Stockport bus station, Stockport, Greater Manchester, England and in the mid-distance is St Mary’s church and to the right is the Hat Museum

I spent last week in Istanbul, Turkey and Stockport, England helping institutions in Europe expand their online class offerings. While in Stockport, our host arranged for a tour of the Hat Museum. Stockport was the center of hat making for several hundred years and almost all hats made and sold from England had their origins in Stockport. Even the American classic Stetson was invented in Stockport.

As we were taking the tour, our guide explained the process of using mercury in a boiling vat to shrink the felt as the first part of the production process. Workers who were exposed to the noxious vapors emitted from this process often exhibited odd and aggressive behaviors and were described as being mad as a hatter. The toxic effects of mercury poisoning were discovered in 1829 and 35 years later, Lewis Carroll injected the Mad Hatter character in his classic tale, Alice in Wonderland. It wasn’t until 1941 that the demands for mercury in the war efforts forced the manufactures to agree to replace mercury with hydrogen peroxide in the production of hats.

Hat Works Museum

Why would the hat industry continue to subject the employees to such a toxic environment when they knew the devastating effects? Maybe it was easier just to continue to do it the way they always did it.

“Yeah, it may not be good but this is how I learned to make hats and this is the way we are going to make hats.”

Maybe the companies didn’t want to invest in new manufacturing equipment and retrain their employees. Maybe the employees would lose their jobs if they were replaced with technology and the companies.

Regardless of the reason, I am sure you are trying to figure out what this has to do with education or innovation, two things about which I am passionate. Well, we know some of the things we do now in higher education are not as effective as they once were; yet we continue to do them.

Classic Mad Hatter Style Hat

We claim to be scholars but yet ignore research on what learning styles are the most effective. We still allow faculty to be the sage on stage, lecturing to classes of students despite the compelling research indicating the brain activity of students during a lecture is similar to brain activity while watching TV.

Research shows students learn as well online as in they do in the classroom and that the most effective style is a hybrid class that blends online with an in-seat component. Just like hatters were hired for their skill at making hats, faculty members are hired for their subject matter expertise. Unlike the hat factory owners, who knew better but continued to poison their workforce, as administrators, we must be embrace what we know about learning and change our practices so that our graduates don’t end up mad as a hatter!

What practices are still in use at your institution that are making you, mad as a hatter? Share with me.

Non-native English speaking students trying to enter the higher education system in the United States face daunting challenges. Consider first the requirement at most institutions that a student have four years of high school English. The premise of the American Dream is that more education leads to increased socioeconomic status, guaranteeing a better life for the next generation. This premise, however, is complicated for non-English speaking students.

Don’t get me wrong – I firmly believe that if you are going to live and work in a country, you need to be proficient with the language. It is deeply engrained in my family history. My grandfather spoke no English when he arrived in the United States from Spain in 1918. He did not petition for the United States to adapt to his language nor did he expect signs to be written in Spanish. He learned the language on his own while working 50+ hours per week.

This may sound harsh, and I assure you that I am not criticizing immigrants seeking a better life. I am criticizing the people in the educational system who remain content with mediocre methodology for teaching language. There have been fabulous advances in the technology of learning driven by credible research. To me, it is simply unacceptable to use old tools to teach and assess language acquisition simply because it is how it has always been done in the past.

Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti

There are new ideas we should try that will not only speed the acquisition of languages, but also increase retention. Tim Ferriss tells the story of Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti who mastered 29 languages and was reported to be conversational in an additional eight by using translations of the Lord’s Prayer. Tim’s approach uses 13 basic sentences that he asserts contain all the components necessary for proficiency in any language.

It is time to step up our game. Cardinal Mezzofanti died in 1849, yet we have been reticent to embrace his style of language learning. The reason my grandfather came to America was to have a better life; that dream still drives millions a year to come to the United States. It is time to help them realize their their American Dream.

What are your thoughts regarding this topic? Have you found a viable solution? Are you as frustrated as I am? Share below or online and let’s start a dialog.

reposted from EvoLLLution Article written by Dr. Mark Sarver

Inter-Institutional Collaborations Critical to Compete

As we have been discussing the commoditization of higher education, the topic of how inter-institutional collaborations can help institutions compete in this ever-changing marketplace must be addressed. The two key areas of collaboration that help institutions boil down to increased opportunity and reduced costs…

In the often protected and territorial confines of a higher education institution, referred to as silos within the industry, cross-departmental cooperation is as rare as collaboration with another institution. We know the reasons: perception that no one can do it as well as me; concerns they will steal my ideas and get the credit; and that would involve me getting out of my comfort zone. However, working together allows for better ideas, shared risk and increased exposure (the good kind). It is not difficult, and quite often simply requires someone reaching out to involve others in an honest conversation to break down these negative misperceptions…

We are working on many cost containment activities, including shared grant writing services, a shared learning management system, a centralized faculty and staff training institute and joint purchasing of educational support software. These activities save our member institutions thousands of dollars each year.

