Streaming Media and the Schools

 

Streaming Media and the Schools

For much of the past 70 years, broadcast television has been an important part of our daily lives.  After a hard day’s work, people would go home for the evening and sit down with their favorite television show.  The next morning at work, a show might be the topic of conversation with colleagues around the water cooler or coffee machine.   It helped to reinforce a sense of community.

            Public television first blossomed in this environment.  Most stations devoted their daytime schedule to “in-school” programs—instructional video programs that were designed for teachers to show in their classrooms on topics that ranged across the curriculum and grade levels.  Back in those days, I worked for WPSU (then WPSX), which offered a full-day schedule of instructional programs throughout the school year and produced instructional programs like What’s in the News, a public affairs program for middle-grade students, and Investigative Science for Elementary Education, which demonstrated physical phenomena for students to study.  The in-school service thrived for three decades, but waned when videocassettes made it possible for teachers to record programs and then show when it was most convenient for them and their students.  Soon after, DVDs allowed schools to create their own instructional video libraries.

            Another change was the rise of cable television in the 1970s.  Now, viewers had more channels to choose from, including channels that could only be viewed if one had a cable subscription.   MTV and CNN are two examples.  The increased number of channels meant that work colleagues were less likely to have had the same TV experience the night before. 

            Now, we are experiencing a new revolution in our viewing habits as TV channels replace their old broadcast schedules with streaming services.  CNN has reported that in July 2023, “linear TV” (i.e., broadcast or cablecast programs) “made up less than half of all TV viewing,” according to the TV polling company Nielsen.  Meanwhile, the report continues, “. . . streaming services, such as Netflix and YouTube, grew last month to a record high of 38.7% of all total TV watching.”   While some streamed series are still scheduled on a weekly basis, the fact that they are streamed means that, within that week, viewers may watch the program at any time.  In some cases, whole series are available, so that viewers can binge watch a 13-part series in a few days, rather than wait for 13 weeks for the story to end.

            Streaming has some interesting implications, though, for K-12 instructional uses.  In a streaming environment all students could view programs at the best time for them.  It also means that their parents have equal access to the programs and could help students learn from them.

As streaming becomes more accepted by teachers, parents, and students, we could, I hope, see a resurgence of instructional media in our schools and a new role for public television to help schools use television as an. Instructional tool. 

            While another innovation—artificial intelligence—is grabbing the headlines these days, we should not overlook the power of streaming media to enrich the educational environment.

Artificial Intelligence: The Next Phase of the Information Revolution

 

It has been only a year since ChatCPT brought artificial intelligence to the attention of the education community, opening a new phase of the Information Revolution for both K-12 and higher education.  This fall, the question administrators brought to classroom teachers at both levels wasy, “How are we going to handle it when students turn in essays written by AI?”  What is driving the increasingly intense interest in ChatCPT and Artificial Intelligence in general is how ChatCPT, as Wikipedia puts it, “enables users to refine and steer a conversation towards a desired length, format, style, level of detail, and language used.”  At both the high school and college levels, faculty become concerned that students will use ChatCPT to generate assignment papers.  eCampusNews, which has published a number of articles about AI in the classroom, carried an article by Dr. Steven Baule on September 5, 2023, with “6 tips to detect AI-generated student work.”  The six tips:

1. Look for typos. AI-generated text tends not to include typos, and such errors that make our writing human are often a sign that the submission was created by a human.

2. Lack of personal experiences or generalized examples are another potential sign of AI-generated writing. For instance, “My family went to the beach in the car” is more likely to be AI-generated than “Mom, Betty, and Rose went to the 3^rd Street beach to swim.”

3. AI-generated text is based upon looking for patterns in large samples of text. Therefore, more common words, such as the, it, and is are more likely to be represented in such documents. Similarly, common words and phrases are more likely to appear in AI-generated submissions.

4. Instructors should look for unusual or complete phrases that a student would not normally employ. A high school student speaking of a lacuna in his school records might be a sign the paper was AI-generated.

5. Inconsistent styles, tone, or tense changes may be a sign of AI-derived materials. Inaccurate citations are often common in AI-generated papers. The format is correct, but the author, title, and journal information were simply thrown together and do not represent an actual article. These and other such inaccurate information from a generative AI tool are sometimes called hallucinations.

