The Class Size Debate Continues

Posted on March 10, 2010
Filed Under class size | Comments

Many people have put forward data on the fact that reducing class size will create better learning outcomes.

There is data that smaller classrooms can lead to more de facto “tracking:”

This may be true, but in the words of an internet entrepreneur: it won’t scale.

With lecture capture, video, and interactive content, content delivery can scale.  With computer delivered assessments, assessment can scale.  This means that teachers are now liberated from the workload related to content delivery and writing and delivering assessments, which used to take up much of their job.

If you scale content delivery and assessment, as in making functional classes for content and assessment BIGGER, you can liberate teachers to focus on other matters – like the process of learning that happens in between.

Show me that new school design.

Facebook for Incoming Classes: While Admissions’ Back was Turned.

Posted on December 19, 2008
Filed Under admissions marketing, facebook, facebook and admissions marketing, higher-ed | Comments

Brad J. Ward recently discovered that marketers from a company interested in reaching incoming freshman was out disingenuously making hundreds of X University Class of 2013 groups on Facebook. The perspectives from both Ward and his commenters are worthy of some deep consideration.

While backs were turned snubbing social media and Facebook, people with interests were proactive and hosted conversations they wanted to be visible in and a part of.  This should not be surprising; it is natural.  There are instances all across the web where marketers who have the interest and the budget “host” conversations, groups, and networks.  Some seem authentic, some seem like posers.

Here’s my thing: would Nike get accosted for creating “Atlanta Runners and Athletes” with a map of Atlanta?  I know I know, you’re going to say its not the same thing.  And, it’s not.  The city of Atlanta isn’t actively trying to manage its brand and doesn’t have a trademark on its aerial image.  However, it is the same in the sense that this is a reasonable thing for Nike to do because Nike wants to be there when people in Atlanta coordinate athletic activities.

CollegeProwler shouldn’t have to apologize for creating groups. (Universities could send them a cease and desist for hijacking the branding, which was in poor taste.)   Now that admissions offices want into those groups, I bet if they asked CollegeProwler to kindly turn over administrative rights in exchange for a link to the CollegeProwler site in the group posts, CollegeProwler would be more than happy to hand them over.

Facebook is a free for all, and no group is the “official” group of anything just as @student points out. You could, right now, go and create a group called “The OFFICIAL Brittany Spears Fan Club.”  Then, you could dramatically portray Ms. Spears all wrong.  Her fans would in no way be duped by this; they just go wherever there’s claim to support her and they will ultimately gravitate to the best community and the most authentic communication channel.

So, admissions offices could be like the record industry – they could make a lot of enemies by waging war on all of the people taking advantage of their own slowness.  Or they could do what would work: go host the best community and create the most authentic communication channel about their college or university.  The could try it through an off-facebook community that will just add another barrier to particpation.   Or, they could figure out how to tame the beast.  Talk about your strategies here in this Facebook group.

I, of course, hope they do it by watching our intros on Facebook for Universities and Colleges and ultimately choosing to use Schools on Facebook.  After all, though I think I am authentic. a secondary motive for this discussion is that Inigral, Inc is present in these types of conversations.

Technology Implementation in Higher Ed: What do GRCC and Carnegie Mellon Have in Common?

Posted on December 18, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments

On Friday I got a chance to pick the minds of two great individuals: Eric Kunnen of Grand Rapids Community College and Jay Brown of Carnegie Mellon.  The two might seem like they wouldn’t share too much in common, Kunnen is Coordinator of Instructional Technologies at an outstanding community college, and Brown is a Director of Marketing for Web Communications at a top research university.  However, both share a passion for the social web and edge technology… and aren’t afraid to pursue it.

You might know Kunnen for his well circulated GRCC blog, his visible involvement is edge uses of Blackboard, and his early and loud adoption of Coursefeed on Facebook (full disclosure, they are theoretically a competitor of ours).  Carnegie Mellon recently pulled off effectively riding an authentic instance of “viral content” – that rare combination of keeping the content ( “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch) authentic, genuine, and “free” while integrating the phenomenon into their overall communications strategy.  CMU’s presentation at the AMA Symposium on Higher Education was, IMHO, the best example of rubber meets the road at the conference.

