[Itech] Fwd: Tomorrow's Professor eNewsletter: 1325. 'Great experimentation' predicted for online learning

Mon Apr 21 21:11:45 EDT 2014

Hi Grads,

I thought you might be interested in this reading on online learning.

Best wishes,
Dr. Franklin

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rick Reis <reis at stanford.edu>
Date: Mon, Apr 21, 2014 at 5:44 PM
Subject: Tomorrow's Professor eNewsletter: 1325. 'Great experimentation'
predicted for online learning
To: tomorrows-professor at lists.stanford.edu

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correctly.<http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/enewsletter.php?msgno=1325>
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*President John Hennessy shared a stage with UC-Berkeley Chancellor
Nicholas Dirks last week as the two discussed online learning. Higher
education, Hennessy said, is in a "period of great experimentation." *

1325. 'Great experimentation' predicted for online learning

*Folks:*

[image: Rick Reis]

The posting below looks at some comments by Stanford President, John
Hennessy and others, on some future aspects of online learning. It is by
Kathleen J. Sullivan and is from the March 11, 2014 issue of the *Stanford
Report* [http://news.stanford.edu/]. © Stanford University, 2014. All
Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis

reis at stanford.edu

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'Great experimentation' Predicted for Online Learning

Higher education is in a "period of great experimentation" in the field of
online learning, President Hennessy told a Berkeley audience last week,
adding that he is confident its successes and failures will lead to new
approaches to teaching that will benefit students.

"We're going to invent the future," Hennessy said, speaking during the
opening Q&A of an online summit held March 7-8 at the University of
California, Berkeley, "How Technology Impacts the Pedagogy and Economics of
Residential Higher Education."

Speaking during a "fireside chat" with UC Berkeley Chancellor Nicholas B.
Dirks, Hennessy said that colleges and universities will be taking a more
scientific approach to online learning than in the past, relying on their
schools of education to measure student learning and to provide feedback.

"I'm actually pretty confident that we're going to come out with
pedagogical approaches that are truly a step forward in terms of helping
our students be better learners - and that will really be refreshing,"
Hennessy said.

The invitation-only summit, which attracted more than 150 people, was
sponsored by UC Berkeley, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology and Stanford.

The event featured panels of online-learning leaders from across the
country, including senior administration officials, and professors of
education, human computer interaction, cognitive studies and sociology.

Candace Thille, an assistant education professor and senior research fellow
in the Office of the Vice Provost for Online Learning at Stanford,
organized a panel on learning analytics that featured faculty from Columbia
University and Carnegie Mellon University.

In response to questions from Dirks, Hennessy said massive open online
courses (MOOCs) - as well as video conferencing - present a great
opportunity to provide something of real value in professional education
and to generate enough income to cover their costs.

Within the general public, he said, "communities of learners" could form
around MOOCS.

"Imagine that 'Book of the Month Club' becomes 'Course of the Month Club',"
Hennessy said. "With a little bit of technology, a community of learners
self-assembles around a course and forms a group. They do peer grading.
They interchange. They exchange conversations and they learn the material
together. I think we'll see this happening. It would be a wonderful thing
and great for the world."

Hennessy also discussed the challenges faced by instructors whose MOOCs
attract students with a dynamic range of abilities - some without the
background necessary to succeed, some who would like to move more quickly
through the material and others who need to move more slowly. Sometimes
instructors don't know there's a problem until exam time.

At UC Berkeley and Stanford, he said, faculty members design exams to
challenge students."Now, take that exam to a school where perhaps the
students are not quite as capable and give them that exam and you're going
to crush them," he said.

"So we've got to figure out how to tailor and customize these courses much
more appropriately for the level of the student, the rate at which the
material is going to go, the rate at which the students are going to move.
Over time, this will happen. We've just got to continue to push it there
and make the adaptation to individual ability and to the classroom setting
in that particular institution."

Hennessy said one thing that MOOCs do very well is "educate the educators"
in other parts of the world, allowing them to use the material to prepare
courses for their students.

In response to a question from the audience, Hennessy said some faculty
have reported that more students are attending classes when they have
"flipped" the classroom - delivering lectures online and meeting in the
classroom for one-on-one interaction and hands-on projects. While those
early indicators are positive, he said, controlled experiments would be the
key to understanding how well students are mastering the material in those
settings.

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*"A teacher affects eternity; [she]he can never tell where the influence
stops." - Henry Adams*Dr. Teresa Franklin
Professor, Instructional Technology
313D McCracken Hall*, *Dept. Educational Studies
The Gladys W. and David H. Patton College of Education
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