Dear Commons Community,

Our colleagues Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman have just released their latest national survey of chief academic officers and their opinions on the extent and nature of online learning in their institutions.  Very interesting are new questions asked this year regarding MOOCs.  Below is the Executive Summary and the URL for a free download.

Changing Course: Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States

(Wellesley, MA) – The 2012 Survey of Online Learning conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group reveals the number of students taking at least one online course has now surpassed 6.7 million.  Higher education adoption of Massive Open Online Courses remains low, with most institutions still on the sidelines.

“The rate of growth in online enrollments remains extremely robust, even as overall higher education enrollments have shown a decline,” said study co-author Jeff Seaman, Co-Director of the Babson Survey Research Group. “Institutional opinions on MOOCs are mixed,” added co-author I. Elaine Allen.  “Some praise them for their ability to learn about online pedagogy and attract new students, but concerns remain about whether they are a sustainable method for offering courses.”

Todd Hitchcock, Senior Vice President of Online Solutions, Pearson Learning Solutions, stated, “Learning is no longer limited to four walls – learning can happen anywhere – and it already is happening everywhere, everyday. The growth of online learning underscores this need for quality, flexible education programs that meet the demands of our 21st-century workforce.”

Frank Mayadas, Senior Advisor to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and founding President of the Sloan Consortium noted “As in past years, the survey demonstrates the continuing robust growth in a wide range of institutions.  It underscores the importance of online learning in higher education in the U.S. What a remarkable ten year period the survey has captured.”

Key report findings include:

• Over 6.7 million students were taking at least one online course during the fall 2011 term, an increase of 570,000 students over the previous year.
• Thirty-two percent of higher education students now take at least one course online.
• Only 2.6 percent of higher education institutions currently have a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), another 9.4 percent report MOOCs are in the planning stages.
• Academic leaders remain unconvinced that MOOCs represent a sustainable method for offering online courses, but do believe they provide an important means for institutions to learn about online pedagogy.
• Seventy-seven percent of academic leaders rate the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those in face-to-face classes.
• The proportion of chief academic officers who believe their faculty accept the value and legitimacy of online education has not increased – it now stands at only 30.2 percent.
• The proportion of chief academic leaders who say online learning is critical to their long-term strategy is at a new high of 69.1 percent.
• The perception of a majority of chief academic officers at all types of institutions is lower retention rates for online courses remain a barrier to the growth of online instruction.

The tenth annual survey, a collaborative effort between the Babson Survey Research Group and the College Board, is the leading barometer of online learning in the United States.   Based on responses from over 2,800 academic leaders, the complete survey report, “Changing Course:  Ten Years of Tracking Online Education in the United States” is available at
http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/changing_course_2012

Previously underwritten by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the report has been able to remain independent through the generous support of Pearson and the Sloan Consortium.

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past few days, the media has been abuzz with the pending nomination of Chuck Hagel, former senator and Vietnam veteran, for the position of Secretary of Defense.  Much of the discussion has been about the fact that he will be a Republican in President Obama’s administration.  Many of his Republican colleagues in the Senate are expected not to support his nomination mainly because he spoke against the Iran War and President George W. Bush’s policies while a senator.  David Brooks looks at his nomination and predicts that it is part of President Obama’s plan to make significant budget cuts.  As Brooks says:

“If a Democratic president is going to slash defense, he probably wants a Republican at the Pentagon to give him political cover, and he probably wants a decorated war hero to boot.

… The real question is, how will he begin this long cutting process? How will he balance modernizing the military and paying current personnel? How will he recalibrate American defense strategy with, say, 455,000 fewer service members?”

In addition, Brook also provides insights into the budgetary realities for the need to cut entitlement programs especially health care which he says will be most difficult because:

“Americans don’t particularly like government, but they do want government to subsidize their health care. They believe that health care spending improves their lives more than any other public good. In a Quinnipiac poll, typical of many others, Americans opposed any cuts to Medicare by a margin of 70 percent to 25 percent.

In a democracy, voters get what they want, so the line tracing federal health care spending looks like the slope of a jet taking off from LaGuardia. Medicare spending is set to nearly double over the next decade. This is the crucial element driving all federal spending over the next few decades and pushing federal debt to about 250 percent of G.D.P. in 30 years.

…As a result, health care spending, which people really appreciate, is squeezing out all other spending, which they value far less. Spending on domestic programs — for education, science, infrastructure and poverty relief — has already faced the squeeze and will take a huge hit in the years ahead. President Obama excoriated Paul Ryan for offering a budget that would cut spending on domestic programs from its historical norm of 3 or 4 percent of G.D.P. all the way back to 1.8 percent. But the Obama budget is the Ryan budget. According to the Office of Management and Budget, Obama will cut domestic discretionary spending back to 1.8 percent of G.D.P. in six years.”

Difficult times!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michelle Rhee’s lobbying group StudentsFirst has issued its first report ranking the  states based on how closely they follow the group’s platform, looking at policies related not only to tenure and evaluations but also to pensions and the governance of school districts. The group uses the classic academic grading system, awarding states A to F ratings.

