I stayed home and delivered this presentation via video conferencing at midnight on a cold night in March in Canada. Awww... my shrinking carbon footprint. Requested topic was innovations in graduate education at a distance.

1. Innovation and Disruption– ODL and
Graduate Education
Terry Anderson
Professor, Centre for Distance Education

2. Athabasca University,
Alberta, Canada
34,000 students, 700 courses
100% distance education
Graduate and
Undergraduate programs
Master & Doctorate
* Athabasca University
Distance Education
*Athabasca Only USA Accredited
University University in Canada

3. 3
Growth of Graduate education

4. 4
Growth of demand for grad programs
DEGREE INFLATION !!

5. 5
Fastest Growing group at Athabasca
Highest Tuitions!
Older students
Faculty Research
• MBA
• Master of Health
• Master of Nursing
• Master of Education

6. 6
Innovations in Online Graduate Education
• E-Portfolios
• Social Networks
• Production of Artifacts
• Research opportunities
• Peer review of Thesis
• PLAR, MOOCs and Credentialing

7. E-Portfolio
• Process and product
• Archiving, artifacts and reflections
• At a course, program or institutional level
• CVs and the next step
• Network entity and presence
• Lifelong learning
• Personal ownership of process and product
• Exportable to other archives and use ??

8. 8
Innovations in online Graduate Education
• E-Portf
http://www.nie.edu.sg/practicum/practic
um-structure/niefolio
Students Creating Net presence

9. 9

10. 10
Social Networks

11. Social Media
• Tools for Building Personal Networks of people and Resources
• Means to reify and share knowledge
• Ownership and identity
• Supports long term partnerships, relationships, alumni
• Weak and strong ties
• Boundary crossing and serendipity
• Place for coalescence of Sets into networks and groups, nets
into groups.
• Discovery, external validation “danger of good ideas”

12. NOT Learning in a Bubble

13. Networks add diversity to learning
“People who live in
the intersection of
social worlds are at
higher risk of
having good ideas”
Burt, 2005, p. 90

14. Educational Theoretical Rationale
• Social Presence
• Cooperative work in self-paced programming
• Interaction results in increased social, institutional and
academic integration, leading to increased completion
rates (Tinto, 1987)
• Need to develop a virtual campus supporting community
beyond course interactions
• Social Capital Building
• Student Control and identity
• Persistence and Networking (Connectivism)
• Potential for community and alumni contribution

15. 3 Generations of
Distance Learning Pedagogies
1. Behaviourist/Cognitive – Self indiv-
Paced, Individual Study idual
1. Social constructivist –
Groups, classes group
1. Connectivist – Networks
net
Anderson, T., &Dron, J. (2011). Three generations of distance education
pedagogy.IRRODL, 12(3), 80-97.
Anderson, T., &Dron, J. (2011). Three generations of distance education pedagogy.
International Review of Research on Distance and Open Learning, 12(3), 80-
97

16. 16

17. 17

18. 18

19. 19
Production of Artifacts
• Have you or your students contributed to Wikipedia this
week?

20. Persistence
Rosetta Stone

21. 21
Students as researchers
• More Challenging at
a distance
• Need for
Synchronous, project
management tools

22. Research Paradigms
 Quantitative~ discovery of the laws that
govern behavior
 Qualitative ~understandings from an insider
perspective
 Critical~Investigate and expose the power
relationships
 Pragmatic~interventions, interactions and their
effect in multiple contexts (design-based, action
research

23. Students Thesis reviews
“The underlying philosophy with this peer
review approach is that students should
manage their involvement without
supervisors’ intervention firstly because
supervisors might change the nature of
dialogues (create a power asymmetry) and
secondly because the Peer Portal is meant to
reduce the work load for supervisors, not
create another task to take care of.”
AGHAEE, N., HANSSON, H. 2013Peer Portal: Quality enhancement in thesis writing using self-managed peer revie
on a mass scale.IRRODL 14(1),
Aghaee, N., & Hansson, H. (2013). Peer Portal: Quality enhancement in thesis writing using self-managed peer
review on a mass scale. 2013, 14(1). http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1394/2436.

24. Moocs
• Massive: - Scalable, How big is Massive?
• Open – Free as in tuition for students, not as in
editing, reproduction, remixing
• Online – may support F2F MeetUps
• Course – Bounded by topic and time frame, paced or
continuous

25. Duke University/ CoursEra 2012
Bioelectricity: A Quantitative
Approach
Promoted to millions through
Coursera
12,000 Registered, Paced
4,000 no shows first week
313 (4%) from 37 countries
completed
Clow, D. (2013). MOOCs and the funnel of
participation.

26. • “The students who drop out early do not
add substantially to the cost of delivering
the course. The most expensive students
are the ones who stick around long enough
to take the final, and those are the ones
most likely to pay for a certificate”. Daphne
Koller, Founder Coursera

27. 27
The Interaction Equivalency Theorem by
Anderson (2003)
• Thesis 1. Deep and meaningful formal learning is supported as
long as one of the three forms of interaction (student–
teacher; student–student; student–content) is at a high level.
The other two may be offered at minimal levels, or even
eliminated, without degrading the educational experience.
• Thesis 2. High levels of more than one of these three modes
will likely provide a more satisfying educational
experience, although these experiences may not be as
cost- or time effective as less interactive learning sequences.
Seehttp://equivalencytheorem.info/

28. 28

29. IS UNISA READY TO
EXPLOIT THESE
OPPORTUNITIES??

30. http://www.amazon.com/Quality-Software-
Management-Anticipating-Change/

31. • Slides on SlideShare:
• http://tinyurl.com/bzfdtlg
• https://landing.athabascau.ca
• terrya@athabascau.ca
• Terrya.edublogs.org