Equally as important to their passion is that their institutions and the leadership at them actively encourage them to experiment with utilizing new technology.  Brown described Carnegie Mellon as an “Entrepreneurial Atmosphere” that bled into institutional practices.  He had mentioned in his AMA presentation that the best angle in edge marketing is to just put stuff out there – if there’s no kickback, move on and get even more courageous. All campuses that get great attention for their use of technology, like our founding partner ACU, seem to have this sort of culture – a culture that’s shorter on conversation and longer on execution, and by nature experimental in its analysis of all things new.  As Kunnen put it: “We don’t want to sit around and talk about it meeting after meeting.  We just do it.”

This reputation for technological gusto rubs off as a “Je ne sais qua” factor.  However, the method is always the same: the institutions hire good people, give them or embrace an existing sense of mission, and let them do their job.

As someone who thinks about overcoming barriers to innovation in education, I commend Kunnen and Brown and their institutions for living on the edge.

Video Platforms in Education, Facebook Video in Education, Facebook Video Now Embedable.

Posted on December 18, 2008
Filed Under facebook, facebook and education, video platforms, web 2.0 | Comments

Well, I’m going to take a cheap shot at getting street cred here: I was hanging out the other Saturday with Chris Putnam, a 22 year old GSU drop-out that is responsible for Facebook’s video offering. (Many of Facebook’s early hires were either graduating Harvard and Stanford CS students or young, hungry, overly talented hackers getting stir-crazy at big state schools.)

Putnam told me about the softlaunch of a Facebook feature I’ve been dying for: “Facebook Video is now embeddable,” he said.  I had been waiting for this moment.

Facebook video, just like Facebook, is a technological wonder. It keeps better resolution, presents a bigger window, and has fewer glitches than most video offerings. As with most technological problems on the internet, it’s not the actual product (in this case, the video) that’s hard to make, it’s hard to make that same product highly functional and fast when there are millions of concurrent users.  This is where only Facebook and Google can play, and its amazing that Facebook can even play on this field because until this past year it was literally a bunch of ivy grads and dropout savants staying up late drinking red bull.  I think YouTube, now powered by Google, recently came out with a size and res that trumps Facebook, but I haven’t figured out where to load one and Facebook Pages are way more conducive to marketing purposes than are YouTube channels.

Here’s our video conversations on Facebook for Colleges and Universities. It talks about how Facebook can be used for recruiting, enrollment management, retention and persistence, educational enrichment, and alumni engagement.

At Inigral, we’ve been using Vimeo for our promotional videos up until now. Viddler, I think, has the best UI on their video player, but both Vimeo and Viddler get choppy when during playback.  I think YouTube is so cluttered with nonsense that I don’t want any Inigral promotional content to get much audience there.

I’m sure as Educators we sense the power of reduced barriers to video distribution. Unfortunately, most video content on the internet is senseless; but on the back of senselessness educators everywhere will have their own video content publishing and distribution platforms for free. John Couch, VP of Education at Apple, told me in his office once “the brilliance of iTunesU is that it’s becoming the most powerful distribution platform for educational content and it’s all subsidized by the music and movie industries.” How’s that for innovation.

Now if we could just get the oil industry to subsidize school improvement…..

Reduced Class Size: An Inefficiency in School Improvement

Posted on December 14, 2008
Filed Under class size, school reform | Comments

I got a chance to chat with with a successful former Yahoo! manager the other day at a VC in Palo Alto; the discussion focused almost exclusively on school improvement at the k12 level.  Of particular energy was our conversation on class size.  My perspective, confirming Dan Meyer, is that class size is more or less besides the point and not worth pondering too much as a school improvement tool; but worth pondering, no actualy highly concerning to me, is that the movement to push down class size is probably the most inefficient, least cost-effective way to improve our schools.  To boot, the backbone of the movement is based on controversial and misappropriated research that kind of resembles Mortgage Backed Securities (it’s meta-analysis of less than scientific studies, like divvying up the findings of so many research projects that even the authors can’t keep track of where their data comes from or what’s in it).

No, actually, I can think of an equally inefficient use of money: one-to-one computing and the One-Smart-Board-per-classroom movement.  But, back to class size.

