The Shifting Landscape: Enrollments and Quality Learning in Higher Ed

This post is in response to a comment left on my last post, "Online Learning: Pay it Forward" by Barry. Barry, I found your comment intriguing in many ways and it touched on a lot of ideas that have been on my mind lately about higher ed: competition in higher ed enrollments, the need for quality learning across the board in higher ed, the new standards for "face to face learning" that I am sensing from our YouTube generation of students.

In Barry's comment he stresses a concern that higher ed institutions are at risk of losing enrollments to any well funded institution who can craft staff that includes "the best" online educators which, I assume, means subject matter experts with a mastery in online pedagogy, supported with a team of creative individuals to assist with cultivating dynamic, engaging learning experiences anchored by solid learning objectives (the core of an effective online learning experience). Well, Barry -- you're spot on. And it's happening. Nancy Martinis recently shared this article, College for $99 a Month, from Washington Monthly with me. It was alarming to me, so much that I find it rather difficul to summarize in this blog post. It describes your scenario (and then some) but the model that is being sold to students, and ravenously devoured might I add, is void of the passionate online professor. Think back to your undergraduate college experience. I bet every one of you can think of at least one passionate professor -- in some discipline, even if it wasn't your major -- that inspired you, motivated you to see the world differently. That's what our students risk losing with this new model, in my opinion.

Students are leaving traditional colleges and universities in hoards as they're being confronted with closed doors due to budget cuts, as well as outdated, inconvenient modes of instruction that don't meet their needs. Our students are only trying to get the degree they need so they can achieve their professional or personal goals. It's our job to ensure the degrees they get result in quality learning.

Before the shift from online non-profit universities to online profit universities/corporations began, we saw a significant decrease in face-to-face enrollments across the nation within institutions. If your college/university has a significant online program, 5-7 year date will likely demonstrate a decrease in face-to-face enrollment and a simultaneous increase in online enrollment -- check it out yourself. But...be warned that you'll have to be quite scrupulous as you analyze that data because often colleges and universities seem to embed online data with their face-to-face enrollment data, clouding the fact that their face-to-face enrollments have tanked and their online enrollments have soared.

So, let's focus on this interesting shift for a moment. Why are students leaving face-to-face classes for online classes -- either within their own institution or elsewhere? The article above poses many reasons but there is one that isn't addressed that I'd like to work through a little.

I truly believe that there are many young students today who prefer to learn in face-to-face environments but they find their classroom experiences passive and painfully irrelevant. It seems that the "YouTube Generation" may be establishing different standards for their "face-to-face" time than previous generations. And, when you think about the type of content they access through streaming media, it makes sense.

Why, for example, is a twenty year old college student going to be compelled and motivated to show up, in-person, for an 80-minute session of sitting passively, lost in a group of forty other students, listening to a professor talk about a topic? THAT is content that should streamed for students. Take those lectures and put them online. Have students access them before coming into the classroom. Reactivate the classroom experience for our students, make it engaging, make it dynamic, make it relevant and meaningful. Give them a reason to be there other than "because I said you need to be here." If you haven't watched Jose Bowen's 4-minute "Teach Naked" video yet -- watch it. And don't miss the last minute, as it is very relevant to this discussion.



Bowen's Teach Naked approach, which stresses the importance of taking the technology out of the classroom, is similar to the course design strategy I employed in my Teaching Without Walls experiment that I shared with the Educause Learning Initiative in September. You are welcome to listen to the 20-minute interview I had with a few of my students the last week of the semester. Or download the PowerPoint here to review the student survey results. We need to think carefully about design active learning experiences in the classroom and online so our students view all levels of American higher education as relevant and important.

For those of you interested in following the dialogue about "quality learning" in higher ed, I encourage a thorough reading of Jamie P. Merisotis' recent presentation at Claremont University titled "It's the Learning Stupid," in which he eloquently identifies higher ed's lack of delivering quality educational experiences for students centered around assessing clear learning outcomes. You may be interested in knowing that Merisotis also just delivered a keynote presentation in San Francisco to community college trustees, as well.

