Toward a Learning Society

Over the past few years, our public colleges and universities have made great strides in adopting online technology to extend undergraduate and graduate degree programs to working adults away from campus.  This has allowed adults to gain the skills and credentials that they need to adapt to the new working requirements of a maturing global information society.  It has also created new revenue streams for universities to support innovation.  Now, it is time for public colleges and universities to explore how they can use the same technologies to revitalize their traditional service missions and to foster true lifelong learning.  This posting will explore some opportunities for online-based lifelong learning as part of the public university’s social engagement mission.

First, a Look Back

Our public colleges and universities have their roots in the Industrial Revolution.  They were invented to facilitate the changes that were needed as the country shifted from a rural economy to an industrial economy.  Industrialization stimulated two big events.  The first was urbanization.  Most factories were either started in cities or created cities around themselves, attracting families from farms to move closer.  The second was immigration; people came from all over Europe and Asia to find a future in the new economy.  They flooded into the cities.  This caused several problems.  One was a concern that our agricultural system was not robust enough to feed the growing urban population.  A second was the need to educate the children of immigrants, to make them full citizens in the process.  State and federal government responded by creating new institutions—normal schools—to train the many teachers needed to educate the new urban children and by creating the Agricultural Extension Service—housed in the new land grant universities.  And there were other issues, of course.  Some of these gave rise to new academic disciplines, things like sociology and social psychology, which found places in the new universities, along with engineering, business, and applied sciences, needed to keep the revolution moving ahead.  These are the foundations of the system of state colleges and universities that has dominated education in many of the United States for the past century and more.

            For the past several decades, these assumptions about higher education have been challenged as the Information Revolution gained force, bringing with it powerful social changes.  In 2001, the Kellogg Foundation released reports from a commission that it had charged to explore the role of higher education in this new environment.  The Commission on the Future of State and Land Grant Universities looked at five dimensions of quality:  the student experience, student access, social engagement, a learning society, and the campus culture.  The Commission argued that “our institutions must play an essential role in making lifelong learning a reality in the United States.”  Noting that technology was now able to make lifelong learning a reality, the Commission noted, “We are convinced that public research universities must be leaders in a new era of not simply increased demand for education, but rather of a change so fundamental and far-reaching that the establishment of a true ‘learning society’ lies within our grasp.”  The Commission described several characteristics of a learning society:

·      It fosters the habits of lifelong learning and “ensures that there are responsive and flexible learning programs and learning networks available to address all students’ needs.”

·      “It is socially inclusive and ensures that all of its members are part of its learning communities.”

·      It recognizes that lifelong learning begins with early childhood development and organizes “ways of enhancing the development of all children.”

·      It uses information technology as tools for “tailoring instruction to societal, organizational, and individual needs.”

·      “It stimulates the creation of new knowledge through research and other means of discovery.”

·      “It values regional and global interconnections and cultural links.”

·      "It fosters public policy to support equitable access and recognizes that investments in learning contribute to overall competitiveness and the economic and social well-being of the nation.”

In the years since the report, Returning to Our Root, was published, higher education has, for the most part, focused its use of information technology on extending undergraduate and graduate degree programs to students away from campus.   There have been some efforts in the noncredit arena—development of MOOCs as noncredit courses and sharing of Open Educational Resources (OERs) – but the greatest innovations, affecting the most institutions, has been in credit-based programs.  Meanwhile, traditional noncredit programs at many institutions have struggled.

            The challenge for the coming decade will be to explore how information technology can be used to fulfill the social engagement and lifelong learning challenges articulated by Returning to Our Roots and, in the process, to re-imagine the role of public higher education in sustaining a learning society in an era marked by cultural and economic globalization.  The rest of this piece will suggest a few starting points.

Re-Imagining Undergraduate Education

While many of the ideas to follow deal with noncredit and informal learning—the traditional venue of continuing education units in our universities—I’d like first to describe a key step in creating a true lifelong learning system:  redefining undergraduate education as a launching point for lifelong learning.  In the industrial period, society gradually expanded primary and secondary education; high school moved from being a pricey option to a publically funded expectation.  We need a similar expansion to prepare students to succeed—as citizens and professionals—in the new environment.  Elements might include:

·      A K-14 curriculum that makes the first two years of higher education—combining traditional “general” education and introductory professional/vocational education—free to the student.