Smaller class sizes show a correlation with increases in performance, sure.  But it’s teachers 1) having control over the classroom and 2) building relationships with students that are behind the performance increases.  There are simply more cost effective ways to achieve these same elements of a good education.

My major thesis about class size is that it totally depends on the point in the lesson cycle the students are in.  Students benefit from effective, relevant delivery – but this could happen in groups of hundreds, through a textbook or through programs like Sesame Street.  Students benefit from rigorous, diverse, and differentiated activity – but this can happen in small groups and independently as long as there is focus and guidance.  Students benefit from cooperative, creative activities with analytical problem solving – but that’s more likely to happen in the performing arts.  And students benefit from formative assessment, re-teaching, and performance and content evaluation – but this can happen with a combination of an adaptive learning environment, a learning journal, and a college-student grader.

Really now, I think the conversations in education should move away from expensive diamond-studded, silver-bullet ideologies (based on opinionated research) and move towards outside-of-the-box, common-sense thinking.  Is that too much to ask?

School Reform Ideas and Michelle Rhee: Bankrupt on Big Ideas?

Posted on December 6, 2008
Filed Under school reform, talent | Comments

Well, I’ve been following this Michelle Rhee dictatorship for some time with much interest. With all the buzz lately – the article in the Atlantic and Time Magazine for instance – I figured I might lay down some commentary IMHO.

Michelle Rhee doesn’t have any ideas. At least she hasn’t revealed any yet. Or, most likely, the press doesn’t care enough to cover them. From what I see, her bold first move seems to be stuck in the bold first move phase.

With a long-run perspective, I’m interested in destroying the political structure that stifles school reform and allowing myriad beneficent dictatorships to bloom and comparing their results. In the short term, I’m remarkably skeptical until I see real Ideas (Ideas with a capital I) come out of DC.

Rolling heads and scaring the pants off everyone, generating resentment from most people you have to work with ( even with the applause of spectators ) isn’t an idea; it’s poor leadership and a hackneyed way to quickly get the allegiance of subordinates.

Leadership must invest in talent, must have a commitment to bringing in good talent, pushing out bad talent, and creating incentive structures that bring out the best in everyone. And in this, Michelle Rhee does have an operating principle that has been missing in education. One that, unfortunately, isn’t as revolutionary as people want to laud. Managers in the private sector have been complete champions in investing in talent, and the fact that it is so difficult to use this “must have” operating principle in more public sector services and institutions is deplorable. The fact that this operating principle has not been in use in public education is not an indicator of its revolutinonariness but is rather an indicator of a political system designed for stability and inclusion rather than efficiency and innovation. In the sense that Michelle Rhee wants to create a structure where leadership can invest in talent, I cheer Michelle Rhee on. If she has to do something with dramatic flare and uncompromising intimidation in order to shake up the system to get to where this operating principle becomes, well, an operating principle within our school system, I will be her fan boy.

The part where her lioness tactics come up short is twofold. First, dismissing hordes of people whose talent has been confined by the structures in which they work assumes that those individuals don’t have latent talent. I’ve worked with alongside hundreds of teachers, and for the most part they universally are committed and can be innovative when given the freedom and the wherewithal to do so. Second, axing people only generates allegiance when the entire community is given a coherent vision to work towards and each community member can clearly see their own role in the renaissance. Otherwise, it either quickly disintegrates into a disorderly herding of cats or behind the uncanny order is chronic dishonesty that leads to nice statistics but Great Leap Forward style mistakes.

My humble recommendations to Michelle Rhee:

1) Work with people to release their talent.
2) Publish a coherent vision with Big Ideas.

