The University of Everywhere

KevinCarey's March 5th NYT article is right on the money. Carey asserts that college as we know it will be seriously challenged when free and affordable learning resources are coupled with excellent and valid assessments of learning that are equally affordable. This adds up to very affordable, well-documented evidence of learning that will trump current transcripts and time spent in college with academic and career-relevant information that can be expanded on throughout life and through multiple careers. (For the complete discussion, see Carey's book, “TheEnd of College: Creating the Future of Learning and the University ofEverywhere," Riverhead Books, 2015.)

As Carey says, the “future of learning and the University of Everywhere” is here to stay, and at Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU), our team has been working towards just this future. Led by Drew Ross, Susan Huggins, and myself, OC@KU already has the elements of that university in play.

With OC@KU, learners can

• Build a portfolio of all prior formal, informal, and experiential learning at no cost and without the commitment of enrolling until they want the portfolio assessed. This reduces time and expense toward earning a degree, respecting the learning already accomplished.
• Take our free open courses and have access to course assessments for $100, also without enrolling.
• Access the free Career Journey program, which provides excellent career advice with data drawn from the LinkedIn economic database.
• Enroll in the accredited Bachelors of Professional Studies (BSPR) degree program for $195/month, which includes the assessment of their prior learning portfolio, design of an Individualized Learning Plan, ongoing academic mentoring, and access to free and open resources to fulfill the requirements of their competency-based degree program.

As members of the higher education community, we have a responsibility to make sure that everyone who wants access to learning, has it. As I reflect on Carey’s article, I am pleased to see that OC@KU is on the right track with adapting to the changing landscape of higher education. At OC@KU, we acknowledge that the future is now and we are proud to provide learners with the opportunity to take advantage of it today.

OEC and OC@KU: Putting the Learner First

I have had the honor and privilege of serving on the National Advisory Board to the MIT OpenCourseware project since its inception in 2001. Through this experience, I learned of the Global Open Courseware Consortium (OCWC), also established by MIT a few years later. OCWC was founded to promote open educational resources and encourage institutions around the world to offer open courses. At last look, OCWC had grown to several hundred participating institutions offering thousands of courses under a variety of Creative Commons licenses, resulting in tens of millions of course downloads annually.

Last year, OCWC changed its name to the Open Education Consortium (OEC) and the Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU) has become a proud supporter and participant in this community. As an OEC member institution, we offer our MOOCs on OEC’s website, complete with course assessments for academic credit. We are excited about our ability to link MOOCs with rigorous academic assessments that can go on a college transcript. The potential for learners to benefit from high-quality free content and then convert that learning to academic value seems very significant to us.

In addition to offering our MOOCs and course assessments, we have also developed a portfolio which will act as a repository for OEC learners to collect and store their open course learning. Called the “Open Portfolio,” this tool fills a previously significant gap for OEC learners by allowing them to create a living record of their progress through open courses. The ability to collect and store throughout the open course experience immediately adds value to the learning itself by making the evidence and record tangible and public. It also opens the door to additional value-adds should the learner want them, including the option to use “Learning Plans.” Learning Plans are groups of open courses that help the learner meet specific learning goals. Using Open Portfolio, learners can develop their own Learning Plans, select/edit pre-developed Learning Plans, and share their Learning Plans with other Open Portfolio users if they choose.

We are very excited about our growing relationship with OEC. It combines the freedom and fairness of the open education resource movement with a practical reality: Learning, wherever and however it is achieved and recognized, ties powerfully to the learner’s career aspirations, academic goals, and personal fulfillment. By making the choices elective and learner-driven, our partnership puts the learner first, supporting whatever pathway he/she chooses to take.

Open Education Rocks the World! (#AllAboutOpen)

Open Education Week (OEW) is coming fast upon us; the week of March 9th to be exact. This global, week-long event will touch hundreds of institutions and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of learners and professionals from all stripes of education backgrounds and interests.

It is hard to imagine a world without open resources in the learning space for all to use without accruing personal expense or jumping through admissions hoops. But when I had the honor of serving on the MIT/OCWC Advisory Board over 13 years ago, this reality was only a gleam in the eye of an emerging set of education innovations.

Fast forward to today where millions of learners access open resources in multiple forms, from MOOCs to mobile apps to videos. And they do it to achieve personal, informal learning goals, economic and career goals, or to meet more formal educational goals.

This free and open treasure trove of content has forever changed the relationship between learners, employers, institutions, and content. And in so doing, it is driving the un-bundling and re-bundling of the higher education/lifelong learning value proposition in myriad ways.

It also is giving learners far more control over their lifelong journeys towards increased civic, social, and economic literacy and strength. Some educators love it; some think it’s a passing fancy; and others think it is the educational equivalent of the Barbarians at the Gate.  But open is here to stay and it is rocking the world.

In honor of this growing trend, join me next Wednesday, March 11^th as I participate in #AllAboutOpen, a 24-hour Open Education Week Twitter event dedicated to promoting the open movement worldwide. Co-sponsored by the Open College at Kaplan University (OC@KU) and the Open Education Consortium (OEC), this event will help set the stage for the next generation of innovation and development in open education resources of all kinds.