Our discussion of innovation in learning needs to stay anchored in quality learning. That is essential and, to me, I believe public higher education has an extreme opportunity to achieve leaps and bounds now over corporate online learning "machines" that are turning out online classes devoid of passion and teaching presence. Students come to college to learn from passionate educators -- that's no different in an online class.

But this will never happen if colleges view their license renewal of an LMS as their only necessary commitment to supporting an online learning program. An LMS does nothing to ensure quality learning and it does nothing to foster innovation. (Barry, this was another great point of your comment.)

An LMS (Blackboard, Moodle, Desire 2 Learn, etc.) is merely a shell for organizing, structuring and managing course content and communicating confidential grade information to students. I realize there are slight innovations shifting in some LMSs but an institution can't merely pay loads of money for faculty to have access to an LMS and consider a program built. Faculty need pedagogy training and much more beyond that.

When I teach online I consider Blackboard the "train station" for my students. They come into it each week to get their itinerary for their learning "journey" and then they go out to engage in web-based, collaborative web 2.0 activities (VoiceThread, Ning, WetPaint) and more customizable content (iTunes U) to learn. The LMS is only one tool in a very, very rich toolkit needed to teach successfully online. That big price tag can't be viewed as, "ok, that's all we need to spend on educational technology for the year." If it is, you'll never foster innovation.

In fact, I still get emails from previous students who write to me about their "flat" learning experiences "back inside" Blackboard using the discussion boards. It seems that once students are pulled into collaborative, peer-based, visual learning activities, it's tough to go back to text-based threaded discussions and be engaged.

Thanks for your comment. We're in for an interesting ride. The landscape is shifting all around us. It truly is an opportunity to make great changes.

Hopefully,
Michelle

Online Learning: pay it forward

Things are a mess in higher education now and we need new ideas to help us move forward. In my last blog post, I reflected on the loss of California's proud history of higher education which includes magical stories of free community college degrees that opened gateways and fulfilled dreams of socially disadvantaged individuals who, otherwise, would likely have never completed a college education. I received a few comments from that post and several heartfelt emails from individuals who had earned degrees through this "free college" system. The emails were filled with tremendous heartbreak over the recent budget cuts to California's higher education system and, more specifically, how those cuts are impacting students' access to learning.

Of course, we all realize something has to change. First, public education in California, and across our nation, needs more funding in order to ensure our students are provided with access to affordable college education. However, we need more than money. We need new approaches to education; new ways of thinking about connecting our students to learning experiences.

This week was the 15th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning. Two years ago, I was awarded with the Sloan-C Excellence Award in Online Teaching, which will remain a highlight of my career forever. Sloan-C has been a leader in the field of advocating for quality online learning since before most educators had even considered the notion of "distance learning." This was the first year since receiving my award that I did not attend the conference. Despite being invited to participate in a prestigious panel discussion titled "Ask The Experts," I was not granted funding to travel to Orlando due to the California budget cuts. Therefore, I was not in attendance this year. That was tough for me, as I feel being part of the international dialogue about online learning is an important part of growth as an educator and an advocate for faculty who teach online.

While I wasn't there in person, I did read an article today in the Chronicle of Higher Ed that featured some thoughts about the conference. Despite the drastic travel restrictions, conference attendance increased from 1,190 to 1,435 people (in person). Frank Mayadas, long time Sloan Program Director, addressed the crowd with a call to action -- a call to meet the demand to retrain Americans who have been laid off and are now in a state of transition seeking new skills for a career change. Online learning opens new avenues of opportunities to students who may be unable to attend a physical class due to other circumstances (which could include a host of topics from child care challenges, work schedules, psychological disorders, physical disabilities, etc.). Online learning is in demand. We know that. It's not a shock. Last year's Sloan-C report, Staying the Course, revealed that 3.94 students in higher ed were enrolled in at least one online class in 2007. That's about one in four students. I'm waiting for a new report to see the new numbers but I'd anticipate these numbers will continue to rise.

