Making the Most of MOOCs

The idea of Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) continues to attract attention in the education press and popular media.  As the idea evolves, we gradually are getting a better idea of where MOOCs might fit into the broader online learning environment and, indeed, what role they might play in the transformation of higher education as we adapt to the realities of life in a global information society.   In December, I posted some thoughts on where MOOCs might fit into the Land Grant mission.  Today, I want to look at them from a slightly different perspective.

There is one area where I want to be very clear:  The idea that a single MOOC should replace general education course taught at almost every college/university in the U.S. is misguided, at best.  This has been part of the MOOC discussion since the earliest courses came out.  It is an idea that has been around technology-based education since at least the 1980s, when PBS moved to satellite distribution and Walter Annenberg gave funds to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to create nationally distributed tele-courses, creating the idea that one great course with fantastic video lectures could ensure that every student got a good education in that topic.  But that's not how our educational system works.   We have more than 3,000 institution of higher education in the United States.  While many of them may use the same text to teach "Introduction to Sociology" or "Introduction to World History" or whatever, the strength of the system is that each institution has its own faculty members who teach the course using their own syllabus, each drawing on their own research and experience, and each responding to the individual needs and interests of their students, whether they be on campus or online.  This creates a kind of butterfly effect as students move into different classes and different majors, taking with them the nuances of their own experiences in these courses.   The resulting diversity is one of the strengths of the system.  We don't need--and, indeed, should avoid the homogenization of the curriculum by relying on MOOCs.

So, then, what do we need?   I see three areas where investment in MOOCs might have the greatest payoff for not just for the institutions that offer them, but for society in general.

The first of these I mentioned in my December 2012 posting on MOOCs:  MOOCs provide a powerful new tool for creating learning communities around research and technology transfer.  Over the years, I've seen the importance of academic conferences in disseminating the results of research and creating new discussions among researchers and between researchers and those who benefit from the results of their work.  Two great examples from Penn State's conferencing work in Outreach are (1) a series of conferences that brought together astronomers and statisticians and that eventually resulted in the creation of a new discipline, Astro-Statistics, and (2) the annual autism conference, which brings together a huge community of researchers, practitioners, and autistic children and their families.  MOOCs have great potential to more quickly and more broadly disseminate research findings and to create communities among diverse populations that have an interest in applying research.  It is a potentially powerful tool for academic outreach and engagement.

A second potential role is to build new pathways between higher education and schooling.  Currently in the U.S., about 39 percent of high school graduates go on to college.  The U.S. Department of Education has set a goal of increasing that to 60 percent by 2020--what they estimate the country will need to thrive in the information economy.  To get there, we will need to dramatically increase the percentage of high school students who are prepared to go to college.  MOOCs can help by providing a means by which higher education institutions can share content with high school teachers.  Imagine, for instance, a MOOC on high school chemistry.  Science Education faculty in our universities could develop video and computer-based instructional materials on critical science concepts at all K-12 levels.  These would be made available to teachers via a MOOC that would also contain sample lesson plans and other resources that the teachers would need.  Then, it would also serve as a meeting place where teachers could share their experiences in using the materials, get advice from both higher education faculty and peer teachers, and share materials that they have developed locally to contextualize the materials available via the MOOC.  The result:  a teaching community that would help even small, poor districts ensure that their students have access to high-quality learning.

We did this sort of thing back in the 1970s and 1980s through public television.  Penn State's public TV station worked with Dr. Paul Welliver in the University's College of Education to create "Science for the Seventies," a video series that captured key science concepts for elementary school students.  Dr. Welliver and his colleagues also tried to create a community of teachers who could share lesson plans, etc., but the lack of a medium for exchange made that difficult.  MOOCs offer a very fresh way to create this kind of teaching/sharing community to address important educational needs.

A third potential use of MOOCs relates to the new demographics of our world.  Today, Americans are living well into their 70s and 80s, but still retiring at 65 or earlier.  In his landmark book, The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin noted that now need to prepare older adults for life after work--ideally, a third act of life where experienced adults can apply their talents and experiences in the social sector,  helping improve life in their communities.   In this arena MOOCs offer an interesting opportunity to bring older adults together with social sector organizations and university faculty to help prepare them for productive after-retirement contributions.  As with the other applications, a key element is not just the transfer of knowledge, but the creation of communities.

