Higher Ed GPS: How Will We Get Where We Are Going?

The Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) recently published an Evaluation Report for First Course Iteration that documents the interim results of a study designed to address three goals, including building capacity for online humanities instruction, using online instruction to improve student learning outcomes, and determining whether institutions can more effective use resources and reduce costs through online humanities instruction. This initiative is certainly well intentioned.   There is no doubt that the humanities (and the liberal arts generally) need an overhaul in American higher education.   The infusion of online and virtual resources is central to this revitalization.   However, the takeaways in the Evaluation report highlight an overall lack of awareness among the participating institutions that characterizes the current state of humanities instruction. As someone who has been steeped in the humanities for decades, I find it the report disheartening. The...

At a recent panel hosted by the Committee Development, Gordon Gee advocated “blow[ing] up the box” of higher education.   He rightly observes that American higher education is behind the curve in serving students, industry, and society in general.   A central issue is the structure of higher education.   Simply, higher education continues to organize itself around structures that were developed centuries ago for a much different culture.   Colleges and departments, Gee opines, are probably not the best structures for connecting consumers (i.e., students) to the world of work and society at large.   Rather, we should look to more relevant structures that can accomplish this function.   If you have been reading this blog, you may remember a discussion of “form follows function,” and how our current system is missing the mark in this regard. What makes Gee’s remarks, well, “remarkable,” is the fact that he has been a university president at several very h...

I recently received an email from a good friend and colleague who had attended a panel discussion where he was asked to comment on Digital Leadership.    His judgment was that Digital Leadership does not exist—it is a myth (his word).   His take on the term is that it is one of many fuzzy (my word) buzzwords that permeate higher education today.   He further opined that the term is “another colleague try[ing] to carve out a new niche by playing semantics.”   I couldn’t agree more with this perspective.   But I think that it may be too kind.   As I have mentioned in previous posts, there is a substantial body of literature rife with definitions of leadership (a quick Google search will reveal at least 100), types (autocratic, facilitative, strategic, etc.), and approaches (push or pull, for instance).   In addition, leadership is often differentiated by profession.   What it takes to lead in the financial world must somehow be fundamental...

I just read one of the latest (read: most recent redundant) rehash of the effectiveness of online learning and how to better engage students online. It suggests engagement online is to be found in such things as peer review of student work, imbedded videos with chat exercises, or interjecting real world activities like visiting live businesses into an online course.   This study (and, in fact, pretty much any similar study out there) misses the basic fact that online learning is not a simple translation of the physical classroom to a virtual environment. The gaming industry—and the gaming generation—has been telling us this since at least 2004 in the book Got Game.   Virtual engagement is a sophisticated approach to keeping anyone—students included—connected to content, whether that content is a video game or a learning object.   In short, it begins from the recognition that sitting in a physical classroom is not the same as sitting in an online class, any more than ...