·      A Year of Service that would take place between the twelfth and thirteenth years, so that young adults begin their higher education with a better understanding of the working world and the needs of the community in which they live and work.  This might include work in state/national parks, hospitals, libraries and other community organizations with the service helping to offset the cost of the next two years of instruction), or it might include a practicum with a local employer or service in the military, Peace Corps, or other societal contribution.

·      Periodic internships or practica in the student’s chosen vocation/profession as part of the undergraduate experience, so that students become familiar with the expectations of the field in which they are studying.

·      Involvement of alumni to help students prepare for their careers.

·      As students complete their undergraduate programs and move into their careers, the institution should help them make the transition by providing noncredit seminars and access to an online learning community for transitioning professionals.  The learning community would give the new professional access to faculty, alumni, and other transitioning students to help solve problems and to learn about new developments in the field. 

Noncredit Lifelong Learning in the Online Learning Era

Sadly, many of the less formal kinds of lifelong learning that defined “continuing education” for much of the 20^th century have faded in recent years, due in no small part to the new emphasis on delivery of credit programs to off-campus adults.  However, if our public universities are to fulfill their public mission, we need to take a fresh look at how our institutions, our research centers, and our faculty engage key constituencies and ensure that citizens can continue to benefit from learning throughout their lives. In recent years, this function has taken a back seat to innovations around online degree programs.  However, these noncredit and sometimes nonformal learning opportunities are key to the vision of the public university in a learning society.  New kinds of extension services can use information technology in ways that complement delivery of online credit programs.   Here are some examples of how institutions can re-invigorate and expand noncredit engagement for lifelong learning in the new era:

·      Career Maintenance While alumni may eventually return for a graduate certificate or degree, the university should also maintain contact with them by offering short noncredit courses and resources to keep them informed about new knowledge and skills in their professions.  This is the traditional role of continuing professional education and could involve traditional mechanisms, such as workplace learning events and conferences.  In the new environment, it might also include an online learning community that gives recent graduates access to noncredit webinars, TED-type video lectures, Open Educational Resources, and less formal engagement with faculty, alumni, and other recent grads.

·      Learning Communities In an earlier posting, I described how a combination of online technologies could be combined to create ongoing learning communities.  These could be organized around professions or disciplines to help alumni and others in a field to maintain their knowledge, to learn about new research and technology applications in their field, and to find solutions to problems by sharing experiences with colleagues and faculty in an online environment.  Learning communities can become a meeting ground where faculty and practitioners learn from each other through webinars, videos and other OERs, and messaging.:

·      Open Educational Resources for Schools Throughout the industrial age and early in the Information Revolution, land grant universities used distance education to extend learning opportunities to high schools.  The University of Nebraska was a leader in developing high school level correspondence courses—which were often adopted and used by other land grants—to ensure that high school students had access to key courses.  From the 1960s through the 1980s, universities used television to deliver learning resources that high school teachers could use in their classrooms. Today, information technology allows us to create libraries of Open Educational Resources that teachers can incorporate into classes at all levels.  Development of OER collections (perhaps, initially, taken from an institution’s online credit courses) and collaborations among institutions to share their libraries with local schools is an easy way to extend new learning opportunities to students while building relationships with K-12 schools.  Such a service must be accompanied by professional development programs that help teachers learn how best to incorporate OERs into their own curricula—another application of the Learning Community model.

·      Open Educational Resources for Industries and Professions Universities can also build stronger relationships with the industries and professions that they serve by creating OER collections that provide nonformal professional development and research transfer opportunities for companies, professional associations, government agencies, and community organizations.

·      Preparing for the Third Act Americans are living longer today than in the past.  Increasingly, as a result, one of the challenges of lifelong learning is to help older adults prepare for retirement and what follows.  That might be a second or third career or a commitment to community volunteerism or turning a hobby into a vocation.  This may be accomplished through noncredit short courses like those sponsored at more than 100 universities by the Osher Foundation’s Lifelong Learning Institutes. 