Read the rest of this article here 

Ellen Clapsaddle “The Army and Navy Forever!”

As Memorial Day approaches, many of us will make plans to cookout with friends and family, go to the beach, or just enjoy the time off. I whole heartily encourage you, however, to take a few moments to reflect on those individuals who have willingly and selflessly protected the freedom we enjoy today yet often take for granted.

On February 22, 2013, I had the honor of attending a ceremony in Norfolk, VA celebrating the retirement of Colonel Jeff Waechter from the United States Air Force. Col. Waechter is a soldier, pilot and educator whose passion for finding new and innovative ways to educate military students has produced awesome results at the Joint Forces Staff College.

If you have never attended a full military ceremony, you truly are missing something special. The Joint Forces Staff College serves all branches of the military so the ceremony included representatives and traditions from all the branches, not just the Air Force where Col. Waechter served dutifully. Col. Waechter was presented with his retirement flag as the poem by SMSgt Don S. Miller USAF (Ret.) entitled My Name is Old Glory was read aloud.

As the flag was passed from one person to the next, each proudly representing their individual branch, I was flooded with emotion. Watching their purposeful and precise movements and the honor and respect with which they handled the flag was overwhelming. Even now as I am writing this, those overwhelming emotions that I first experienced that day in February have come flooding back, as moving and vivid today as they were then.

Listening to Col. Waechter give his farewell speech, I couldn’t help but see how passionate he is about the business of educating and how I think many individuals in the business of education have lost their passion.

Here’s the link for Col Waechter’s Retirement Program.

When I think about the young men and women who fearlessly and freely fight for the freedoms we enjoy, some of whom were told to consider military service because they were not “college material,” I am reminded that with freedom comes choice. These young men and women are defending our right to choose to accept an educational system that was once the envy of the world, but is now lagging behind in rank and quality. I am troubled that we squander the stalwart protection of the heroic men and women in the armed forces because we have chosen to be mediocre.

Photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Derek Poole

I challenge you to take time this Memorial Day to reflect on those men and women who willingly make unimaginable sacrifices, devoting their lives to the protection of our country, and find your passion for education. At different times in our lives, we have all been a son or a daughter, a child or an adult, a student or a teacher. Today is the day to be a teacher. Let your passion teach our students that we will no longer choose mediocre.

They deserve it.

Today, as many fee-based consortia are disappearing because of a dwindling membership and inability to express their value proposition, eduKan continues to grow. Over the past several years, eduKan has experienced growth at double-digit rates, resulting in a substantial return on investment for each of its member institutions. Last year alone, each of the six member colleges received an annual dividend payment of $90,000…

…Recognizing the need for ongoing innovation, eduKan has built an innovation fund (read: research and development) into its annual operating budget.

Read the rest of this article published in Evolllution, written by Dr. Mark Sarver.

Way to be wildly innovative, IBM.

In your whitepaper, Taking the Guesswork out of Student Retention, you highlight the benefits of using IBM SPSS to predict and improve student retention. SPSS, first introduced as Statistical Package for Social Science and later changed to Statistical Product and Service Solutions, was first released in 1968. Granted, IBM paid 1.2 billion to purchase the company in 2009, so maybe it is just new to them. Anyone close to my age who attended graduate school will remember the pain and suffering of using SPSS and will probably agree with my assertion that IBM is going to have a tough time convincing us that their product is now user friendly and can help us with retention.

Take a close look at the whitepaper. Start with the title, Taking the Guesswork out of Student Retention. You might infer from this bold title that SPSS has found a solution for retention issues. If true, this could help every institution in the world; who doesn’t want better retention? Yet the document doesn’t contain any evidence to support the claim that SPSS has improved retention. The first example from an implementation at Baruch College quotes the following:

Using IBM SPSS software, the college was able to better integrate data across all units. This led to a 7.1 increase in applications to its business school – when other schools were seeing sharp decreases – and a 21 percent annual increase in transfer students. Baruch also used IBM SPSS technologies to improve the placement of freshman in introductory courses, which significantly reduced drop outs.

Call me silly, but for a company that sells statistical software to use the words  “significantly reduced” is like the Pope saying sin is “kind of bad.” If they had claimed that “retention rose 22% over last year” or that the “college realized a net increase in total revenue by $200,000,” I may have been able to buy it.  But an increase in applications? What does that have to do with retention?

The next example is of SPSS being used at American Public University. I know APU’s Vice President of Research and Development, Dr. Phil Ice, personally. He has done amazing work using predictive analytics. I also know that APU has done more than just “predict with 80 percent certainty at what point a given student is likely to drop out.”  For IBM to simply stop the story there without further discussing the amazing outcomes at APU is a slap in the face to Phil and his team, simply for the benefit of a marketing promo piece. If I were Phil, or the president of APU, I would be perturbed with IBM for publishing this assertion that their product was the primary reason for retention success, a fact the whitepaper fails to mention.

