WebCt will disappear as soon as someone designs the firewalled management system we REALLY want.
No one likes WebCT. No one really likes Windows.
Oh sure, we use them. We also go to the dentist and have regular blood tests. But we don’t like it.
Just log in to WebCt for a minute.
Look at this harsh and authoritarian interface. Examine the bulleted lists. The text-based assumptions. Check out the lack of aesthetics.
“Whoa, Schmidt you talkin’ bout Ae WHAT!? Aesthetics!? Whaddaya think this is? An Art class!”
Ahhhh. That’s just the problem. We in academia for the most part think that something inviting, interesting, graphically exciting, maybe even infused with motion, video, Flash, and sound is a SELL OUT.
So, we feel “academic” and “serious” if our material is text-based, word-o-centric as I call it. Black and white would be even better!
You can’t imagine what happened when I signed a contract in 1984 with West Publishing and we came out with the first four color, graphically rich, well designed American Government textbook!
• “Trivializes education.”
• “Sells out to student’s lower instincts.”
• “Do we really want comic book textbooks?”
Well, by 2004 our book had become the best selling American government textbook in the world. It is now out in Chinese too (no color and pretty basic). So, students love the book. Professors find it a compelling way to reach a generation of Americans that is totally visual.
Now back to WebCT.
It needs a complete makeover or it needs to move over
.
I will blog again on how I (and my students) visualize a WebCt “for the rest of us.”
For now ask yourself, ‘Does WebCT look like ANY of your favorite web sites?”
Go look at http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/, http://www.nationalgeographic.com/, - what’s the difference in the look and feel between these and WebCt?
Are you paying attention?!
]]>There, she said it! Now fire her! (Just kidding! She's tenured)
What I left off was the "unless" part. So, now I can pass on some comments from my very, VERY smart colleague who is tenured, distinguished scholar, and she's also as interested in DL (Distance Learning) as I am.
Hortensia LaEstudiosa has bee trying to goad her university, a Research I public university located north of the Mason-Dixon line and East, WAY EAST of the Mississippi, into designing a robust and aggressive DL program.
Her every effort in pushing DL has been praised up and down the admin ladder. She has been given awards for innovation in delivering education, she has been featured as a pioneer, etc.
BUT, no one seems to know how to take a hugh oil tanker and change its course (a metaphor for the university in case you are confused).
Even though there is genuine support for a more complete and visible distance education initiative the two things that stops anything substantial from happening are:
A. The management "boxes" on the org table are all in the wrong place for distance learning. Hortensia says that there is no synergism. The silos that are in place don't need to or want to flatten and become more horizontally integrated. Why should they? It would be a threat to them and no one has spelled out the advantages for colleges, departments, programs, and other traditional units.
B. There is no real power at the center or the top. Universities just hate to make hard decisions. We don't like to offend people and often acadmics are excellent in-fighters which my colleague says has stymied many good initiatives at her school. This means that changes are normally made collegially - everyone is consulted; everyone has to sign off. At least this is my colleagues experience at her instituion. See point A above re why silos don't wand to come down.
There are, Hortensia has shared with me, also the accumulation of other issues, some of which I've adressed in this blog. The lack of a DL business plan. The lack of high respect levels for DL in a research I institution. The "why should I do this" attitute of most faculty who, correctly so, see DL as a very time consuming and hard way to design, redesign, and deliver classes. The lack of material (that's real money not prizes and "Atta' Boys/Girls") incentives, annual bonuses for achievement, and other rewards for people who carry out successful projects or classes. This is not a "raise" but performance rewards for exceeding targets. So, it could go to a staff person who does an exceptional job in marketing. Someone who is in design of classes, a professor (these people should be rewarded anyway for taking the plunge or people shopuld be hired who's job description is distance education classes).
So, the administrative commitment that is needed for DL to fly high in a large university is -
1. Reorganize the missions of the silos.
2. Be agile and speedy in making decisions.
3. Reengineer as new data comes in and be driven by hard information - be metric!
4. Generously reward the frontier pushers like Hortensia and the folks who work in Continuing Education pushing the envelope beyond the job expectation, who deserve hard compensation for her incredible commitment to the cause.
Distance learning will mostly fail [to catch on and become a major force] at large research universities, .... unless. And like IF, that's a BIG "unless"!
Why must they be justified?
