Monday, October 29, 2012

Daily Randomly Sporto 10/30/2012

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

CFHE12: Drivers of change

In the heels of the iron triangle discussion, the issue of assessment and credentials was raised. Very good one by the way. That took me back again to Daniel's discussion of separation between institutions that do assessment and certifications and those that conduct the actual teaching...


Hi Beth - 
I don't think the iron triangle captures every single aspect, but looking to major drivers, these seem as big ones. You raise the issue of credentials, and I definitely think this is a huge one, and Sir John Daniel is other papers, including his recent work on MOOCs brings to the forefront. For years now, he has advocated that assessement/certification/credentialing should be done separately from the teaching and learning. If that were to happen, students would have a plethora of venues to learn, both formal and informal, different ways of assessing mastery and competencies would be in place. One could actually have the 'real' passport of learning, where the 'stamps' give you recognized credentials and one can move around. This is exactly the concept behind badges. In my view, all these movements will only create actual change in these connections are made. Not necessarily this needs to happen in a concerted way though...Sir John Daniel's paper can be found here through Tony Bates' wonderful blog post: 
http://www.tonybates.ca/2012/10/01/daniels-comprehensive-review-of-mooc-developments/ 
cheers,--Stella.

CFHE12: Higher-ed changers...

I have joined the CFHE12 MOOC created by Downes and conducted through D2L... I great chance to learn a bit aout D2L, which soon will be UMUC's new LMS, and also get to discuss the Future of Higher-Ed with some other educators around the world.

I'll use this blog, which I had left to die for years now ;-) as a way to track some of my thoughts. Maybe in doing so, I can revive this medium once again, and capture some of my ideas and reflections, which I still often have, but don't really share other than through my Diigo bookmarking mania (see link on the side of this blog).

For the first discussion, we were asked about the major drivers of change... Sir John Daniel pops right into my head. So, from October 8, here is my post...


As I read through all the articles about the changes in HE, Sir John Daniel speeches still ring true. The iron triangle still explains the forces of change and push-pull relationship in education in general, and HE, namely: the tight relationship between cost-quality-access. Daniel makes the point that technology has the potential of 'breaking the iron triangle' (sometimes called the eternal triangle). But, it still very much a complex issue to be solved. Technology will require appropriate practices and policies that ensure that high  quality can be achieved, with open access at a low cost. 
Here are some places where this concept is well defined: 
http://www.col.org/resources/speeches/2011presentation/Pages/2011-12-15a.aspxhttp://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/916/1739 
--Stella.