·      Social and Cultural Engagement  A Learning Society is not just interested in work.   Other kinds of participation in the community—through the arts and other cultural and avocational activities—are important to building sustainable communities.  Public Broadcasting—now perhaps better described as Public Media—has been a leader in this function for many decades.  Today, public media is not limited to a single broadcast channel.  Many stations have multiple cable channels as well as online resources.  In short, there are many ways to engage lifelong learners in the arts and to help them develop their own creative and avocational skills.

            Our public colleges and universities have a long history of helping learners develop many aspects of their lives.  Experience shows that a commitment to lifelong learning and a learning society is not a one-way street.  Engagement at this level also helps faculty identify unmet needs, which leads to new research, new teaching, and, ultimately, fresh engagements.  

Institutional Policy and the Mainstreaming of Online Learning

I got my first exposure to online learning in the early 1990s at the University of Maryland University College.  In those pre-web days, UMUC developed its first online baccalaureate degree program.  A few years later, I was back at Penn State, where, in 1996, we began to plan the World Campus, which went online in 1998.  Today, online learning is entering its third decade as a change agent in our colleges and universities.  It is moving into the mainstream of many early adopter institutions.  In others, it is still proving itself as an innovation.  As more institutions move toward mainstreaming their online learning innovations, it is a good time to look ahead to some of the policy issues that institutions may want to consider.

            This is not to say simply that online learning needs to match up with the pre-existing policies.  Looking ahead, it is good to keep in mind that, when an innovation enters the mainstream, it changes the mainstream and that this, in turn, paves the way for future innovations.

Program Approval and Academic Authority

            At many institutions, the startup period for an online learning program often involves responding to entrepreneurial opportunities—a faculty member who is interested in experimenting, a client organization that has a pre-existing relationship with an academic unit, etc.  However, as online learning becomes an ongoing part of the institution’s services, it is essential that decisions to offer a program online are vetted in the same way as a program being proposed for on-campus delivery.  After all, online programs represent a long-term commitment by an academic unit and its faculty.  They become part of the faculty workload and, ideally, part of the reward structure within the academic unit and the institution as a whole.  Programs also represent a collaboration between the sponsoring academic department and the online learning unit.  Once online learning is mainstreamed, approval and central support for online programs should be managed within the shared governance environment that guides  on-campus programs.

Copyright:  Enabling OERs

            Online learning is, at one level, a publishing activity.  Institutions need to ensure that the material included in courses is properly copyright protected.  Most institutions will already have copyright policies that may need to be adjusted to include copyright of faculty-developed online course materials.

            One facet of copyright that has emerged in recent years is the idea of repurposing some online course content as “open educational resources” (OERs).  OERs could be used to provide K-12 schools with new content that allows teachers to enhance their classroom instruction.  They can also provide noncredit training opportunities to employees in client organizations.  Colleges and universities can also make them available to partner international institutions to ensure that students can effectively transfer to complete a degree. 

            The uses of OERs are still emerging.  However, several organizations have emerged to support the sharing of online resources.  One is the OER Commons, which notes that, “Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for systemic change in teaching and learning content through engaging educators in new participatory processes and effective technologies for engaging with learning.”  Another is the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources, a consortium of more than 250 institutions in Canada and the United States that “promotes the awareness and adoption of open educational policies, practices, and resources.”

            The emerging policy issue is for colleges and universities that produce online courses to ensure that online course content can be restructured as OERs.  Developing policy now will facilitate future innovation in this arena.

Certifications: Defining Badges

            Badges have emerged as a new kind of certification for online learning programs.  However, for them to work in the long run, they must become integrated with institutional policy.  Two policy issues are emerging in this area.

            First, as institutions offer badges for professional education, it is essential that they record them on a student transcript so that, in the coming years, if a student includes a badge on her resume or job application, the employer can verify the student’s accomplishment. 

            Second, institutions must develop standards for defining badges.  Ideally, inter-institutional standards for badges will emerge to allow them to have more value in student career advancement.

