eLearning Design & Delivery

Envisioning Our Information Future

Here at Harvard Business Publishing's Higher Ed group, we've been collaborating more closely lately in new product development efforts with Harvard Business School's Baker Library and the Knowledge & Library Services group that supports it.  They do incredible work, from faculty research support and disemmination (including the Working Knowledge publication) to creation and maintenance of historical collections.

So it was a privilege to be invited via Baker Library to participate and provide a publishing perspective in a 3-day 'design shop' conference called Envisioning Our Information Future and How to Educate for it. 

edX's Platform Play

It's been almost a year since I wrote about the edX announcement and launch.  Alot has happened since then -- particularly in the area of understanding more about their platform's adaptive tutoring and grading capabilities, learning analytics promise, and business model opportunities.  This post takes a look at some of these areas that show the interesting value proposition that the platform -- and not just the content brands and quality -- brings to the offering.

The ITHAKA Organization and Interactive Learning Online

This blog entry reviews a not-for-profit organization called ITHAKA that focuses  helps the academic community “use digital technologies to preserve the scholarly record and to advance research and teaching in sustainable ways.”   It does this via a number of entities and platforms – some you may have used, others merely heard about, and some that may be new to you entirely.  But for anyone interested in “transformative uses of new technologies in higher education” – and particularly in the area of online learning and education – it’s an incredible resource.  I’ll briefly review the organizational arms and also mention two recent reports related to online learning.

EdX and MOOCs

Harvard’s announcement this month that it was joining forces with MITx to launch EdX, a series of (free and paid) openly-available online courses, fueled an already buzzing trend in higher education:  MOOCs, or massively open online courses.   The move is being portrayed in a variety of ways – the promise of democratizing higher education and potentially disrupting, or at least fundamentally altering the structure and quality of, online learning and even face-to-face classroom education.   Here’s a look into the MOOC evolution and how EdX fits into the picture.

The Future of Business Education

I was privileged to be invited to a “Future of Business Education” conference hosted by the Acton MBA program in Austin, Texas, this past Fall.  Jeff Sandefer, founder of the Acton MBA in Entrepreneurship and an entrepreneur, educational innovator, and philanthropist, assembled a group of entrepreneurs and thought leaders in business education to discuss some of the thornier issues facing this constituency today.  It was a provocative and inspiring few days and I’ll try and detail some of the discussion here.

The Digital Revolution and Higher Education

The Pew Research Center issued a report entitled The Digital Revolution and Higher Education (report available online and in PDF format here), with the tagline "College Presidents, Public Differ on Value of Online Learning".  The Center is a non-partisan 'fact tank' that does not make policy recommendations, but rather "collects information and disseminates it in an understandable and analytical way, rather than producing expert opinion on policy subjects".  Here's a brief overview of the report's Executive Summary.

Open Education

I'm currently enrolled in a hybrid classroom/online course called Open Education Practice and Potential in Harvard University's Division of Continuing Education.  The course is taught by Vijay Kumar, Senior Associate Dean and Director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Office of Educational Innovation and Technology (bio) and Brandon Muramatsu, Senior IT Consultant in the same MIT office.  Both are incredibly accomplished learning technologists dedicated to the "Open Education" movement -- a movement aimed at improving education access and quality by enabling educators to develop, use, re-use, and share digital learning resources.  Although the class isn't over yet and I'm by no means fully educated on this expansive topic, I thought I'd make an attempt to describe this movement and detail just a few of its components that challenge the conventional educational content landscape.

Private Sector Colleges & Universities

The debate continues about the academic efficacy and student adoption/retention practices associated with "private sector" colleges and universities.  Also known as "proprietary" and "for-profit" education and sometimes referred to as the "career college" market, this is a growing segment within the higher education landscape both in terms of numbers of students and educational dollars.  I've attempted an overview of the segment that includes the recent/ongoing political controversy as well as insights into their program design practices that, for some of these institutions, promise real educational reform and opportunity for otherwise neglected student populations.