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.

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.

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.

Just like the rooster on my grandfather’s farm in southern West Virginia, MOOCs are waking up higher education. And like many of my colleagues, I am torn when it comes to how I feel about MOOCs.  I have publically called them the academic Pet Rock.

I remember how much I wanted a Pet Rock for Christmas when I was a kid and how excited I was to open up that brown box with the holes in the side.  Nestled in the protective bed of shredded paper, there it was – my very own pet rock. It was the best Christmas ever! 

But within a couple of days, I figured out that the pet rock really didn’t do much of anything except sit there. Bored with it, I put it in a drawer where it remained, out of sight and out of mind for the last thirty years, until my mother recently unearthed it. I see MOOCs in a similar light.

I am excited to see Ivy League and top tier schools finally show interest in delivering quality online education, something I have been advocating for the last 10 years. Regional accreditors, however, don’t know what do to with MOOCs since they fall outside of their purview and are now being forced to look at changing their very traditional model. I see this as a welcome change.

Professors are now excited about going global via the web to convey their knowledge and expertise and they have figured out a way to completely bypass the conventional red tape of course development by cutting out the hierarchy of committees…not to mention circumventing the faculty senate. Now, as more institutions are rushing to accept MOOCs as prior learning credit, the idea that learning can (and does) occur outside of the walls of traditional institutions is gaining traction.

However, MOOCs have their problems. Many schools still will not accept them for credit. Retention rates in most MOOCs are deplorable and the engagement between the faculty and students is nowhere near what it should be.  How could it be when there are over 100,000 students in a class, in some cases, maybe even more? Despite growing investment in providers like Coursera and EdX, there is no realistic model emerging to allow the monetization of these courses.

I believe MOOCs, like my pet rock, will enjoy its short-lived popularity, but will eventually get stuck in a drawer. Just like my grandfather’s rooster really didn’t do much except announce a new day, so crows the MOOC.

“The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” That is what immediately popped into my head when I read claims that a pilot program the California State University System plans to launch using Udacity’s online classes to meet student demand in gateway courses is “the end of higher education as we know it” in the TechCrunch.com article penned by Gregory Ferestein on 15 January 2013.

As the CEO of a consortium that delivers quality online classes to over 5,000 community college students, I applaud their efforts to implement an online solution to address a rapidly growing issue that plagues students across the country, not just in California. Here in Kansas, eduKan has been delivering high quality, affordable and accessible online classes while also saving our students and our consortium-member institutions thousands of dollars each year. Although the biggest obstacle for San Jose State University will be figuring out how to hammer the MOOC “square peg” into the traditional “round hole,” it is not big enough to prevent them from launching a successful, affordable and accessible online program that meets the demands of both the institution and the students it serves.  How do I know this?  Because this is what eduKan* has been successfully doing for the past decade.

Although I have yet to uncover the conspiracy theory to replace professors with computers, I have observed the way in which technology is changing the role of faculty from the “sage on stage” to “content expert.” Quality online classes, like those at eduKan, are not run by a computer; they require human intervention – a faculty member who is implicitly and actively involved in every facet of the class, from selecting course curriculum and content, to determining the delivery method of various content, to establishing and evaluating student engagement with course content and with each other, to safe-guarding student success by watching for early indicators of students at risk, to consistently ensuring course content quality through real time feedback from analytics.  And let’s not forget the virtual office hours that online faculty members offer to students for individualized interactions.

What do we need to do to erase the misperception that online classes are comprised solely of content from a traditional class, posted to a static web page and peppered with videos of a professor lecturing to a camera?  The faculty teaching online for eduKan have the resources to design a class that engages the student in ways never before possible.  Using digitally embedded content, we can offer students access to a multitude of multi-modal assets, freeing them from the confines of an expensive one-dimensional textbook. Using moderated threaded discussions; we are able to provide students with myriad social learning opportunities.  Using analytics, we can see how students engage with each other, with the content, and with the faculty.  Using predictive analytics, faculty can identify students who are struggling to be successful and then implement a personalized early intervention strategy.

Perhaps more threatening to traditional faculty than the thought of being replaced by a computer is the assessment data available from analytics.  Before we had the massive amount of irrefutable data gleaned from the activity of the thousands of online students, we were forced to rely upon anecdotal student surveys as one of the only ways to measure the effectiveness of faculty.  At best, the metrics were arbitrary and far too often given little credibility.  Now that analytics has provided unbiased data-driven assessments of faculty performance, there is a new focus on accountability that even tenure can no longer protect.  Far too often what is couched in questions of course rigor and quality is really a diversion tactic employed by feckless faculty.

Indeed, change is coming.

The pilot at San Jose State University is just the beginning.  Online classes are not the “end of higher education as we know it.”  Altruistic institutions that challenge the faculty-centric traditional model of higher education to focus on delivering a quality education their students in a way that is attainable, sustainable and scalable is, in fact, participating in a new beginning. Whether or not this changes higher education in California** remains to be seen.  What I do know, however, is we at eduKan are leading the charge to change the way institutions teach and students learn.