IBM, your public relations firm missed the mark with this obvious MARKETING ploy. My advice to you is to reconsider your entry into a market as an effort to repay that 1.2 billion dollar purchase of SPSS until you are 100% sure that you know how that market operates. I am left wondering if your software could have predicted just how far off the mark you are on this endeavor, from a statistically relevant perspective, of course.

Another interesting IBM factoid: In 1943, IBM chairman Thomas Watson said “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

Now it’s your turn to tell me what you think about this? Share below, or tweet me @eduKanCEO.

Online Learning saves money for students and institutions

Universities with online programs want a learning management system that is not only easily deployable, but also includes features that can improve student retention—a problem that is particularly concerning to online institutions….

Mark Sarver, CEO of eduKan, said the consortium of community colleges… serves approximately 5,000 students.

eduKan’s research found that about 50 percent of its students were purchasing textbooks through college bookstores, while the other half of students took their business elsewhere—or failed to purchase textbooks altogether.

“We found students dropping classes early on because they didn’t have books,” said Sarver. Investing in Pearson LearningStudio opened up digitally embedded content and open educational resources (OER) for students to use, thereby alleviating costs. Today, students pay a $115 resource fee that includes everything they’ll need for class, which, compared to the previous $225 average textbook cost, is a welcome change.

Pearson LearningStudio’s operational reporting capabilities also greatly benefit eduKan….

…“allow us to look at where students are, how they’re engaging—with each other, with a faculty member—and we’ve done some correlation studies looking at the correlation between students who spend time in threaded discussions and their success rate in classes,” said Sarver.

Perhaps above all else, eduKan values Pearson LearningStudio’s ability to identify “weak points” in a given course. eduKan hopes that through editing and reconstructing courses, it can generate stronger student outcomes in the future.

“What [Pearson LearningStudio] allows us to do [is], you can look in and see, ‘All of our students are struggling with differential equations,’ and we can go to the professor and say, ‘Here are all these resources, let’s find a better way to teach this,’” said Sarver. “This is the ultimate academic freedom.”

Find the complete story here at eCampus News.

Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer unleashed a new policy on February 25 saying employees would no longer be available to work from home. In an internal memo she stated, “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side,” the memo said. “That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.”

Hello… does anyone see the irony in this? The company that has given us Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger to allow us to connect with others remotely now says that employees must be face to face to communicate and collaborate.

WOW and backwards WOW.

Never mind the studies that say employees working from home are more productive and work more hours than their in-office counterparts. Then at an all-staff meeting several weeks ago a staffer asked Mayer whether her rigorous hiring practices had caused the company to miss out on top engineering talent in Silicon Valley’s hyper-competitive job market. She personally interviews all candidates applying for a job. Mayer dismissed the complaint that she had refused good candidates because they did not have degrees from
prestigious universities, and instead she challenged her staff to get better at recruiting.

Kind of reminds me of traditional academe. Despite the studies showing students in online and hybrid classes acquire knowledge better than their traditional in-seat counterparts, faculty and administrators are still resisting online education at many institutions. “I think some classes are ok online, but for those classes where students need to interact with a professor, there is not substitute for the face to face classroom.” This comment came from a community college faculty member at a faculty training I attended a couple of months ago.

Again…. WOW.

Many colleges are quickly trying to figure out how to get into the “online game” in an attempt to bolster failing traditional enrollments and to adjust to the changing marketplace of higher education. Just this week, I have had two inquires from institutions wanting eduKan to help them bring their programs online, to use our expertise and learning management system. Just like many are speculating that more and more traditional institutions who don’t embrace change are not going to be in business in the future, many in the tech world are speculating based on the decisions of Yahoo!’s CEO they are not going to be in business in the near future.

Next blog I will address Marissa’s hiring practices and how they parallel the hiring practices of traditional institutions.

Yahoo!

At the 20^th ICAI Conference’s Technology Showcase, Dr. Mark Sarver will be discussing how eduKan is using biometrics technology for student identity proofing to meet regulations, lower operational costs and maintain high levels of academic integrity for distance education.

Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO of eduKan, a consortium of colleges in Kansas, will be speaking at the International Center for Academic Integrity’s 20^th Anniversary Conference. Dr. Sarver will be talking about his choice to seek out a solution for identity proofing students enrolled in eduKan’s distance education program, to maintain a high level of academic integrity and to lower operational costs associated with physical proctoring. The ICAI conference originally was to be held at Princeton University in November, but Hurricane Sandy forced a reschedule to February 26-28^th, 2013 in San Antonio, Texas and will feature thought leaders who support the need to cultivate a culture of integrity in academic communities throughout the world.

