Pass the SoLT

This is just a brief reflection on the recent QS Apple conference in Manila where I presented a paper on the new face of internationalization. The paper challenged two basic assumptions: distance education is second rate and online learning is poor quality. My central thesis was that online and distance education is the new normal as a new type of globally untethered learner is expecting a new type of higher education for new times.

The paper goes on to outline how traditional universities are being chiseled away by the rise of the amateur and new business models as a multitude of new higher education providers emerge. The conference reinforced for me how quickly the global higher education landscape is changing in Asia (and beyond) and the role new alliances and partnerships will play in maintaining the relevance, reputation and revenue of both traditional and modern 21st century universities. In particular, the groups and partners that universities decide to associate themselves with will become essential as higher education institutions respond to the challenges of the new global environment. During the conference I was interviewed about these changes although there is only a short extract of this video interview on the conference website.

I was also pleased to collect on behalf of Massey University a QS Award for the Best International Student Recruitment Brochure judged according to the concept, design, layout and content. Massey is currently expanding the number of degree programmes available by distance to international students living overseas and the award recognised the quality of our 2012 Distance Education International Prospectus. Arguably QS is the most reputable of the university ranking systems and Massey recently received 5 stars for the quality of our international programmes (the top ranking) which bodes well for the future of our online and distance education offerings targeting distance learners.

I was sent a link to a blog today maintained by the Best Colleges Online which celebrates 'National Distance Learning Week'. I immediately assumed the reference to national meant the United States.

The blog lists 25 facts you should share during National Distance Learning Week. Here is a quick summary of the top 10 facts:

1. Between 2007 and 2008, 20.4% of American undergrads participated in distance education.

2. More female undergrads participate in distance education than male.

3. Most undergraduates taking distance learning courses are white (their term not mine).

4. Twenty-two percent of graduate students took distance learning courses during the 2007-2008 school year.

5. Distance education participation increased by 4% between the 2003-2004 and 2007-2008 school years

6. Distance learning is just as engaging as its classroom counterpart

7. There are disadvantages, of course

8. …distance learning programs lag crazy behind when it comes to accessibility

9. Most DETC (Distance Education Training Council) students are middle-aged adults

10 Master’s degrees are their (DETC) most popular offerings

I'll leave you to explore the remaining 15 DE facts from the website. Each of the so-called facts has a brief explanation along with a hyperlink which takes you to further information, including a link to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The United States Distance Learning Association website states, 'The purpose of National Distance Learning Week is to generate greater awareness and appreciation for distance learning, including K-12, Higher Education, Corporate and Military, while recognizing leaders and best practices in the field'. There is also a link to a series of webinars over the course of the week to discuss different topics related to distance learning.

The idea of a week devoted to distance learning is an interesting concept but I'm not sure how well it would be received by the current government in New Zealand with such a focus on retention and completion rates. Perhaps the Distance Education Association of New Zealand (DEANZ) could try to initiate a similar celebration to help raise the profile of the social, cultural, economic and environmental benefits of distance learning to society at large. I might raise the idea at the next Executive Committee meeting...

A special issue of the Journal of Computing in Higher Education was recently published on the topic of Distance Education. The issue contains a number of interesting papers, including a reasonably comprehensive review of the distance education literature (Simonson, Schlosser and Orellana, 2011). In short, the review piece concludes with the 'statement that it is not different education, it is distance education; what is known about effectiveness in education is most often also applicable to distance education' (p.124).

Although I found the review was quite descriptive, it reports findings from most of the major studies in recent years and was useful in reminding me of work that I had largely forgotten. For example, the review summarizes Berge and Muilenburg's (2000) study of potential barriers to distance education in which they identify as the strongest barriers in rank order:

1. Increased time commitment

2. Lack of money to implement distance education programs

3. Organizational resistance to change

4. Lack of shared vision for distance education in the organization

5. Lack of support staff to help course development

6. Lack of strategic planning for distance education

7. Slow pace of implementation

8. Faculty compensation/incentives

9. Difficulty keeping up with technological changes

10. Lack of technology-enhanced classrooms, labs, or infrastructure

The paper also reintroduced me to Tony Bates' 12 ‘‘golden rules’’ for the use of technology in education which still appear relevant and make good reading. That said, I think the rules would benefit from a contemporary update in light of the growth of new digital and social media. A brief summary of the rules follows:

1. Good teaching matters.

2. Each medium has its own aesthetic. Therefore professional design is important.

3. Education technologies are flexible. They have their own unique characteristics but successful teaching can be achieved with any technology.