Starting at 8:00 AM EST, for 24 consecutive hours a global selection of “Guest Tweeters” will lead 30 minute sessions on topics of their choosing related to the open movement. Using the hashtag #AllAboutOpen, add your perspectives on these topics to those of thousands of other Twitter event participants. The objective is to generate a worldwide “town meeting” with global perspectives about the future of open education resources.

Visit our website https://www.opencollege.kaplan.com/AllAboutOpen/ to see the schedule of “Guest Tweeters” and topics for the March 11^th Open Education Week Twitter event. And then rest up and get ready to rock the world!

"If you leave, go out the front door"

“If you leave, go out the front door…”

That’s what Leon Panetta said to me when I sought his advice about resigning as president of CSU Monterey Bay under fire from a small, but very active group of faculty, staff, and students.

Leon was, and still is, the most respected person in Monterey County. He came to CSU after leaving the Clinton White House in 1996. His goal was to return to Monterey County (his Congressional district and birthplace) and start a policy center at the university. He and his wife Sylvia created an extraordinary resource at the Panetta Institute and they have, in important ways, contributed to the definition of the university’s character since their arrival home. In short, we were very lucky to have him.

The conflict in question had been boiling for over two years. There were disagreements regarding the philosophy of the university and its larger purposes as well as disagreements about daily conduct and performance. Coming from Vermont, I was an outsider to both California and the CSU system, and these two things were being used as a level against me.

As the pressure mounted on me — including faculty resolutions, protests, a death threat, and a nighttime attack on my home during which my car’s tires were slashed — I was beginning to wonder whether it was time for a change, for me and for the university. When did it stop being just about me and begin hurting the longer-term prospects of the university’s development? Where did my larger responsibility lie?

So that day I was just a tired, dejected, and somewhat beaten-down guy looking for advice from a former Congressional colleague and a friend at the university. I summed up my thinking, pros and cons, for him and waited for his counsel. What he said has stayed with me ever since:

“I don’t think you should leave. This is a political situation and you have a lot of support here on campus and out in the community. Your leaving will only fuel the forces that are aligned against you and that will be bad for the university. So I think you should stay. But if you leave, go out the front door.”

“Go out the front door.” I decided, at that moment, to see the situation through, no matter what happened. You don’t bail on your friends, allies, and colleagues. That was a matter of taking his advice and support to heart, but I took a much larger lesson from Leon that day: Aim high, work hard, and be proud of what you stand for. And when you leave, go out the front door.

"Coping Up"

I have often prided myself on being a good “coper;” a person who, when the times and events require it, can simply deal with a negative situation or result and get through it. As one of my sons once told me, when describing a tough patch in his life, “Dad, I have learned that sometimes the best you can do some days is get through the day, go to sleep and wait for tomorrow to come.” At the time, it struck me as a darned important thing for an 18-year-old to have learned.

And so it has been with me, sort of. For instance, when I was involved with politics, I came to realize that elections are very binary ventures; as complex and interesting, as difficult and divisive as political issues can be. When it comes to elections, you either win and serve or lose and go home.  And as much as I hated losing, I learned to deal with it when that was the hand that was dealt me. I was a “coper.” And coping meant dealing with it and moving on to the next thing. And so it has been at several junctures in my life where my aspirations and reality did not coincide.

But learning to cope does not only involve handling the negatives in one’s life. Coping also involves handling successes in a productive and thoughtful way. This was a lesson I missed several times in my younger days. And failing to “get” that lesson hindered my effectiveness in several cases. This is just one example.

When I was 24, I founded what is now the Community College of Vermont. It was, and still is, an unlikely success story for the institution and the people who worked there in the first 7-8 years, including me. Pretty heady stuff. As a result, when I retired from the presidency at age 32, I had never known defeat as a working professional adult. My mantra, unconsidered, was “If you work hard, things work out.” So, running for Lieutenant Governor of Vermont, which now looks as if it was a gross overreach, seemed like a reasonable next step at the time.

It should come as no surprise that as I headed into the home stretch of my primary election campaign –well ahead of my opponent, the incumbent – I had still not had to experience “Coping Down.” And as a result, I had no idea at all about “Coping Up” to deal with success.

In retrospect, my lifelong friend, Chuck Butler, tried to help me. Chuck had been a journalist and a political advisor to the Governor, and later went on to a distinguished career with Blue Cross in Vermont and then Montana. As I stepped forward to accept the victory that night, he whispered to me, “Be humble.”  And I was, speaking graciously about my now-defeated opponent and my upcoming opponent as well. In truth, however, as I think back on it, I took his human advice as merely tactical advice; a way to handle the evening. By Election Day, I had fallen from a strong front-runner to a narrowly-defeated candidate. Like I said, elections are very binary.

It wasn’t until almost 30 years later that I finally understood that coping with success was equally as important as coping with the negatives in life. I have come to understand that failing to achieve your expectations, whether personal or professional, can be a teacher of tremendous significance if you are ready for the lesson. Chuck wasn’t giving me tactical advice alone, he was trying to teach me  that success, as well as failure, is always qualified by factors beyond your control; by the contributions of others; by the turn of events, and, yes, sometimes by simple luck.

When you learn how to “Cope Up,” how to understand and handle success, it is a very humbling moment.