I hope these three examples illustrate the true potential of MOOCs as tools for community-building and engagement around research, technology transfer, and cross-sector partnerships.

I Won't Give Up

Jason Mraz is one of my very favorite singer-songwriters these days.  It started with "I'm Yours," but his most recent album, Love Is a Four-Letter Word, has some great songs that capture a spirit that I haven't heard in popular music for a long time.

Right now, my favorite is "I Won't Give Up."     I was listening to it this morning--the day after the Boston Marathon bombing--and realized that it pretty much captures how I feel about our country these days.  Our country has become fascinated with violence, greed, and, ultimately, the stubborn ignorance of radical ideology.  These have been with us for many decades, but, today, they have clouded the great light of caring and community that is American democracy at its best.  Still, in the face of this ugliness, as Mraz says, "I won't give up."   

Finding Courage

Our country's inability to better manage guns is appalling.  A few short months after 20 young people and 6 teachers were killed--and with many gun murders since then, including, most recently, a Texas prosecutor and his wife--our government seems not to have the courage to act.  It is the ultimate failure of a democratic government not to protect the lives of its citizens.

In our society, one must be licensed to drive a car.  One must pass a test to get that license and must renew the license annually in most states.  In addition, all cars must be registered and insured.   Some states also require that each car be inspected regularly to ensure that it is safe to use.  This is done to minimize highway deaths and property destruction caused by cars. 

We should take at least as much care with the public distribution and use of firearms as we do with automobiles:

1.  All gun users should pass a test that demonstrates their ability to use a gun safely and that they are of sound mental condition.  Only then should they be granted a license to use a gun.

2.  That license should be reviewed and renewed periodically, perhaps every two years.

3.  Purchase of a gun should include a background check to be sure that the person has a license and, thus, has the legal right to carry and use a gun.

4.  Guns themselves should be registered and that registration should be renewed every two years.

5.  Sale of a gun should be handled in the same way that the sale of a car is handled:  there is a title to the gun and that title transfers with appropriate review.

The active resistance to any form of government oversight of firearms by the National Rifle Association and gun manufacturers is but one example of how corporations and financial interests are undermining democracy today.  The logical result, if left unchecked, will be a new and destructive kind of autocracy.  It is important that we respond not only by advocating for national and state laws to control weapons, but by grassroots changes to the culture of violence in the U.S.  We need to make violence unpopular, the way we made smoking and anti-Semitism racism unpopular.   Let's start by rejecting violence in the media and computer games and by making it clear, as citizens, that assault weapons are not welcome in our homes and neighborhoods.  Let's strengthen sentences for crimes that involve deadly weapons.   Let's not make stars out of criminals and advocates of violence.

Mother Theresa once said that she pitied Americans because, despite all our riches, we are, in her words "poor in spirit."  The strength of American democracy is the balance between the spirit of independence and the spirit of community.  We need to strengthen the bond between the two.  We are not Americans unless we honor the individual in the context of community.

Taxes and a Moral Society

David Blandford, a Penn State colleague and fellow member of our local Torch Club, said something at a Torch Club meeting last year that has stuck with me.  How people feel about taxation, he said, has less to do with the amount that they are taxed and more to do with how those taxes are used.  Tax evasion in 17^thcentury Britain, he told the Club, was rooted not in the tax itself, but in the fact that the British government used the taxes to carry on foreign wars that were of no benefit to the average Englishman.   On the other hand, modern Scandinavians are among the most highly taxed citizens on earth, and they are also the happiest, because tax revenues are returned in the form of benefits:  health care, work release for new parents, old age benefits, etc. 

            Americans are currently taxed at a much lower rate than Scandinavians.  In fact, we are taxed at a lower rate today than was the case just a generation ago, before the so-called Reagan Revolution.  And yet, we are among the most unhappy of industrialized nations.  Mother Theresa pitied us, saying that we are poor in spirit.   Why?  Well, one reason may be that, like Britain in the 17^th century, we are increasingly disconnected from our government.  We are afloat, unmoored to our sense of citizenship that gives us identity and a sense of social purpose.  Our waste of public resources to support private greed is a symptom of a government that is attending more to business interests than to the needs and interests of its citizens—in short, a government that is failing to do its real job. 

