TV with Rabbit Ears

For those of you reading this that don’t remember black and white television broadcasts, you might be thinking the title of this blog is making fun of Grandpa’s ears, the ones attached to his head. Brief lesson for the younger set; prior to cable and satellite television providers, one would purchase an antenna for their television to improve reception of broadcast signals coming across the airwaves. Most antenna sets had a heavy base and two expandable metal rods, giving them the name rabbit ears. So you could watch local broadcast television for free given your proximity to the television towers broadcasting the signal.

Today in the age of cable and satellite television, most people don’t realize television signals are still broadcast over the air. As Netflix and Hulu erode the traditional broadcast base, a company called Aereo is putting the nail in the proverbial major network coffin. Using technology, Aereo captures these over the air broadcasts and them makes them accessible via the internet to its subscribers willing to pay just $8 per month.

As you might imagine, the broadcast networks such as ABC, NBC and CBS are not happy with this service that takes their highly scheduled programming and makes it available anytime a customer wants it and at a fraction of the cost from cable and satellite providers. They are accusing Aereo of copyright infringement. The Copyright Act states that the owner of a creation has the exclusive right to perform the work publicly. Aereo argues that a broadcast via the Internet to a person’s computer is not a public performance; and The Second Circuit court agreed. This case is now before the Supreme Court and their ruling could impact the way we watch TV.

I am thinking about how this could apply to higher education. What if a college simply took lectures captured and distributed via the college website, MOOCs or social media outlets such as YouTube and then packaged them into a degree program for a fraction of the cost? In theory, you could argue that the content comes from an accredited college and that an amalgamation of accredited content should equate to an accredited degree. And no rabbit ears required!

A few years ago, we started a pilot at eduKan to test a new biometric signature password to ensure that the students who used our online learning system, were in fact the student who should be logging. We’ve successfully launched this technology and have used it to build trust with our faculty and staff as well as deter cheating and unauthorized use.

Yesterday’s Security-Today.com article, by David Rizzo, entitled “The Next Step in ID Verification” talks about the recent security breaches at banks and how institutions need to up their game and positively identify online users with technology that can identify behavior and gestures that are unique to each individual. They contacted me to find out more about our switch to using biometric signature passwords to build trust and meet requirements to positively identify students who take our online courses.

“We have used signature biometrics for nearly three years with more than 10,000 student users, and it has exceeded our expectations,” said Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO of eduKan, a consortium of community colleges offering online courses and degrees. “It provides an identity-proofing means that is transparent to our students while respecting their privacy. [It] is available anytime and stays cost-effective for the institution.”

                                                                       Dr. Mark Sarver, CEO, eduKan

Click here to read the complete article.

What are you using to secure your online systems? Share with me below or if you have questions, I’d be happy to share more about our cost effective system from Bio-SigID.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court struck down key components of the FCC’s Open Internet Rules, effectively ending Net Neutrality. So why did this not make the news? Why are online education providers not screaming? Maybe most people just don’t care, or don’t know what it means, but they sure should.

In the most simplistic terms, net neutrality means that all Internet traffic should be treated as equal. Sounds fair enough, until you look at the other side of the equation. This greatly benefits bandwidth hogs, like Netflix and YouTube, who are able (and willing) to pay higher fees to consume more Internet bandwidth in a minute than the average Joe uses in a month.

While Netflix can afford to pay a higher premium to be able to stream endless hours of content at the highest speeds to their subscribers, how can a consortium of community colleges in Kansas afford to deliver hours of online education to thousands of students via the Internet? They simply cannot afford to pay the same rates as the media monoliths, rendering students helpless and frustrated as they move through their online coursework at the speed of Methuselah, relegated to the bottom of the bandwidth.

Adding insult to injury, the flush for-profit education giants, like the University of Phoenix, will be able to buy more bandwidth, leaving the smaller private online institutions in the virtual dust.  If your institution has an online presence, you might want to pay close attention to this ruling and the impact it could have on your students.

This is the much anticipated, yet vastly misunderstood Web 3.0. What are your thoughts? Please share below.

Did you see this article “Supreme Court declines case on making online retailers collect sales taxes” in the Washington Post?

For most of us in higher education, we’re struggling with not only how to comply with the state authorization mandate but dealing with the simple fact that this situation even exists. Those private liberal arts institutions without an online presence, you should wake up and pay attention to this because it will impact you more than you can imagine. Also, you might want to pay attention to the Gainful Employment movement currently impending on the for-profits because you are next!

