Reblogged from an article written by Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO, eduKan for the WCET blog

wcet-blog-figure-1-sarver

Figure 1

Do you ever look at something and know it doesn’t look right, but you just cannot figure out why?  Perhaps more troubling than not knowing what is wrong, is not knowing how to make it right.  Over the last ten years, I have poured over tons of assessment data from several different institutions and have yet to be inspired.  The most recent reports I read contained an inordinate amount of information- standard deviations, n values, means and modes- a veritable testament to the art and beauty of technical writing. As an academic administrator, however, I need assessment data that proves unequivocally, that we are providing academic excellence. Sure, there was an executive summary that highlighted a handful of revelations, but I also knew that I would have to delve into the hundreds of pages of statistical analysis and data to get the whole picture.  If only those compiling assessment reports could remember a picture is worth a 1,000 words…..or numbers!

Read the rest of this blog post on WCET by clicking here.

Sloan Effective Practice Award Nomination

Sloan Effective Practice Award Nomination

eduKan manages the online courses for a consortium* of 6 colleges in Kansas and wanted to reduce proctoring costs and deter online cheating while meeting verification regulations for distance education as required by the Department of Education and their regional accrediting agency. Dr. Sarver worked with the team at Biometric Signature ID (BSI) and Pearson to pilot test BioSig-ID(TM) as part of the LearningStudio authentication process since BSI’s technology matched eduKan’s needs versus other webcam-based, hardware intensive technologies. The pilot ran from March-April, 2011 with 174 students from multiple classes using BioSig-ID(TM) to authenticate their identity 6 times before their final exam. There were 6,300 verifications and only 9 help desk calls during the trial period. eduKan conducted a survey after the pilot ended and found that 97% of the students preferred BioSig-ID(TM) to finding a proctor or driving to a facility for physical proctoring while 94% of them had a positive experience with the verification process.

The final results of the pilot including the survey and cost analysis proved that the BSI technology would more than meet their goals. The faculty and administration were also very positive about their user experience making it a “win-win.” The outcome has been impressive and has allowed eduKan to achieve their goals of reduced costs, increased compliance, dramatically lower student fees to help gain a competitive advantage, and ensure academic integrity. eduKan now meets and exceeds the requirements for verification of online student identities and can be confident that the same student who submits assignments, takes exams, and earns a final grade is the same one who enrolled in that course and has received financial aid. *Pratt Community College, Barton Community College, Garden City Community College, Seward County Community College, Dodge City Community College and Colby Community College.

Read more here.

U.S Department of Education in Washington DC

U.S Department of Education in Washington DC

Dr. Mark Sarver of eduKan will be testifying at the Negotiated Rulemaking for Higher Education hearing on the Federal Student Aid Programs and the methods needed to stop fraudulent activities related to distance education and financial aid.

The CEO of eduKan, a consortium of colleges in Kansas, to testify at the Negotiated Rulemaking for Higher Education hearing on the Federal Student Aid Programs authorized by the Higher Education Act of 1965. The purpose for the testimony will be to reinforce the need for ensuring the security of the Title IV programs delivered through distance education and protection of academic integrity and funding for the program.

There is a growing trend in fraudulent use of Title IV HEA Distance Education funding programs and this has created a need to open up this subject for public input. The May 31st meeting at the U.S Department of Education in Washington DC will be to explore the formation of a negotiated rulemaking committee to examine regulations to prevent future fraudulent use of Title IV and the disbursement of funds to recipients.

With changing legislation and budget cut proposals, more than 1 million students could be effected over the next 10 years as Pell grants help more than 9 million students afford college today. Add to this the growing fraudulent activities being uncovered, the students who really need financial aid to get a secondary education could be left at the wayside.

“We believe that there is a better way to stop fraudulent activities with distance education and help secure funding for our children’s future education,” says Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO of eduKan. “Adopting new technologies that ensure the identity of the student applying for and getting grants while enrolling in college is vital and is available today. Unfortunately, it is not something that is at the top of the list of every higher education institution in the U.S.”

eduKan has taken steps to ensuring that the student who enrolls and receives financial aide is the student who is attending and getting the credits for their education. They are concerned that thousands if not millions of students will be penalized by slow-moving institutions who are not taking action to put these remedies in place to protect financial aid programs today and in the future.

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.

Flipped Classroom

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

Here’s 15 news stories from the last month about flipping the classroom.