What's buried in these numbers is the fact that more than 50% of these online students are enrolled at community colleges. I can attest, from my informal research of observing and listening and conversing the online conferences I've attended across the nation in the past few years, that the large majority of those who attend professional development conferences focused on online learning come from four year universities. Also, having been employed as a full-time faculty member at a California community college for seven years, I can all share that I do not ever recall any community college in California that I came into contact with that had an instructional design team on staff or even a single instructional designer -- thoughts anybody? I'd love to hear from some of you about this topic.

If you are employed at a community college or a university, do you have an instructional design TEAM to support faculty with developing their online courses? What about multimedia support specialists, accessibility specialists, graphic designers, and learning management system staff? What's the faculty support structure like at your community college or university? Let's compare.

Developing online classes is a lot of work. This is not a myth. 85% of faculty with online course development experience agreed that it takes "somewhat more" or "a lot more" effort to develop an online course. The recent APLU survey provides an indepth look at faculty attitudes and opinions about online learning. Most important is their blatant disappointment in their campus support structure (including support for course development, delivery, students, and more). And we need our instructors to maintain a high level of teaching presence in a class for online learning to be high quality. This is where I get concerned.

We have an opportunity right now to put our heads together and support faculty, foster innovation and cultivate communities of course development and shared online content resources that result in online classes with high-touch teaching presence, rather than dull, dry, disconnected content deployed to students through a computer screen -- that's not a quality online course.

Back to Sloan...Frank Mayadas, Program Director for Sloan, has stressed the need for offering more online classes to fulfill the needs of training our workforce. Excellent point. He has also stepped up and encouraged the Obama administration to fund free online courses for community colleges. Perhaps, this is an opportunity to move us back closer to the 1960s free community college education in the California golden state.

This is sounding intriguing, isn't it!?

But the excellence of this plan hinges on whether or not our faculty, the subject matter experts and the human souls that foster and inspire learning, are a core element of the online learning experience. And whether or not instructors are teaching courses that are designed to actively engage students in creative, active learning environments with teacher mentoring and facilitation. It is not acceptable to think of "teaching presence" as a "bottle neck" towards achieving our goal of delivering access to online learning to our student population. Instead, we need to focus on new methods of organizing and funding support for our faculty as an integral element of online programs, rather than a secondary or tertiary afterthought that faculty must fight for.

Frank Mayadas said, "If we’re going to have instructor-led courses, you better get your faculty very enthusiastic, beating on the doors, saying, ‘Give me help. I want to go online.’ And I don’t think we’ve done that." I fully agree. It's time our faculty become empowered to be advocates for the support needed to deliver a quality online learning experience to their students.

And, finally, I also believe it's time higher education begins to foster the value of innovation. How will faculty be encouraged and motivated to try something new, something different -- to take a risk -- when academia is so focused on success? Failure is part of growth and success in a culture of innovation. And if we're modeling innovation and risk taking in our teaching methods but trying new activities and pedagogies, then we're cultivating strong, creative thinkers for the 21st century.

Online learning is our golden opportunity but it's up to all of us to advocate for quality online learning so we pay it forward, rather than open access to dead, irrelevant learning experiences. I hope we play this one right.

I want to learn. Please let me in, California.

I have only shared a slice of myself through my blog posts through the past couple of years. I've shared my passion for learning and my belief that technology can effectively foster more active, critical experiences for our students than the types of experiences they too frequently encounter in higher education today. In this blog post, I wish to hone in on a more focused issue that is the cornerstone of higher education in the US and, perhaps, the most vulnerable of all in some of our 50 states today -- affordable access to all.

I am a Californian. I grew up in the heart of Silicon Valley, in south San Jose in a beautiful area near the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains area known as Almaden Valley. My father was a research chemist for more than 30-years at the IBM Research Lab and my mother raised me and my two sisters and was actively involved in our schools (I have a memory of a friend in elementary school asking me if my mom "owned the school" -- just a taste of how "involved" she was). Needless to say, the importance of education was instilled in me from early on. But what my parents actively instilled in me was more than just the importance of getting an "education."

