With over two decades of experience in online learning, one must question why any college would proceed with a hybrid/online program without first consulting those in the field.  There are many practitioners with experience eager to share their expertise. Even so, I see many colleges embark on their online journey in an entirely unplanned, unresearched, and unprepared manner.  The question is why.  This post offers some ideas.

Lack of Understanding

Colleges and universities are complex enterprises.  Presidents and administrators are under much pressure to improve student retention and success (however that is measured) while satisfying faculty needs and balancing the imperative for research and scholarship. With many constituents to serve and multiple mandates, it comes as no surprise that online learning may not be a high priority. Many presidents suffer from the same misunderstanding prevalent amongst their faculty that online learning is “second rate” and “not for our students.” These beliefs set the tone for online implementation at that college, and can thwart any real progress in this area.

Without substantial support for online learning by college leadership, online efforts will succumb as dedicated staffers attempt to do the heavy lifting inherent in changing an institution’s culture, often resistant to change. In most cases, these efforts at best will produce some sporadic or tentative successes while the opportunities to transform the mode of teaching at that institution flounders. Considering that online learning has been the largest trend in higher education in the past decade, a college can no longer afford leadership without an informed understanding of online learning.

Lack of Vision and Strategic Plan

Real leadership has an understanding of the potential for online and how it supports the mission of that institution (i.e., access and quality). Moreover, that leader also needs to possess the skills to nurture strategic planning for online learning that is more than empty rhetoric or a dead, easily discarded planning document.  As an example, I can point to Joel Hartman, University of Central Florida’s Vice Provost for Information Technologies and Resources, who has won numerous awards for his university’s online implementation. I have had the pleasure of attending a workshop of his on “Planning Online Programs” several years ago. Mr. Hartman possesses the talents of being a visionary with strategic planning skills. Over the course of several years, he has transformed teaching and learning at that institution, while dramatically increasing online enrollment and revenues. Moreover, his position within the university allows him to lead a team that does both planning and implementation for online learning.  The results speak volumes for what an informed leader can deliver with a real vision and strategic plan. (link Video of Joel Hartman)

Lack of Institutional Support

Related to the previous points, institutional support is critical to achieving anything substantive within a university.  This support not only includes the administration using its influence to overcome obstacles and barriers to online adoption (e.g., resistant faculty governance), but also for allocating the necessary manpower and faculty incentives so initial efforts can have a reasonable chance of success. Assuming that the existing faculty center, for example, can achieve online learning at a college without instructional technologists, instructional designers, media specialists or even a director of online learning is, simply put, a pipe dream.

Lack of Quality Control

It is arguable that even in traditional courses, there is little “quality control,” but in online offerings the lack of such controls spells trouble. Student evaluations and instructor observations may be the minimum requirement in a face-to-face class, but is woefully inadequate for an online class. Issues like course organization, instructor accessibility and responsiveness, use of interactive tools for learning, and clarity of explanations for assignments all carry greater importance in a fully online class.  The problem is that when hybrid/online programs develop (often with little thought to quality control by the college), students are presented a range of online experiences that may detract from the success of these initiatives. Moreover, once the proverbial cat is out of the bag, faculty may resent oversight of “their” online courses, even if it promises better quality to students. Ideally, quality control needs to be considered at the outset of online development—although it rarely is.

Lack of Policies and Procedures

Outside of providing faculty development for their online efforts, many colleges spend almost no time thinking whether institutional policies and procedures need to be addressed for online learning. Joel Hartman, referred to earlier in this post, argues that such thinking is critical to the success of any online program. Alas, often the policy makers don’t realize this issue until problems start to occur.  Some examples are:

• Faculty complain that their classes are too large (no student maximum for online courses)
• Department chairs struggle with reviewing adjunct faculty performance in online courses (no procedure for evaluating online instructors)
• Administrators complain about greater student dropouts in online classes (no student preparation for online, no prerequisites for taking online classes)
• Students complain that their online instructors are doing a poor job (no policies regarding course quality, or mandatory instructor training/certification).

The fact that such problems (and many others) can be addressed by formulating policies and procedures prior to the rollout of online programs seems like a well-kept secret to many administrators.

Lack of Faculty Buy-In

Academia by its nature is a slow-changing beast made even more so by faculty governance mandates that resist any change thought to be a threat to faculty.  Online learning, for many instructors, is seen as a threat that must be abolished (too late for that) or, at least, slowed down (let’s say “no” at first, then study the issue). Of course, many tenured faculty have embraced hybrid/online learning and are greatly dismayed when their colleagues have such a jaundiced view of online. Even so, many studies clearly show that faculty resistance is the major impediment to online adoption within institutions (see references below).  Furthermore, faculty who have never taught online are the most resistant. I have heard rather absurd resolutions passed in Faculty Senates that consider “hybrid courses” as experimental in nature and therefore requiring Senate approval after a 2-year trial. These and other stalling tactics are a major reason that institutions with a long tradition of tenure and unions within the professoriate are the slowest to embrace online learning and indeed, try to subvert it whenever possible.