6. Current generative AI tends to be based off training materials developed no later than 2021. So, text that references 2022 or more recent events, etc. is less likely to be AI-generated. Of course, this will continue to change as AI engines are improved.

Leon Furze noted in his blog that the rapid growth of AI in education has led to a “widespread fear” that it will be used by students for cheating.  However, he adds that “The truth is, we have little idea of the impact the technology will have on education. . . Some states are still deciding whether to ban the technology outright, while others try to grapple with the ethical and academic implications of permitting its use.”  Furze also noted that ChatGPT prohibits people under 18 years old to sign up for access.  “However,” he notes, “there are many ways teaches might use ChatGPT . . . and it is almost certain that many students will be using the technology.  This means that one of the biggest factors in education should be the discussion of the technology’s ethical and appropriate use.”

Interestingly, shortly after publishing Steven Baule’s “six tips” article, eCampus News posted “Coming Out of the AI Closet: A Scholar’s Embrace of ChatGPT-4,” a pro-AI statement by Dr. John Johnston.  Johnson argues that “ChatGPT-4 has ushered in a new era of brainstorming, structuring, and drafting academic papers. Understanding that this cannot be equated to outsourcing my work to AI is crucial. Instead, ChatGPT-4 acts as an enhancer for my innate critical thinking and creative prowess.

The previous week in eCampus News, Roger Hamilton had argued that “In the realm of higher education, this marriage of AI and learning is ushering in a new era that holds the potential to not only disseminate knowledge, but also cultivate the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.”   He added, “By acquainting learners with cutting-edge technologies like AR, VR, and the metaverse via innovative methodologies, this approach hones their ability to tackle challenges that may not even be conceivable in the present.”

This year we recognize the thirtieth anniversary of the Internet browser, a tool that has, over the past generation, revolutionized how we communicate, how we work together, how we build bridges across the old barriers of geography and time. It is not hard to imagine that AI will be of similar—if not greater—significance, as K-12 schools and universities together innovate to use this new tool to change how students use technology to find meaning in their areas of study and learn how to better communicate that meaning.   The rapid movement of AI into the mainstream is already creating disruption.  Laura Ascione reported in eCampus News on a Cengage Group survey of 1,000 degree graduates that “Half of graduates (46 percent) feel threatened by AI and question their workforce readiness (52 percent).”  The challenge facing both K-12 and higher education leaders is how to create a new approach to educational methods and content to prepare students to work in an environment that is just now taking shape but that will evolve rapidly over the coming years.  Like the Internet browser three decades ago, AI will stimulate some dramatic changes in how we educate citizens for the future.

A Lesson from Joseph Campbell: We Live In Nature, not On Nature

 

I am reading The Power of Myth, a collection of conversations that Bill Moyers had with Joseph Campbell, who once described mythology as “the song of the universe, the music of the spheres.”  The interviews were the focus of a six-part 1988 PBS television series; the interviews were also published as a book by Anchor Press in 1991.

In the first interview, Moyers asks, “Mother Earth.  Will new myths come from this image?”

Campbell’s answer sets the stage for us to think in new ways about our relationship to the world around us.  He says, “And the only myth that is going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one that is talking about the planet, not the city, not these people, but the planet, and everybody on it.  That’s my main thought for what the future myth is going to be. . . the society that its got to talk about is the society of the planet. And until that gets going, you don’t have anything.”

Campbell goes on to talk about Chief Seattle, quoting a version of a speech that this Northwest Native American leader supposedly gave upon learning that the federal government wanted to buy tribal lands to make way for immigrants in the 1850s.

“The President in Washington," he says, “sends word that he wishes to buy our land.  But how can you buy or sell the sky?  The land?  The idea is strange to us.  We do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?”

“We know the sap which courses through the trees,” he adds, “as we know the blood that courses through our veins.  We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters.  The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers.  The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family. . .  If we sell you our land, remember that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives his last sigh.”

“This we know,” he says, “The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.  Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand in it.  Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.”

These are the thoughts of a person who lives in nature and not—like some invasive species—on nature.  This summer, when the entire world is suffering from global warming brought about by our short-sighted greed and uncaring treatment of the earth, it is a message that carries new meaning.  It is time for us to find our place in this world and to remember Chief Seattle’s closing words:  “We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother’s heart-beat.  So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it.  Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it.  Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all.”

