Presenting at the 2014 Kaltura Connect Video Experience Conference

On Tuesday, June 17^th I had the privilege of presenting “Learning in the Digital Dimension: Big Data and Video” at the Kaltura Connect Video Experience Conference in New York City. Kaltura is an extremely interesting company with both non- and for-profit arms that support video-based solutions in higher education as well as in other settings. This conference was jam-packed with innovation and the people who make innovation happen.

My presentation addressed two associated points. First, I shared some examples from LRC100, LearningAdvisor, and KU Open Learning that address post-traditional learners, helping them “make sense” of career and academic choices, chart a path, and execute that path. I believe that helping learners “self-orient” regarding their career and academic paths, giving them the information that answers their personal questions about both, and “personalizing” their path forward is the missing link in the online and cloud-based environment today.

Second, I walked the group through three phases that a company like Kaltura and a place like Kaplan might collaborate in the future. Phase One is Enterprise Media Management that creates consistent guidelines and standard tags, etc. across the entity and enables a comprehensive “search and retrieval mechanism.”  Phase Two might well address access to and production of video to create ease of use and sharing of resources up to and including an integrated video infrastructure in authoring and delivery systems. Phase Three, as I see it, would focus on distribution and enhancements that would encourage personalized use for employees or students with integrated learning, science-based services, and extended distribution channels.

In short, it was an honor to be included in the Kaltura Connect Video Experience Conference and I look forward to seeing what the future holds for this pioneering company.

The Democratization of Higher Education and Competency-Based Assessment

Is the competency-based approach to assessment and degrees a step towards greater accountability and improved clarity for teachers and learners alike?  Or, does it sound the death knell for traditional higher education, fashioned to control non-elite students who are more interested in career preparation than the liberal arts? Or is the definition of the two sides as contrasted and hostile to each other; a false dichotomy; a red herring cooked up by traditional academics to derail the discussion?

This will be the subject of a “Point/Counterpoint” panel which I will chair on Friday, April 25^th at the Western Academic Leadership Forum Annual Meeting in Albuquerque, N.M., sponsored by WICHE. The US Department of Education’s approval of competency-based education programs for Title 4 financial aid has moved this issue from the academic margins to the mainstream as institutions sign up, following the lead of Western Governor’s University.

I believe that it is a false dichotomy. First, I will stipulate that any mode of teaching, learning, and assessment can be done badly. We all know that. Having said that, however, an evidence-based assessment process that not only asks for answers, but also for understanding and performance, has the potential to transform the learning experience for the better.

How? By transforming assessment from an inconsistent and unreliable measurement — driven by an academic’s subjective impression — to a presentation of evidence and understanding that puts the learning in a far more consistent context and requires the learner’s reflection an understanding. Put another way, having consistent outcomes does not require that all learners do the same thing. In fact you could have many different forms of evidence, each satisfying the requirements of the outcomes. And there is still plenty of room for teaching, mentoring, and guiding by faculty members.

The deeper potential for competency-based education, in addition to reliability, clarity, and accountability, lies in its potential to transform assessment from a measurement of what you know, to a pedagogy that helps you understand what you know through active reflection and development of evidence. I think that reflection is the way we can extract meaning from experience, a way to understand what we know and what we have learned more deeply. And a commitment to assessment that does this is a commitment to better results for the learner.

Impact on Institutions

What’s a college to do when all the resources that it used to control, that made it unique, become free or very cheap and readily available to the general public? Think about free courses (edX), low cost or free assessments (CLA+), on-line labs (MIT OCW), books available online or printed on demand (EspressoBook Machine), socially-networked learning support (OpenStudy), Career Advice (AARP-Life Reimagined), and a complete lower division curriculum (StraighterLine), just to name a few.

Added to this burgeoning array of competing instructional, assessment, and learning support services is the fact that for traditional institutions, our 18 year old population is declining as far as the eye can see into the future. Remember, all the 18 year olds in 2030 have already been born.  So we know that number and all the numbers in between. This steady decline is not only bad news for Social Security.  It’s bad news for traditional higher education as well.

We are approaching the mother of all mash-ups as traditional institutions are pulled one way by demographics (declining youth population and increasing focus on flexible lifelong learning) and torqued another way by services which duplicate their basic offerings at a level of price and quality that most cannot compete with.  I believe that in the post-traditional world, the relationships between campuses, learners, and employers will change dramatically, with the balance of power shifting in most cases to favor learners and employers.

Colleges need to ask this fundamental question: how can we add value to learners’ lives in this emerging post-traditional world? The answer will lie in truly responding to the learners’ needs, great learning support and mentoring, great assessments, and making every aspect of the experience adult-friendly. Institutions’ organizational cultures will need to become learning-centric, not teaching-centric, supported by the intelligent use of big data and IT to personalize the learning experience, thus reducing time and cost to degree dramatically.

At the ACE Annual Meeting last week in San Diego, I heard Candace Thille say that the barriers between non-profit institutions and for-profit vendors and services need to come down. I think she was saying that the days are over when, for most of us, one college or university can control all the resources needed to survive and prosper in a learning-centric world. Partnerships are the way of the future.

Of course, no one can predict the future, but I believe that institutions that simply try to “stay the course,” extending the traditional model, will be in for a rough ride.