4. There is no ‘‘super-technology.’’ Each has its strengths and weaknesses; therefore they need to be combined (an integrated mix).

5. Make all four media available to teachers and learners. Print, audio, television, and computers should all be available.

6. Balance variety with economy. Using many technologies makes design more complex and expensive; therefore, limit the range of technologies in a given circumstance.

7. Interaction is essential.

8. Student numbers are critical. The choice of a medium will depend greatly on the number of learners reached over the life of a course.

9. New technologies are not necessarily better than old ones.

10. Teachers need training to use technology effectively.

11. Teamwork is essential. No one person has all the skills to develop and deliver a distance learning course; therefore, subject-matter experts, instructional designers, and media specialists are essential on every team.

12. Technology is not the issue. How and what we want the learners to learn is the issue and technology is a tool.

I've always been a little uncomfortable with the 'technology as tool' metaphor a I believe this underestimates how technology effects people as much as people have an impact on the way technology is used. No technology is neutral. Overall the literature review comes to the following tentative conclusions:

• Distance education is just as effective as traditional education in regard to learner outcomes.

• Distance learners generally have a more favorable attitude toward distance education than do traditional learners, and distance learners feel they learn as
well as if they were in a regular classroom.

• Successful distance learners tend traditionally to be abstract learners who are intrinsically motivated and possess an internal locus of control.

• Although interaction seems intuitively important to the learning experience, interaction should not be added without real purpose.

• Focusing on building collaboration and group interaction may be more important than focusing on individual participation.

• Each form of distance education technology has it own advantages and disadvantages in contributing to the overall quality of the learning experience.

Reference

Simonson, M., Schlosser, C., & Orellana, A. (2011). Distance education research: a review of the literature. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 23:124–142.

For staff and students a full electronic copy of this article is available through the Massey University Library.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of leadership. On a similar theme this week I watched a video presented by Professor Geoff Scott prepared for the Massey University senior leadership team in which he talked about his research on leadership in higher education.

A key finding from the study of senior leaders in the Australian university sector is the importance of 'listening, linking and leading' - in this order. Although I read the full research report, Learning Leaders in Times of Change, a year or so ago, Geoff's presentation got me thinking about the leadership challenge in the context of professional development in the area of online, blended and distance education.

In my own work, three key words standout and inform my thinking about leadership in this area: (i) service, (ii) communication and (iii) impact. Put simply, I often remind myself of the importance of serving or leading with impact in a manner that keeps everyone aware and informed of the end goals that we are trying to achieve. The latter point underscores the importance of communication that builds a sense of purpose (vision) and collective ownership which in my experience is crucial to any successful and sustainable initiative.

You could say these three key words form my mantra for leadership, with a strong emphasis on impact. After all, there is no sensible reason to dedicate hours to an initiative or innovation which is unlikely to have significant impact... what's the point!

It also follows that people are central to effective leadership as it is almost impossible to make an impact in a large project or organization by working on your own. Thus, teamwork is vital along with leadership through influence and networking rather than through direct management.

But putting all the leadership ingredients together to achieve tangible outcomes is no easy matter, as evidenced by the challenges in the area of academic development. The history of academic and professional development in higher education has been problematic for many years. On a regular basis senior managers question the value of academic development, and academic developers--people employed to support academics to enhance the quality of teaching and learning--usually struggle to report clear outcomes as a result of their time and effort.

However, in the current higher education environment it is essential that central service units such as centres for academic development are able to demonstrate their return on investment, including both tangible and non-tangible benefits. The days of assuming benefits automatically follow from the work of a team of academic developers are long gone. And rightly so! The old excuse or argument that evidence of impact is near impossible to demonstrate simply does not hold up in the age of performance management.

Having said that, identifying the most appropriate performance measures of impact is crucial as I am mindful of Einstein's warning that "Not everything that can be counted counts, not everything that counts can be counted".

To address this leadership challenge the Council of Australian Directors of Academic Development (CADAD) recently supported a project to develop a set of benchmarks for academic development centres. CADAD report that they undertook this project for two interconnected reasons.

First, academic development (or the expectations of what it should involve) is changing as universities respond to more competitive higher education environments. Second, institutional performance in learning and teaching is now more important to university reputations and is subject to performance funding. Thus, the performance of academic development units has become increasingly under the spotlight.

