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MISCELLANEOUS KINDS OF STUFF
Harry Pence on Preparing for the "Real"
Web Generation
by George Lorenzo
On June 1 of
this year I had the pleasure of attending a featured
presentation at the State University of New York Conference
on Instructional Technologies that was given by Harry Pence,
Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Chemistry and
Biochemistry Department at SUNY Oneonta. The title of
Pence’s presentation was "Preparing for the Real Web
Generation." As noted in the program abstract, this
presentation was basically about the quickening pace of
technological change and how today’s students are "only a
transition."
Pence emphasized how the workplace is
changing and that "there is a need to do work with people
you don’t see from different cultures, to communicate, to
reach out to people, and to coordinate activities across
cultural and geographical divides. This is a new world that
requires new techniques and new skills for our students."
Most of what Pence talked about related to the changing
nature of the web. The old web was users accessing content.
The new web is about communities creating and sharing ideas.
It is not about being in control of massive amounts of
information. "It is about working with Jim, who is working
with Steve, who is working with [so-and-so]. My community
creates something and everything that everyone in my
community knows, I also know."
Pence showed a photo of a two-year-old and said "my best
guess is that this is a picture of the real web generation,
although, at the rate that new capabilities are being
developed, they may also turn out to only be a transitional
generation." Pence went on to say that today’s students
recognize the web as a social communications medium as
opposed to only a source of information (which is how some
of us older generation folks continue to see the web).
Today’s reality is people communicating through the
Internet pipeline, working together to form a new
"interactive universe that constitutes the social web.
Change is not just about how we find knowledge, but how we
view knowledge, because knowledge is no longer a small and
discretely identifiable part of information. Knowledge is
anything I can get to through that box [the computer
connected to the Internet]."
Pence posed the following questions: "How can we prepare
faculty for the real web generation? What would be an ideal
learning environment?" His admittedly idealistic answer: "It
should be a collaborative experience where every student
actively contributes by using both electronic and
face-to-face communications, in media-rich environments, to
solve real-world problems that involve other cultures."
Report on the Future of Higher Education Now
Available
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL),
as a member of the Council of Higher Education Management
Associations (CHEMA), recently participated in a survey
conducted by CHEMA and the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied
Research (ECAR).
Twenty-two CHEMA member associations, including ACRL,
jointly sponsored the project. The complete results of this
survey, a report entitled "The Future of Higher Education: A
View from CHEMA," is available online in PDF format at:
http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ECP0602
Through this survey, CHEMA wanted to identify the forces
for change and to understand their potential implications
for higher education over the next 10 years. The study also
looked at how to prepare and manage change to shape the
future of higher education. Three of the top four threats to
higher education’s success identified in the study relate
directly to the financial health of the industry: 1)
resistance to change; 2) lack of resources; 3) increased
cost of education; and 4) decreased government funding.
WGU
Teachers College Receives NCATE Accreditation
T he
first ever NCATE accreditation for an online institution
recently occurred at Western Governors University (WGU).
According to NCATE, "In 2001, NCATE modified its standards
in part to anticipate the accreditation of non-traditional
providers, and WGU is the first to engage the opportunity."
The approval ratifies WGU’s focus on the quality of its
teacher preparation programs. It further validates that
WGU’s online, competency-based programs meet the highest
criteria by which professional education programs are
evaluated.
WGU President Dr. Robert Mendenhall is
elated about the accreditation. "WGU is rapidly becoming one
of the largest teacher education programs in the country,
and as we have teacher education graduates seeking licensure
in all 50 states, it was important for us to have NCATE
accreditation in addition to our own quality standards,"
says Dr.Mendenhall. "We are very pleased with the growing
acceptance of competency-based education not only by
students, but by accrediting organizations, state
departments of education, school districts, and the U.S.
Department of Education. It is a tribute to NCATE that they
were willing and able to apply their standards of quality to
a non-traditional program, that is both online and that
measures learning rather than time."
WGU’s Teachers College continues to grow more than 40%
annually. After just three-and-a-half years, the college now
enrolls more than 4,000 students, with approximately 1,000
of these students concentrating on math and science
education. Approximately 600 candidates for licensure will
graduate this year. Because WGU’s Teachers College is
online, it serves a national audience. Today, WGU graduates
can apply directly to more than 40 states for teacher
certification, and WGU students are eligible for reciprocity
in most of the remaining states. With the NCATE
accreditation, WGU students will be able to apply for
certification directly in even more states.
WGU offers bachelor’s and master’s programs leading to
initial teacher certification in interdisciplinary studies
(primarily for elementary teachers), in the high-need areas
of mathematics and science, and in social science. WGU also
offers master’s programs for already-certified teachers in
mathematics, science, English language learning, management
and innovation, learning and technology, and measurement and
evaluation.