There are news stories and web articles about reverse instruction, or ‘flipping the classroom’, published just about every day lately. Here’s 15 news stories from the last 4 weeks focused on this instructional technology phenomenon. Many of these articles mention ‘the flip’ in their title (and for every one of these, there have been one or two additional articles that discuss the concept).

In addition to listing these articles here, I’ve also created and shared a videoand a Slideshare deck to help to bring attention to this powerful idea and spread the word about it to educators everywhere. If you want to spread the word too, please pass this article or one of these other presentations on to your colleagues.

1. ‘Flipped Classroom’ Makes Most of Hands-On Time,Education Week, April 25, 2012
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/04/25/inflippedclassrooms_ap.html

2. The Flipped Classroom,  my.hsj.org, Heart Beat , Barat Academy, Chesterfield, MO April 27, 2012
http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/articleid/521751/newspaperid/2577/The_Flipped_Classroom.aspx

3. Framingham High teachers try ‘flipped classroom’ format, The MetroWest Daily News, April 24, 2012
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/news/education/x101303297/Framingham-High-teachers-try-flipped-classroom-format

4. ‘Flipped Classroom’ Getting A Tryout At Suburban High SchoolsCBS Chicago, April 23, 2012
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/04/23/flipped-learning-getting-a-tryout-at-suburban-high-schools/

5. A New Homework Strategy: Flipped ClassroomsHartford Courant, April 25, 2012
http://articles.courant.com/2012-04-25/features/hc-no-homework-teresa-pelham-20120425_1_math-spanish-teacher-teaching-grammar

6. Flipping the Classroom Requires More Than VideoGeek Dad on Wired.com, April 13, 2012
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/04/flipping-the-classroom/

7. With A New Education Platform, TED Gives Teachers The Keys To A Flipped ClassroomTechCrunch, April 24, 2012
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/24/ted-launches-new-ed-platform/

8. Inside The Flipped ClassroomThe Journal, April 11, 2012
http://thejournal.com/articles/2012/04/11/the-flipped-classroom.aspx

9. The flip: Classwork at home, homework in classThe Washington Post, April 15, 2012
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-flip-classwork-at-home-homework-in-class/2012/04/15/gIQA1AajJT_story.html

10. St. Gabriel’s Launches 1:1 iPad Initiative To Flip ClassroomsThe Journal, April 3, 2012
http://thejournal.com/articles/2012/04/03/texas-school-launches-11-ipad-initiative-to-flip-classrooms.aspx

11. ‘Flipped classroom’ model leaps to Long IslandLibn.com (Long Island Business News), April 4, 2012
http://libn.com/2012/04/04/flipped-classroom-model-leaps-to-long-island/

11. Conference to explore best practices in flipped learning,eSchoolNews, April5, 2012
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2012/04/05/conference-to-explore-best-practices-in-flipped-learning/

13. Is Reverse Instruction Education Technology’s Perfect Storm?EmergingEdTech, April 8, 2012
http://www.emergingedtech.com/2012/04/is-reverse-instruction-education-technologys-perfect-storm/

14. Arizona schools flipping homework, lecturesAZCentral, 12 News March 31, 2012
http://www.azcentral.com/12news/news/articles/2012/03/31/20120331arizona-school-online-flipping.html

15. Mishicot Middle School tried new model for math class,htrnews.com, April 13, 2012
http://www.htrnews.com/article/20120413/MAN0101/204130594/Mishicot-Middle-School-tries-new-model-math-class

 Thanks to Emerging Tech for this reference.

Here are a list of online resources our faculty members have found helpful. Most are free. Feel free to add your favorites by posting a reply with the name and web address.

Help

Open educational resources (OER) are “digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.”

OER include different kinds of digital assets. Learning content includes courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals. Tools include software that supports the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content, searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities. Implementation resources include intellectual property licenses that govern open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content. They also include materials on best practices such as stories, publication, techniques, methods, processes, incentives, and distribution.

Open Educational Resources websites:

MERLOT- Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching at www.merlot.org

http://www.advantageedu.com/blog/2008/100-open-courseware-resources-for-teachers/

National Repository for Online Courses content and in house materials — http://www.montereyinstitute.org/nroc/

The California State University system has been implementing a “Affordable Learning Solutions” initiative for about a year.   They have organized many open learning resources into a “one-stop shop” that is open to everyone – see http://als.csuprojects.org

CSU have built some simple applications where a faculty or student can type in the ISBN of their textbook and “OER Finder” will provide a list of open learning resources associated with the topic of the textbook see http://als.csuprojects.org/course_content or if you only want to find open textbooks (vs. course modules, online courses, etc), use the OER Finder at http://als.csuprojects.org/free-textbooks . The Affordable Learning Solutions and the OER Finder is built on the long term success of MERLOT (www.merlot.org) – an open online library of over 27,000 open learning resources, many of which have been peer reviewed by academic editorial boards.

