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OLDaily - Text Edition by Stephen Downes Oct 25, 2016
Reaching the Tipping Point: Insights on Advancing
Competency Education in New England
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This report (89 page PDF
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provides an overview of competency-based education (CBE)
and then drills down to look at some lessons learned in New
England. CBE is motivated by three major strands of
thought, according to the report: first, the current system
is focused on delivery, not results, with the result that
students have gaps in their learning; second, CBE ensures
that students move on to the next grade level only after
they have acquired the required competencies; and third, a
system defined by CBE is rooted in equity and transparent
process. "Rather than expecting compliance from students,
competency-based schools seek to ensure students feel safe,
respected, valued and empowered." You have to more than
just provide opportunity; steps need to be taken to support
and engage students. The report discusses the challenges of
implementing a paradigm-changing program, and stresses
providing support and a focus on results. The
assessment of the New England experience is generally rosy.
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The Great Unbundling of Textbook Publishers
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Th unbundling of the university is more story than fact,
writes Michael Feldstein, but the unbundling of publishing
is imminent. This tipping point may be open educational
resources (OER), which are making textbook publishing
unprofitable. He writes, "The real money will be in a few
areas:
High-end digital products that directly or indirectly
improve student outcomes
Related services that help colleges improve student
outcomes
Services that help colleges improve the unsexy but critical
aspects staying viable, from marketing to administration
Loans to schools looking to make changes that will
(theoretically) make them more sustainable in the long run
but require significant up-front
investment—preferably in the products and services of
the company offering the loan."
Will these separate services be offered under a single
brand, or are we seeing the beginning of a marketplace with
multiple players? As usual, the answer is "yes".
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Open Educational Resources
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This article opens as an account of the nature and history
of open educational resources. But then it turns sceptical.
Michael Q. McShane writes, "open resources are offered free
to users, but they are not necessarily free to produce...
the people who create them want to be paid for doing so."
Fair enough, and for the most part creators are paid by
their school, company, university or government department.
The article then turns to a criticism of a (U.S.) federal
government program. "It is important to examine what
productive role, if any, the federal government can play in
the evolution of OER... the federal government is putting
its thumb on the scale for one particular type of
content-creation mechanism, and that could disrupt the
marketplace." This presumption that there is some 'natural'
state of the marketplace that is 'distorted' by government
intervention is of course a fallacy, as is the presumption
that the government has no business being involved in the
education of its citizens.
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Can Your Productivity Be Measured?
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I think we all knew this, but in this review of Yves
Gingras's Bibliometrics and Research Evaluation: Uses and
Abuses
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bibliometrics-and-research-evaluation"
target="_blank we read of a detailed examination of the
topic. "While study of publication and citation patterns,
“on the proper scale, provides a unique tool for
analyzing global dynamics of science over time,†the book
says, the 'entrenchment' of increasingly (and often
ill-defined) quantitative indicators in the formal
evaluation of institutions and researchers gives way to
their abuses."
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Building A Higher Ed Social Media Budget
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I haven't seen this topic covered elsewhere, which is by
itself something to recommend it. "Paying to promote
posts—either to the organic audience or to a target
audience.... is becoming the norm in higher ed. Of the
1,100 respondents to the 2016 CASE Social Media in
Advancement Survey
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59% said they paid to promote posts on Facebook, and 18%
paid for Twitter promotion." In addition to paying social
media companies, institutions will also need to budget for
staff. "Engagement assistants are given 'the keys' to
social media accounts to publish content and respond to
inquiries." And of course there are software costs for
tracking and monitoring response. "Don’t start by
contacting vendors. First, know what data you need. Then,
find a tool (paid or free) that provides you with that
data."
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A Devil’s Dictionary of Educational Technology
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Bryan Alexander hits the mark again and again with this
lighthearted look at terminology in our field. Also
published in Medium
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Copyright 2016 Stephen Downes
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License
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