Henry Adams on Pennsylvania in 1800: "The History of the United States 1801-1809"

 

I have begun reading Henry Adams’ History of the United States of America During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson.  It covers the cultural and political history of the U.S. from 1800 to 1809.  Originally, the book was published in nine volumes.  I am reading the Library of America edition, which includes 1252 pages. (The Library of America also publishes Adams’ History of the United States of America During the Administrations of James Madison, which is equally long).

Adams, the descendant of two Presidents, had a personal interest in American history.  His grandfather was John Quincy Adams; his great-grandfather was John Adams.  That said, the book is not just about politics.  The first six chapters, covering 125 pages, explores what the United States looked like in the year 1800—a mere 24 years after 1776.  These chapters describe the variety of life in the U.S., with profiles of Northeastern, middle-Atlantic, and Southern states, how they viewed democracy, and how they dealt with political and social trends. I was especially surprised by his analysis of Pennsylvania:

The only true democratic community then existing in the eastern States, Pennsylvania was neither picturesque nor troublesome.  The State contained no hierarchy like that of New England; no great families like those of New York; no oligarchy like the planters of Virginia and South Carolina . . .The value of Pennsylvania to the Union lay not so much in the democratic spirit of society as in the rapidity with which it turned to national objects.  Partly for this reason, the State made an insignificant figure in politics. As the nation grew, less and less was said in Pennsylvania of interests distinct from those of the Union.  Too thoroughly democratic to fear democracy and too much nationalized to dread nationality, Pennsylvania became the ideal American State, easy, tolerant, and contented.  If its soil bred little genius, it bred still less treason. With twenty different religious creeds, its practice could not be narrow, and a strong Quaker element made it human.  If the American Union succeeded the good sense, liberality, and democratic spirit of Pennsylvania had a right to claim credit for the result (pp.80-81).

Jefferson was about to assume leadership of a nation struggling to find a common vision for their new democracy and for ways to take charge of their vast frontier.  I am looking forward to Adams’ telling of that tale.

Sharing Information: A Lesson from Benjamin Franklin

I am reading Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, which he wrote in two sections, one focused on his early life and settlement in Philadelphia, the other focused on his later years.

            In the first part, he describes how he established himself as a printer and member of society in Philadelphia in the 1720s.  He notes,

I should have mentioned before, that, in the autumn of the preceding year, I had formed most of my ingenious acquaintance into a club of mutual improvement, which we called the JUNTO; we met on Friday evenings.  The rules that I drew up required that every member, in his turn, should produce one or more queries on any point of Morals, Politics, or Natural Philosophy, to be discussed by the company; and once in three months produce and read an essay of his own writing, on any subject he pleased.  Our debates were to be. under the direction of a president, and to be conducted in the sincere spirit of inquiry after truth, without fondness for dispute, or desire of victory; and, to prevent warmth, all expressions of positiveness in opinions, or direct contradiction, were after some time made contraband, and prohibited under small pecuniary penalties.” (Isaacson, p. 453).

             Later he describes how, in 1730, he proposed to the group that

 . . . since our books were often referred to in our disquisitions upon the queries, it might be convenient to us to have them altogether where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common library, we should, while we liked to keep them together, have each of. Us the advantage of using the books of all the other members, which would be nearly as beneficial as if each owned the whole.  It was liked and agreed to, and we filled one end of the room with such books as we could best spare.  The number was not so great as we expected; and though they had been of great use, yet some inconveniences occurring for want of due care of them, the collection, after about a year, was separated, and each took his books home again. (p.462)

            The experience gave Franklin the idea for “my first project of a public nature, that for a subscription library.” 

With the help of friends from the Junto, he achieved the first fifty subscribers at a cost to them of an initial fee of ten shillings, plus a commitment of fen shillings a year for fifty years.  The project soon grew to 100 members.  The Library Company of Philadelphia, founded in 1731, was, he wrote,

“the mother of all the North American subscription libraries, now so numerous . . . have improved the general conversation of the Americans, made the common tradesmen and farmers as intelligent s most gentlemen from other countries, and perhaps have contributed in some degree to the stand so generally made throughout the colonies in defense of their privileges.” (p. 462-463)

A 2017 Brookings Institution study noted new challenges to Franklin’s idea that have arisen as a result of the Information Revolution: 

Smartphones, tablets, the internet, and other massive technological changes have reshaped the landscape. Information is easy to access and available to most individuals in their pockets. With a single tap or swipe, we retrieve and discover knowledge that would have taken days or months to find in Franklin’s time.