Lack of Institutional Capacity / Expertise

These days, MOOCs (massive open online courses) and other online developments are very much in the news. Consequently, everyone seems to have an opinion about it, or think they know a great deal about online. To implement a successful online program requires real experience and knowledge of the field. It may possibly require an experienced director to guide an institution’s online efforts, and/or a committee dedicated to doing research on best practices from other schools literally decades ahead in their online development. In my experience, many experts within institutions with mature online programs are more than willing to share their expertise with those colleagues new to online. However, many colleges starting online programs tend not to consult with real online experts, but instead give this authority to those who lack a real understanding of online who are suddenly thrust into a role involving online leadership. The expression “incompetence reigns supreme” perfectly describes the consequences of such policies. Ironically, on such a  campus, there may exist a real expert regarding online teaching and learning, possibly one who has followed the field for years and may even blog about an online vision for their institution.  Rest assured, that individual will be overlooked when such planning occurs and will operate in relative obscurity while the faux experts weigh-in.

In conclusion, there is little reason that a new online program cannot learn the lessons of institutions that have treaded this well-worn path. The pitfalls described above are avoidable.  With the right people and support structures in place — and a real vision and plan for online learning — a college has a fighting chance to successfully grow their online programs.

References:

Allen, I.E., Seaman, J., Lederman, D., & Jaschik, S., (August, 2012), “Digital Faculty: Professors, Teaching and Technology, 2012,” Inside Higher Ed and The Babson Group. Retrieved from: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/survey/digital-faculty-professors-and-technology-2012

Bacow, L. et al, (May 2012) “Barriers to Adoption of Online Learning Systems in U.S. Higher Education,” ITHAKA S+R, Retrieved from: http://www.sr.ithaka.org/research-publications/barriers-adoption-online-learning-systems-us-higher-education

MOOCs have caught the imagination of the media, and even many in academia. This is understandable. There is a sexiness to MOOCs that the garden-variety online course cannot compete with. Moreover, venture capitalists shower money on startups, promising learning to anyone with a computer, and at very low cost to students. Such courses are  facilitated with advanced technologies that allow a “personal feel” though taken by thousands, while using varied modes of instruction to capture students’ interest and engagement. Some of the most avid MOOC advocates claim that based on authenticated student feedback, they can provide individualized instruction to each student while assessing the effectiveness of specific learning elements in the course. With teams of course developers, these courses are superior to the instructor-produced efforts, and naturally, are delivered by the best  professors from elite colleges like MIT and Stanford. And to top it off, eventually students will be able to earn course credit for completing such courses, posing a serious challenge to the existing credentialing process of higher education.

Many of these promises might come to pass, in time.  The sobering reality is that MOOCs currently impact a small fraction of the students currently in college.  The industry is working on a budget model that won’t be free, and that academic leaders are skeptical whether they will be implemented any time soon on their campuses. I am of the belief, for all the pluses of this new approach to learning, the hype about MOOCs is obscuring the important impact that online has already had on the academy. Online learning has been the biggest trend in higher education for a decade and a half, growing at a 20% per annum rate initially, and finally leveling off to a more sustainable 10% rate in recent years (reference below).  That is real impact, not hype. Along the way, online has caused significant shifts (but not transformation) in teaching and learning at colleges across the country. Online has gone from a discredited outlier to a fundamental university strategy in the span of a decade. Very few trends in higher education have had the impact that online learning has, particularly in this relatively short span of time.  As one of my blog posts was titled, “Online is Inevitable.”

All movements need their visionaries, and certainly MOOCs has theirs. Sebastian Thune, a Stanford professor who founded Coursera, is one of the Pied Pipers of this movement.  In many presentations, he speaks passionately and eloquently about a brighter educational future with the advent of MOOCs (see video). I would love to believe him. The way I see MOOCs at this point is a promising technology that can advance the field of online learning at some future point, but maybe in a more evolutionary manner, as is the norm in academia. I applaud the spirit of innovation of Thune and others, so sorely needed to improve the moribund instructional paradigm of current college teaching. Now the hard work begins.

References:

Allen, I.E., Seaman, J., Lederman, D., & Jaschik, S., (August, 2012), “Digital Faculty: Professors, Teaching and Technology, 2012,” Inside Higher Ed and The Babson Group. Retrieved from: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/survey/digital-faculty-professors-and-technology-2012

Allen, I.E. & Seaman, J. (2011). Going the Distance: Online Education in the United States 2011, Babson Survey Research Group. Retrieved  11/15/11 from, http://sloanconsortium.org/publications/survey/going_distance_2011

10. Collaboration, community and communication. Let’s face it; online learning can really seem a distant, isolated and lonely enterprise were it not for some of the tools an instructor can use to create social cohesion. Fortunately, there are an array of tools that can bridge the social distance of online learning. Some of these tools create community like social networking, wikis, and web conferencing, while others foster group work like project management tools (i.e., Basecamp), document sharing tools (Google Docs, Dropbox). The tools for communication like lecture/ screen capture, webinar software, blogs, discussion boards and chat rooms allow for exchanges needed to break the isolation.

