (simulations, other content, study groups, etc) that can enhance the learning experience and avoid the linear learning dictated by textbooks. The self-directed nature of elearning allows hyperlearning.
6. Blindness of the learning engagement: some learners who are inhibited in a classroom may increase engagement online
7. Learner-centered learning: The learner is not a passive participant but a proactive searcher and finder of information.
8. Modularity of presentation: The content's architecture is modular, which facilitates different construction of learning design in both design and length.
9. Manageable structure: The electronic infrastructure supports managed and measurable interactions between advisers and learners
10. Ability to measure the effectiveness of the program. eLearning software empowers administrators to track performance and measures ROI. In addition, monitoring usage by user is simpler, i.e., the number of downloads per user can be measured. This helps training managers to evaluate cost-effectiveness and provides assistance with license negotiations based on estimated use.
11. Simpler data management, The rapid rate with which new learning products are introduced and older products become obsolete creates a challenge for individuals charged with updating libraries. However, if a single version of each product is kept on a host, users get instantaneous access and updated components.
12. Cost savings: provides an efficient and cost-effective model for education
13. Revenue enhancement: provides a way for campuses to expand classroom enrollments without using bricks and mortar.
14. Greater storage capacity. The Internet has so much more capacity than most physical locations or a user's hard drive. This allows learners to access more products and lets the adviser mix and match courseware activities to fit specific needs. Learners can preview presentations of different courses prior to selecting one, or they can access a specific slide from thousands.
15. Individual education programs (IEP) can be generated from a combination of the historical record of the student's prior learning (from monitored usage) and the vast data stored on the server. As student's progress, information is delivered based on what they learned and how they've performed. For example, a student would log on to the learning server and a customized course would be generated from the content data base that knows which courses the learner took, how well she did, what her job description is, what problem is most pressing. This dimension serves to focus the curriculum on skill gaps, saving organizations both time and money. A by-product of IEPs, in our view, is increased motivation from the self-centered nature of the experience.

One has to wonder if maybe our agenda for the next gen of elearning, the Web 2.0 era, should be aimed at delivering on some of these promises that Block and the investment communities were making on our behalf as long as ten years ago. Because when I think about some of the big ideas that were shared among the participants of a fantastic think tank experience I had a few weeks ago at Rio Salado College in Tempe Arizona and what we can finally do deliver on these 15 promises described above...well, I have to say, I am excited about all the new opportunities that are startiong to emerge on the horizon.

And THAT brings me to my real subject of today's blogpost.

Imagine how excited I am that one of the hottest new emerging trends that is going to rock post-secondary education is a return to High Quality. Scalable. Online. Howard Block gave us the roadmpap more than a decade ago. And now, as we all try to figure out how to navigate in what Josh Jarrett calls "The New Normal", it seems as if High Quality, Scale and Online easily fit in the same sentence. Again.

There are  initiatives on the horizon that will challenge the way we think about our practice. Hopefully give us all some tools and techniques to think about achieving our goals in creative new ways. I have to say, when I think about where  the next waves of innovation are likely to emerge in my little slice of the education ecosystem I start getting butterflies in my stomach. Excited butterflies.  

...And Another Thing (about Predictive Analytics)

Judging by some of the reactions I have been getting to my Data Change Everything blogpost last night, I would say I've touched a bit of a nerve. Good.

People get ready, there a change a comin'.

Just a few more random, ancillary analytical thoughts:

Predictive analytics are not just used in for-profit universities. While institutions like the University of Phoenix and APUS are investing in analytics tools to help them improve services and customize the experience of learning online, forward thinking publicly funded institutions including Rio Salado College and the Colorado Community College System are doing the same kinds of things.

Predictive analytics are also not just used with online learning (and, by the way, online learning is not the same thing as for profit education.) But with so many of the transactions of online teaching and learning captured in various technology systems, it does seem like fertile ground for finding out what learning analytics may be able to reveal. Which is why you are seeing so many researchers/companies/foundations moving into this space these days. Learning analytics are hot, hot, hot.

Some researchers respond quite negatively to predictive analytics in education. I've heard mutterings of Orwellian conspiracies and dismissive comments about how data-mining is so... ad hoc.  True enough. But remember, analytics aren't really about research, they are more about supporting decisions. That's different. And it's about reliability and convenience. That's also different.

I mentioned some of the most familiar uses of predictive analytics in consumer life - Amazon shopping and Netflix movies. iTunes Genius recommendations are another example. They help you narrow your search. Sometimes they suggest just the right thing. But I forgot to mention one of the most popular consumer use of predictive analytics.

Any guesses??

<drumroll>....Dating sites. Match.com and that ilk. No matter how you feel about online dating, here is an impressive statistic: 1 one of 8 American marriages come from an online dating relationship. 

Pretty good completion rate, if you ask me. 

That is all. For now.

Data Change Everything

 
During the past several months there have been low background rumblings in the land of education and training, and the rumbling is starting to get louder. That is the sound of the learning world discovering what Internet professionals working in other vertical markets have known for years: The digital “breadcrumbs” that learners leave behind about their viewing, reading, engagement and assessment behaviors, interests and preferences provide massive amounts of data that can be mined to better personalize online experiences. 

Learning analytics are all about applying statistics and research methods in the service of better informed, more accountable decision-making. We're talking about using descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and predictive statistics on the data that we collect about, well, just about everything associated with Online Learning. eLearning. Distance Learning. Whatever you call it.

While predictive analytics are commonly used in consumer settings (e.g. to help generate recommendations for Amazon shoppers and select movies on Netflix), predictive analytics are not yet broadly used in educational settings for assisting with activities such as course selection, or for predicting points in a student’s academic experience where they may be at a point of increased risk. We're not even very good at keeping track of descriptive information in education, a la Google Analytics. at least not yet.

But we're getting there.

Here are five things I know for sure about the rising tide of learning analytics and what this is going to mean for helping people make better, more informed decisions about learning. Yours, mine, theirs, ours.

 

A vast number of today’s online learning transactions are captured in Content Management Systems, Learning Management Systems, Student Information Systems and Enterprise Resource Planning systems. We know A LOT about what happens when students - and faculty - are online. Given what we know about web analytics in Google, and personalized recommendation engines in Netflix and Amazon, and the power of hastags in Twitter, "thumbs up" in Pandora and Facebook...why WOULDN'T we want to personalize our learning experiences in the same way? 

I know for some that the most fun is going to be getting all crazy with the complex statistical modeling that this kind of work is going to require AND enable. But for a lot of us, what we are really going to care about is that learning analytics give ME a foundation for my own learning progress and completion. Set up the right way, these personalized predictively generated experiences will help ME stay on top of what I need to know. And THAT is very cool.

This isn't so much about collecting more information from people. It's more about getting smarter and  putting the data we already collect to better use.

 

This is the hard part. This is the "admitting we may have a problem" part. Because once you take a look at what is going on, you need to be prepared for the fact that you are going to need to respond. To SOMETHING, anything. Ignore at your peril.

Same basic idea, just a different way of saying it. I will tell you all that I've been watching people squirming about how to report results in ways that show the not-as-good as well as the good in a couple of projects recently - enough to tell me that the benefits of learning analytics are going to be balanced with some big cultural barriers that will require direct and focused attention.

Yup. These data we leave everywhere we go...they really are going to change everything. Because once we KNOW what we know, there will be no going back.