CSU has started having faculty share their course syllabi that illustrates how they are substitute open learning resources for textbooks (see http://als.csuprojects.org/sharing-practices for some initial samples.

The CSU also has tested the strategy of licensing digital textbooks (“Renting Digital”) at a significantly lower cost (35% of new textbook price for the pilot studies).   You can read about the CSU’s Digital Marketplace project at www.dmproject.org and the “licensed content” project at: http://www.dmproject.org/solutions/licensed_content.html and the Digital Marketplace 2010 year-end report http://www.dmproject.org/docs/2010-YearEndReport.pdf

http://hosted.mediasite.com/mediasite/Catalog/pages/catalog.aspx?catalogId=68c4ce9f-c919-45ea-b18b-0f5aa7501fbd presentation on the open future and the speaker is Dr. David Wiley. While not totally open there is a large FIPSE Grant that was given to Florida State College in Jacksonville. They have a project called SIRIUS Academics which provides low cost course contents and books on several courses with more in the works. Person to contact if you are interested is Rick Granger: lgranger@fscj.edu phone: 904-632-3307. Also you may contact Leslie Balsiger for materials that she has on this topic lbalsiger@lccc.wy.edu

Going hybrid

For those faculty in our member colleges who are thinking about creating hybrid courses, here are some great resources. Most are from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

For those faculty in our member colleges who are thinking about creating hybrid courses, here are some great resources. Most are from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

A new post by EduKan CEO, Mark Sarver, is available at http://innovatingtheivy.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/i-love-vegas/

 

This is an excellent resource by Cable Green.

http://bit.ly/oer-matrix

Open Educational Resources (OER)

What are they?

Open educational resources (OER) are “digitized materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.”

OER include different kinds of digital assets. Learning content includes courses, course materials, content modules, learning objects, collections, and journals. Tools include software that supports the creation, delivery, use and improvement of open learning content, searching and organization of content, content and learning management systems, content development tools, and on-line learning communities. Implementation resources include intellectual property licenses that govern open publishing of materials, design-principles, and localization of content. They also include materials on best practices such as stories, publication, techniques, methods, processes, incentives, and distribution.

Open Educational Resources websites:

 

MERLOT- Multimedia Educational Resources for Learning and Online Teaching at www.merlot.org

http://www.advantageedu.com/blog/2008/100-open-courseware-resources-for-teachers/

National Repository for Online Courses content and in house materials — http://www.montereyinstitute.org/nroc/

The California State University system has been implementing a “Affordable Learning Solutions” initiative for about a year.   They have organized many open learning resources into a “one-stop shop” that is open to everyone – see http://als.csuprojects.org

CSU have built some simple applications where a faculty or student can type in the ISBN of their textbook and “OER Finder” will provide a list of open learning resources associated with the topic of the textbook see http://als.csuprojects.org/course_content or if you only want to find open textbooks (vs. course modules, online courses, etc), use the OER Finder at http://als.csuprojects.org/free-textbooks . The Affordable Learning Solutions and the OER Finder is built on the long term success of MERLOT (www.merlot.org) – an open online library of over 27,000 open learning resources, many of which have been peer reviewed by academic editorial boards.

CSU has started having faculty share their course syllabi that illustrates how they are substitute open learning resources for textbooks (see http://als.csuprojects.org/sharing-practices for some initial samples.