The rise of Open Educational Resources and streaming media in more recent times opens new vistas for realizing Franklin’s vision of openly sharing books and, more generally, information.  The result will be a much more open access to information and ideas in a variety of media—an environment that Franklin would have appreciated.  It is our challenge to build on Franklin’s vision in this new environment.

"The Origins of Creativity"--A Call for a New Enlightenment

 

One of my favorite finds at the annual AAUW used book sale in May was The Origins of Creativity by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward O. Wilson.  It was a surprise in several ways.  Wilson, who died in 2021, was not known best as a creative artist.  Instead, he was an internationally known biologist and naturalist.  In The Origins of Creativity, he explores how creativity became an inherited trait—one of the things that separates Homo Sapiens from our biological ancestors—and why it is important to the long-term success of our species. 

Wilson looks at how homo sapiens emerged from an array of early humanoid species.  Most of these were vegetarians, and Wilson notes that the move to eating meat was a key to physical changes that led to a larger brain and the eventual emergence of home sapiens.  That said, his real purpose is not just to see what happened, but why, and how many human traits reveal the unique nature of our species.  “At the base,” Wilson writes, “we need to explore ever more deeply the meaning of humanity, why we exist as opposed to have never existed.  And further, why nothing even remotely like us existed on Earth before” (p.197).

To answer that question, he calls for a “Third Enlightenment” that brings together science and the humanities.  “The philosopher’s stone of human self-understanding,” he notes, “is the relation between biological and cultural evolution.  Why are human beings built and behaving in such and such a way and not some other?” (p. 194).  The “why” of our reality can be found only by bringing together science and the humanities in a philosophy that is “the center of a humanistic science and a scientific humanities” (p.195).  Together, these can create a new philosophy, “one that blends the best and most relevant from these two great branches of learning.  Their effort will be the third Enlightenment” (p.198).

Over the centuries, we have moved from a culture dominated by agriculture to an industrial age and, now, a rapidly maturing technological age.  In The Origins of Creativity, Edward Wilson explores why this new age requires a new synthesis of our traditional thinking about science and the humanities.  Just as the Industrial Revolution gave rise to the social sciences as well as hard sciences, the Information Revolution must now innovate in a new approach to research and education that brings together the sciences and humanities so that future generations, enmeshed in a technological society where artificial intelligence has become a daily reality, can better understand the “whys” of our ongoing societal and personal evolutions and our relationship with the world in which we live. 

From my perspective, Wilson’s work is a challenge to higher education to find a way to incorporate scientific humanism and humanistic science into a new approach to General Education that prepares students to understand the “why” of our human experience so that they can best contribute as citizens of a rapidly evolving society, as well as prepare them to enter professional studies for careers in this new environment.  It is quite a challenge, but an exciting one, too.

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Wilson, Edward O. The Origins of Creativity. New York: Liveright Publishing, 2017.   

Implementing the Second Amendment

 

The recent mass shooting at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, brought to the surface yet again the tragedy of our gun control policies in the United States.  As CNN reported, “There have been at least 134 mass shootings in the United States so far this year, leaving more than 175 people dead and 500 injured, according to the Gun Violence Archive (GVA).” Guns are now the largest cause of childhood deaths in the United States.  

The question for all Americans to answer is:  How do we protect all of our citizens from mis-use of firearms while maintaining the spirit of the Second Amendment?  It is a question that shines a bright light on deep differences in how Americans define “freedom” and “individual rights” and how politicians—and the arms industry—use those differences to benefit themselves. 

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is clear in its intent to ensure that all Americans have the right to have weapons in order to protect themselves and their communities.  It reads:

A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.