9. It’s not them versus us. Whether the mode of teaching is online or traditional, there is a pervasive sense among many in the professorate, that students are — (fill in the blank — unmotivated, lazy, not prepared, unable to think). There is a wide gap between teachers and students, made even more so by a totally outdated instructional paradigm that places the professor at the center of the class, rather than student learning. One consequence of this arrangement is a chasm between two groups in the learning process. The recent concept of “learning community” is a much more productive model that allows for a closer relationship between students and teachers.

8. Feel the passion. We all have seen professors who have lost the reason they became professors in the first place, namely their passion for both their subject and the teaching of students. These professors, whatever their mode of delivery, need to be let go.  Often this can’t be done because of the institution of tenure. However, even in an online class, there is a myriad of ways to make the topic engaging, alive and delivered with an undertone of passion by the instructor.  Without passion, all the players will go through the motions of learning without actual learning taking place.

7. Use technology. Yes, you’re teaching online and in all likelihood employing a course management system (CMS). That may be necessary, but it definitely is not sufficient. It is incumbent of online instructors to become versed with instructional technologies. Such technologies can engage students, help students learn new tools/skills essential in a modern workforce, and improve actual learning in your class. Every semester I hear from students who often decry the lack of technology usage in previous online classes. I feel it important for instructors to learn one or two new technologies per semester to incorporate into their classes.

6. Live and personal. Who said that just because a program is asynchronous, that you can’t include live webinar events? These events can be optional to attend at the scheduled  time, but can be recorded for later viewing by students who missed it or want a second go-round. I have been conducting live sessions for several years, and invariably students are very positive about this option which allows them to see and hear the instructor live, ask questions, hear responses from other students, and be kept up-to-date with both assignments and course content. The vast majority of online professors do not avail themselves of these free, simple webinar tools that can add so much to a class.

5. Constantly improve your online course. I feel this is true for all teaching, but especially online teaching. A recent blog post (link here) traces the evolution of the capstone course that I teach. I am always looking for new teaching approaches, better instructional tools, and dynamic materials for my class. I actually look forward to trying new things in class and even make mid-course corrections when needed. These improvements keep the course fresh and my interest in teaching it high.

4. Learn from others in the field.  This past week we had a Hybrid Teaching Showcase in my Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). Three professors who went through our faculty cohort for hybrid/online instruction presented their class to colleagues and others in the college community. By listening to their approaches, I was able to pick up three good ideas to use in my online class — this semester. Such forums, conferences, and even blogs like this, are a constant source of ideas and inspiration.

3. Take a break. Teaching online courses can be labor intensive and therefore require a lot of work. If you can, taking a semester off from teaching online can restore perspective and balance.  You may even return with renewed enthusiasm for the task at hand. My break is during the summers.  I never teach during the summer, yet with my full-time job in faculty development, always have my foot in traditional teaching modes and methods.

2. Reach out to students. This semester, I tried something that was recommended to me many years ago, but I never attempted: I called my students. At agreed-upon times, I had about a 20-30 minute phone conversation with all (six) students in my capstone course. With a small class this is certainly doable, but please consider it in larger online classes also. The connection with students, feedback about the course, and insights into their lives, was well worth the extra time involved.  Generally students appreciate the effort as it demonstrates caring for them as people and interest in their success. Try it and you may find it is one of the best time investments you can make as an online instructor.

1. Use a learning contract. Although this may seem a bit on the formal side, such a document (you may also call it an “agreement”) signed by students can eliminate a lot of misunderstandings regarding instructor expectations. I have included a Student_Contract that I have used in a previous class. There is nothing that quite focuses the attention of a person than having to sign a contract of any sort. Some instructors make drafting such a document an activity of their class. In any case, it would include the major requirements of the course and your specific expectations of students in the class.

So, my Top Ten List is complete — until the next one. I hope it has served the purpose of having you reflect on your online course, and making it the best it can be.

Online Through the Eyes of The Times

After a close reading of the editorial, the following are the major points:

• Attrition rates in online courses are significantly higher than in traditional courses.
• Students with poor skills, needing remedial help, would be better off in face-to-face classes.
• Online courses typically have little interaction with students.
• Students are wasting “hard-earned” tuition monies by taking online courses.
• Students should demonstrate success in traditional classes prior to taking online courses.
• Blended courses may be more appropriate for struggling students, but they are rare and costly.

There is some merit to what The Times puts forth, and a lot of misguided nonsense. First, in well-planned and well-run online programs, the attrition rates are not significantly different than in traditional classes. “Struggling students” who need remedial help would have been screened out prior to taking any classes.  It is a “best practice” for online programs to be forthright about what online learning entails and to realistically assess students’ abilities during the application process.

