In this presentation at SXSWedu in March 2013, Dr. Gigi Johnson explores the fuzzy world of “blended” courses in higher education. She dissects the tensions and tribulations as universities attempt to blend F2F and web-enriched tools in traditional environments, including challenges of time, space, and data politics in research universities, challenges with cost structures and faculty development, and abundant legal and IP issues. What is a class vs. what it could be with rich alternative technologies for learning? How do old universities rethink “class” instead of “just” repackage learning in a blended environment?
1. "Blending" the
University:
Beyond
MOOCs
SXSWedu
Wed., March 6, 2013
Flickr/PromoMadrid
Gigi Johnson, EdD
Maremel Institute
@maremel
#BlendU
#SXSWedu
2. 1.What is "blended"? And
what is a MOOC?
4 Frames
4 Frames 2.Rethinking time, place,
Today
Today and data politics
3.Reexamining the business
models of higher
education content
4.Rich opportunities and
where my heart sings
5. Distance Education: Long Paths
KUHT . "Dr. Richard I. Evans." June 8, 1953. University of Houston Digital Library.
<http://digital.lib.uh.edu/u?/p15195coll38,195>
6. 31% of US Higher Education Students are
Engaging Learning Online
More than 6 million students in the U.S. took at least one online
course in 2010
Sources: Allen & Seaman, 2011; National Center for Education Statistics, 2010
7. Not Just “Those For-Profits”
235,000 50,000 30,000 students for
enrollments in enrollments to $6,000/year each
1,200 courses 10,300
students in 70
degree and
certificate
programs
27,000 students
Online courses Rio Salado College
to 7,000 of its (AZ), with 40,000
31,000 students students with its
Oblinger (2012) online programs
8. Blended: Where Online Expands F2F
Options
Live Anywhere
Synchronous
Co-Located Classes
Asynchronous
Message Boards
9. Blended Learning:
More than a Decade of Research
• 1999-2003: Program in Course Redesign
• $8.8mm from Pew
• 30 colleges and universities
• Quality matched or improved upon prior face-to-face courses,
and saved 20-84% of costs (Twigg, 2003)
(http://www.thencat.org/PCR.htm)
• 2001: Temple University
• 2002: University of Wisconsin
• 17 faculty redesigned their traditional courses into blended
courses (Aycock, Garnham, & Kaleta, 2002)
• 2001: The Learning Technology Consortium
• Blended learning programs at 9 universities: Indiana U, Virginal
Tech, U. of Delaware, U. of Florida, U. of Georgia, U. of N.
Carolina, Notre Dame, U. of Pittsburgh, and Wake Forest.
10. US Dept. of Ed Meta-study: Blended Learning
Can Be More Effective than Online or Face-to-Face
(F2F)
• Means, Toyama, Murphy, Bakia and Jones (2010,
revised)
• Meta-study for the U.S. Department of Education
• Evaluated studies with objective measures from 1996-2008
involving online, face-to-face, and blended courses, nearly
all in higher education (versus K12). Online vs. FTF:
Learning outcomes formethodsand face-to-faceuse of
• Content delivery online (e.g., lecture vs. courses
• Content delivery methods (e.g., lecture vs. use of
were statisticallyvs. embedded quizzes)online learning and
video, live indistinct. Types of made no
video, live vs. embedded quizzes) made no
structures did not matter.
significant differences.
significant differences.
• Blended Improvements stemmed from projects involving show
• Learning vs. FTF: Blended learning did
• Improvements stemmed from projects involving
statistically significant improvementsversus the
collaboration, additional time spent in learning
collaboration, additional time spent versus the
outcomes, especially connected with self-monitoring
traditional classroom hours, and additional materials
traditional classroom hours, and additional materials
available for instruction and learning versus F2F
of student understanding and with reflection.
available for instruction and learning versus F2F
course designs.
course designs.