The original intent was to ensure that communities could arm local citizens to protect their community from invasion.  However, the gun industry has emphasized owning guns as an individual right, not as a way to protect the community.  The issue has become more urgent—and at the same time more complex and less easy to define—as assault rifles and automatic weapons have hit the general marketplace and as guns have been made outside normal industry standards. 

What can we do?  Some thoughts:

1.         With some exceptions for mental health and demonstrated criminal activity, adult citizens of the United States should be permitted to purchase and own a traditional firearm—pistols and/or rifles that are not automated.  This should be handled as we have done for over a century with the purchase of automobiles.  Guns should be registered and the user should be licensed.  Ideally, this would involve no fee or only a minimal fee.  The registration and the owner’s license should be renewed on a regular basis, perhaps every five years. If a gun is sold, the license should be transferred, as is the case with an automobile. 

2.         Citizens should be able to purchase semi-automatic and other assault weapons for community protection, but these should not be available for general use.  As weapons of war, their purpose is to protect the community, as described in the Second Amendment.  These are not designed for individual hunting or hobby use.  One solution is to work in partnership with the National Guard.  Citizens who want to have one of these weapons available to them would be able to purchase one and register it with the local National Guard.  It would be stored in the local County National Guard armory and available to the registered owner if/when an emergency requires citizens to be armed to protect their communities.  The National Guard could arrange for periodic opportunities for training and skills growth.

3.         Other weapons of war—bazookas, machine guns, etc.—would not be available to individuals but access would be controlled by the U.S. military.

The challenge for our era is to find a balance between individual rights to bear arms and the community’s right to the safety of individual citizens and public places, like schools, churches, other public venues. 

eLearning and the Future of Higher Education

Thomas Friedman has written that, while technological change can happen quickly, the social change brought about by technological innovation often takes much longer to be realized.  Today, I’d like to talk about that idea as it relates to online or eLearning in higher education.  With that in mind, let me start with a bit of history.

·      America Online premiered in 1991—32 years ago. 

·      The first web browser was launched in 1993—three decades ago.  

·      Facebook was launched in 2004—nineteen years ago. 

·      YouTube started streaming video in 2005—18 years ago.

·      The first international agreement for Open Educational Resources—the Capetown agreement--was in 2007.

What all that tells us is that today’s traditional-aged college students and many young professionals were born in the full flowering of the Information Age.  They have never known a time when there was no worldwide web, when there was no email, or social media.   Most have only vague memories of a time before the iPhone—it hit the market in 2007. 

So, here we are, a generation into the eLearning movement.   And the question we need to ask ourselves is this:  How might eLearning help shape the long-term higher education environment in light of the maturing of the Information Age? 

That is an essential question for you as leaders in today’s—and tomorrow’s—eLearning environment. 

Let’s take a quick look at several elements that are part of today’s eLearning environment AND what they might mean as eLearning enters the mainstream.  This involves a bit of speculation, but I hope it also sparks some good discussion at the end.

Micro-Credentials

Micro-credentials have long been a way that colleges and universities have packaged continuing professional education for adult learners.  Often, they consist of a collection of three or four credit courses that help young professionals keep up with their field or develop new knowledge and skills they need for professional growth.   The results are undergraduate and post-baccalaureate certificates rather than degree programs. 

Writing in Evollution (August 31, 2022), Vickie Cook listed alternative credentials as one of five significant trends that institutions will need to address in the coming years.  “Continuing Education and alternative credentials,” she wrote, “will ensure students understand that their degree has high value. Using Continuing Education to build employability skills, whether for a new job or a new position within a current company, will help students reach their goals and expand their learning opportunities.”

 

From an institutional perspective, micro-credentials offer an opportunity to maintain a connection with students as they pursue their careers after graduation.  The question is:  how do we use micro-credentials to institutionalize an ongoing relationship with former students?  One thought:  Academic departments could organize alumni as communities and assign faculty mentors to help identify and respond to needs in the community as they evolve.  This will also allow faculty –and their institutions—to learn about emerging issues and opportunities in organizations where their students work, leading to new research opportunities and new content for both traditional and micro-credentials.