Also, not all online programs are for-profit, where students are aggressively recruited to spend their (often) government-funded tuition dollars with little hope of obtaining a degree. Many, like the CUNY Online programs, require mature adults to have 30 or more credits of previous college experience. Rather than a recipe for exploitation, this is the fulfillment of a student’s lifelong desire to earn a legitimate credential at a respected institution. In fact, some online programs have policies where only students with a requisite  GPA can enroll in online courses, and only after their first year of college is complete. Policies such as these would prevent much of the abuse seen in for-profit online programs which The Times attributes to the entire field.

Blended or hybrid courses are a viable option for many students at many institutions. Within CUNY, there is a major push from Chancellor Goldstein to ensure that all colleges within the university offer a range of hybrid courses. Additional funding was provided to most CUNY campuses and college presidents need to report hybrid/online benchmarks at their respective campuses. The idea that blended courses are “rare or costly” in higher education is completely off the mark.

Interaction in hybrid/online courses may be as robust, if not more so, than in traditional courses. In my fully online course, I  have:

• webinars twice a month where students can see, hear and interact with me,
• students use collaborative tools for group projects,
• students create a blog about both course content and their reflection of learning, and
• used various other Web 2.0 and social networking tools. So students experience active learning, engagement with course content, the professor and fellow students and, in all likelihood, have a higher degree of interactivity than in a traditional course. It is up to program administrators to set the bar higher to ensure the quality of online courses. Interactivity is but one aspect of course quality. Rest assured, lack of interactivity can just as easily exist in a traditional setting as in an online one.

What The Times Didn’t Say (but I have in my various blog posts):

1. The field of online learning has been one of the most dynamic developments in higher education in the past century. Its growth has been meteoric, and its impact on higher education policies and programs, significant.  (see this post)

2. Online learning is now an established fact in higher education, and a strategic component at most institutions. (see blog post)

3. Online learning is part and parcel of a significant shift in how teaching and learning are conducted.  Essentially, we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in teaching practice from an instructor-centered model to a learner-centered one. (see blog post)

4. Online learning has its issues and abuses, as does traditional learning. With any change in paradigm, those benefitting by the existing paradigm will vociferously resist change, usually by parroting specious arguments. The Times is complicit in this process by such editorials. It can take a generation of innovators to make real inroads in any endeavor as significant as college teaching. Despite the nay-sayers, the arguments for online learning are compelling and will not be reversed. (see blog post)

5. The existing model of pedagogy is bankrupt and has completely outlived its usefulness. It’s one thing to criticize online learning as deficient, it is quite another to assume that traditional pedagogy, as practiced for several generations, is a paradigm of good teaching. As John Tagg writes in his book “The Learning Paradigm College,” the current instructional paradigm needs a complete overhaul in its approaches, processes, policies, measures of success, and roles of teacher and student. It is this current system that has spawned a legion of educational reformers who clearly see that “the emperor has no clothes.” (see blog post)

Much more can be written, but The Times editorial is nothing but an embarrassment for those of us in the field.  Hasn’t The Times tried to change its modus operandi due to the recent digital avalanche in publishing? In a similar manner, traditional institutions will be forced to change their operations in light of the avalanche of digital learning and the new learning paradigm.

Reference:

Tagg, John, (2003). The Learning Paradigm College, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA.

• The Flipped Classroom–where content is delivered online and outside the classroom, while engaging activities happen within the classroom;
• A re-examination of the lecture as the primary mode of teaching (closely related to the flipped classroom trend);
• A boon to older, non-traditional students returning to college for whom “the campus experience” is not needed and for whom the convenience of online is paramount for degree completion;
• The gradual dis-aggregation of the faculty role (see previous post) in which essential parts of what constitutes a professor’s work are getting farmed out to others including course design, grading, and teaching;
• A rise in collaborations between private content providers, tech companies and colleges to seize a competitive advantage for their online programs; and
• A gradual shift in the role of the professor from “sage on stage” to a facilitator/guide of learning.

Online teaching has been a force for change and arguably, the major force in higher education in this last decade.  This is noteworthy since higher education has by and large been an entity resistant to change. But there is change, and there is transformative change. I would agree with Clayton Christensen’s term, “disruptive technology” when assessing the impact of online in higher education. Indeed, online learning, as stated above, has already caused significant change in the delivery of college courses, but not fundamental change in the prevailing “instructional paradigm” as described by Tagg in the “The Learning Paradigm College.” The “online revolution” has hardly produced systemic change at most colleges, only incremental change at best.

What Hasn’t Changed?