And, in case Michelle Rhee reads this, or in case you want to introduce me to her or anyone else going head first into school reform, I will list my Ideas below:

1) Scaffold skills and behaviors with more attention than academics. Once kids learn how to engage, the academic payoffs are gargantuan.
2) Streamline aligned multimedia content delivery and assessment, creating time for teachers to address real teaching and learning. Every teacher building content and assessments, stuck in continual delivery, is a complete inefficiency and wholly distracting.
3) Mandate comprehensive remediation using adaptive learning environments until every child is blue in the face or has the fundamentals to participate. Start this as soon as a child gets even a month behind. Children that don’t have the fundamentals ultimately hold back entire classrooms.
4) Build a schedule from scratch and alter building design around moments in the real lesson cycles: preview, delivery, reflection, assessment, content evaluation / activity modeling, monitored activity, individual activity, assessment, process evaluation. Hour or Two hour blocks provide no structure and make no sense.
5) Dramatically increase the number of hours engaged in school. All the data shows we lose them when they’re not in school.
6) Facilitate students relationships with authentic role models. Otherwise everyone can only imagine careers they see on TV.
7) Focus on health and fitness, the arts and creativity, and social, creative, and constructivist projects. It’s these totally neglected elements that create an environment for engagement.

I can go into more detail for anyone with the mind to chat.

Disrupting Textbooks: cK12 and Flat World Knowledge

Posted on November 12, 2008
Filed Under Open Source, Open Source Textbooks | Comments

In Nyack NY, north of NYC, a seed is forming.  Flat World Knowledge, a company bent on disrupting the textbook business, is getting ready to move into a private beta next spring with 10 textbooks in business and economics.  Jeff Shelstad, CEO, and Eric Frank, CMO, left regular textbook publishing where, as of late, publishers are fighting to keep their head above water by jacking up prices and skewing the revision process.  After hooking up with David Wiley and Brad Felix, the group decided to turn the textbook market on its head by utilizing open source methodologies.  Just looking at their team and advisory board, you know they are going to be one of the leaders in a nascent effort to shake down the publishing money tree, and perhaps liberate considerable cash flow for both higher education and k12, who annually see somewhere around 20 billion a year spent just to get textbooks that seem, to digital natives, a bit dry and out-of-date.

 

The movement to completely disrupt the textbook market has other players bound for significant traction.  cK12, run by Neeru Khosla, is focusing on the k12 market and is perhaps a little further along in product development.  (Honorable mention, Chegg, the “Netflix” of texbooks, based in Santa Clara, is reducing the amount students pay for books by as much as 70%, and has already hit some $10MM dollars in revenue.  But, let’s focus on this open source model championed by cK12 and Flat World Knowledge.)  Out in the heart of Sillicon Valley, cK12 is in the right place to come up with innovative technology.

 

Both cK12 and Flat World Knowledge have their own open publishing platform.  They reach out to highly reputable authors to write the first textbooks on topics targetted to both early adopters and for high impact.  (With cK12 its Engineering).  Since each textbook is under the Creative Commons License, they each have a way for teachers who use the textbook to “modify” it and make it their own, and then share the modified version.  Eventually, they hope to allow open textbook creation, and I think that’s possible now on cK12.  However, it is important that the organizations earn a reputation for quality and authority, the primary drivers of textbook adoption.

 

While cK12 is a non-profit, Flat World Knowledge plans to make money through on-demand printing (because, let’s face it, most people want to hold what they are reading in their hand if they are going to be spending hours and hours with it) as well as ancillary supplemental materials, a $14BB dollar market.  I personally believe that the best disruptive products usually come from for-profit businesses.  However, the CTO of cK12 is Murugan Pal, which should completely render that tendency invalid, at least in this case.

 

Though both products are still too early to weigh their great advantages and disadvantages, I’ll be really excited to get in and use them.  I’ve talked to people at both groups (Murugan Pal even met me for coffee) and I couldn’t be more hopeful that something big is afoot.  It’s part selfishness: I have a thematic approach to US History that I can’t wait to get out.  And I’m in the process of open sourcing my college readiness curriculum, Academic Ninjitsu, so I’d love to have an outlet for that where teachers can go and change how they need to.

 

Share your thoughts about open source textbooks.  And be sure to use the products.

Facebook for Alumni Associations: A Guide for Advancement Professionals

Posted on November 7, 2008
Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments

a video we made for alumni professionals


Alumni Associations on Facebook from Inigral Inc. on Vimeo.

Facebook for Educators: A Guide for Instructors

Posted on November 7, 2008
Filed Under facebook and education, web 2.0 | Comments

here’s a video we made, a follow up to my most popular post.