My father came from a very poor family in New Jersey in which he was one of fifteen children. His mother died suddenly before he completed junior high and his father pushed him to work early to make money for the family. My dad grew up with a relentless passion for reading, one that has never ceased. He tells me stories about how he would be scolded for "wasting time" if his father discovered him reading a book, rather than "working." So to fulfill his passion for learning, he would take books from dumpsters while nobody was looking and read them under the covers by flashlight at night.

After high school, he tried diligently to get a college degree in New Jersey but it proved too challenging and expensive. He couldn't seem to work enough hours during the day as a mechanic to still have time and energy to go to school and study at night. And then something magical occurred. There was a football coach who was spreading a magical story about schools in California giving away college educations for free. These magical wonderlands were referred to as "community colleges."

My father gave up everything in his home town -- he quit his job, said good-bye to his friends and family, and left town in his car with only dollars in his pocket. He drove across the country to a small town in California called Porterville where he attended Porterville Community College. He began taking classes there, for free. He was the first in his family to graduate from high school and now he was the first to be attending college. He fulfilled the requirements for his AA degree and then moved on to San Jose State, part of the now 23-campus CSU system, where he complete both an undergraduate degree and master's degree. Then he proceed out of state to Iowa State where he successfully completed his PhD in Chemistry. My dad is, to me, the greatest community college success story that exists.

Rarely do we think of a community college contributing to a college student's success when we hear of him earning a PhD. But if you were to ask my dad which institution was the most critical to his success, he would tell you it was Porterville Community College, no doubt. In fact, just a couple of years ago, he returned to the campus with two classmates, roughly 50 years after they graduated, just to pay homage to the campus that granted them access to education. If it wasn't for Porterville CC, that PhD would have been nothing other than a day dream in the mind of a tired car mechanic in New Jersey. My dad's story reminds me everyday why community colleges' commitment to affordable access to higher education by all is so very crucial to supporting success to the future of our country. And I think of his story each time I read a story about the current California budget cuts, respond to a former student who wants me to write a letter of recommendation for applications, or look into the eyes of my two young children and wonder about their own futures.

Imagine, just imagine, how many students in the next few years alone will be squeezed out of the higher education system in California due to the current budget crisis. Just this year, public higher ed institutions have coped with over $1 billion in budget cuts. Over two years, these cuts are projected to reach the $3 billion mark -- it's going to get much worse, folks.

Community colleges in California are already stretched beyond their current budget capacity. The public needs to clearly understand that a crowded community college does not receive the money from student tuition. This money is returned directly to the California general fund. CCCs are funded based on a growth formula determined by the state. If a college exceeds the growth they are allotted, they are serving students they don't have money to support. In other words, community colleges do not financially benefit from crowded classrooms. That's the harsh reality of community colleges.

CSUs and UCs seem to be in dismal situations as well for the near future. CSUs are squeezing out students for the 2010-11 academic year. Applications are currently being accepted for Fall 2010 but marketing efforts clearly suggest that students should expect the application doors to close early due to the large volume coming in early and the reduced number of seats available next year. Fresno State students organized a walkout in mid October to protest the cuts to the CSU system and higher edu, overall. According to the blog of Diane Blair, Communication Professor at CSU Fresno:

For the first time in Fresno State’s history all admissions, including transfers, have been canceled for the spring semester. In Fall 2010, the university announced that it will reduce enrollment by approximately 400 eligible students. The CSU system-wide is calling for a reduction of enrollment by 40,000 students over the next two years. High school students who have been told that if they do well in school they can earn a college degree are facing a broken promise because meeting the minimum eligibility requirements will no longer guarantee a student a place in the CSU.

Do they look angry? You would be too if you were potentially now being squeezed out of a higher educational system that has raised your tuition 182% since 2002. Not quite the "golden state" anymore, is it?

I can't say that I fully understand how we got ourselves into this mess but we need to understand what we're doing to our future, to the future of our children, by cutting educational funding. No cost to low-cost higher education, which is the type of learning community colleges provided in the 1960s in a face-to-face environment, offers everyone an opportunity to learn, to broaden their opportunities, to challenge their minds, and reach for a life beyond the social confinements they identify as their only "reality."