In the latest Inside Higher Ed edition,  I was reading a stimulating blog post entitled “The Right Path to MOOC Credit,” by Pamela Tate. The author was skeptical about whether Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) would transform higher education as some have argued. Ms. Tate writes, “Dig deeper and we are left to ask how many MOOC courses will really be worth college credit, where will the credits be accepted, and for how long wil college credits even be the primary measure of learning?” So despite the potential for such an innovation as MOOCs, in reality, it has yet to transform the academy in any substantial ways.

When I consider what a transformation would entail, John Tagg’s “The Learning Paradigm College” would be a starting point. He points to five characteristics of this new learning paradigm including:

• Supporting students in pursuing their own goals
• Requiring frequent student performances
• Providing frequent and ongoing feedback
• Assuring a long time- horizon for learning, and
• Providing for stable communities of practice.

Traditional teaching structures that Tagg references often have little to do with actual student learning, and often are detrimental to learning. These practices include:

• Course-credit hours to measure achievement,
• The 15 -week semester,
• “Atomized” curriculums that simple do not add up to a whole,
• Assessment  via grades that provides little context or proof of learning,
• Discipline/department structures that don’t reflect newer societal inter-relationships,
• Tenure and promotion policies that often don’t reward good teaching, and
• Isolated classrooms and students walled-off from each other and the outside world. These and other attributes reduce the chances of any transformative change beyond token or marginalized reforms. In a future blog post I will examine these further.

It is evident that traditional structures within the academy have not been transformed by developments in online learning, or more generally,  instructional technologies. At best, I believe that technology innovation has improved learning and student engagement to a degree and at worst, it functions as a band-aide for deficient pedagogy and institutional structures. So, although many faculty within these institutions (K-12 included) do their best to teach students, we all labor under an instructional paradigm that can accept innovations to teaching, but are still largely impervious to transformative change.

References

Christensen, Clayton M. & Overdorf, Michael, (2000). “Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change” Harvard Business Review, March–April 2000.

Tagg, John, (2003). The Learning Paradigm College, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA.

Tate, Pamela, “The Right Path to MOOC Credit,” Inside Higher Ed, February 14, 2013. Retrieved from: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/02/14/course-course-approval-moocs-may-not-be-wise-essay

I have been teaching the capstone course for the Communications and Culture B.A. program for over three years during which time the course has evolved with my understanding of pedagogy along with my interest in the field. The various titles of the course reflect changes in my thinking, interests and understanding. Not surprisingly, these changes have paralleled shifts in my blog’s focus– from strictly online teaching issues, to issues of technology tools and online learning, and further to tools for engaging students in lifelong learning. The reasons for this “evolution” in my course are the subject of this blog post.

The first course, “Principles and Applications of Online Teaching” was proposed and taught in Fall 2010. Given my interest in the field of online learning, I had a epiphany: Why not teach a course about online learning to students taking a fully online program?  The course was traditionally structured with readings from Michael Simonson’s book about distance education, supplemented with my Camtasia screen captures and website resources. A great deal of the work was accomplished via online discussions about topics concerning online teaching and learning as well as trends in online education. An ending research term paper was also required. Overall, I thought the first incarnation was a success and generally felt the students were engaged and real learning was achieved.

Upon reflecting on the first semester, I knew changes would be needed, hence the new title in the Spring 2011, “Principles, Practices and Pedagogy of Online Learning.”  I believed that students needed to approach the subject matter–online learning–from multiple perspectives, namely, that of the student, the instructor, and the administrator. Those perspectives became the three course units that gave this revised course a real structure and focus.

In addition to the change in content, I decided to experiment with several webinars throughout the course and also make use of anonymous surveys after each unit. Furthermore, I made group assignments a part of the course, and tied major assignments specifically to the three perspectives of online learning. Instead of a term paper, students had to produce and conduct an online learning module about an aspect of online learning. By the end of the term, I was pleased with the increased student engagement and tangible learning shown by the group projects and production of  an online lesson. Student feedback was more positive than in the first term, with students mentioning the usefulness of the webinars and technologies used by the professor and themselves.

I had the summer to contemplate further changes to the course, and by the Fall of 2012, “Engaging Tools for Online Learning” was rolled out. The focus had moved from the theory of online and the various perspectives, to the actual tools that could be used to enhance online learning.  I was intrigued about the potential of Web 2.0 tools, social networking, collaborative tools, video/ screen capture and other technologies. So, theory had gradually given way to practice, and specifically the nuts and bolts production of online learning. It was no longer whether online had a legitimate place in the curriculum; by this time the battle was over. Online had achieved a strategic place in higher education pedagogy; it had entered the mainstream. To me, the question became, “How can we make online the best it can be?” Tools were central to this equation.

I had all the students use a WordPress blog as the container of their semester’s work.  I felt this gave them ownership of their work in a way that Blackboard discussions did not. Moreover, at the end of the semester, they had a tangible product of their efforts. I had the class explore a different tool almost each week, from screen capture and wikis, to word clouds and concept maps, from social networking to group collaboration tools. Each tool was used in a context, which required both an understanding of the tool in addition to the course content. I felt this approach was quite ambitious since most professors are happy for students to master some content, without even bothering to learn new tools. Nonetheless, despite some technical glitches, I felt the students’ comfort zones were stretched, and actual learning took place.

