Dear Commons Community,

I am just back from  a week at the Sloan Consortium Conference in Florida.  It was quite an event for those of us interested in online learning.  Regardless there is a lot of news to catch up on.

First, the tragic story of the sexual abuse scandal at Penn State has reverberated around the country.  I was with Penn State colleagues at the Sloan Conference and they can’t believe how this could have happened and been kept secret for some many years.

Second, last night was yet another  Republican debate.   I thought John Huntsman had the best insight of any of the candidates especially his comments about bringing  American troops home now from Afghanistan.  He stated we cannot be engaged in nation building when our own country needs so much major attention to economic and education development.  On the other end of the spectrum, Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain proudly boasted that they would resume using  waterboarding

Third, Maureen Dowd has a column on the new J.Edgar Hoover movie starring Leonardo DeCaprio and directed by Clint Eastwood.  The title, Dirty Harry Meets Dirtier Edgar,  says it all.

Lastly, there is an article in the NY Times about a different type of Occupy Wall Street movement among an order of nuns, the Order of St. Francis of Philadelphia.  Essentially they use the investments in their retirement fund to become minimal stockholders in companies and then ask to meet with CEOs to present social issues.  A NY Times article describes their activism:

“The nuns have gone toe-to-toe with Kroger, the grocery store chain, over farm worker rights; with McDonald’s, over childhood obesity; and with Wells Fargo, over lending practices…We want social returns, as well as financial ones,” Sister Nora Nash said, strolling through the garden behind Our Lady of Angels, the convent here where she has worked for more than half a century. …. “When you look at the major financial institutions, you have to realize there is greed involved.”

Indeed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The number of students taking at least one online course in American colleges and universities grew substantially for the ninth straight year, according to a new survey from the Babson Survey Research Group.   However, “belief among academic deans and faculty that the quality of online education is at least as good as the face-to-face alternative continues to grow in grudgingly small increments” says the survey.

The new survey, conducted by my colleagues, Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, is the ninth iteration of an annual poll of academic administrators about online learning.

Online enrollments grew 10 percent, as the number of students taking at least one online course (“online” defined here as a course where most or all content exchanges and class meetings occur virtually) crept past six million. It was the smallest bump in enrollments since 2006, and less than half the growth online programs saw last year (21.1 percent).

Meanwhile, views on the quality of online education compared to traditional courses have shifted by only 10 percent over the last eight years. In 2003, the first year the Babson group and Sloan-C conducted the survey, 57 percent of academic leaders estimated that learning outcomes in online courses were equal or superior to those of face-to-face courses. This year, the figure was 67 percent.

These same academic leaders suggest that professors have also been slow to completely come around on online education. Since 2003, the proportion of respondents who agree that their faculty “fully accept” the “value and legitimacy of online education” has edged up from 30.4 percent to 32 percent.

A new feature of this year’s survey was a series of questions on open educational resources (OER).

The majority of respondents see OER as having the potential to reduce costs, however, it would be beneficial if there was a single OER clearinghouse.

Tony

Dear Commons Colleagues,

I had quite a busy day yesterday at the Sloan-C Conference on Online Learning.  It started with a plenary session by Cable Green, Director of Global Learning for the Creative Commons.  Cable is responsible for setting Creative Commons’ strategic direction and priorities to build on the global Open Educational Resources (OER) movement that will enable robust and vibrant practices and policies for free and open sharing of learning assets.  His talk centered on affordable computing, open licensing, open access journals and open educational resources and specifically the need to educate policy makers about the obviousness of open policy.

I was a member of two panels.  The first was Students at Risk: The Shifting Roles of Public Higher Education and For-Profit Colleges and Universities.  The theme of this panel centered on the debate about the success of American colleges and universities in meeting the needs of minority, low-income and “non-traditional” students seeking higher education opportunities. This panel specifically examined the role of public higher education vis-à-vis for-profit colleges and universities in serving these students

The second, Because We Can: The Era of Big Data examined that because of recent advancements in computing power, federation techniques and analytics tools, institutional research is being transformed from a hypothesis based to a data mining paradigm. This panel specifically focused on some of the emerging trends in analytics and how they are impacting education at numerous levels. The aim was to provide participants with perspectives on how contemporary and emerging trends can be used to inform practice, including multi-institutional research initiatives.

All was very enjoyable!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As mentioned earlier this week, I am at the Sloan Consortium’s Annual Online Learning Conference in Orlando Florida this week.  Yesterday myself and three colleagues visited the Florida Virtual School (FLVS).  FLVS was established in 1997 as its own school district to offer online and blended learning courses to mostly middle and high school students.  It employs more than 1,200 fully certified full-time teachers who have workloads of 150 students each which is about average for many high school  teachers assuming one was teaching 5 courses per semester.  The headcount enrollment is 122,000 students.

Each course is designed by teachers  and instructional designers and use common curriculum materials, assessments, etc.  It offers just about any course that could be offered in a middle or high school curriculum including electives such as Latin, Chinese, Advanced Placement courses, and even driver education.  Below are some “quick facts” about FLVS.

In sum, I was quite impressed with the operation.