Pat Morrison's public radio broadcast, "State of the State," featuring interviews with Bonnie Rice, UC Regent and partner in the Pegasus Sustainable Century Merchant Bank, and William Hauck, current member and former Chairman, Board of Trustees, California State University and President, California Business Roundtable, is an excellent resource for understanding the magnitude of the cuts to the future economic situation of California -- although, listening to it was more bone chilling than any halloween movie I've seen yet this year. According to Hauck, recent reports indicate that the budget cuts are projecting that the state of California will have a deficit of 1,000,000 baccalaureate degrees by 2025. The natural result of this will be for businesses to leave California and begin to prosper in other regions of the nation that appropriately invest in producing an effective workforce. This really does affect all of us in California.


I began this post with a local slant and I'm going to finish it there too. I am concerned about the future of country and my state and, more specifically, the amazingly innovative fabric of Silicon Valley that I love so dearly. I wonder, are the CEOs of the high tech giants in our region concerned about the pinch on higher education in California? Or not? Are you concerned enough to foster partnerships with higher education to offset these unprecedented budget cuts? Clearly, moving forward, in the best interests of our students -- and the future of our state -- will take an innovative mindset and, really, isn't Silicon Valley the mecca of the world for entrepreneurial thinking? Can't we utilize the strengths of our own community to get us through this challenge? Every great entrepreneur understands that within turmoil and tragedy there lies tremendous opportunity. Can't we find a better way within this train wreck to collaborate, to partner, to serve the needs of the future generations of this amazing state that has so much to offer? I can't bear to see California, the state that symbolized the pathway to learning and opportunity to my own father just forty years ago, begin to crumble away.

Students, hang in there. Don't lose your passion. You will achieve your dream. Please feel free to share your stories. We need to hear them.

Most High Tech Community Colleges

The e.Republic Center for Digital Education and Converge Magazine have released the 5th annual list of community colleges that are leading the way in area of digital technologies. The colleges that made the ranking utilize digital technologies for online registration, distance learning, tutoring and advisory services; technology training for students and faculty; and Web 2.0 social and collaborative capabilities.

The Center for Digital Education's press release notes:

Marina Leight, vice president of the Center, said, “Community colleges, year after year, impress us as forward thinking and quick to adapt. Our survey results show overwhelmingly that community colleges are fast embracing cyber technologies used by “First Digitals” fostering collaboration in learning by using tools students are familiar with. Those institutions chosen as this year’s top community colleges are exceptional examples of this investment in learning.”

On the one hand, this article is quite refreshing, as it's wonderful to see community colleges, rather than four year universities, applauded for their strides in integrating technology into learning and student support. Although how the technologies are actually being leveraged for learning is not assess here. We must acknowledge, there's a big difference between putting a powerpoint online and using digital technology to create a collaborative, online learning experience. This latter, deeper reshaping of learning activities through technology is more challenging and occurs through a cultural shift in our approach to teaching and learning.

On the other hand, as a California educator, in the midst of our economic crumble as I witness our learners bear the brunt of budget cuts through furloughs, layoffs, course reductions, increased class sizes, resource reductions and tuition increases, I can only wonder how many years it will be before we will see our first California Community College appear on this list -- and which one it will be. Any guesses?

Students, Speak Up: What Upsets You About Your College?

Here is a study that was just promoted on Inside Higher Ed, a source I consider reputable. I appreciate efforts today that make student voices heard, so I thought I'd share this here:

Study on What Really Upsets Students in or From a College/University

I'm trying to find out what are the the top ten things that upset students in or from colleges. Like. what offices, procedures, policies,offices, regs or whatever that upsets students off.

If you would be willing to help me out by letting students know of the project and completing a simple online or in class survey please let me know at nealr@greatservicematters.com.

And please let others know. We may be able to make things better.

The VASA Project: Now offering Free Online Gallery Talks

Roberto Muffoletto contacted me a few months ago to discuss his intriguing idea to leverage technology to bring together visual scholars from around the world to facilitate online workshops, providing intimate and rare learning opportunities for those with an interest in the visual arts. The concept, titled the VASA Project, is moving forward and partnerships are being fostered through his efforts. I applaud his efforts to push this idea forward and continue to connect great thinkers with great technology.