My current iteration is called “Engaging Tools for Lifelong Learning.” As my thinking and understanding have evolved, I am starting to realize that learning begins and ends with the student. It’s not so much the mode of teaching (e.g. online or hybrid), or even the tools that facilitate that teaching, but rather it is the pedagogy that ultimately trumps technology. It was my recent reading of Tagg’s “The Learning Paradigm College” from which that insight came (see related blog post). Although I can’t single-handedly change the prevailing instructional paradigm, in my own small sphere of influence I can make the course focus more on actual student learning.

This semester, I am still having students learn and use various technologies that they may incorporate in their real lives and beyond–as in lifelong learning. However, the passion for learning in all of us begins with our own personal passions and so I have students blog about their passions, interests and hobbies. The concept is that whatever passion they have (and presumably want to share with others) will energize them to learn these tools and apply them to teaching others. In addition, I have changed my focus from grading many individual assignments based on rubrics, to substantive feedback after each unit, via a teleconference/ discussion of a student’s work.  I believe this will prove more useful than more frequent, but often superficial, feedback that most classes provide. Lastly, students will be connected via conferencing software to form groups that review and critique each other’s work.

Naturally, the jury is still out on this semester (just starting), but I am hopeful. I think it is incumbent for teachers on all levels to improve, refine and tweak their courses throughout their tenure. Failure to do so constitutes “pedagogical malpractice” in my book. But even with all the changes I achieve as an individual instructor, I feel there is a chasm (more like an abyss) in the lack of fundamental change in our nations institutions of higher learning. The glacial (pre-global warming) pace of change  in higher education prevents the real restructuring of teaching and learning until a later time.

“It is nothing short of a miracle that modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.”  –Albert Einstein

What is a Paradigm?

It was Thomas Kuhn, in his influential classic, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” that is credited with the term “paradigm shift.” He defined it as a set of assumptions and rules that create the framework in which the scientific community operates. Other theorists applied his idea to changes outside of science, particularly in the realm of the social sciences.  For example, John Tagg (citation at end of post) sees its relevance to organizations, and defines “organizational paradigm” as “. . . the framework of examples, models and rules that define the boundaries of an organization’s proper activities and that generates new rules governing those activities. . . .  The paradigm that governs an organization often cannot be–or never is–explicitly stated. But through living and working in an organization, one learns the paradigm that defines it in practice.” (Tagg, p. 15, full reference below).

Why Paradigms Matter

Paradigms are more than philosophical constructs. They have tremendous implications for how we see the world and how we approach problems. So for example, if we have a disease or condition afflicting a group of people, the allopathic (medical) paradigm would seek a vaccine, drug or surgical procedure or chemical/radiation therapy to address it. Alternative treatments, even if they have proven efficacy, would not be considered within that paradigm. Thus, many safe modalities practiced for generations would be dismissed as “quackery” regardless of their positive effects. This deprives us of viable health choices that may deliver results without the side effects inherent in the allopathic model which currently has a virtual monopoly in our health care system. Why doesn’t a new paradigm take its place?

The Power of the Paradigm

People, institutions, prestige, power and money all come into play in preserving an existing paradigm, regardless of how wrong-headed, destructive and costly it may be. We would like to presume that a better model would displace a previous flawed one. As already explained, this is just not the case. In actuality, any new paradigm will be vigorously opposed by those benefitting from the existing paradigm. Think of getting 20 plus years of education to become a medical doctor. Overnight, a new paradigm is touted as having the answers to health issues. Would you gladly embrace this new paradigm if your livelihood was threatened?  99.9% of doctors would not, which explains why less than one-tenth of 1% of physicians practicing in the U.S. would be considered as practicing alternative or complementary medicine.

The sad reality is that practitioners (fully accredited, licensed and accomplished in their fields) usually get vilified and their reputations disparaged for even suggesting anything critical of the existing paradigm, or offering alternative therapies. There are many examples I may give. Doctors have been attacked for suggesting a connection between vaccines and autism, for challenging the theory of AIDS and its treatment, for having the courage to oppose many drugs and orthodox therapies that may be dangerous or simply don’t work. As previously stated, the paradigm protects those within it, and opposes those who question it, often with a vehemence and mean-spiritedness that shows the inherent defensiveness of a paradigm on the ropes. So regardless of their merits, existing paradigms are guarded and protected against all new ideas or methods.

An Educational Paradigm?

Alas, it exists and it is also impervious to change from within. The instructional paradigm has been the predominant one for generations of students –so much so that we can hardly imagine another way of approaching education. However, like having a medical paradigm that treats patients but rarely restores health, we have an educational paradigm that offers instruction, but often not learning. Both K-12 and higher education are under its spell, and it has produced a host of problems that have been resistant to any “reform.”  As detailed in his book, The “Learning Paradigm College,” John Tagg explains how, for many students, this instructional paradigm has created incentives for surface learning, extrinsic rewards of  learning (grades/jobs), and passivity in their own learning process.