Overview of Benefits of Technology used from BSI

The International Center for Academic Integrity (ICAI) was founded in 1992 to combat cheating, plagiarism, and academic dishonesty in higher education. ICAI offers assessment services, resources, and consultations to its member institutions, and facilitates conversations on academic integrity topics each year at its annual conference. The 20th International Center for Academic Integrity Conference’s theme is Influencing Culture, Advancing Integrity and is headed up by director, Dr. Teresa Fishman, from Clemson University in South Carolina and has members in 18 countries.

“We are excited to be speaking at the ICAI conference this year, representing the first distance education institution that has pioneered the use of BSI’s biometric technology for identity proofing as part of our learning management platform,” stated Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO of eduKan.

eduKan ran a pilot in the Spring of 2011 to test the viability of the BioSig-ID software for use in student identity proofing along with a plan to lower proctoring costs, protect student privacy and increase accountability while being easy to use. Dr. Sarver was able to realize a dramatic savings in operational costs and lower fees for students while proactively managing academic integrity for eduKan’s online campus. eduKan was nominated for a Sloan Consortium Effective Practice award for their advancement in using innovative technology to solve this critical need.

At ICAI, Dr. Sarver will share the key findings from the pilot, how it’s working now that it is rolled out for school-wide usage, and how eduKan is benefiting today by using BSI’s solution.

“We are on a fast growth path and needed to manage costs as our staff of six manages over 5,000 online student enrollments,” Dr. Sarver continues. “The risk-reward for adoption of innovative technologies comes down to the plan –one in which we very methodically stated clear goals and objectives to our technology partners and were able to realize them as a result of the hard work of our team’s execution.”

For more information on this conference and membership opportunities in the ICAI, please visit http://www.academicintegrity.org.

About eduKan

eduKan provides access to quality higher education, including ESL courses, via college degrees, certificates, and individual courses, with affordable online classes. eduKan was founded in 1998 as a cooperative effort between member colleges to offer courses via the Internet. eduKan’s consortium schools are all accredited Kansas learning institutions with excellent reputations and long histories of providing degrees in traditional settings, as well as through online courses. eduKan Consortium member institutions are: Barton Community College, in Great Bend; Colby Community College, in Colby; Dodge City Community College, in Dodge City; Garden City Community College, in Garden City; Pratt Community College, in Pratt; and Seward County Community College/Area Technical School, in Liberal. For more information, please visit http://www.edukan.org.

I recently attended the International Academy of Web Television Awards, where I walked the red carpet as the host of eduKanTV. At first, I considered this event the red-headed step-sister to the iconic Academy Awards, but once I saw the quality of these programs, I quickly revised my Wayne’s World- inspired preconceived notion of web television programs. As I worked the crowd at the after-party, I met producers, publicists and executives from some of the major Hollywood film and production houses. It became suddenly clear to me that traditional television and film companies perceive a palpable threat to their monopoly on both viewers and talent posed by the burgeoning web entertainment industry. In order to protect their position at the top of the food chain, they are actively recruiting the best shows and talents to their networks and production companies.

American Federation of Musicians

So how does this relate to higher ed? I wasn’t until I read an MSN article the other day that shed light on the “talkies,” the first movies that incorporated sound with the picture, that I made the connection. The addition of audio flat out ended the careers of many silent screen actors whose untrained voices assaulted the tender ears of the movie-going public, while the few stage actors thrived, using their finely-honed vocal projections to delight audiences. The American Federation of Musicians joined in the cacophony once it became clear that the talkie rendered their services obsolete and placed an ad in the Pittsburg Press in 1929 that in part said:

This is the case of Art vs. Mechanical Music in theatres. The defendant stands accused in front of the American people of attempted corruption of musical appreciation and discouragement of musical education. Theatres in many cities are offering synchronized mechanical music as a substitute for Real Music. If the theatre-going public accepts this vitiation of its entertainment program a deplorable decline in the Art of Music is inevitable. Musical authorities know that the soul of the Art is lost in mechanization. It cannot be otherwise because the quality of music is dependent on the mood of the artist, upon the human contact, without which the essence of intellectual stimulation and emotional rapture is lost. (via Duke.edu)

By the next year, approximately 22,000 movie house musicians had lost their jobs.

Although established Hollywood production houses are rushing to recruit this new web talent, they are not sure what to do with it, how it fits into their conventional model or even how to monetize it. Kind of reminds me of traditional higher education’s response to MOOCs, OER content and para-educators, such as TED and the Khan Academy. Online learning has been around for over 15 years offered by early adopters, like eduKan, and for years have fought the perception of traditional faculty and administrators who failed to see how these online courses could be as good as what is offered in the classroom.

Those who are saying, “You can’t replace teachers with technology,” or “this is the demise of higher education as we know it,” sound like theater musicians to me.