11. Diverse Blended Learning Paths
• CS50, at Harvard (now part of edx)
• 615-student must-take class introductory computer science class
• Virtual office hours, TA-scribed lecture notes, an evening phone hotline, and
two multimedia producers (https://www.cs50.net/)
• Plaid Avenger, Virginia Tech (http://www.plaidavenger.com/).
• 3,000-student undergraduate world affairs course
• Portfolio of 13 social media engagement assignments, plus just-in-time videos
and collaborative discussion boards to engage his students; 2 part-time TAs and
a lot of data-scraping collaboration and automation
• University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• 100 staff and faculty across the university to build a cohort around using digital
storytelling--New Media Studio (http://www.umbc.edu/studio/); (Community
of Practice faculty profiles:
http://www.umbc.edu/oit/newmedia/studio/digitalstories/profiles.php)
Oblinger (2012)
12. Now . . . MOOC-Expanded Content
Ecosystems
Connectivist Large-Scale University-
MOOCs (cMOOCs) Duplicated MOOCs (xMOOCs)
2008 to today 2011-now
Often emergent, messy Knowledge tested and
learning reviewed
Group exploration and co- Some mirror F2F class
creation “Sage on the Stage”
Increasing use of
subgroups and forced
collaboration
18. Impact of the Cloud on Education
Breaking time and space barriers
Local + Exclusive =
Historical Barriers to Entry
19. What is a class?
Jarring time and space definitions
Class -- needs a Beginning, Middle, and End?
Alternative Reality Games as Classes?
20. Magic Buttons of
Unquestioned Time
• Assigning class times and spaces
• Measuring faculty and students on course
hours
• Flipping classrooms to eat into non-class time
• Artificial nature of Terms
• Why start in the Fall?
• Why quarters or semesters except hiring and space?
Financial aid pushed Accelerate the quarters and
into term system helping public universities
flex intake and support
21. The D-Word
• Diagnostics
• U of Phoenix – contact students just to
check in
• Concept of Mass Personalization
• Knewton and others
• Supervision
“If I wanted people to see my
work, I would have gone into
industry."
22. Collaborative Time + Place + Data =
Collaboration and
Interactivity
Publishing
Webinar
Chat Forums
Collaborative community
Workshops
E-portfolios Projects
Embeds
Personal
Storage URLs Lesson
Books
Quizzes
Pages
Files Assignments Surveys
Solo
Static Interactive
23. Learning: Two-Way + Ubiquitous
• Cloud-Based Expansions
• SaaS-led Ease of Entry
• Commoditizable Systems without upfront
investments
• BYOD as expected norm with browser based
engagement or simple downloads
• Limits: Program marketing, overhead and
content costs, not time and place
• 2012: Explosion of MOOCs
29. University as Content Filter
Abundant
Creation
Creative Community Source: Caves, Creative
Industries, 2000
Physical costs and marketing as historical barrier to entry
Physical costs and marketing as historical barrier to entry
31. "Album":
Black Box and Rock Walls
FilterMailers
Filter
Websites
Package
Package
Purchased lists
High Accreditation
Accreditation Alumni
Schoolers
Rankings: awkward
Rankings: awkward
measures of input/output
measures of input/output
Magazine
Rankings
Transparency Challenges in "Album" Model
32. Content Production Model: Live Classes
University
University Live Class
Live Class
Instructor
Instructor Experience
Experience
TA as Seminar
TA as Seminar
Instructor and/or
Instructor and/or
Grader
Grader
Other
Other Textbook
Textbook
University Publisher
Publisher Paid by
University Paid by
Instructor
Instructor Student
Student
33. Blended/Flipped Video Production:
Takes $ and a Village
University
University
Instructor
Instructor
Blended Class
Blended Class
Experience
Experience
TA as Community
TA as Community
Manager
Manager
Instructional
Instructional
designer
designer
Publisher?
Publisher?
University?
University? Multimedia
Multimedia
Animator
Animator MOOC?
MOOC? Paid by ??
Paid by ??
Video Producer
Video Producer
and Editor
and Editor
Syndication Models?
Syndication Models?
34. Business Model • Who owns what?
• Syllabus vs. class vs.