Multi-Institutional Degrees

When eLearning began in the 1990s, some institutions saw its lack of geographic boundaries as a threat.  At earlier points in the Information Revolution, competition was not so much a factor.  Institutions worked within the range of their broadcast signal or cable channel.  Satellite allowed institutions to connect with each other, but did not necessarily create competition.   The Web and streaming media, though, have effectively eliminated geography as a limitation on engaging with students.  With no geographic boundaries to delivery, some universities looked around at first and saw every other institution as potential competitor.  Others saw it as an opportunity to collaborate in order to better serve learners in their core service areas. 

An example of the latter is the Great Plains Interactive Distance Education Alliance—the Great Plains IDEA.   It was founded in 2001 by public universities in the Midwest on the assumption that it was no longer enough for public universities to offer the best they had locally.  Instead, they needed to offer the best content available nationally—and beyond.  The goal was to combine faculty resources across institutions to ensure that universities could offer local students the best possible graduate and undergraduate program options in high demand professional fields.  

Today, GP IDEA includes 19 public universities from Washington State to North Carolina, with institutions collaborating to offer 18 undergraduate and graduate degrees in Human Sciences and Agriculture through Great Plains IDEA.  Examples include master’s degrees in a variety of Agricultural specializations—animal science, agriculture law, grassland management, and horticulture, as well as graduate programs in Dietetics, Gerontology, Education, and other disciplines.

Here is how it works:

*Member institutions chose to participate in programs that fit their interests and expertise. 

*Students identify a "home" institution, where they apply for admission, enroll in courses, pay tuition, and graduate.

*Curricula are developed by inter-institutional faculty teams, with individual courses offered by different institutions based on their local expertise.

*The student’s home institution offers the same core curriculum, using that institution’s course title and number.

*The student’s home institution awards the academic credit and degrees for the programs in which they participate, regardless of which institution offers instruction for a course.

*All courses and curricula receive a full institutional review and meet the academic standards of the participating institutions.

*Courses are taught by faculty from each of the partner institutions on a schedule determined by the faculty

*Students pay a common tuition fee per credit hour regardless of which IDEA institution originates the course.

*The student’s home institution maintains the student's transcript and awards the degree to its students; there is no credit transfer between institutions.

*Revenue is distributed among the home institution, teaching institution, and the central alliance management to ensure sustainable programs and a sustainable alliance.\

It is a model that can be applied to many disciplines as the need and/or opportunity arises.  It illustrates how innovation at this level requires us to consider anew factors that go beyond the technology and beyond a particular discipline.  That, in turn, broadens the challenge for eLearning leadership.

Other institutions are also building new partnerships to deliver specialized graduate programs.  This includes international collaborations that grow out of relationships between faculty and academic units at different institutions.  Some might be fully online degrees; others allow institutions to add specialized online courses to what is otherwise a residential degree program.  This approach allows academic departments to offer their students academic specialties taught by colleagues around the world.   

This kind of collaboration can stimulate new relationships between participating academic units—and their faculty-- and the companies in which their students work.  This, in turn, opens new opportunities for research and outreach by faculty at the participating institutions. 

This kind of collaboration is not new.  Back in the 1970s, a project called AGSAT, headquartered at the University of Nebraska, used satellite technology so that Colleges of Agriculture could share content around different regional specializations, for instance.  Similarly, the Appalachian Educational Satellite Program, allowed institutions to share access to teacher and health care education to remote communities in the Appalachian range.

However, eLearning takes collaboration to a much higher level.  This new environment requires that both faculty and administrators at participating universities take a fresh look at their responsibility to give their students the best possible preparation for the world in which they are going to live and work. 

It is something that I can see expanding as the need for collaboration increases and as institutions become more comfortable with the administrative issues.  We know how to deliver instruction.  The challenge is how to create administrative systems to encourage and to sustain that service.

Open Educational Resources

Another factor that will help to facilitate curriculum innovation and control cost is the growth in Open Educational Resources, or OERs.   UNESCO defines OERs as “learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purposing, adaptation and redistribution by others.” (https://www.unesco.org/en/open-educational-resources)   OERs were originally conceived as e-books--written lessons or commentaries—that replace traditional texts, which lowers student costs.  Increasingly, they can also use streaming media to share video lectures, examples of scientific principles or natural events, solutions to complex math problems, interviews with visiting scholars or celebrities, etc.   There are many ways that OERs can be integrated into the teaching/learning environment. 

