I’m happy to announce that the paperback edition of Revolution in Higher Education has just been released by MIT Press. It is available from online and traditional booksellers everywhere.
Today’s #FutureHigherEd idea is a novel use of big data to match students with peers and mentors and improve the learning experience. In 2010, Tim Renick at Georgia State Univesity started to examine millions of student grade reports looking for markers that might be predictive of classroom success. Over time, Renick and his team developed analytical models that would alert students and advisors when an intervention is needed. The resulting data-driven interventions improved graduation rates and saved GSU students over $3 Million in tuition payments. It also saved the university money and those savings justified hiring more advisors. The GSU project helped launch a revolution in the use of data to improve outcomes and was the subject of an Education Advisory Board case study which can be found here.
Terry Hosler’s submission to the openIDEO Challenge takes this idea in another direction: using student data to match students with peers and mentors. It’s an important concept because this kind of support strongly influences achievement.
For a student to be successful attending a university or college away from home takes a ‘village of support’ including guiding communication both before and once arriving on campus with both the student and their network of support (family, mentors, and, when the student chooses, a broader community to increase their confidence and comfort level.
This need is there for all students out of their normal cultural environment.
This cultural match is particularly crucial for low-income, first-generation, rural students who are academically astute but unsure of higher education opportunities ‘away from home’ due to lack of experiences and feeling ‘like a fish out of water’.
https://challenges.openideo.com/challenge/future-of-highered/research/looking-back-and-looking-forward (Tyler’s Story)
How can Hosler’s idea be combined with the GSU predictive analytics model to identify not only culturally similar peers, but also a community of mentors and tutors who are likely to be effective at helping students improve classroom performance?
Prof. Dan Ryan from Mills College posted another thoughtful piece on #FutureHigherEd, posing the question what will the regulation of academic quality look like in a Flat World?
We can imagine the emergence of both disruptive skill/knowledge certifying enterprises that operate at the individual level and certification accrediting enterprises that operate at the program level. To generate a healthy ecosystem of such “regulators” we will need to think not in terms of government regulation of educational institutions but rather of some collective regulation of regulators.
Ryan has in mind a collection of marketplace solutions that together will: :
In short, these are reforms that should foster innovation. It was the first thing that occurred to me in 2012 when the MOOC phenomenon started to reshape my thinking about technology-enabled learning:
Letting learning outcomes speak for themselves in a Linked-In network of referrals, accrediting course repositories rather than institutions, and crowd-sourcing ratings to help students choose among competing courses and curricula are all experiments that are under way. Whatever their outcome, the future of accreditation will not be the same.
I was pretty critical of accrediting agencies back then, but over the past four years I have found myself returning over and over again to the idea that the same Flat World rules that inspired Dan Ryan can also breathe some new life into this necessary part of education:
Accreditation is, well, boring. Accreditors are the green eye shade players in the drama of higher education. It’s hard to get excited about green eye shades, but today—improbably—I find myself excited by accreditation. To be more exact, I am excited about what will replace it.
Reimagine the Future of Higher Education
Georgia Tech, USA Funds, Global Silicon Valley, Northeastern University, the US Department of Education, and the international design firm IDEO are partnering to sponsor the OpenIDEO Future of Higher Education Challenge. The global initiative was announced Nov. 15 at the White House by Department of Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell and will run through February 2017.
Get involved in the Challenge and share your vision!
The Challenge’s Research Phase is now underway. Share stories and reflections, emotions, perspectives and other personal contributions related to education after high school and throughout one’s lifetime. These contributions can be shared through the OpenIDEO Challenge Portal.
Postsecondary education is one of the best investments a person can make, serving as a gateway to social mobility and economic opportunity. This year, U.S. public high schools recorded a graduation rate of 83.2 percent, the highest number ever in recorded history. As these students transition into the American workforce, they’re likely to have four job changes in less than 10 years. Of those jobs, two billion will disappear by 2030—that’s approximately 50 percent of employment opportunities today. Learners are more diverse, because the country is more diverse. They are also older, because as old jobs disappear, people return to school. They do not always live and work near a college campus, so access to quality education is not guaranteed. Even if education is accessible, many find themselves priced out of a learning experience by tuition increases that outpace inflation by a factor of four.
There are dozens of shifts in the academic and economic landscapes happening all at once. Designing an adaptive postsecondary system that supports lifelong learning will be more critical than ever before.
The people and unmet needs behind these numbers inspire a huge opportunity for redesigning the post-secondary learning experience. Traditional colleges and universities, new providers of education, emerging learning communities, families, students, employers, civic institutions all seem to be poised at a pivotal moment for innovation. How might we prepare students – of all ages – for active civic engagement, real-world employment, and career success in an ever transforming economic ecosystem?
With your help during this Future of Higher Education Challenge, maybe we can find a way to work together to design new ways in which we might better support learners to evolve with the needs of tomorrow. Let’s explore ideas that cut across cultures, income levels, and sectors as we envision a system that supports innovative models and empowers a broad set of learners.
Check back as I summarize some of these ideas, and feel free to add your comments and perspectives here and at the OpenIDEO Challenge Site.
PALM BEACH GARDENS, FL–(Marketwired – May 10, 2016) – Campus Technology Conference, an higher education technology event produced by LRP Conferences, LLC, an affiliate of LRP Publications, today announced Richard DeMillo, Ph.D., computer scientist, author, and executive director of the Center for 21st Century Universities at the Georgia Institute of Technology, will be the Opening Keynote presenter for the 23rd annual higher education technology event. Setting the tone for the four-day event being held Aug. 1 – 4, 2016 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, DeMillo’s presentation, A Revolution in Higher Education: Tales From Unlikely Allies, will explore the complex issues confronting contemporary institutions and how unexpected partners are working together to transform higher education.
Source: Campus Technology Reveals Dr. Richard DeMillo to Keynote 2016 Conference
Innovate.EDU 