The project identified eight key domains of practice for academic development units that could be used to benchmark performance. Each domain is divided into several sub-domains.

Domain 1: Strategy Policy and Governance

1.1 Strategic advice
1.2 Strategic planning
1.3 Governance
1.4 Policy Development and implementation
1.5 Strategic initiatives

Domain 2: Quality of Learning and Teaching

2.1 Standards
2.2 Evaluation and improvement
2.2.1 Student feedback
2.2.2 Peer review
2.2.3 Curriculum review

Domain 3: Scholarship of Learning and Teaching

3.1 Grants and Awards
3.2 Significant projects and research into learning and teaching
3.3 Research into Academic Development

Domain 4: Professional Development

4.1 Planning
4.2 Management
4.3 Delivery

Domain 5: Credit-bearing Programs in Higher Education

5.1 Program and Course Design
5.2 Management
5.3 Delivery

Domain 6: Curriculum Development

6.1 Curriculum planning and Design
6.2 Education resource Development

Domain 7: Engagement

7.1 internal engagement
7.2 external engagement

Domain 8: Effectiveness

8.1 Mission and strategy Alignment
8.2 Leadership and management
8.3 Impact
8.4 Quality Assurance and improvement

Each of these domains and sub-domains is assessed on a five point scale as described below:

1. Beginning / Developing
3. Functional / Proficient
5. Accomplished / Exemplary

The benchmarks have been developed to support both self-assessment and benchmarking with partners. They come with a set of templates to support the benchmarking exercise.

Although the benchmarks are light in terms of identifying the explicit theories which inform practice, professional development, decision-making and performance reporting, they provide a useful framework for developing a whole of institution approach to listening, linking and leading in this area. With a stronger theoretical or philosophical statement supporting the nature of academic development, they should help leaders and micro leaders within these centres to understand the strategic potential of professional development, and to evaluate and enhance academic development unit performance regardless of the design and delivery model.

That said, the relationship between the benchmarks and previous benchmarks developed for professional development in online, blended and distance education (e.g., ACODE Benchmarks) is unclear and there is potential to merge or weave some of these elements into the proposed overarching set of benchmarks for academic development centres. But this is a job for another day.

This is just a quick placeholder to alert readers to this interview arranged by Capella University with Professor Tony Bates and Dr Michael Simonson on the history of distance education. The predictions for the future at the end of the interview are particularly interesting and I'm still reflecting on the half-full and half-empty scenarios described by the interviewees. Another valuable aspect of the interview is the way in which Adobe Presenter is used in a far more engaging way than merely dumping content at the audience. Futher comments about the interview are available on Tony's website which I regularly keep up to date with.

enjoy!

Earlier in the year I gave a conference presentation that asked the question: What are the social, cultural, health and economic benefits of distance education to the nation?

Degrees of Value is a new report out of the United Kingdom which attempts to calculate the benefits of universities to society beyond individual financial returns to students and human capital gains for the economy. In particular, the report focuses on three main benefits:

• Societal benefits from individual social outcomes
• Facilitating social mobility, and
• Public outreach and access to cultural resources

Picking up on the last point, unless I missed, it the report does not comment on the new open scholarship movement which arguably will extend the public outreach even further. Nevertheless, the report adds useful numbers to the many personal narratives that exist on the benefits of higher education. One of the key conclusions is that universities need to become more vocal about the public value they deliver to society. This point is particularly relevant at a time when university funding is being reduced and higher education is being positioned as a burden to society rather than an investment in the long-term future of humanity and the planet.

Unfortunately the report does not disaggregate the benefits of study by delivery mode as this would be useful in terms of current concerns in New Zealand, and elsewhere, over retention rates and the return on investment of mature learners studying through distance education. Nevertheless, when combined with the findings of the 2010 New Zealand report on Social and Economic Indicators of Education and the 2010 Education Pays analysis produced in the United States by the College Board, the message is quite clear. As the latter report concludes:

“The evidence is overwhelming that higher education improves people’s lives, makes our economy more efficient, and contributes to a more equitable society. The existing gaps in participation and success are detrimental not only to individual lives, but also to society as a whole. Different paths are appropriate for different individuals, and our challenge is to make the most promising paths readily available to students from all backgrounds. We will all be better off if we continue to make progress in this direction” (Education Pays, 2010, p.9).