            The recent mass murder in Aurora, Colorado, is another sign of our alienation not just from government but from community.  The tragedy sparked a brief national discussion of gun control, which noted that, among the 23 most industrialized nations, the U.S. ranks first in gun murders.  Why?  I suggest that one reason is that we increasingly are estranged from the communities that used to support us.  We are a nation of immigrants and, unlike the nations from which our ancestors came, our cultural heritage is thin.  Our connection with our geographically defined community is made thinner by globalization.

            Taking a longer view, this disconnect may also be a symptom of a broader change that is overtaking our society as technology and globalization redefine “community” and challenge us to seek a new identity.   I believe that the changes we are now experiencing are much more profound than we tend to recognized.   It think it is safe to posit that not only are we moving from the Industrial Era to a new Information Era, but that we have left Western Civilization behind in the process.  The 20^th century, with its two world wars and its ideological Cold War, was the last century of that old world.  The new civilization is just now taking form.  It is being shaped, in part, by technology and globalization, to be sure.  As Fareed Zakaria wrote in The Post-American World, the change is not about the downfall of Western life, but about the “rise of the rest”—a new global culture where power and influence are more distributed and diverse.

            I’ve been reading Grace Lee Boggs’ recent book, The Next American Revolution.  In it, she argues that, in this new world, the challenge is not simply to over-turn the existing power structure, but to revolutionize our interactions with community at all levels.  “We are beginning to understand,” she writes, “that the world is always being made and never finished; that activism can be the journey rather than the arrival; that struggle doesn’t always have to be confrontational but can take the form of reaching out to find common ground with the many ‘others’ in our society who are also seeking ways out from alienation, isolation, privatization, and dehumanization by corporate globalization” (p. 48).

            Boggs quotes Meg Wheatley, who describes the new culture as “this exquisitely connected world” and notes, “Because of these unseen connections, there is potential value in working anywhere in the system” (p. 50).  The implication is that, as individuals, we can help shape the new world from wherever we find ourselves in our society.  This is a powerful new way to think about the dynamics of change in a democratic society. It also describes the paradigm shift in social identity that we are experiencing:  a new social context that encourages individuals in a globalized society to reconnect with community at the local level and, perhaps, with professional and social communities that are not defined by geography.   Revolution, Boggs argues, is the cumulative impact of many, many local actions.  “In other words,” she writes on her own career as an activist, “our revolution had to be for the purpose of accelerating our evolution to a higher plateau of Humanity” (p.70).

            And this is where we have gone wrong in the years that span my adult life and those of many of us Baby Boomers who had such ambitions for our society.  Somewhere along the line, we’ve lost our passion for “accelerating our evolution to a higher plateau of Humanity” and settled for a kind of comfort that dulls our moral sense.  The rich get rich, but we are all the poorer for it.

The Sequester and Natural Law

The current budget sequester raises many questions about what America should do reduce our budget deficits and arrive at an ongoing budget scenario that (1) is sustainable in itself and (2) addresses issues that will ensure a healthy and sustainable society for our citizens.   In The Myth of Progress (2006, University Press of New England), Tom Wessels reflects on what the laws of nature can tell us about how we need to care for our societal ecology.  Wessels makes several important points in this concise book:

            First, we need to abandon the linear thinking that has tended to dominate economic theory and practice for the past century.  Linear thinking reflects an industrial approach to the economy:  that the world is like a machine—in which “each part works in a lockstep way with the other parts, so that the system always follows the exact same sequence of interactions between the parts” (p. 6).   In reality, he argues, we live in a nonlinear, complex system that is less predictable because the parts interact in multiple ways, so that the system is much greater than the sum of its parts.  Complex systems, Wessel notes, generate “emergent properties—things that couldn’t be predicted just by examining the parts” (p. 9).  He also notes that complex systems tend to be nested within each other, which helps to maintain system integrity.  

            Second, Wessels argues that, just as natural ecological systems depend on diversity to sustain themselves, our political ecology also benefits from diversity.  “The foundation of sustained progress lies in stable systems that increase diversity through time to resist perturbations” (p. 78).   Systems that lack diversity are more likely to be adversely affected by external changes because they lack means to adjust.  Wessel offers several examples of where the American economy is becoming less diverse and, in the process, less stable:  the rise of industrial farming over smaller family farms, increasing consolidation of the news media under less than two dozen large corporations, and the rise of corporate power that displaces small businesses.  A good example of the last change is Walmart, which has reduced economic diversity by killing small local retailers in communities across the country.