This Washington Post article reported that the Supreme Court of the United States decided not to hear an appeal regarding the collection of sales tax for online retailers. Simply put, states can continue to establish policies regarding the collection of online sales from out of state companies to the citizens of their state regardless if the company has a physical presence in their state. Currently, Amazon collects sales taxes from sixteen states.

Sounds a lot like if you have an online student in our state you need to be authorized to operate as an educational institution in our state…just like you were going to build a brick and mortar building in our fair state! But the good news, the high court felt it was Congress’ responsibility to legislate interstate commerce.

What could possibly go wrong with Congress involved? Oh wait, didn’t this entire state authorization debacle get started because one Senator wanted to stop the spread of for-profit education. Hey, thanks for the help!

Most for-profits already are compliant in most states because they actually have a physical presence there and have a stable of attorneys ensuring their compliance because everyone is shooting for the for-profits to make a mistake. But really, could we have expected a Senator to know this before he submitted the legislation (wait, you mean Senators actually have other people draft the legislation… like 22 year olds and then don’t actually read what it says before submitting it…and passing it!).

Well maybe Amazon will have more influence than a few colleges struggling to keep tuition low and an education attainable for all that desire.

Share your thoughts

What are your thoughts on state authorization? Are you frustrated or have you just given up? Share your thoughts below with me.

The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) has declared November 11-15, 2013 National Distance Learning Week.

As we all prepare our campuses for a week of ceremonies and festive activities…does anyone else see the irony in celebrating distance learning week in a physical location…or is it just me?

For those of us that have been actively engaged in online education for the better part of our careers, this weeklong promotion designed to bring awareness and recognition to quality distance education conjures up some mixed feelings.

While it is nice to see this segment of higher education get the accolades it certainly deserves, it is also a little sad that after almost two decades of success in the higher education market place, we needed to designate a specific week in its honor?  I feel the same way about National Grandparent’s Day.

Do we really need a special day, or week in this case, to recognize something so good? I started thinking about some other things happening in higher ed that could benefit from having their own specially designated weeks for recognition.  How about these:

• National Private College Disappearance Week – for those colleges that have been resisting distance education for years and are now starting to disappear.

• “You Can’t Deliver that Class Online” Week – for those faculty members that continue to assert their classes could not possibly be delivered online.

• National “Save Our Institution” Week – for college administrators who think putting a syllabus online or contracting with a third-party vendor to deliver their courses will save their failing institutions.

• Faculty Against Technology Week – you can figure this out by the name, but unfortunately, it was cancelled this year due to poor response.  Evidently, none of the faculty read their email or saw the post on social media. Paper surveys will be mailed to them next week to solicit consensus on a unified position statement about why technology is bad in education.

• Department of Education is Here for You Week – unfortunately the development of the portal to engage with the DOE was awarded to the same Canadian firm developing the ObamaCare website…enough said.

So party on people, virtually of course. Let’s raise of glass of symbolism over substance and give three big cheers to tradition.

Be sure to share and comment…  Mark

The United States Distance Learning Association (USDLA) has declared November 11-15, 2013 National Distance Learning Week. As we all prepare our campuses for a week of ceremonies and festive activities…does anyone else see the irony in celebrating distance learning week in a physical location…or is it just me?

For those of us that have been actively engaged in online education for the better part of our careers, this weeklong promotion designed to bring awareness and recognition to quality distance education conjures up some mixed feelings. While it is nice to see this segment of higher education get the accolades it certainly deserves, it is also a little sad that after almost two decades of success in the higher education market place, we needed to designate a specific week in its honor?  I feel the same way about National Grandparent’s Day.  Do we really need a special day, or week in this case, to recognize something so good?

I started thinking about some other things happening in higher ed that could benefit from having their own specially designated weeks for recognition.  How about these:

• National Private College Disappearance Week – for those colleges that have been resisting distance education for years and are now starting to disappear.

• “You Can’t Deliver that Class Online” Week – for those faculty members that continue to assert their classes could not possibly be delivered online.

• National “Save Our Institution” Week – for college administrators who think putting a syllabus online or contracting with a third-party vendor to deliver their courses will save their failing institutions.

• Faculty Against Technology Week – you can figure this out by the name, but unfortunately, it was cancelled this year due to poor response.  Evidently, none of the faculty read their email or saw the post on social media. Paper surveys will be mailed to them next week to solicit consensus on a unified position statement about why technology is bad in education.

• Department of Education is Here for You Week – unfortunately the development of the portal to engage with the DOE was awarded to the same Canadian firm developing the ObamaCare website…enough said.

So party on people, virtually of course. Let’s raise of glass of symbolism over substance and give three big cheers to tradition.

Be sure to share and comment… 

Mark

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.

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!

“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