For those who'd like to learn more, I encourage you to consider enrolling in the newly announced free gallery talks that VASA and Society for Photographic Education (SPE) South East Region have just announced.

What could 21st century learning look like?

While I do believe effective learning can come in a variety of formats, I also believe we've moved well beyond the lifespan of the lecture as a viable option in the 21st century. But what does 21st century learning look like? How could a student engage blogs, social bookmarking, social networking, podcasting and other forms of RSS as a path towards learning?

This question is so complex and ruffles the very foundations of traditional teaching approaches that most educators shun it and, instead, continue to teach the way they've always taught. Except for Wendy Drexler who, apparently, had her students illustrate what "Networked Learning" looks like. Quite a success, I'd say. What I appreciate most, perhaps, is the end of video that also defines the role of the "21st century teacher." This video also presents a beautiful visual model for connectivism, a pedagogy I've been mostly familiar with in the discourse of online education. Of course, the inclusivity of considering connectivism as a pedagogy for all learning environments is especially delightful in the spirit of innovation.

Thank you to Diana Wakimoto for her innovative spirit and for sharing this great video with me.

I believe...

I am an educator whose personal career goal is to innovate. In a context of budget blues, furlough Fridays, and a grimmer year around the bend, how does one sustain an argument for innovation when there is no other voice but her own singing this lonely song? I can feel my passion wane and my energy tank -- and this is a horrific feeling to me. Our students need innovation in education. I must remind myself of what I believe in, so I remember why I do what I do. If you too believe, please let share a comment here.

I believe...

• in the energy sent through the spark in a student's eye.
• in the need for educators to teach students that it's important to be passionate.
• in creativity.
• that today's students will create a better world for my children.
• collaborative learning environments are more inclusive than lectures.
• lectures need to leave the classroom and enter the iPod.
• classrooms should be spaces for discussion, debate, and dialogue.
• a teacher's job is to evoke passion in a student and engage him/her in the learning process.
• online learning is revolutionary or destructive, depending on how it is managed.
• we can do better.
• we need to listen to our students more.
• that failure is a necessary step towards improvement.
• that risk taking should be rewarded.
  
• in open education.
• in global perspectives.
• technology can help us.
• I can make a difference. I just need to figure out how.

Teaching without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture

Wow, it felt great today to have an opportunity to share my experiences from my face-to-face art history teaching innovations at Sierra College with intrigued educators from around the country in Teaching without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture! The ELI staff, Carie Page, Veronica Diaz and Malcolm Brown, were delightful and incredibly professional to work with. I was elated to learn that my webinar drew the largest crowd thus far from their amazing webinar lineup which was quite an honor. We had roughly 165 registrations as of last Friday.

As usual, there wasn't enough time to answer all the questions that surface in presentation room but I'm more than happy to continue the discussion about my teaching innovations here. For those of you who couldn't join us for Teaching Without Walls: Life Beyond the Lecture, I hope you'l keep you come back and visit my blog frequently, as I'll be sure to share the public archive when ELI makes it available.

I quickly reviewed the room's chat box before I left and recall there were a few questions about using VoiceThread that I could address here. First, there were concerns about FERPA and VoiceThread. This is a terrific question and, I think, anyone with student privacy concerns will be more inclined to consider using VoiceThread over many other web 2.0 tools because of the security options that are built into the tool. If you explore my An Educator's Guide to Using VoiceThread, you'll find an overview of how to create a VoiceThread with student privacy in mind. Essentially, you can have your students link out to a VT and participate in a discussion that will be web-based but will not be "found" through the VoiceThread search function, in their "browse" page (if you don't want it to be) and it won't come up in Google or other web searches. So, the only folks who will have access to the link are those you share the link with.