The CSU also has tested the strategy of licensing digital textbooks (“Renting Digital”) at a significantly lower cost (35% of new textbook price for the pilot studies).   You can read about the CSU’s Digital Marketplace project at www.dmproject.org and the “licensed content” project at: http://www.dmproject.org/solutions/licensed_content.html and the Digital Marketplace 2010 year-end report http://www.dmproject.org/docs/2010-YearEndReport.pdf

http://hosted.mediasite.com/mediasite/Catalog/pages/catalog.aspx?catalogId=68c4ce9f-c919-45ea-b18b-0f5aa7501fbd presentation on the open future and the speaker is Dr. David Wiley. While not totally open there is a large FIPSE Grant that was given to Florida State College in Jacksonville. They have a project called SIRIUS Academics which provides low cost course contents and books on several courses with more in the works. Person to contact if you are interested is Rick Granger: lgranger@fscj.edu phone: 904-632-3307. Also you may contact Leslie Balsiger for materials that she has on this topic lbalsiger@lccc.wy.edu

For Your Reading:

Free wikis for educators: K through 12 through PhD

Starting this month, Wikispaces is offering free wikis to higher education. It’s the logical next step for us, all things considered. Source: Wikispaces

Link:  http://blog.wikispaces.com/2011/02/free-wikis-for-educators-k-through-12-through-phd.html

10 Essential Mobile Apps to Invest in 2011: Gartner

Few people would refute that the IT world is going increasingly mobile. A quick scan of the many tech blogs show a preponderance of mobile gadget coverage. Numbers from researchers bear this out. Gartner said worldwide mobile device sales hit 1.6 billion units in 2010, a 31.8 percent increase from 2009. Smartphone sales to users were up 72.1 percent from 2009 and accounted for 19 percent of total mobile communications device sales in 2010. Gartner Feb. 10 put forth new prognostications for the mobile market, estimating that mobile apps will account for $16 billion in user spending in 2012. “Gartner expects brand companies to increasingly shift their marketing budget to the mobile channel and experiment with cutting-edge apps to capture marketing and sales opportunities,” noted Gartner analyst Sandy Shen. To that end, here is a list of the top 10 consumer applications Shen and her Gartner colleagues expect to fuel smartphones and tablets in 2011. Source: eWeek.com

Link: http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/10-Essential-Mobile-Apps-to-Invest-in-2011-Gartner-486968/?kc=EWKNLNAV02232011STR1

-Seven Technologies That Will Rock 2011

So here we are in a new decade, and the technologies that are now available to us continue to engage (and enthrall) in fascinating ways. The rise and collision of several trends—social, mobile, touch computing, geo, cloud—keep spitting out new products and technologies which keep propelling us forward. Below I highlight seven technologies that are ready to tip into the mainstream 2011. Source: TechCrunch

Link: http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/02/seven-technologies-that-will-rock-2011/

-Students Become Immersed in History with Augmented Reality Games

The next generation of learners will have access to an astounding array of tools — including augmented reality games. What’s the purpose of this high-tech approach? To use “the world as the hook to get students interested in learning,” says Kurt Squire, the associate education professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, in an article by Heather Chaplin in Spotlight on Digital Media and Learning. Source: Mind/Shift KQED

Link: http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/02/students-become-immersed-in-augmented-reality-games/

 -Open Courseware on Every Campus By 2016?

UC Irvine official makes a bold prediction during meeting of open courseware advocates from across the country. Source: eCampus News

Link: http://www.ecampusnews.com/technologies/distance-learning-dean-open-courseware-on-every-campus-by-2016/

-Who Needs Textbooks?

How Washington State is redesigning textbooks for the digital age. Great article about the Open Course Library project at WCET-member Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges. Source: Newsweek

Link: http://education.newsweek.com/2011/01/25/who-needs-textbooks.print.html

MIT OpenCourseWare Announces New Course Materials to Support Independent Learners

MIT OpenCourseWare launched beta versions of five courses that represent a significant new approach to openly sharing educational resources. Dubbed “OCW Scholar” courses, these materials are designed from the start for independent learners who have few additional resources available to them. The courses are substantially more complete than typical OCW courses and include new custom-created content as well as materials repurposed from MIT classrooms. The materials are also arranged in logical sequences and include multimedia such as video and simulations. Source: MIT OpenCourseWare

Link: http://ocw.mit.edu/about/media-coverage/press-releases/ocw-scholar/

Course Specific Links

Open Resources for Intermediate Algebra:

Closed caption video lectures at:

http://www.khanacademy.org/#Pre-algebra

http://www.khanacademy.org/#Algebra

http://www.collegeopentextbooks.org/open-textbook-content-/open-textbooks-by-subject/math.html

 

What new products need to be developed?  Don’t be limited by what you know or think could happen…. Think outside of the box.. sorry for the cliche.  Try to combine things that would never be combined.

How about weight loss bourbon?  …. or

A furnace in your home that  burns junk mail.  The more junk mail you get the less your energy costs would be.

What are your ideas?