The OER movement grew out of a September 2007 meeting in Capetown, South Africa, when an international group of institutions prepared a declaration that stated “We are on the cusp of a global revolution in teaching and learning.  Educators worldwide are developing a vast pool of educational resources on the Internet, open and free for all to use.  These educators are creating a world where each and every person on earth can access and contribute to the sum of all human knowledge. They are also planting the seeds of a new pedagogy where educators and learners create, shape and evolve knowledge together, deepening their skills and understanding as they go.”

In the U.S., that same year, the Community College Consortium for OER was created. Today, it has 110-member colleges in 37 states.  Its mission is “to promote the adoption of open education to enhance teaching and learning at community and technical colleges” by providing “resources, support, and opportunities for collaboration for learning, planning, and implementing successful open educational programs at community and technical colleges” (https://www.cccoer.org/about/about-cccoer ).

At the four-year level, Pressbooks was established to help educators and institutions “working across Canada, the U.S., and beyond” (https://pressbooks.com/about/) to develop and share OERs in order to “get accessible educational content into the hands of students.”   Currently it lists more than 5,000 open books. 

OERs can greatly reduce the cost of materials for students, while giving students increased access to a wide range of content.  Instructors can also create OERs to help them update information to a topic discussed in a course, add audio or video interviews with colleagues, or provide hints on difficult problems or detailed solutions.  OERs are becoming a natural way to expand faculty-student interaction as well as providing content from other sources.  As the Community College Consortium and Press Books suggest, they are also sharable, so that faculty teaching similar courses at different institutions can help each other build a deeper collection of resources for their classes. 

It is easy to see that OERs are migrating into the mainstream to serve students in on-campus and off.  It is also easy to project that OERs may become a way for academic units to engage employers to support training in the private sector. And, finally, some higher education OERs have potential use in the K-12 arena.  

The combination of OERs and the streaming environment creates a powerful new delivery environment that gives both faculty and students greater access to content.

Undergraduate Education: The K-14 Movement

One sign that change is underway is the so-called “K-14” Movement.  It is good to remember that, early in the Industrial Age, most students did not go to high school.  Free education ended with the ninth grade.  By the 1920s—decades into the Industrial Age--a full K-12 experience emerged as the standard.  The K-14 idea assumes that all students should have free access to 14 years of schooling in order to prepare for work in today’s society.

Two states—New York and California—have begun to move from a K-12 standard to a K-14 expectation.  In New York, the “Excelsior Scholarship” provides tuition-free education at New York State owned public universities for families making up to $125,000 per year (https://www.suny.edu/suny-news/press-releases/04-2017/4-8-17-excelsior/ ).  California, as reported in Forbes Magazine in 20019,  “will now provide free tuition for the first two years of community college for first-time students who attend full-time.”  

  There is pretty clear evidence that, while eLearning will continue to serve adult students, the percentage of eLearning students who are recent high school graduates will continue to grow, especially now that the COVID pandemic has given many institutions—both K-12 and higher education—experience with serving students online at a distance from the classroom.  The emergency adoption of eLearning did not always start well, but institutions quickly learned do use the environment more effectively—partly because the students were increasingly comfortable online.  This is very likely to be a factor in a move toward a K-14 system.

There are other factors to consider, though, when we look at K-14. 

One is that eLearning college courses can also present a new opportunity for high school students to take “dual enrollment” courses—courses that give them both high school credit and college credit—online not just from local colleges, but from any institution that offers a desirable course. 

Think about the long-term impact:  It is not hard to imagine that students might complete their senior year of high school with nine or more college credits already on their record. 

It has also been reported that increasing numbers of high school seniors are resisting the idea of immediately moving from high school into higher education.  This suggests the need to provide an option for students who aren’t ready to move full-time into college but don’t want to fall too far behind.  eLearning fills that need, too.

A K-14 environment, especially one that supports online dual-enrollment courses, might also prompt planners to take a fresh look at both the high school curriculum and the undergraduate general education curriculum.  The goal would be to eliminate duplication and to ensure that the K-14 curriculum prepares students both as citizens and professionals in a changing social and work environment. 

In a K-14 environment, what should be the flow between high school and undergraduate courses in the general education curriculum?  What associate degree majors are most adaptive to this environment?  Where is the community need greatest?  These are the kinds of questions that go beyond the technology and strike at the long-term strategic planning process for institutions.  It is time to start asking them.