Challenges PowerPoints vs.
produced video
• Professor often not
paid for course
development
• Who buys and pays
for what?
• Production funding
from Publishers?
Universities?
• Syndication – who
has rights to reruns?
• IP within the class
content vs. Fair Use
• Whose time?
35. Content
Creation Cost
and Risk
• Cost Elements for a live class vs. online
• Lecturer Average Pay: $3-4K/class
• Cost to record: $20-100K?
• No variable pay by volume . . . who benefits?
36. Challenges for the University as
Organization
• Organizational support structures – Built
to support classes with definite times,
places, and historical rules
• Cost Structures – Who pays for the shift
from F2F to blended?
• Faculty Development – Ghettoized in
teaching and learning centers
• Rethinking faculty role(s)
• Role of content experts, course designers,
instructors, and community managers
• Teaching identity – who am I?
• Values of Time – What merits a class
hour of work?
37. Content Licensing – Fragmented
OER
•Big movements already in Open Educational Resources (e.g., Merlot,
Connexion, a la Learning Registry and Gooru)
•Thin marketplace for revenue-share or revenue-producing licensing
(though on the horizon)
•MOOCs -- Production costs w/o revenue model
• BIG brand dumping?
Blur of Publishing and Licensing
•Books coming the other way – Publishers trying to lock schools into full
packages of print and content delivery
•Role of books and copyrighted materials in MOOCs – upside of the
Freemium Model?
•Bookstore model broken
• B&N aggregating university bookstores selling sweatshirts and brand logos
• Course Readers next wave
38. Legal issues
Flickr/jjorogen
• IP Ownership differs between universities
• “Paying for Re-runs”
• In-class IP and the role of readings and
simulations
39. Decoding the Experience: Ease of Entry?
• Learning entry
experience may be
very different by
course
• Need to build
student skills for
proactive learning
Template-driven student
learner population
encouraged by NCLB
COI – Community of
Inquiry -- as more than
magic dust Flickr/romana klee
42. Learning as Community
• Different skills in creating
community
• Community managers
• Peer learning
• Tribes and PLNs
• Concepts of learning together
without an “end date”
http://peeragogy.org/
http://is.gd/v101peeragogy Source: COI; Garrison et al 2000
43. Re-Containerizing Learning
• When does education end?
• Continuing communities of practice
• New Opportunities as co-learners beyond
the term?
• Break from learning environment as
“alumni”
44. Education in a World of Search
Teaching taxonomies and domain rules, rich in
context
45. My Own Passions in Blended
• Courses for change
• Using context in asynchronous, distributed
learning
• Action learning
• Cross licensing great content
• Impact on outside world
46. Continuing Conversations
Dr. Gigi Johnson
Maremel Institute
gigi@maremel.com
@maremel
Google Community: Blending the University
https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/106
888717177464309972
48. Related Links
• Steve Kolowich (Mar. 4, 2013), “Online Education May Make Top Colleges
More Elite, Speakers Say,” Chronicle of Higher Education,
http://chronicle.com/article/Online-Education-May-Make-Top/137687/
• Taylor Walsh (2010), Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading
Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses, Princeton Press.
• Diana Oblinger, Ed. (2012), Game Changers: Education and Information
Technologies, EDUCAUSE. (free download at
http://www.educause.edu/research-publications/books/game-changers-
education-and-information-technologies)
• Chris Anderson (2008), Free: Why $0.00 is the Future of Business, Wired
Magazine, http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free
• Barbara Means, Yukie Toyama, Robert Murphy, Marianne Bakia, and Karla
Jones (2010, revised), Evaluation of Evidence-Based Practices in Online
Learning: A Meta-Analysis and Review of Online Learning Studies, US
Dept. of Education, http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-
based-practices/finalreport.pdf
49. Training and Pedagogical Support
• Centers for Teaching Learning
• Scholarship in Teaching and Learning
(http://www.issotl.org/SOTL.html)
(http://ilstu.libguides.com/sotl)