            A model for this was developed by the Continuing Education community back in the 1960s.  A recent article by Deb Peterson notes that the CEU concept emerged from a task force commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education in 1968.  Peterson notes that a CEU is defined as “unit of credit equal to ten hours of participation in an accredited program designed for professionals with certificates or licenses to practice various professions.”  The International Association for Continuing Education and Training (IACET) takes responsibility for maintaining the standard and working with institutions and professional associations on CEU assessments.

            The time is rapidly approaching where institutions—and professional associations—will want to standardize badges in a similar way.  Meanwhile, colleges and universities can advance this area by creating their own criteria and working with peer institutions, higher education associations, and client professional associations to create standards that can be applied across institutions.

            These are three areas where colleges and universities that are innovating with online learning can develop policies that will allow them to fully realize the potential of online learning to fulfill their educational mission in the new global information society.

Considering the Voters

This election season, it has been hard not to talk about politics in situations where one normally avoids it.  Recently, I was at an “appreciation dinner” for donors and volunteers.  At my table, we pretty much avoided talking about the individual candidates, but one of the guests could not resist asking, “Why is our country so polarized this election year?”

            There are lots of reasons, of course, but I see three things—three major fault lines where American solidarity has begun to crumble, opening the way for strange politics.

            One of the fault lines is generational.  Over the past few years, Baby Boomers have begun to move past their leadership roles and into retirement.  At the same time, Millennials have arisen as the largest segment of today’s population, ready to take responsibility as the Baby Boomers move out.  It promises to be a messy hand-off of power and responsibility between generations. Millennial democrats were drawn to Senator Bernie Sanders not for his age, but for his ideas—the progressive vision that has faded in the Democratic Party as Congress has become dominated by conservative Republicans.  As the election nears, both major party candidates are early Boomers, born in the 1940s—the oldest candidates for President ever—and unable to communicate a vision that will attract Millennials; thus, many of them are considering a protest vote for Gary Johnson, another Boomer, born in 1953.  The 2020 election should give Millennials their first opportunity to put their own candidate forward; meanwhile, the generation gap gapes open, with none of the candidates really making a coherent case to the emerging majority age group.

            A second fault line is class.  Over the past decade, we have seen the progressive isolation of the American working class—who I will define as men and women who work in manual labor and skilled industrial jobs that do not require college degrees.  This group of Americans has had a difficult time in the United States since the Great Recession of 2007-08.   For years, leading up to the economic downturn, the working class had been largely ignored by both Democrats and Republicans.  We saw the power of labor unions begin to fail.  We saw government increasingly under the sway of big corporations and moneyed interests, including the Supreme Court’s decision that business interests can fund political campaigns as if they were individual citizens.  At the same time, we saw the rise of a new, global information economy that has shaken old assumptions about work and community.  Historically, the Democratic party had been the party of organized labor.  Historically, the Republican Party was the party of small business, including farmers.  However, by 2007, those constituencies often felt abandoned. 

            A third fault line is race and culture.  In 2008—at the height of the recession—we elected our first African-American President.  The working class, already struggling and having increasingly to compete with newer immigrants from Asia and Latin America, now felt abandoned.  The Republican Party determined to totally isolate President Obama.  The “Tea Party” arm within the GOP got started.  Legislative paralysis set in, and the working class, with no one backing them, paid the price.

            Someone recently noted that, this year, the political dividing line is not between the right and the left.  Instead, the divisions cut across these economic, class, and racial fault lines.   The challenge for everyone—in and out of government—is to avoid an earthquake.  In 2017, the new President, the new Congress, and the States will need to set aside the “do nothing” tactics of the last eight years and work together to address the issues facing working Americans.  And, they will need to do so in a way that avoids the traps set by corporate interests—Second Amendment scares, for instance—and that engages working class Americans in decisions about how best to meet today’s challenges.  For instance, while working people do need some federal support, they have also made it clear that they want to protect their individual freedoms.  Finding the balance will require open discussion, increased understanding, and compromise.  It is time to work together.

            Several issues stand out as potential winners in this environment:

·      Tax Reform – Very clearly, our tax system is unbalanced in favor of very wealthy citizens.  Reducing income taxes—state and federal—for working class citizens makes sense at two levels.  First, it leaves them with more net in their paychecks.  Second, it begins to recognize the importance of workers in creating a positive, productive dynamic in the new economy.

