A few months ago (Sept 09, “All you can learn for 99 bucks a month”) I wrote about Straighterline.com after reading about them in the Washington Monthly. I was floored by the concept (floored=positive). It was everything I thought about higher education rolled up into a company. A working, growing business. On a whim, I wrote the CEO and basically said,
Hi, I really love your company and believe that you’re what’s next in higher education. I don’t care if it’s mopping or sweeping, I think that I should be working for/with you. Let me know if we can work something out.
Cheers,
Joe
And that’s the short version of how I found myself newly employed at Straighterline.com as course manager. Am I stoked? You have no idea.
To borrow from my previous post, the win here is “efficiency + quality + freedom = a better way for motivated learners to get degrees“.Having looked through the courses already I can attest to the quality (and guarantee that the quality is going to improve based on student feedback and will be updated as we grow as a company). Additionally the LMS integration with tutoring and a real course advisor leaves very small chance that a learner will feel isolated online. Paired with real feedback on assignments submission (writing) and instant feedback from tests it creates a very efficient learning environment for the student.
Here’s some recent coverage we got by a local DC news outlet:
An extraterrestrial being, newly arrived on Earth–scrutinizing what we mainly present to our children in television, radio, movies, newspapers, magazines, the comics, and many books–might easily conclude that we are intent on teaching them murder, rape, cruelty, superstition, credulity, and consumerism. We keep at it, and through constant repetition many of them finally get it. What kind of society could we create if, instead, we drummed into them science and a sense of hope?
One of the things on my bucket list is to be referred to (some day) as an expert. You know, like those quacks on FoxNews in the split screen with the green screened cityscapes behind them. For some reason that seems glamorous to me.
Getting quoted by a reputable blogger/educator only helps me take the first baby steps toward that goal. Enter Miguel Guhlin, a really skilled and experienced Director of Instructional Technology in TX who quoted me on his blog (woot!). The quote, well, it was from my comment left on this really interesting post at http://connectivism.ca that discussed the future of education technology and the differences (shortcomings?) of Learning Management Systems (LMS, which include Blackboard and Moodle) and Social Networking Sites (SNS, Facebook, Ning, etc.).
Here’s my comment in full, the bold is what Miguel picked out:
Great article, I really liked the fact that Martin chimed in about Moodle’s use and its design. I’ve been using it for several years and over that time have worked my best to educate teachers about the social features that can be used (as simply as the discussion forums). But training apparently isn’t enough, as course designs/construction almost always defaults to a content centric approach. It’s no fault of any Moodle administrators or trainers, it’s just that the Moodle tools provide a very easy way to organize content (and it’s often the very first thing taught to new Moodlers).
I’m eager to see the new features in Moodle 2.0, however I’m not sold that they will accomplish the necessary change alluded to in this blog post.
On another note, perhaps my biggest gripe is that we’ve provided teachers this AWESOME tool to structure courses and content that could easily be used by other teachers, but the software locks it down (or at least, it provides tools that are easily configured to “close” the content to the outside). Sure there are Moodle course exchanges, but far and wide content is closed to outsiders, difficult to procure (even if a backup is available) and not available as OER. Imagine if all the content created in Moodle were open? THAT would be a great asset to the educational community and would be ripe to transition past the “build today use for 3 years model” to more of a social approach (where the best content floats to the top of social interactions because it’s freely available).
I’ve got a soft spot for Open Educational Resources (OER — and I mean really, truly open resources, e.g. no passwords, fees, indexed by Google). Part of it is driven by the fact that I think we (the human race) should have access to every subject matter that we want to learn (for free). The idea of paying for access to certain content just seems less and less acceptable as I get older (at least some of that stems from how spoiled I am by my personal learning network and the internet, which never fails to edutain me).
The other part is driven by the fact that OER makes education easier. It’s faster to use content that’s already been created and in many cases, that content has a high probability of being higher quality and vetted (not to mention thoroughly checked and re-checked by those that have come across it before and used it likewise).