Eighty-five percent of WGU students are from underserved
populations. Underserved populations are classified by WGU
as either economically disadvantaged, rural, first
generation college student, Hispanic, African American,
Native American, or a combination of two or more of these
categories. The average age of students is 37; most (77
percent) are female. Most (85 percent) are currently
employed, the large majority of them full-time.
WGU now joins the ranks of 623 other colleges and
universities, such as Stanford, Teachers College of Columbia
University, Purdue, Texas A&M, BYU, Southern Utah State, and
others with NCATE accreditation. Nearly 100 other programs
are currently seeking the highly-recognized NCATE
accreditation.
Why Students Aren’t Learning Online
The September
2006 International Journal of Instructional Technology and
Distance Learning has an informative paper titled "The
Course is Online: Why Aren’t the Students Learning?,"
written by Tim S. Roberts, senior Lecturer with the faculty
of Business and Informatics at Central Queensland University
in Australia and
Joanne M. McInnerney who is noted as
having two degrees in Communications and a special interest
in the problems and pitfalls of online learning. As noted in
the abstract, "the authors distill the essence of good
practice to present ten guidelines for effective online
learning, in the hope that some of the more prominent
pitfalls and disasters can be avoided. See
www.itdl.org/Journal/Sep_06/article02.htm.
Eduventures Says Consumer Interest
Growing for Online Higher Ed
A
recent survey on consumer demand for online higher education
published by Eduventures found that approximately 50% of
consumers anticipating enrolling in a post-secondary program
say they would prefer a mode of delivery either dominated by
online or at least balanced between online and on-campus
instruction.
Beyond basic openness to this form of
education, the survey revealed more detail on how consumers
think about online higher education, and why they value this
type of delivery.
•
Perceptions of quality.
Perceptions of quality suggest a maturation of consumer
views - a willingness to assess individual online and
on-campus programs on their merits, rather than solely
in terms of delivery mode. There is also a sustained
skeptical minority, however, that continues to regard
online delivery as being poor quality by definition.
•
Perceptions of price.
Although 42% of the sample was willing to judge the
quality of individual online programs or courses on
their merits, almost half the sample said they would
only be willing to pay less for an online program or
course compared to an on-campus experience.
•
Online delivery & geography.
Sixty-three percent of respondents who were willing to
consider a wholly online program preferred the online
provider to have some physical presence (branch campus
or main campus) at least within their state. Only 37% of
respondents willing to consider wholly online delivery
disregarded location as a factor.
Alongside strong openness to forms of
online delivery, consumers also revealed less positive, or
narrower, conceptions of the nature and value of the online
experience. Responses to a number of survey questions
indicated that interest in online higher education is
dominated by notions of convenience, suggesting that
consumers see a tradeoff between convenience and quality of
education.
"Online universities and colleges face a tricky balancing
act between playing to majority consumer value perceptions
centered on convenience, versus emphasizing broader
conceptions of online higher education (e.g., around
pedagogy, technology)," said Eduventures Senior Analyst
Richard Garrett. "Breadth is essential to overcoming
consumer hesitation and allowing individual schools to stand
out in an increasingly crowded market. Schools need to both
accommodate and educate consumers."
These findings are highlights from Eduventures’ recent
report, "Expanding Demand for Online Higher Education,"
which analyzed responses from more than 2,000 consumers
nationally. The full report, which is available exclusively
to members of Eduventures’ Learning Collaborative Program
for Online Higher Education, contains a details on demand
for online higher education by credential and discipline, as
well as such demographics as gender, age, and ethnicity. For
more information, visit
www.eduventures.com.
Horizon Wimba Introduces New Podcaster
Tool
H orizon
Wimba claims that creating educational podcasts just got
easier with the release of its new Voice Tools version 5.1.
Building off the most recent Wimba
release, which introduced compatibility with iPods and
iTunes, version 5.1 introduces the Wimba Podcaster, a tool
for teachers to add audio files to their online courses to
which students can then subscribe as podcasts. To subscribe,
a student clicks a single button on the Wimba Podcaster
interface to sign up for the podcasts in iTunes or other
podcast-ready software. Once a student is subscribed, he or
she will automatically receive any audio updates the
instructor posts to the Wimba Podcaster. These updated
podcasts and voice files will then be automatically sent to
their iTunes podcasts lists, iPods, and/or other desktop
media player. Each file can then be listened to via iTunes
or on a user’s iPod or other mp3 player.
This basically elminiates users having to constantly
login to their courses to check for new vocal or audio
postings.
Additionally, when combined with the new import feature
of Wimba 5.0, the Wimba Podcaster will allow audio that has
been recorded outside of Wimba Voice Tools - such as a
recording of a lesson, interview, or music file - to be
distributed as a podcast. For more information, visit
www.horizonwimba.com/products/voicetools/.
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