Facebook for Educators from Inigral Inc. on Vimeo.
An Instructional Guide to Facebook for Teachers from Inigral Inc. on Vimeo.

FAQs for Schools on Facebook: a dialog with Jeff Bohrer

Posted on October 22, 2008
Filed Under Schools on Facebook, facebook, facebook and education | Comments

Jeff Bohrer had a sit down conversation at Wisconsin-Madison about our Schools on Facebook product.  He brought up some great questions we hear quite often, so I figured I’d repost here:

Legal

* For how long is our institutional data kept at third-party host?
Seeing as how the value increases over time because students and alumni are able to connect on all the data they share, we aim to have that data within the application permanently. Under contract of course!  We could host on your systems, if it makes you feel more comfortable.  However, over the past ten years there have been dramatic advances in server/hosting technology.  We recommend using a top of the line host, and we can provide that for you.

* What are the intellectual property (of students) considerations?
At this moment, we have no e-portfolio capabilities.  It is worth noting that students are sharing all sorts of data and work on the internet freely.

Features

* How often would our enrollment data be updated at third-party host?
As often as you can support.  We take batch exports from older systems, and we’re the market leader in real-time integrations according to the LIS specification by IMS Global.

* Will advertising be served? How?
Seeing as how we are attempting to “license” the application and support, advertising at the moment would be inappropriate.  An ad network would have to be student organization driven, and there would have to be a revenue share with both the campus and with publishing student organizations.  This is a year or more off, however.  Right now, no advertising.  We have to be careful, if this is even something we want to pursue.
Currently, a company called Chegg (Netflix for textbooks) is willing to fully sponsor any campus that wants to use our application but doesn’t have the budget.  This would mean that each course would have its book list link directly to Chegg.  However, this is only at the campus’ request.  We’ve also got interest for affiliate programs with CourseSmart and ScanR.

* Is there a difference between a person’s regular Facebook profile and their Schools profile?
The facebook profile is only shared with “friends” on facebook and contains dynamic content of a personal nature.  Students don’t necessarily want to “friend” all their classmates and reveal all of that personal information, but through activating their Schools profile they can share campus relevant data such as course memberships and affiliations with organizations, greek life, dorms, and departments.  This kind of profile will help to accelerate community between classmates that aren’t yet comfortable with the “facebook friend” designation.

* Can any members of a class get to other classmates regular profiles without being a friend?
Any classmate or person who shares an affiliation can get to the Schools profile with campus relevant information, but not to the Facebook profile.

* How would FERPA exceptions be handled in the application?
This is a great question, and we’ve given this more than considerable thought.  We’ve designed our application for various level’s of “opt-in” permissions, so there is no indication that we are not 100% FERPA compliant.  So, as far as we know, there are no exceptions.

Instructional and Business Process

* What is our process for choosing which “cool new” tool/service to try or adopt?
We’re interested in this as well.  Incidentally, I’ve been writing an article for On the Horizon about disrupting the higher ed products and services market.  I’ve been interviewing VCs, and they all think Higher Ed would be a much more desirable market if there a way to speedily get decisions made about purchases.  I’d be happy to discuss ideas around this.  One thing is for sure, the more the process is streamlined and fast-tracked across campuses the more the market will see innovation.

* What are the implications if instructors participate? What if they do not?
Instructors will see a lot of value in “Facebook as Symbolic Interaction” (title of a presentation Susan Lewis and I are doing at the next New Media Consortium conference in Second Life).  However, its certainly not mandatory.  If it was, some professors would be less than happy.  It’s a tool that has significant value, but we don’t want any top-down mandates for instructor participation.

* Could our institutional participation in Schools somehow help teach students how to best manage their “public face” (online profiles and info)?
I think so.  It would automatically mean more prudent choices in profile pic, and would certainly generate discussion on how older generations are using the social web to get an impression on job applications, etc, in addition to the long term ramifications of creating a reputation that gets carried with you even after school.  One would hope that the moral of these conversations would be that students should always be putting their best foot forward.

* Should we consider this a student-only tool? Just at first or for how long? Do we let instructors or TA’s in?
If that’s what your campus is comfortable with.  It would be of value either way.

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