So…how might I become an expert? Well, I think the first part is to continue contributing to the discussion about OER and how it should be organized, categorized, classified, etc. The other way to turn out any and all of my content as OER (but I really haven’t found an effective way to do that either). Truly open resources are hard to come by (but they are out there: http://www.oercommons.org/), I hope to make it my job to advance and grow OER. (After all, that’s 50% of the mission of http://Coursefeeds.com)
Another model highlighted in the article was a lot more exciting. Why? Because it basically outsourced all non-critical, non-instructional tasks to other NPOs in the area. The school is the Gardner Pilot Academy outside of Boston, MA. This is what the report had to say about it.
The Gardner Pilot Academy, an elementary school serving the mostly low-income Latino community of Allston, Mass., just outside of Boston, is teeming with adults. The leadership of Gardner includes and extended services director, whose job is to coordinate the work of all the various people and programs serving students and families. The school has more than 15 community partners, including Young Audiences, which offers arts and enrichment; Sports4Kids, which rounds out the physical education program run by the school’s part-time teacher; and a local branch of the YMCA, which serves as the fiscal agent for Gardner’s after-school program. In all, there are more than 40 additional people who play a variety of roles and work a variety of schedules to support core teaching staff inside and outside of the classroom. This kind of support, where aides and interns are assigned to oversee recess, lunch, and before- and after-school programs, means that teachers’ work at Gardner can be designed almost entirely around improving instruction.
Eureka! You mean if we let teachers focus only on improving their instruction (by removing/outsourcing the other “school” distractions) they might help students achieve more? I love this model for two reasons.
it readjusts a teacher’s role to instruction (and not a hodge podge of other duties as assigned). In web app building I call that “feature creep”, which is to say that the teacher job descriptions has been continuously added to (including recess duty, managing after-school projects, lunch duty, arts, etc.)
it takes a comparative advantage point of view of educational services and embraces the idea that a school may not be best equipped to provide all common services. By outsourcing them to partners in education you can help lighten work loads, consolidate services and improve overall efficiency in the system. A YMCA already running after-school programs may be better able to offer services to a student body than if the school went about it independently (and therefore would incur less expenses by relying on an organization already with the management and means in place to offer quality programs.
The main objection to this, as far as I can see would be that a school’s overall budget may shrink (because of the outsourced services), but I don’t necessarily see that as a negative if it brings down per pupil costs while increasing quality instruction. On another note, this might be harder (but not impossible) to achieve in rural areas where such services are dispersed over large areas.
I have to agree…but it certainly makes for harder assessment’s in the traditional sense:
“Look, I think the brilliant and beautiful thing in life is that anyone can do anything,” he said. “When I used to go to special needs, we got laughed at, but we’re not supposed to all be academic. What is education? A bunch of stuff that people think we should know. Ultimately if you can put a wall up, if you can paint, if you can work with other people and, most important, if you find out what you are good at, that’s the key. Kids can do detailed, technical things, and they can do them well. Have you seen them on skateboards and surfing? It doesn’t have to be a BMX, it can be a pot and a pan and a knife, but we wrap them up in cotton wool and treat them like babies and they’re not.” (Putting America’s Diet on a Diet, NYTimes.com)
The debate continues. As a master’s student at UVM my thesis focused on Vermont’s historical trends in educations which contributed to and set the stage for our high ranking public school system (at the time, according to certain resources). I placed particular emphasis on the fact that Vermont’s long standing traditions and demographic arrangements had contributed to very small class sizes (the pupil to teacher ratio is still around 10:1, one of the lowest in the nation). Subsequently this also means that VT has one of the most expensive education system on a per pupil basis in the country as well.
It’s nice to think that Vermont has the best public education system in the country, but that’s hotly debated with each of the number of sides, resources, experts, etc. pointing to a diverse array of statistics: class size, student achievement, teacher pay, graduation rate, unemployment, etc. It all depends how you define “outcomes”.
I’ve been swayed from my original assertion that VT had it good because of the low class size (which was more caused by geography and population density than any public initiative). And it seemed that a lot of other individuals had been too, even Bill Gates who threw a lot of money behind the small schools movement has largely backed away from it.