According to Tagg, one artifact of the Instructional Paradigm is the credit hour, a unit that measures hours of classroom time.  The credit hour is useful for transfer of credits and assigning workload to faculty, but does it have anything to do with actual learning? Regrettably, “seat time” does not correlate with student learning as many studies like “Academically Adrift” report. Another structure that Tagg takes issue with is courses.

“For many policy makers, the meaning of education has changed. Formal processes have become the purpose of the institutions. Courses, which the funding mechanism of public colleges had made the economic backbone of the institutions, had come to define the educational mission in the Instructional Paradigm. The mission of colleges became putting more students in more classes. . . offering courses–had become the end, if not the definition, of higher education.” (Tagg, p. 16-17,  full reference below)

Only recently, has there been a concerted effort to begin questioning the entire structure, approach, processes, and artifacts of this teacher-centered model. Tagg and others have been in the forefront of such a re-examination of what the real mission of higher education should be, not what it has evolved into, as Tagg decries, “factories for the production of full-time equivalent students (FTES), transcript generating machines (p. 17). When enough people see the dysfunction of an existing Instructional Paradigm, and are willing to focus their efforts on changing it (which may mean putting their reputations on the line) then real change may be possible. As with most changes in paradigms, it may take a generation of professors to “leave the stage” before the new student-centered learning paradigm has a chance to take hold. In the meanwhile, we are doing a great disservice to generations of students that must play the game of taking courses to earn a degree, and often only after graduation, can begin the real process of learning.

References

Arum, Richard and Roksa, Josipa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, January 2011), Retrieved at: http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo10327226.html.

Barr, Robert B. and Tagg, John, “From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education,” Change,  November/December 1995.
Retrieved at: ilte.ius.edu/pdf/BarrTagg.pdf

Tagg, John, The Learning Paradigm College, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA., 2003.

The Learning Paradigm College by John Tagg,  is a rare book with the power to produce epiphanies of insight in most self-reflective readers. Over many years, I have enjoyed the role of both student and teacher, and yet I had an unsettled feeling that something in the process was fundamentally wrong, something that was both hidden, yet obvious.  Now I understand why.

That unsettled feeling had much to do with teaching as had been done for many generations, namely what Tagg terms the “instructional paradigm.”  This pedagogy, practiced at all levels of the educational environment, places instruction at the center of the enterprise, with the assumption that learning will naturally follow.  In other words, current educational systems will typically trumpet student learning as central to their missions, while in practice placing instruction as the organizing principle around which all activities are organized. In fact, there is a disconnect between what is being said versus what is being practiced.

Tagg passionately and clearly critiques the Instructional Paradigm, as reflected below.

The fundamental flaw of the Instructional Paradigm is precisely that it substitutes a means for an end. It raises formal organizational processes (courses, transcripts) to the level of institutional mission. In the Instructional Paradigm college, maintaining and expanding the paradigmatic process of delivering instruction is what makes a college a college, what defines it as an institution of higher education. . . . Teaching is valuable if and when it leads to learning, but not otherwise . . . It can be a useful tool. But it is only a tool. When we make the production of tools the objective and ignore what the tools were meant to achieve, we produce warped priorities and incoherent plans. To say that the mission of a college is instruction is like saying the mission of General Motors is to produce assembly lines or the mission of a hospital is to fill beds.

 . . . At the core of the Instructional Paradigm is a conception of teaching as the transmission of information from teachers to students. The paradigm thus emerges from a model of pedagogy that gives value to everything else in the institution [except learning]. (Tagg, pages 18 and 19, reference at end).

 So What’s Wrong with Current Instruction?

Tagg argues that the organizing structures of instruction are either antithetical to real learning or simply irrelevant artifacts that no longer have purpose.  Among the examples of such practices he cites include:

• The lecture as the primary means of transmitting information (contributes to student passivity)
• 15 week semester (an arbitrary length of time for a course, inflexible to actual pace of student learning or their capacity)
• 3 credit-hour course that insists all subjects can be covered in chunks of time that relate to “seat-time” not actual learning time (artifact of 19th century model)
• Curriculum is “atomistic” in the sense that students proceed through an array of courses that may or may not relate to each other in any meaningful manner; “a stack of instructional bricks that can be stacked in any order” (Tagg, p. 25)
• Disciplines that, like guilds, have long ago lost their relevance and reason for being other than the fact that academia has been structured for generations into academic departments which “derive their power from their role as depositories for classes.” (Tagg, p. 23). Inter-disciplinary models are needed for students to navigate the current world.
• The transcript as a document that reflects the instructional passage of a student through a curriculum, but accomplishes little else in terms of what is learned.
• The lack of accountability in terms of what students actually achieved in 4+ years of higher education.
  “The numbers that colleges report on are largely self-referential; enrollments and GPAs can be compared to equivalent figures from other colleges but not to any meaningful referents in the world outside the academy.” (Tagg, p. 29).

