Archive for May, 2010

Semi-random notes. Not fully baked…

If we all want something better than what we have/had for our children, this is akin to unrestricted growth. At some point, we need to plateau (or descend again, as population continues to increase…) – 1% higher ed enrolment in the US in the 1800s, up to nearly everyone attending some form of higher ed now…

“Professionalization” of occupations – formation of boards and bureaucracies to determine who is “qualified” to practice an occupation – may be a nice segue from straight institution-granted accreditation. Guilds? Apprenticeships? How do these concepts adapt from the trades to more “white collar” academic subjects?

The way she describes the history of higher education institutions in the US (and, I’m assuming, in other Western countries) sounds an awful lot like a real estate bubble. Speculators grab some land, hype it, sell it, then need to find more land and hype (manipulate media to artificially foster need…) that even more to keep buyers coming. Repeat until mortgage crisis…

IS (subsidized) access to higher education a right? (says the guy in the middle of a subsidized graduate degree program…) I need to unpack this a bit. I totally see the value of higher ed, but is it a right? We can agree that K12 education is a right. If access to higher ed. is a right, then we need to find/make a way to get to 100% enrolment and 100% graduation. If it’s not, then we need to figure out what the real need is, and adjust our resources and demands accordingly.

“Too often they scaled up by watering down, depending increasingly on large lecture courses and part-time instructors.“ - this is the reality of modern universities as well. BUT, how would this look in a DIY model? Scaling classes up to what we’ve seen in Massively Open Courses – with hundreds or thousands of participants – could water things down even further. Or reverse the process? Would universal access to whatever becomes of education fix the dumbing-down?

If the problem with “lowering the bar” to admission (by state universities and community colleges as part of the Massive Expansion of Higher Education), how will this look in a DIY model where there may be no bars at all? With no barriers to entry, we obviously need to rethink how to frame an “education” in a way that we all understand. Is it just “I read a bunch of websites, and did some stuff, and then earned some form of accreditation” or is it something else?

Gatekeeping serves an important role when resources are limited. It also serves to raise the perceived reputation of an institution. With no gatekeeping, what happens? Everybody gets a Harvard education? It then becomes meaningless. Similarly for higher ed. in general. If everyone has degrees and diplomas, will we need to create some new higher goal for elite academic performers? Super degrees?

Students as resigned pragmatists? Not sure I see that, but if so, how does this affect things? Shifting to DIY-U would need some pretty radicalized students, balanced with pragmatism. How to foster that?

Education as a means to get power – power is only effective when there is a differential or gradient. When you have more than others. What happens if we blow up the institutions and shift to DIY-U? Are the gradients and differentials removed? I doubt it. But, how are they reconstructed?

Quick notes on the introduction to Anya Kamenetz’s DIY-U. I’ll post more as I work through it.

I met Anya at Open Education 2009, while she was researching the book, and I’m curious to see where she took the stuff she was asking attendees about.

I’m reading the book through Kindle for iPhone, so I have no idea what page these notes apply to. YMMV. Also, the Kindle for Mac app is a steaming pile of donkey turd. I’ll be holding off buying any more ebooks until I see what the iBooks thing looks like. I’m guessing it will suck much, much less than what I’ve seen of Kindle so far…

On the rising number of people seeking out higher education: The reason education raises people in socioeconomic status is that it places them above the average (or at least at a competitive advantage) compared to their peers. If everyone gets education, it loses its effect. What next? Quality of education? Will a new elite show their wealth by choosing NOT to be educated?

The introduction is very US-centric data on policy and cost. I’d love to see comparisons to other countries. Canada? England? India? South Africa?

On moving online to reduce costs: At my institution, online courses cost up to 4x what a f2f course does, to get around provincial tuition regulations. Just pushing stuff online doesn’t necessarily make it cheaper (even if it could be argued that it costs less – that might not be necessarily true, either).

On the estimated 63 million people who have accessed (“raided this trove”) MIT OCW as of 2009: Define “raided” – does it include “followed a google query result to a page on a course” or is it “actively engaged in the course” ?

On distributed, P2P universities etc…: Great. What about accreditation? Are potential employers going to grok DIY U?

On the “modern day multiversity” with research/teaching/vocational/technical/sports/social stuff: This is a strength. This is why Education is important – the serendipitous connections etc. that are possible – even mandated – by this model. NO! Separation for the sake of separation (or, worse, simply to save money) is BAD!

On learner centricity via technological magic: This proposed shift to learner centred education does not require technology. Learner centricity is a philosophy, not a technology.

On “The Great Unbundling”: Boiling education down to the equivalent of an MCSE? really? Who does this benefit? How can we make sense of such a structure (or lack thereof).

On “Techno-hybridization”: It’s called Blended Learning. Don’t make up new words to mystify it.

On education as a conservative enterprise to pass on stuff from previous generations: Not necessarily. Education is not about content dissemination. It is about personal development and skill building. Neither requires anything from a prior generation.

On federal/state incentives for online/open/networked education: Networks cross borders. How to deal with multinational contexts?