·      Wage Reform – We need a minimum wage that allows full-time front-line workers to make a living from their work.  This is fundamental in a democracy. 

·      Free Higher Education – Democrats have proposed making some level of higher education free to students.  This is a natural extension of free elementary and secondary education—a product of the industrial revolution—that recognizes the need for a more educated frontline workforce.  I have elsewhere proposed that we complement this by promoting a year of public service, so that young people make a contribution to their community—and learn about the nature of work—as part of their common educational experience.  Regardless, if the nation needs a better educated frontline workforce in order to compete globally, we need to ensure that young workers have access to education.

            These are examples of initiatives that would empower the working class and help them regain their footing in the new global information society.  It may be one of the most important domestic issues for the new President.

Learning Communities

Last year, I wrote a piece on “Re-Imagining Continuing Education,” which focused on the need for universities to re-invigorate the continuing education function in order to meet the needs of the dramatically changing communities that we serve.  One thing I suggested was that Continuing Education units could adapt the MOOC concept in order to deliver noncredit services to groups within the community.  Today, I’d like to expand a bit on that idea.

            First, though, we need to get beyond the “MOOC” model as it has emerged.  MOOCs were initially advertised as a way to extend noncredit education to under-served areas.  They became shadows of credit-based online courses.  They also became a business for some.  At any rate, true noncredit Continuing Education programming goes well beyond what the public identifies with a MOOC.  It is time to start from scratch.

Continuing Education can best use online learning technologies in a noncredit environment by creating online “learning communities”—systems that allow universities to maintain an ongoing engagement with a client group through which multiple learning opportunities can be developed.   Learning Communities would have several key elements:

·      The ability for participants to enroll and participate in faculty-led noncredit online courses, research transfer seminars, and training workshops.  Some of these may lead to certificates, “continuing education units,” or badges.

·      Access to open educational resources (OERs) developed by the host institution to provide specific research-based content that users can apply in their local working environment.  These may be small training modules, demonstrations of new processes and procedures, backgrounders on regulation, or academic content that members can use to train local staff.  OERs might include video lectures, process demonstrations, computer models, etc.

·      A social media environment that allows members to interact informally with each other and with academic experts on local issues as they arise and to share experiences in using OERs and applying the content acquired from the Learning Community.

·      A data bank where ideas, discussions, etc., can be stored for later access.

            Each Learning Community would be led by faculty in the sponsoring academic unit and administered by the Continuing Education/Engagement/Extension office.  The institution should assume that the Learning Community’s needs may extend beyond the major discipline around which it is organized; one role of the Continuing Education office, then, would be to help attract other disciplines to the Learning Community when the need arises.  The Continuing Education office would also be in a good position to ensure that successful innovations generated by one Learning Community are shared with others. 

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            Learning Communities could benefit any number of professional groups that are geographically dispersed or work in different organizations.  Some examples:

·      School Teachers

·      School Administrators

·      Hospital Professionals

·      Farmers

·      Local Government Professionals, such as Borough Managers, Financial Officers, Police, Firefighers, etc.

·      Elected Officials

·      Tourism Directors

·      Small Business Owners/Operators

·      Specialized Professionals

·      Leaders in Civic Organizations

·      Civic Clubs and Service Organizations

·      Librarians

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            While each Learning Community would have a distinctive set of services and programs, all might operate under a similar business model that would have three major components:

·      An annual subscription fee would fund basic operation of the Learning Community.  The fee might apply to the organization or to its members.  For instance, a school district could join a Learning Community, giving a specific number of teachers access in a given year; or the district’s membership might be based on the number of teachers in that district.

·      During the year, the Learning Community would offer a variety of formal noncredit training programs.  An individual registration fee would be required of all participants (either paid by the member organization or directly by the participant).

·      A Learning Community may choose to charge a subscriber to download OERs.

            The goal would be to keep membership fees low, with the understanding that the value of the Learning Community increases with the number of members.

            Ideally, each Learning Community would also have an advisory board that would give members a voice in governance.