Artificial Intelligence

Recently, the eLearning news has been dominated by a new development that could have additional—even more dramatic—impact on teaching and learning at all levels.  It is called ChatGPT -- an artificial intelligence software package that allows individuals to ask questions and get detailed answers.

Wikipedia describes ChatGPT as follows:

Although the core function of a chatbot is to mimic a human conversationalist, ChatGPT is versatile. For example, it can write and debug computer programs,^[13] compose music, teleplays, fairy tales, and student essays; answer test questions (sometimes, depending on the test, at a level above the average human test-taker);^[14] write poetry and song lyrics;^[15] emulate a Linux system; simulate an entire chat room; play games like tic-tac-toe; and simulate an ATM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT

 

Writing in the February 23 issue of Forbes“, Alex Zhavoronkov, noted, “We are witnessing the next major technology transformation since the advent of the Internet.  . . . But this time, it is not yet clear who the winners and losers are.”

What happens to the learning process when a creative part of the learning process—or at least one part of that process--getting answers to complex questions—is done through artificial intelligence?  How will the instructor know that the student has created the information?   That is a question instructors worry they will need to answer in the near future. 

On the other hand, the New York Times recently featured a high school teacher who used the app to “quickly write adapted lesson plans for each of his students.”  So it seems to have multiple advantages for both faculty and students.  

Artificial Intelligence has been very much in the news these past weeks.  I can’t see it disappearing from the educational process, but there is much to learn about it.  We need to find a safe space for AI innovation in the curriculum and in our expectations of student use of the technology.

How Do We Get There?

One thing I learned over the years is that there is no single academic culture in a big university.  Each college has its own history, its own sense of its role in the larger society, and its own way of relating to alumni and the organizations that hire its alumni, its own history with foundations and other funding organizations, and so forth.  They also have their own sense of competition with other institutions, and their own sense of what the future may hold for their students. It is one reason why they tend to want to keep local control over the educational process. 

It very important, then, that eLearning leaders be able to say to faculty at their institution what is happening in similar academic institutions elsewhere and what how employers in their disciplines are responding to rapid change. 

To make this all work at the institutional level, it will be important for faculty members to have access to IT and Instructional Design support.  Ideally, these specialists would have a dual reporting line. 

·      On one hand, they would be assigned to academic colleges or, when scale requires it, departments, so that these staff get to understand the culture and teaching needs of the disciplines being taught. 

·      At the same time, they should have a reporting line to the eLearning office so that they can keep abreast of new technologies and learn about—and extend--innovations created in individual courses.  

·      We also need well-defined policies with regard to costs and revenue distribution and related administrative areas.  These need to come from the institution-wide policy groups, like the Faculty Senate, etc.

Learning Communities

    This year, Penn State’s World Campus is celebrating its 25th year.  When we were getting started back in the 1990s, a good colleague of mine, who was also an associate dean in one of the colleges, gave me this advice: 

    “Gary,” she said, “ if you want to be successful in this, you will need to be a scholar in this field.  You will need to be the person faculty and deans turn to in order to learn what other institutions are doing, what new innovations are emerging, and what employers are thinking about eLearning.  They will look to you for information and good ideas that will meet the test of being respected by both faculty and administrators.”

    It was good advice.  It is one reason why organizations like MOLLI are important.  It is vital that you have a professional community where you can learn from your peers what faculty at other institutions are doing and what opportunities may exist for collaboration, but also how other institutions are solving problems--dealing with policy issues, funding issues, etc.  Bringing these administrative innovations into the mainstream is essential to long-term success.

            Colleges and universities are complex organizations, with multiple academic cultures and a complex organizational and budgetary system that makes it difficult sometimes to innovate at large scale.  Some of the things I’ve talked about—

·      the willingness to partner with other institutions on curricula and services that meet student needs,

·      creating systems to help faculty develop and make available online and streaming resources,

·      micro-credentials that extend learning to working professionals, exploring how to use technology to improve the educational pathway from high school to college,

·      and the willingness to create new kinds of learning communities—

are hard to do in isolation.  They are better seen as steps in an institutional evolution.

            It promises to be an interesting decade ahead.