In my opinion, the debate swung to teacher quality and effectiveness and is partially being driven by Michelle Rhee and others (the question of merit pay has also been wrapped into this discussion, though I think that effectiveness/quality is and should be the focus). There are plenty of questions remaining (like how to measure effectiveness in real time, rather than retroactively) but I like where the debate is going.
It’s interesting to see though that the Total Student Load theory¹ is still getting attention. Could it be both? From personal experience, it was much harder to get lost in a small class (just think back to your senior seminar courses in college). But from the other side I can also remember big classes where the teacher was awesome and their instruction was lasting. It’s no wonder we can’t make up our minds.
¹note that the article might be password protected at Edweek.org, but it’s basically a write up on William G. Ouchi and his new book The Secret of TSL. If you really want to read up on class size and the debate against it, Eric Hanushek’s research is well known in education as an opponent to the class size argument (he says it’s bunk).
Buffet-style education? Heck yeah. The company is probably one you’ve never heard of (I hadn’t) but I already see it’s value and foundation: efficiency + quality + freedom = a better way for motivated learners to get degrees. The company is StraigtherLine (based in DC) and it provides a carte blanche approach to education for a low monthly fee. Partnering with colleges around the US for accreditation, it can eschew the rigors of meeting an accreditation but also provide credits as part of the monthly fee (I’m guessing that they assume students will average a certain number of days per course, ensuring their ability to cover course credit costs per student per course passed).
This model has its detractors and rightly so. This is a major shakeup of the status-quo in American style (which in a sense is the global standard) higher education. It’s a bet that 100s of millions–perhaps billions–of dollars are caught up in the system, an inefficiency brought forth by the “college amenity package” which currently consists of A/C dorms, game rooms, student centers, weekend trips, free internet, student clubs and activities, research grants, etc. The whole shebang which constitutes the contemporary college experience.
It’s tempting in such circumstances to take comfort in the seeming permanency of our colleges and universities, in the notion that our world-beating higher education system will reliably produce research and knowledge workers for decades to come. But this is an illusion. Colleges are caught in the same kind of debt-fueled price spiral that just blew up the real estate market. They’re also in the information business in a time when technology is driving down the cost of selling information to record, destabilizing lows. (Washington Monthly – “College for $99 a Month” pg 1)
It makes perfect sense that the arrival of ubiquitous, free information paired with easier to access internet connectivity means that costs will be driven down (what doesn’t make sense is that, until now, colleges have largely bucked the trend, charging what they want and increasing those charges at higher than justifiable rates):
Colleges charge students exorbitant sums partly because they can, but partly because they have to. Traditional universities are complex and expensive, providing a range of services from scientific research and graduate training to mass entertainment via loosely affiliated professional sports franchises. To fund these things, universities tap numerous streams of revenue: tuition, government funding, research grants, alumni and charitable donations. But the biggest cash cow is lower-division undergraduate education. (pg 3)
So what happens when that bottom falls out? If Straighterline.com is marginally successful then there’ll be rivals partnering with as many accredited colleges offering the same programs. Those colleges might even court several low cost providers to hedge their bets. The unaccredited low-cost providers will cut out an entire swath of inefficiency (freshman lectures) leaving a gaping whole in university and college enrollments (cause those students will just pay the couple of hundred bucks and transfer in the max credits). Where a university or college might have garnered $9000 from a student before (for 3 classes let’s say) the student now pays a few 100 and gets a jump start for him/herself and a bonus in his/her checkbook. Colleges and universities will become leaner. They’ll be forced to realize their competitive advantage and adopt a laser like focus to milk as much dough as they can from it (this is a positive in my humble opinion).
Honestly, this already exists for a lot of states that are smart about tiering their education: California is perhaps my favorite example. As a “freshman” I can go to Community College (Santa Barbara has a particularly beautiful and esteemed on), I can finish 2 years of college (60 credits+!) and use them at any UC school in the state. The total cost? 1200 bucks plus student fees (which includes a bus pass). That being said, SBCC is hugely subsidized by the state. So really, if a private company can do it profitably is that so wrong when a state can only do it by losing money? Remember that CA just struggled to figure out a 44 billion dollar deficit. Maybe outsourcing these courses to Straighterline (instead of subsidizing them) could have saved some time, effort and money.