Secondly, I had some questions about my lectures. As I explained, I shared my lectures with my students in PDFs that I wrote out by hand actually before I recorded any of the podcasts. When I began teaching online, I generated all my lectures in text format. I started teaching online in 2003, before podcasting was popular. I was teaching at a community college with absolutely zero instructional design or multimedia support. So I developed all my lectures in writing with text-based lectures. The PDFs included images that my students would refer to as they would read. Then, after that foundation had been set, I began to record the lectures a few years after that. I used the written lectures as my "transcripts." I am a mac user and the fastest and easiest program I found was Profcast which allowed me to present my lectures on a whim (in my office in front of nobody). I would create a Keynote that held all my images and just click through the images as I read my "transcript" and then at the end click "publish" and it created an .mp4 file that I uploaded to iTunes U. Voila!

That's how things began to flow. It took a long time and, no I did not receive any extra incentive or support for my work and, yes, I do believe I should have. I certainly believe faculty need to be supported and encouraged for taking risks and, in fact, I think they should be applauded when for being innovators.

How does your institution foster innovation? Leave a comment, let us know. I believe we need to cultivate more centers of innovation in higher education to promote and encourage new ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Our students need to see innovation modeled in the classroom so they can become innovators themselves in the world. This is so important.

I hope you will take some time to listen to my student interview from last semester. If you do, you will hear the voices of Ashley, Kiley and Heather, three of my students from my spring 2009 Women in Art class at Sierra College. I hope their thoughts will reasonate with you, as they have with me.

I am available for further discussion and consultation about using VoiceThread or innovations in pedagogy in an online or face-to-face environment. Don't hesitate to contact me via my blog or email! I look forward to it!

"Congrats! You did it Wrong!" The Critical Role of Innovation in Education

"Congrats! You did it wrong!"

Sounds odd, doesn't it? Encouraging mistakes is a paradigm shift for a society who raises children in a context in which he who earns the highest percentage of correct scores or reaches the finish line the quickest is the one who is rewarded and praised.

However, what must be realized is a person who is raised to fear mistakes will not take risks. And a society void of risk takers is a society void of innovation. As we sit here ready to plunge into the second decade of the 21st century, we all should now be cognizant of the critical importance of innovation across all spectrums of our society -- this includes teaching and learning. We need change agents, we need out-of-the-box thinkers, we need creative minds. We need to foster a generation of risk takers and I believe we, as educators, need to be weaving risk-taking into our pedagogy to model it to our students. Risk-taking is teaching creativity. It's teaching entrepreneurial thinking. It's teaching 21st century skills. It's what we need to be doing every day in our classroooms. And it's ok to make mistakes -- we should be striving to make mistakes because without them we aren't learning how to transform our existing models of learning.

Joshua Kim has offered a wonderfully insightful and some would still say "brave" excerpt of a sociology teaching experiment that required risk taking on his blog. In the end, his experiment resulted in some successes as well as some failures. What was his experiment? Instead of requiring his students to complete research papers, the traditional outcome of a higher education experience, he offered his students the experience of working with multimedia to create "voice-over lectures and video mashups" (with Jing and iMovie) that would be placed publicly online through YouTube. Check out his students' impressive work!

The success? As Kim notes, "We created a warm and supportive learning environment. The students did great work. I think we covered the foundations of the sociology, and maybe got some people excited (and prepared) to take more courses." The failures? The technologies implemented for creating the project took a long time to master (not everyone enters a sociology class with video editing skills) which limited the amount of time the students had to engage more thoroughly with the curriculum.

I have, personally, reflected on this challenge myself as I have thought through the potential of encouraging faculty to integrate movie-based projects into learning. My suggestion to Kim (and one that I left in a comment to his blog post) would be to check out Animoto, and easy way to create videos with voiceover from still images. The resulting productive doesn't use video but it creates a high quality video with amazingly cool transitions set to music. Animoto even incorporates the ability to use voiceover and text-only slides. The training time is minimal and (here's the best part), it's all web-based (students can do it from home with an internet connection) and they offer free accounts to educators!

Cheers to Kim and his efforts. Do you have examples of risk taking to share from your classroom? Take a risk today and applaud yourself or a colleague for making a mistake. Start a paradigm shift. Be a change agent.