            Third, he notes, “Large-scale change in complex systems never comes from the top down; it always bubbles up from the bottom.  That means that large-scale social, political, and economic change comes from the citizenry, whom elected officials will follow when its collective voice becomes loud enough” (p. 60).

            What does this suggest for how we should deal with the federal deficit and the sequester?  For one, we should be aware of how budget cuts might create unanticipated “feedback loops” within our complex economic and political system.   Across the board cuts could have both positive and negative consequences; either way, we need to be sensitive to the potential for unforeseen consequences.   On one hand, it is essential that there be some discretion about how cuts are made.  On the other, it is important that we use the sequester to make real cuts that result in real change. 

            At the same time, we should use the sequester to eliminate subsidies to activities that work against economic diversity and that create instability.  For instance, this would be a good time to eliminate subsidies to large-scale corporate farming operations and to the oil industry.   We should invest some of the saved funds to support small, family farms and local cooperatives and to support innovation in wind, solar, and other sources of energy in order to diversify our food and energy resources and allow us to be more responsive to climate change and other external threats to stability.  

            I am a firm believer that the final solution will require more than just an across the board cut in expenses.  New revenues should be at least one quarter of the total solution, which assumes closing existing loopholes in federal income taxes.  Beyond that, however, we will need significant cuts, even if the hatchet approach of the sequester can be avoided.   Let’s hope that, in both sides of the process, we keep Wessels’ ideas in mind and find solutions that recognize that our society—and our economy—is a complex, rather than linear, system.

Empower Citizens with Fiscal Cliff Data

Speaker of the House John Boehner said on Sunday, “I don’t think anyone quite understands” how to resolve the current U.S. federal budget crisis.  Well, here’s an idea.

            In his new book, Citizenship:  How to Take the Town Square Digital and Reinvent Government (Penguin, 2013), Gavin Newsom argues that, in the Information Society, we need to connect citizens to government in new ways, by giving them access to government data so that they can better participate in solving public problems.  The result is more of a bottoms-up than top-down approach to governance.   The problem with today’s federal government is that it is paralyzed by radical ideology and conflicting loyalties.  There is no constructive conversation, making good top-down government decisions almost impossible around important issues.  So, let’s try a bottoms-up approach.

            A first step is to have transparent data.  What, in detail, is the problem?  What, in detail, have the various parties—the Administration, Congressional Republications, Congressional Democrats, various non-governmental interest groups—proposed?   We need to be able to put all of the different solutions side by side with each other and with the budget itself to understand the options.  Then, we—and by “we” I mean the citizenry—need to be able to look at the impact of different options and, perhaps, suggest our own solutions.

            The problem is that we are not, at this point, getting good information, either from government directly or from the news media.   Or, at minimum, dependable information is not easy to find.  Confirming and organizing the data so that people can attempt their own understanding of the problem, evaluate the various solutions that have been proposed, and suggest their own improvements would be a great contribution that any one of the national news outlets could make.  It would go much further toward creating public understanding than the constant point-counterpoint panels of political hacks and hired guns.

            The Fall 2012 update of The Federal Government’s Long-Term Fiscal Outlook makes clear that simple solutions—the kind we’ve been hearing about in the press—are not going to work.  It notes, for example: “Discretionary spending limits alone do not address the fundamental imbalance between estimated revenue and spending, which is driven largely by the aging of the population and rising health care costs” (GAO-13-148SP).  As a public, we need to develop an expectation that the solution will be complex, but that we will need to understand that complexity so that we can evaluate what our elected representatives propose as solutions.  Having the data and some structure for thinking about options—and then being encouraged to delve into the material to find possible solutions—could be very helpful in the long run.

            This would make a great project for CNN or another of the major national news outlets that lays claim to objectivity.  What a way to empower voters to help their government.

OERs: A National Strategy

Over the past few years, the idea of Open Educational Resources (OERs) has taken its place in the mainstream of the new online global distance education movement.   This posting will explore the 
potential for OERs to help address important educational needs in the United States.