*eduKan is the recipient of the NUTN 2012 Institutional Achievement Award

**See Phil Hill,Guest Blogger’s post on WCET entitled California Switches Driver on Road to Future of Higher Education 

Silicon Valley thrives on disruption; academia thrives on tradition. That’s a recipe for tension. Technology has transformed industries: music, publishing, film, health — and education is next in its insatiable path.

…Behind every course lies big data — an aggregate of who’s learning what, how and when. Companies including Kno, CourseSmart, 2U and eduKan will look at what it means for educators to have real-time knowledge of what students are learning and how students learn best.

The conference also explores the printed book and whether technology will lead to its ultimate demise as the lynchpin in the classroom.

Click here to read the rest of the article by Robin Raskin, Living in Digital Times

Dr. Sarver will be a panelist at the HigherEdTECH Summit discussing eduKan’s successful use of analytics to track student progress in distance education to improve student retention, identify at-risk students, & better manage learning outcomes.

Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO of eduKan, a consortium of colleges in Kansas, will be speaking at the 2013 HigherEdTECH Summit at the CES (International Consumer Electronics Show), Thursday, January 10^th 2013 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Dr. Sarver will be joining a group of expert panelists who will be talking about using analytics gleaned from educational data to understand what’s working and what isn’t in addition to platforms and technology tools.

HigherEdTECH is presented by Living in Digital Times and brings together the educators, journalists, high tech experts, and policymakers changing higher education and showcases the latest technologies and digital services. The HigherEdTECH conference is held in the midst of the (CES) Consumer Electronics Show, the world’s largest technology arena and the best place to be part of this unique strategic dialog, preview the hottest digital innovations, and network with thought leaders and potential partners.

Mark Sarver is the CEO of eduKan, a consortium of colleges delivering online education. His prior experience in Advancement and Enrollment Management informs his expertise in higher education strategy and spans virtually all aspects of institutional management, including marketing and financial analysis. He has created, taught, and administered courses in leadership, organizational behavior, accounting, international business marketing and management for universities and community colleges around the country. Sarver has assisted faculty and administrators in conceptualizing and designing online courses given direction to schools for designing program assessment policies. His leadership experience bridges academic sectors that range from private to public colleges and universities to for-profit and not-for-profit institutions. He is a recognized speaker on educational innovation, emerging analytics-driven content, and engaging minorities in education through technology, and is considered an educational futurist.

Dr. Sarver will be joining a group of renowned experts in their fields at this HigherEdTECH Summit panel on Thursday, January 10, 2013
 Las Vegas Convention Center, North Hall, N256 from 3:00-4:00pm entitled “The New Math:  Is Analytics Adding Up?”  The panelists include Mark Sarver, Ph.D., CEO, eduKan, Jim Ambach, Senior Vice  President, Product Management, CourseSmart LLC, Babur Habib, Ph.D., CTO and Co-founder, Kno Inc. , Mike Sharkey, Director of Academic Analytics, University of Phoenix with Seth Reynolds, from The Parthenon Group as moderator.

For more information on the HigherEdTECH Summit and how to attend, please visit http://www.higheredtechsummit.com.

Here is a video interview of Dr. Sarver talking with Pearson about Project Aristotle and how eduKan is using analytics for creating better education opportunities for students.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YzBhVsY36g]

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.

About HigherEdTECH

HigherEdTECH 2012 is where higher education and technology converge at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, NV. To be held on Thursday, January 10, 2013 in the Las Vegas Convention Center, HigherEdTECH is an exciting mash-up of educators, technology visionaries, journalists and academic publishers. The HigherEdTECH Summit is presented by Living in Digital Times, producer of the following summits and exhibitions at CES: Digital Health, Fitness Tech, Kids@Play, MommyTech, Mobile Apps Showdown and Last Gadget Standing. For more information about HigherEdTECH, visit www.higheredtechsummit.com.

About CEA

The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) is the preeminent trade association promoting growth in the $206 billion U.S. consumer electronics industry. More than 2,000 companies enjoy the benefits of CEA membership, including legislative advocacy, market research, technical training and education, industry promotion, standards development and the fostering of business and strategic relationships. CEA also owns and produces the International CES – The Global Stage for Innovation. All profits from CES are reinvested into CEA’s industry services. Find CEA online: www.CE.org and www.DeclareInnovation.com.

Replay from the September 28th 2012 eduKan TV Fall Series hosted by Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO of eduKan, with a conversation around student literacy with Kevin Brungardt who is developing a program to identify and help students who lack the reading skills to be successful in college. Myk Garn, formerly of the Southern Regional Education Board, will also be talking about Talent Drain from higher education institutions to “the dark side.”

Subscribe to our channel – follow us on Facebook or Twitter and join the conversation.
https://www.facebook.com/GoeduKan
https://twitter.com/eduKanTweets
http://edukan.org/

eduKan provides access to quality higher education including ESL courses via college degrees, certificates, & individual courses with affordable online classes.