Tony

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Florida Virtual School (FLVS) is an established leader in developing and providing virtual K-12 education solutions to students nationwide. A nationally recognized e-Learning model, FLVS was founded in 1997 was the country’s first state-wide Internet-based public high school. In 2000, the Florida Legislature established FLVS as an independent educational entity with a gubernatorial appointed board. FLVS is the only public school with funding tied directly to student performance.

Coverage Area – Worldwide

FLVS is part of the Florida public education system and serves students in all 67 Florida districts, 49 states, and 57 countries. FLVS also serves students, schools, and districts around the nation and world through tuition-based instruction, curriculum provision, and training.

Course Offerings

FLVS offers 110+ courses—including core subjects, world languages, electives, honors, and 15 Advanced Placement courses. FLVS courses are accepted for credit and are transferable. Florida Virtual School is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and courses are NCAA approved. FLVS also offers AP Exam reviews in April, even for students who did not take the course through FLVS.

Faculty

FLVS has over 1400 staff members who reside throughout Florida and beyond. All FLVS teachers possess a valid Florida teaching certificate and are certified specifically in the subject they teach. One hundred and twenty-five instructors are national board certified.

Student Enrollment

FLVS served over 122,000 students in 259,928 half-credit enrollments in the 2010-11 school year. Enrollment is open to public, private, and home school students. Students outside Florida enroll on a tuition basis.

Dear Commons Community,

Ishmael Reed, author of  Blues City: A Walk in Oakland, in a NY Times op-ed piece,  comments on the recent violence in the Occupy Oakland protest.   He comments on the mayor, Jean Quan, an Asian American and first female mayor of Oakland, the police, many of whom do not live in Oakland, and the protesters, many of whom are out-of-towners.  Reed describes the history of race relations between the police and large black and Latino populations as “The force’s viciousness, particularly against blacks and Latinos, is legendary.”

He asks:  “How did Asian-Americans respond to the sight of a diminutive Asian-American mayor being hooted off the stage by a largely white crowd at an Oct. 27 rally?” after apologizing for the police’s actions.

He concludes that:

“All of this has left Oakland’s blacks and Latinos in a difficult position. They rightly criticize the police, but they also criticize the other invading army, the whites from other cities, and even other states, whom they blame for the vandalism that tends to break out whenever there is a heated protest in town: from the riots after the murder of Oscar Grant by a transit police officer in 2009, to the violence of the last two weeks downtown and, most recently, near the port.”

Occupy Wall Street and its progeny in other cities is an important movement in this country but as Reed observes:  “it has risks” and has to be careful of alienating those who it is protesting for.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Angelina Delgado, a student at the Graduate Center, alerted me to an article about researchers in Britain announcing a 10-year, multimillion-dollar project to build a “new” computer.  If the project succeeds, the machine will have only a fraction of the power of today’s computers. It will work based on programming metal gears with a version of the Hollerith (aka IBM) punch card.

What it may do, though, is answer a question: Did an eccentric mathematician named Charles Babbage conceive of the first programmable computer in the 1830s.   Babbage designed his analytical engine but the technology was not available for him to build it in the 1800s.  The Babbage engine is also interesting because of his collaboration with Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace. The article mentions:

“Lovelace — daughter of the poet Lord Byron — recognized that the Analytical Engine could be a more generalized media machine, capable of making music and manipulating symbols. And 113 years before John McCarthy coined the term “artificial intelligence,” she considered — and then rejected — the notion that computers might exhibit creativity or even thought.

While Babbage was driven by the desire to automate tabular data for military and related applications, Lovelace wrote a lengthy commentary on the design that would prove deeply influential when it was rediscovered in the middle of the 20th century.

Lovelace is known as the first programmer, because she designed a program for the unbuilt machine. The algorithm appears in a series of notes written by Lovelace after a friend of Babbage asked her to translate an Italian professor’s write-up of a lecture Babbage had given at the University of Turin.”

For those of us who enrolled in basic “introduction to computers” course back in the 1960s/1970s, the Babbage and Lovelace story was required reading.

Great Idea and Cheerio Brits!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I will be in Orlando, Florida this entire week attending the Sloan Consortium’s International Conference on Online Learning and leave in a few minutes.  For those of you interested in the latest ideas in pedagogy, faculty development, student services, and technology in online and blended learning environments, this conference has a lot to offer.

Tony

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kqZdPbxfhA

Dear Commons Community,

The 1,300 foot long, Asteroid 2005 yu55, is due to fly by Earth this coming Tuesday.  While there is no threat of a collision, scientists are interested in this asteroid because it will be coming within the Earth’s orbit.  Actually it will pass between the Earth and the moon.

Here is a quick video with some explanation and its simulated path.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani says responsibility for the Occupy Wall Street movement rests squarely on the shoulders of President Obama.

Fox News reported that Guiliani said “This is a very dangerous movement, and it’s ironic it’s happening under a president who promised to unify us…Barack Obama owns the Occupy Wall Street movement, it would not have happened but for his class warfare.”

I don’t agree with the former mayor.  The Occupy Wall Street movement has been brewing for years and came to a head because of the awful economic situation that the country now finds itself.  Protesters are as upset at Washington (the president included) because it has been under the influence of and caters to the interests of corporate America.

On another note, some of what Guiliani said is hypocritical given that in 1992 when he was running for mayor of New York,  he was literally egging on police demonstrations and inciting protests at City Hall against Mayor David Dinkins.

Tony