            The Hewlett Foundation, which has funded several OER innovations over the past few years, defines Open Educational Resources this way:

OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.

Internationally, the Commonwealth of Learning and UNESCO have launched an initiative “to increase the understanding of OERs by educational decision makers within governments and institutions, and to encourage the incorporation of the concept of OERs into their policies and strategies.” 

            In the United States, there are a variety of OER initiatives.  However, none have risen to the level of national strategic priority.   The opportunity is ripe to apply OERs in our public school system and in the process, to create new creative partnerships between higher education institutions and schools to help students meet critical learning needs.  

            It is not unlike the situation in the 1960s, when the baby boom generation was straining the resources of our public schools at a time when there was a growing demand for high school graduates to be able to move onto college.   Then, a nascent public television system—organized originally at the state and regional level—began to produce and broadcast television programs specifically designed to be used by teachers in the classroom.  Today, online media provide a new platform not only to deliver content, but to engage both teachers and students in learning communities around critical skill needs.

The Need

            Many states have moved toward standards-based testing for students in key curriculum areas.  The one that area that seems to be most in need of support is STEM—Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.    Schools vary widely in their ability to support teachers as they adjust their curricula to the new standards.  Given the importance of state standards in this environment, the OER initiative would naturally be structured within individual states, with colleges and universities developing materials for use by nearby school districts.   At the same time, producers can easily network to share content (where the content meets state standards and needs) and to coordinate delivery.

The Model

Here is how an OER initiative might work:

            The project would begin by one or more higher education institutions in a State collaborating with the Department of Education and with some selected school districts to identify specific standards that have proven to be the most problematic for schools around the state.  Participating institutions would then develop OERs that address these standards.  These could take multiple forms:

• digitized video lectures, demonstrations, or experiments
•  problems to be solved by individual students or collaboratively by groups of students
•  elements from online college credit courses
•  collections of existing online resources that teachers and students could use to gain experience in finding information, evaluating it, and using it to solve problems or create innovations.

            The OERs would be housed a central online “You-Tube”-type environment, along with downloadable teacher guides, lesson plans, quizzes, assignment ideas, etc.  

            Ideally, a K-12 OER initiative would be complemented by online learning communities—MOOCS—that would address two related needs:  (1) one that teachers could join to learn about how to use the OER collection and, equally important, to share their experiences as a community on how to implement them in the classroom, and (2) a MOOC for students to help them supplement their classroom learning or, possibly, earn high school credit.  Ideally, both of these could also be structured so that teachers would be able to earn graduate credit and students would be able to simultaneously earn high school and college credit.

The Long View

            As noted earlier, it is easy to draw comparisons between the OER initiative described above and the early days of educational television.   It might be helpful to look at that comparison in more detail to get a longer view of what might happen if a truly strategic OER initiative were to be organized around K12 needs.

            In the 1960s, educational television was a statewide and regional affairs.   Most stations had an “Instructional Television” coordinator and a formal relationship with school districts in their service areas.  The daytime schedule was devoted specifically to television programs that had been selected by teachers and broadcast for use in classrooms.  In Pennsylvania, where I worked, the State Department of Education funded the acquisition of programs for broadcast to the schools, as well as the production of new programs that met otherwise unmet needs.  Regional networks—the Eastern Educational Network and the Southern Educational Communications Association as examples—were collaboratives where stations could share local productions and group-purchase programs that would be broadcast in multiple viewing areas.  

            With the arrival of (1) the national Public Broadcasting Service and (2) satellite delivery of educational/public television programming, production and distribution became a nationally coordinated affair.  Programs like Sesame Street and The Electric Company arose to meet national needs.  Over time, however, this three-level system of national, regional, and local engagement faded as nonbroadcast technology—videocassettes and videodisc, cable television, etc.—bypassed the need for coordinated broadcast directly into school classrooms.

            Today, as we think about how to develop an effective system for production, delivery, and support of OERs to ensure that all students have effective access to learning resources that address strategic national needs, we should ask:  How might the lessons of educational television be used to help shape this new service?  It is impossible to predict.  However, we have already seen the emergence of several inter-state higher education collaborations—most notably the Great Plains IDEA and CIC’s CourseShare—that suggest the possibility that an OER initiative might help foster new kinds of academic communities for which, like the online environment itself, geography provides a focus but not a limitation.