The Results

What results from the Instructional Paradigm are students often both passive learners and turned off to their learning, and possibly lifelong learning; students who know how to game the system to get the grade (an external motivator) by doing the minimal amount of work needed; students who see college as a means to an end, and who model surface learning with little connection to the outside world; and students whose skills in many areas are not being tested in a context that can demonstrate mastery. Is it any wonder that in a recent study, called  Academically Adrift, 45% of students in an array of higher educational settings show no improvement in a range of skills over the first few years of college. This represents a colossal waste of resources and time that could be better spent on a Learning Paradigm that puts the learner first in both word and deed.

In Part 2 of this post, I will detail the Learning Paradigm and contrast it to our current model.  In case you wish to read a shorter take on this book, please refer to an article listed in the References section from Change magazine.

References

Tagg, John, (2003) The Learning Paradigm College, Jossey Bass, San Francisco, CA.

Barr, Robert B. and Tagg, John, “From Teaching to Learning: A New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education,” Change,  November/December 1995.
Retrieved at: ilte.ius.edu/pdf/BarrTagg.pdf

As a followup to my panel at the CUNY IT Conference entitled “Navigating the Sea of Instructional Technologies at CUNY Campuses,” I will be hosting a forum on that topic at CCNY’s CETL this January 15th.  All CUNY faculty, staff and administrators involved with instructional technology administration, implementation, planning, teaching or faculty development are invited to attend.  To download the above flyer, please click on– Navigating-IT.

I envisioned this event as an opportunity for technologists, faculty, and administrators throughout CUNY to informally get together to discuss a concern for all of us, namely, successful implementation of instructional technologies (ITs) at our respective campuses. In addition to several (short) presentations, participants will work in small groups to brainstorm issues like:

• Instructional technologies impact on teaching
• Visioning and strategic planning in this area
• Instructional technologies for hybrid/online teaching
• Process of choosing ITs on campuses
• Role of CUNY Central for IT implementation
• Major issues/problems with campus IT implementing
• Collaboration among CUNY schools in this area.

Space is limited. If interested, please register at the link below.
(link deactivated post event)

This visualization is the result of a collaboration between the design for learning experts, TFE Research, and emerging technology strategist Michell Zappa, who describe this work below.

“This visualization attempts to organize a series of emerging technologies that are likely to influence education in the upcoming decades. Despite its inherently speculative nature, the driving trends behind the technologies can already be observed, meaning it’s a matter of time before these scenarios start panning out in learning environments around the world.”

Zappa and his team divided the chart into three areas: the classroom, the studio, and the virtual. Undoubtedly, the classroom is the most endangered of the three teaching venues, and within the span of two decades, it will be unrecognizable from the classroom of today. Current whiteboards and tablets will be displaced in the near future by digitized classrooms with performance-based dashboards, cascading knowledge maps, desk-sized screens and eye-tracking. Ultimately, physical classrooms will yield to studio and virtual spaces.

The studio marks an intermediate space between the traditional classroom and a completely virtual one. They describe the studio as “a peer to peer environment where groups coalesce to discuss, learn, and solve problems with each other and the teacher as facilitator.” There is a lot of current activity in this sphere which includes educational games, achievements and badges, educational programming tools, student- developed applications, and self-paced learning. The essential characteristic of the studio is that learning is a student-driven and “gamified” endeavor that is engaging and enjoyable.

The virtual sphere is where the “opening of information” trend occurs, a significant threat to traditional institutions of higher education. Virtual is defined as “disembodied environments, where learning, discussion and assessment happen regardless of physicality or geography.” Open courseware, online communities, video courses (like MOOCs), education app stores, and the digitization of books, are developments that will happen in this area.

One trend that I have blogged about in the past is what they term “disintermediation,” by which they mean “undoing the traditional student-teacher model, these technologies offer a scenario where AI (artificial intelligence) handles personalization while teachers focus on teaching.” This is similar to my blog post of the “disaggregated professor,” where the traditional role of the professoriate being broken up into discrete parts are farmed out to computer-generated programs or to poorly-paid graders. Assessment and student grading is ripe for a computer takeover, and so is content dissemination based on individualized student performance. Some technologies in this area include mobile platforms, student-to-student teaching platforms, and assessment and assignment algorithms.

A lot more can be said about this tremendous visualization of ed-tech’s future. What is clear is that we are currently in the middle of a major paradigm shift in terms of teaching practice, one that is accelerated by “disruptive technologies.” Teaching and learning will never be the same–and maybe that’s a good thing.

License and Credits

“Envisioning the future of education technology” has a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license, which means that you are free to use it as an individual (or in your organization) whichever way you see fit, as long as you credit the authors.