With no states receiving an A, two states received B-minuses and 12 states were branded with an F.  The two highest-ranking states, Florida and Louisiana, received B-minus ratings. The states that were given F’s included Alabama, California, Iowa and New Hampshire. New Jersey and New York received D grades, and Connecticut a D-plus.

Other than some of the teacher bashing corporate foundation donors and FoxNews, it is not likely that this report will receive serious consideration.   Last week, it was reported that Democrats had all but abandoned her lobbying group. The New York Times reported this morning that:

Richard Zeiger, California’s chief deputy superintendent, called the state’s F rating a “badge of honor.” “This is an organization that frankly makes its living by asserting that schools are failing,” Mr. Zeiger said of StudentsFirst. “I would have been surprised if we had got anything else.”

In my opinion, StudentsFirst has one purpose and that is the greater glory of Michelle Rhee.  It should be renamed RheeFirst.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Michael Bloomberg has accomplished a great deal during his tenure as mayor:  the city is a safer place to live and work, his advocacy for gun safety  is admirable, business is welcome, employment opportunities are decent and better than many other parts of the country.  However, his dealing with the New York City school system and especially his relationship with the teachers union leaves a lot to be desired.  He and his former schools chancellor, Joel Klein, developed this adversarial relationship that can only be described as a “toxic environment” where cooperation and consensus building is frequently impossible.  His latest salvo came a couple of days ago when he compared the leadership of the UFT to the National Rifle Association during  negotiations for a new teacher evaluation system.   This was not the first time Mr. Bloomberg had invoked the National Rifle Association when registering his frustration with the city teachers’ union and others. He voiced similar opinions at a news conference in 2007.  The New York Times reported that during his weekly radio show on Friday:

“The mayor had embarked on a lengthy stream of consciousness on the need to negotiate a new teacher evaluation plan with the United Federation of Teachers. Toward the end, Mr. Bloomberg, almost as an aside, likened the teachers’ union to groups like the National Rifle Association and others in which he said a few leaders were out of sync with large numbers of rank-and-file members.

“It’s typical of Congress, it’s typical of unions, it’s typical of companies, I guess, where a small group is really carrying the ball and the others aren’t necessarily in agreement,” Mr. Bloomberg said to the program host, John Gambling. “The N.R.A. is another place where the membership, if you do the polling, doesn’t agree with the leadership.”

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers and the former president of its New York City affiliate, wrote a letter to the mayor, noting that two of the adults killed in Connecticut were members of her union. She said that despite Mr. Bloomberg’s “great work” on gun safety, he owed the city teachers and its union leaders an apology “for making such incendiary and insensitive remarks — especially coming on the heels of the tragedy in Newtown.”

The UFT was scheduled to hold a news conference today to underscore its outrage and to demand that the mayor apologize.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has a featured article on the profitability of MOOCs.  It starts with references  to Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng who started the online education company Coursera.

“The co-founders, computer science professors at Stanford University, watched with amazement as enrollment passed two million last month, with 70,000 new students a week signing up for over 200 courses, including Human-Computer Interaction, Songwriting and Gamification, taught by faculty members at the company’s partners, 33 elite universities.

In less than a year, Coursera has attracted $22 million in venture capital and has created so much buzz that some universities sound a bit defensive about not leaping onto the bandwagon.

Other approaches to online courses are emerging as well. Universities nationwide are increasing their online offerings, hoping to attract students around the world. New ventures like Udemy help individual professors put their courses online. Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have each provided $30 million to create edX. Another Stanford spinoff, Udacity, has attracted more than a million students to its menu of massive open online courses, or MOOCs, along with $15 million in financing.”

All of this should bode well for MOOCs except no one has figured out how to make profit. One pessimistic analysis was provided by James Grimmelmann, a New York Law School professor who specializes in computer and Internet law.

“No one’s got the model that’s going to work yet.  I expect all the current ventures to fail, because the expectations are too high. People think something will catch on like wildfire. But more likely, it’s maybe a decade later that somebody figures out how to do it and make money.”

On the optimistic side, the article describes possibilities for charging students modest entrance fees, for licensing courses to colleges and universities and for charging fees for transferring MOOC credits to traditional college programs.  One conclusion was that:

“…educators predict that the bulk of MOOC revenues will come from licensing remedial courses and “gateway” introductory courses in subjects like economics or statistics, two categories of classes that enroll hundreds of thousands of students a year. Even though less than 10 percent of MOOC students finish the courses they sign up for on their own, many experts believe that combining MOOC materials with support from a faculty member or a teaching assistant could increase completion rates.”

I am skeptical about the last point mainly because with the open source movement well on the way, there is a good deal of material freely available for the asking.  Why pay for it?   Also faculty and instructional designers in many colleges are developing their own online support materials that might not be as glitzy as Coursera’s but will be preferred because they are customized to the instructor’s teaching style and learning goals.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In April 2012, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo convened the New NY Education Reform Commission. Through the Commission, the Governor brought together leaders from across the state and from diverse perspectives. They focused on a shared objective:

“developing an actionable course of reforms – based on proven models of success from within New York as well as other states and nations – that will provide the level of educational excellence that all New York’s school children deserve, that our State’s future economy demands, and that our taxpayers can afford.”

