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.

The results of a key barometer of online learning in the United States were recently published based on the responses of over 2,500 academic leaders. The 2011 Survey of Online Learning reveals that the number of students taking at least one online course has now surpassed 6 million. Now nearly one-third of all students in higher education in the US are taking at least one online course. Key findings include:

• 31% of higher education students now take at least one course online

• The 10% growth rate for online enrollments far exceeds the 2% growth in the overall higher education student population

• Academic leaders believe that the level of student satisfaction is equivalent for online and face-to-face courses.

• 65% of higher education institutions now say that online learning is a critical part of their long-term strategy.

While the authors report growth rates have declined somewhat from previous years, they "see no evidence that a dramatic slowdown in online enrollments is on the horizon." That said, it is noteworthy that the year-to-year change for the question about long-term strategy was greatest among the for-profit institutions, which increased from 51% agreeing in 2009 to 69% in 2011.

What the survey doesn't discuss is the move by the Federal Government to force online and distance providers to comply with local accreditation requirements for each State in which courses are offered. This change is widely reported as an attempt to address concerns about retention and quality amongst the for-profits and student abuse of the federal loans scheme.

Of particular interest in the report is that less than one-third of chief academic officers believe that their faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online education. This percent has changed little over the last eight years. It begs the question:

• How much progress has really been made in linking online learning to contemporary forms of pedagogy?

In this respect the survey avoids the tough and deeper question of whether the growth in online learning is actually reinforcing rather than challenging the traditional 'dump, dump, pump' model of higher education. Should we be concerned that while student uptake is increasing faculty have yet to be convinced of the benefits, especially in traditional institutions? In this respect the survey notes that "the proportion of chief academic officers that report their faculty accept online education varies widely by type of school."

This last observation raises a serious question of whether online learning can really go the full distance. Arguably, the real test of online learning going the distance is when it becomes central to the mission of ivory league institutions; and by this comment I don't mean simply putting lecture notes online. After all the case of the MIT Open Courseware initiative can be read as a statement in other providers that online learning has no value. A real education still occurs on-campus! Of course not everyone has this luxury and it would be good to see future surveys explore who is studying online and why.

The title of this blog entry is borrowed from the sustainability literature and more specifically the opening remarks made by Joel Mackower during Compostmodern '08. Mackower's comparison between sex and sustainability initiatives was presented at the outset of a seminar today on inter-disciplinary initiatives in this area at Michigan State University.

The comparison got me thinking about whether the original quote could be adapted to apply equally to the concept of blended learning. What do you think? Here is the adapted quote:

"Blended learning is like teenage sex. Everybody says they're doing it but no one really is. And those who are doing it aren't doing it very well."

There are some interesting similarities. Some people argue that blended learning is nothing new and people have been doing it for a long time. On the other hand, I would argue that blended learning is still a poorly defined concept and the literature is immature. How do you know that you're doing it when there are different meanings and understandings of what it actually involves. And of course even if lots of people are doing it there is a reasonable chance of disappointment. Arguably, perfecting the art of blended learning requires a lot of experience, a skilled teacher and it does help if you have the right equipment.

I'll stop on this note before totally risking my reputation for serious academic critique. Nevertheless, feel free to extend the comparison in your own thinking as I'm sure other people can be far more creative than me. At very least the teenage sex analogy is likely to grab attention and generate interesting debate. Enough said!

To raise the quality of the conversation, I would also like to alert readers to Graham's (2011) recent critique of the Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) Framework in the journal Computers & Education. This Framework has become popular around the world in the context of technology-enhanced learning and the paper makes a valuable contribution to the literature by critically reviewing TPACK against criteria for theory building. Graham concludes that 'considerable theoretical work still needs to be done if TPACK research is to cohere and constructively strengthen the field of educational technology' (p.1953).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thearches/5181406425/sizes/m/in/photostream/

I encourage you to read the full paper as it reminds us of the dangers of embracing popular educational concepts, theories and perspectives (including blended learning) without adequate critique and debate. Hopefully these comments in a small way will contribute to deeper conversations of whether blended learning is really a disruptive influence to traditional forms of pedagogy. Time to stop as I sense another comparison with teenage sex coming...

Reference

Graham, C. (2011). Theoretical considerations for understanding technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK). Computers & Education 57 (3), 1953–1960

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.

In the face of today's digital and networked world, arguably, the default response of most traditional universities and tertiary providers has been to 'tame' rather than 'exploit' the potential of new technology and related social media. I added the word 'arguably' because in the United States the provision of fully online delivered courses continues to grow at an unprecedented rate, with an estimated 21% increase in online enrolments from 2009 to 2010 (Allen & Seaman, 2010).

Despite this growth there remains a question over quality; and one of the great challenges facing traditional tertiary providers is to understand how to successfully use new digital technology and social media to enhance formal learning in ways that are both effective and efficient. A focus on efficiency in addition to effectiveness is important as Martin Weller (2011) illustrates how the pedagogy of abundance is challenging traditional production and distribution models. Indeed, basic assumptions about the economics of education, especially distance learning, are being turned on their head as content is no longer a scarce resource. In my experience, most institutions have yet to understand the significance of this change and/or are still grappling to figure out what it all means for their future.

In the meantime, the Internet, social media and new virtual networks continue to fundamentally change the way in which people learn informally. Whether the gap between formal and informal ways of learning and open and closed content will narrow over the next few years is one of the big unanswered questions facing tertiary education. What the following video shows is that regardless of different and competing future scenarios, no institution can ignore the pace and scale of the changes taking place in today's digital and networked world.

Tony Bates has written several books over his long career on the costs of using new technologies in education. In the past I have shared some of his findings in debates on the relative merits of specific technologies and in discussions around the use and real costs of video conferencing in comparison to asynchronous options.

A recent blog posting grabbed my attention when Tony claimed that the cost of online learning works out to be $12.50 an hour. In many respects this figure is far less important than the principle underpinning it that there is a cost associated with teaching, as in my experience too often educators fail to acknowledge this point. And of course the intensification of academic work is well documented, so ignoring the problem or dismissing this line of research won't help to find creative ways of reducing the increasing demands being placed on teachers.

Whether the actual cost is $12.50 per hour I think really does depend on the institutional context, but the blog posting offers a useful starter methodology for thinking more seriously about the actual as well as opportunity costs of investing in online and blended forms of delivery for the return on investment. Of course it needs to be said that such calculations must also be done for the real costs of more conventional forms of teaching - for both staff and students.

Postscript

This follow up blog posting by Tony might also be of interest with a link to an article on the costs of distance education in Indonesia. And this monographic on the economics of elearning may also be relevant to this line of discussion.