            Most institutions involved in Continuing Education/Engagement/Extension have some experience with organizing constituents in order to coordinate services.  In many cases, existing business models could be adjusted to the online environment. 

            The Learning Community model offers new ways for colleges and universities not only to extend their academic expertise into the community, but to create an ongoing two-way relationship between faculty and their constituencies for research and technology transfer—and to identify new areas for future research and development.

           

In Defense of Hillary Clinton

“I get it that some people just don't know what to make of me.”

That is Hillary Clinton in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.   Throughout her campaign, she has had to deal with what people see as differences between her public persona and her private self, between public speech and private speech, between public actions and private actions.  It is something that all politicians—in fact, all leaders—find themselves dealing with at one time or another.  But for Hillary Clinton, it is an especially open and onerous issue.

Hillary Clinton is not the only female national political figure who has had to deal with differences between her public persona and her private life.  Think of Eleanor Roosevelt.  Think of Jacqueline Kennedy.  But she is the first woman to be nominated by a major party to be President of the United States, and as such she is being examined on issues that most male candidates never have to face.  Questioning her private versus public persona is one of those issues.  Moreover, she has stepped into this limelight not only with more than five decades of public service behind her (see her website for details), but she is doing so in a time when privacy is very difficult to maintain and when one’s past is always in danger of popping up in the present.  Today’s online environment leaves very little to be truly private.   The 24-hour news channels are always hungry for new material.

This came up at the October 9 televised “town hall” debate, where she was asked about comments she made in private meetings that were leaked to the public in an attempt to discredit her.  She used as an illustration, the scene in the move Lincoln where Abraham Lincoln talked privately about the CSA sending a delegation to Washington to pursue peace while publicly stating that no delegation was in D.C.   His goal:  getting Congressional support for a Constitutional amendment on emancipation before the Civil War ended.

             In a recent New YorkTimes Magazine article Robert Draper notes that, since Bill Clinton’s first loss as a candidate for Governor of Arkansas,  Hillary has built defenses between her private self and her public persona.  He quotes Gay White, the wife of the candidate who defeated Bill Clinton, as saying that, as a result of trying to differentiate her private and public personas, Hillary “has not been able to be an authentic person.”

Well, one might ask, have other Presidents been “authentic” people?   What did the public really know about the “authentic” presidents of the past?  Did we really see the authentic Jack Kennedy when he was elected in 1960?  What about the authentic wheelchair-ridden Franklin Roosevelt?  We tend to focus on whether a public person presents an “authentic” public persona, understanding that some things remain private.  Not so, apparently, for a woman.

           There is another important factor in the case of Hillary Clinton.  Draper notes in his article that, when Bill Clinton first ran for governor, his wife was Hillary Rodham. This Baby Boomer had learned the lesson of the women’s movement and had kept her birth name in marriage.  In fact, much of her early career had been as a social advocate for children and families.  As I have noted in a recent blog posting popular culture has long ago buried the experience of the 1960s.  Today’s young adults enjoy the benefits of the social revolution of the sixties—civil rights, women’s rights, gay/lesbian rights, etc. – but most have no idea what the young social activists of the sixties went through to expand opportunity and rights to all Americans.   I cited Carla Bingham’s comment that, “even hazier was the understanding of what could possibly have mattered so much.”

            After that first defeat, Hillary Rodham changed her name to Hillary Rodham Clinton.  She began to accept that the public passions of the sixties needed to be privatized if she was to achieve public change.  The result is a tension between private passion for improving lives and public position on how that improvement can be effected—a tension heightened by the public’s tendency to be over-concerned about the private personality of the person who, I certainly hope, will become our first female President.

            Hillary Clinton has been a public figure for most of her adult life.  Much of that has been beyond the scope of any elected position.  Instead, she has simply devoted her life to the public good, seeking elected office for herself only in the last 15 or so years.  She stands as perhaps the most qualified candidate for President in many decades.  I hope that, as we move into the final weeks before the election, the American public will focus on her qualifications—her real achievements in public life—as well as her qualities as a person.  She is not just the best alternative to her opponent; she is the best candidate for our times.