I’m a big fan of the reforms happening in DC. I like it for a lot of reasons (it’s cutting edge, it’s gutsy, it’s far reaching implications, etc.) but mostly because Michelle Rhee has vision (and the cajones) to bring her ideas to fruition.
The Wapo recently wrote an article about how Rhee expects to measure teacher success, which is by and large the biggest obstacle of the reform. It’s easy to say that the best teachers will be retained and the worst kicked to the curb or rehabilitated through professional development, harder to actually say which teachers are which and why.
new regular assessments by principals and other staff
how many times student outbursts are permissible (in a set period of time) – good teachers have control of their classrooms
the number of minutes that can be wasted in any 30 minute period (3. Over that and it’s obvious the teacher isn’t well prepped)
I perused the copy I found online and found the insights and directives incredibly easy to follow (honestly, from reading the document I think ANYONE could be a better teacher). It’s succinct, easy to digest and reads like a “how to” instead of a “do this or else”. In fact, the document clearly outlines expectations, how one might accomplish them and “what excellence looks like”. What else could a teacher ask for?
But if I were just getting my info. from the Wapo article and I were a DC teacher I might be shaking in my booties. It doesn’t paint a very favorable (in my opinion) picture of the reforms that will affect measuring teacher success. It’s more of a punch list of changes, including the fact that the number of students is increasing at the same time these new criteria are being imposed.
The situation in DC is a challenge in the simplest sense of the word. That being said, I would also be thinking to myself that measuring these new criteria is a MONUMENTAL task: possibly involving huge amounts of qualitative observation and coding (just like the kind I did as a student in Graduate School at Syracuse University) in order to get a handle on whether or not the teachers are meeting expectations.
Aside from the assessment of teacher quality and effectiveness, I think that some really great changes were also highlighted by the Wapo and these come in the form of disciplinary revisions. At least some of the anecdotal evidence of educational reform concedes that setting up the right culture for learning can have a positive influence on student achievement (and maybe even teacher effectiveness), just look at KIPP. The revisions specifically target for what and when students can be suspended for.
BEFORE: students could be suspended for simple dress code violations
AFTER: students can only be suspended for situations like cheating, bullying and other such violations
The old code permitted suspension for such an array of offenses that the punishment lost any real meaning, officials said. Principals were allowed to send students home for dress code violations, which is not permitted under the new rules.
According to the most recent available data, suspensions grew from 1,303 in 2006 to 2,245 in 2008 — a 72 percent increase. School officials say that removing students from school only puts them behind in class and can lead to truancy and trouble with the justice system. (from page 2)
Let’s hope that the superficial, cultural changes like that above can make a huge difference so that districts aren’t forced to hire observers to code their every classroom activity/action.
From Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography, freely available at your local library or from Dailylit.com. These were the main tenets that he lived his life by, adapted from the Presbyterian church (though he claims not to have been a serious, church going man).
I propos’d to myself, for the sake of clearness, to use rather more names, with fewer ideas annex’d to each, than a few names with more ideas; and I included under thirteen names of virtues all that at that time occurr’d to me as necessary or desirable, and annexed to each a short precept, which fully express’d the extent I gave to its meaning.
These names of virtues, with their precepts, were:
1. TEMPERANCE. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.
2. SILENCE. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.
3. ORDER. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.
4. RESOLUTION. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.
5. FRUGALITY. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.
6. INDUSTRY. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. SINCERITY. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. JUSTICE. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. MODERATION. Avoid extreams; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. CLEANLINESS. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.
11. TRANQUILLITY. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. CHASTITY. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dulness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.
A few months ago (Sept 09, “All you can learn for 99 bucks a month”) I wrote about Straighterline.com after reading about them in the Washington Monthly. I was floored by the concept (floored=positive). It was everything I thought about higher education rolled up into a company. A working, growing business. On a whim, I wrote the CEO and basically said,