The Commission was tasked with performing a comprehensive review of the structure, operation, and processes of New York State’s education system. The Commission sought to develop long-term e”ciencies that will bring about both improved student achievement and greater cost-effectiveness in our education system. Comprising 25 expert members, the Commission held 11 public hearings throughout every region of New York, and received  and reviewed thousands of pages of testimony. Members heard from over 300 students, parents, educators, community and faith-based leaders, business and labor leaders, and experts from across the country about what is working and what needs to be improved to increase student achievement and lead to success both in school and in the workforce.

Its first preliminary report was released earlier this week.  It called for a number of changes in teacher and principal preparation, school financing, school district reorganization, extending the school-day,  full-day kindergarten, more technology, bridging high school and college, etc.

Most of the recommendations are not new.  Some are politically charged such as school district reorganization and school financing.  Others will take significant new resources.  The recommendations for teacher education programs  will surely have CUNY, SUNY and private college deans of education thinking.  For instance,  the recommendation for a bar-exam-style test for teachers has the support of Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who also was a member of the commission.

We will have to wait and see what Governor Cuomo and the New York Legislature will do with this report.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post is reporting that top Democratic party officials are abandoning Michelle Rhee’s StudentsFirst lobbying organization.  Michelle Rhee, the former Washington, D.C. school chancellor, has danced a tricky tango since starting her national advocacy and lobbying group, StudentsFirst, in December 2010.

“Rhee purported to be the face of a bipartisan movement to “transform education,” while simultaneously battling Democratic teachers unions and appearing chummy in photo ops with conservative Republican governors like Rick Scott (Fla.) or John Kasich (Ohio).

All the while, a small cadre of influential Democrats stood behind her, helping her craft messages on things like her positions on unions (that they are entitled to collective bargaining on salary issues), and trying to fend off attacks from the progressive community (one in particular thwacked her explicitly for her right-wing contacts). But in the last few months, these Democrats — including the group’s vice president of communications, Hari Sevugan, as first reported by education blogger Alexander Russo — have left the group, ceding control to a group of new hires, including president Kahlil Byrd.”

Let’s face it, Michelle Rhee was a not a very effective superintendent.  Her style created a toxic environment for teachers and school level administrators.  Her policies resulted in modest if any improvements in student learning.  During her tenure, the Washington D.C. school system was also criticized for high erasure rates to boost standardized test scores.  She is basically using StudentsFirst as a way to cash in on the notoriety she received mostly from the political right.  Her platform of reform is completely anti-teacher, anti-union, and pro-charter schools  It is most appropriate for the Democrats to abandon her and StudentsFirst which should more appropriately be named RheeFirst,

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post just reported that the House of Representatives passed $9.7 billion in aid for Hurricane Sandy victims by a 354-67 vote.  All the no votes came from Republicans. The Senate is expected to pass the measure later today and send it to President Barack Obama for his signature.  The remaining $50.3 billion of the original $60 billion aid bill will be debated and brought to a vote later this month.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I just finished reading David Nasaw’s The Patriarch:  The Remarkable and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.  David has deservedly received accolades for this work from the New York Times and other publications.  David gets well into “the weeds” as one reviewer stated in this excellent piece of biography and history.

It provides important background and meaning for those of us baby boomers who remember John F. Kennedy’s presidency and assassination.  I learned for instance, that aside from vacations at Hyannis on Cape Cod, the Kennedy family did not spend much time in Massachusetts and for a good deal of the 1930s and 1940s lived in New York and Bronxville.  The positions of appeasement and pacifism that Joe Kennedy had prior to and during World War II as ambassador to the United Kingdom are enlightening.  Although they had nine children, the relationship between Joe Kennedy and his wife Rose, allowed each to pretty much go their separate ways.  The details of daughter Rosemary’s illness and botched operation are heartfelt.  I also enjoyed the chapters on John F. Kennedy’s political rise to the presidency.  They are an excellent complement to Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power, that has material that covers the same ground but from another perspective.

I could go on but you get the drift.  A great read!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, members of the new U.S. Congress were sworn in during ceremonies in the nation’s Capitol.    Of the nearly 2,000 senators in the history of Congress, only 44 have been female. The first woman (Rebecca Felton – Georgia) in the Senate served for only 24 hours in November of 1922, and no woman was elected to the body until a decade later, when Hattie Caraway was chosen by Arkansas voters. Now, there are 20 women senators in the 113th Congress. Ten of those women were sworn in yesterday, four of them for the first time.  The four new women senators (Elizabeth Warren – Massachusetts; Deb Fischer – Nebraska; Heidi Heitkamp – North Dakota; and Tammy Baldwin – Wisconsin) are all Democrats.  Tammy Baldwin also has the distinction of being the first openly-gay senator. After she was sworn in for her second term, Senator Claire McCaskill (Missouri) said women were making progress in the Senate. “I don’t think we should be satisfied until we have the same number of women in the Senate that represent the percentage of the population that are women, so we still have a long way to go,” she said.

Tony