Because they are something new we want to do so we have to justify that. The status quo is the existing condition so everyone assumes that's what the world is supposed to look like.
In order to make a case for change and for accelerating distance education we have to build the case around a business model that justifies and validates the cost benefit profile of distance learning. In addition, we need to make a case that distance education can be an ethical and high quality revenue source.
I don't think there is a comprehesible and consistent business model for distance learning at most universities.
It would be useful to do a comparative assessment of university DL business models and incorporate some of the best features of each into a model business plan.
Many colleges treat Distance Learning as an orphan of the normal business plan. They figger that only "DL Universities" need to conceptualize the unique business issues of Distance Learning. NOT TRUE! Distance Learning is a unique environment and needs exceptional, special, customized features to function effectively.
The sooner the better. One of the most damaging consequences of having an ambiguous business plan is that almost nothing else stable can be built until the product development, financing, marketing, and revenue sharing are clear and predictable.
]]>
Yeah Baby! That's the idea behind viral marketing! You "infect" critical "carriers" with the information about some really cool educational program you are promoting. The "carriers" then "spread" the information and you cover dozens, hundreds, thousands, or millions.
Well neighbors, most of us do ot have a clue how to create an effective "virus" in the first place- something really"out there" exciting, different, risky, and cool. (Yeah ... at a univeristy where people have lifetime jobs! We are like the US Supreme Court. Talk about exciting ... NOOOOT!).
Say you manage somehow to create a really exciting virus of education. Now you need to find a host to transmit this and spread it. Where do we go for THAT?! Zdo YOU know people who know hundreds or thousaands of people who can "spread" this thing?
Ok, have I made my point?
There is magic in the new viral marketng world of the Internet.
1. You need a cool virus that's more than a low level rash.
2. You need to infect people who actually will spread it and not just sit at home alone in the dark watching TV and scratching theselves.
3. Then it needs to be spread to the right people. I mean, you don't want to get 1 and 2 right on the money but be trying to sell pork chops to Jewish or Islamic people!
Keep working on this, ok?!
]]>There, I said it.
At many universities, distance learning classes just don't fit in. It's almost a cultural thing.
No one seems to know where distance classes should fit, what sort of tuition should be charged for these courses, and how faculty should be compensated.
I am not talkin' about extension classes, workshops, or special non-credit programs. I'm speakin' about regular, academic, for-credit, classes. Graduate and undergraduate courses linked to departments and programs.
First, but I repeat myself, there is a weird notion that Internet, Web-Based classes are not as good as face-to-face courses.
Second, there is a very profound lack of understanding by many administrators and dept chairs of what exactly distance learning classes are. So, naturally, there is a lot of misunderstanding.
Third, there is the feeling that DL classes are no work and "run themselves". So, once developed they should not count as a part of the teaching load or that an instructor should be compensated each time theyr teach such a class.
Fourth, most universities do not have any credible and consistent central administration leadership that sets a framework which must be applied (let me repeat MUST BE) by subordinate academic units.
All of this amounts to a very weak competitive advantage for universities as they bid for students and dollars in cyberspace.
Unless we resolve these issues mainstream public and private universities will be at a serious disadvantage in competing for the new mobile and agile students looking for classes and programs in today's post secondary environment.
Let us pray!
The question was - 'How can we reach new clienteles?"
I suggested offering an all distance learning class I've developed and which attracts large numbers of students and has gotten excellent reviews.
My colleague said "We are not that kind of university. Maybe in the summer of you have a month or two we can schedule it and you can come and tech".
"That kind of university?!" Is that like "I AM NOT THAT KIND OF GIRL?!"
The perception out there (and even "in here") seems to still be that distance learning (i.e. all web based classes) are only for Phoenix University or the even less "respected" fly-by-night degree mills.
This is astonishing and shows that we in the IT, Distance Education community have done a lousy job in educating university folks on the sophisticated and high quality education we can now offer at a distance.
We have a long way to go. And we need to go out there and educate!
]]>The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an8rZyqCXW0
I received several e-mails from students in the class thanking me for giving them specific advice on how they should deal with a distance class. Apparently they could not figger out how to do this on their own!
* do the readings in a timely manner
*"come to class" frequenlty - log one once a day
*post discussion when they are due and be serious about your postings
*treat this the same as you would a face-to-face class
Another point I need to make is that we are discovering that now 75%of the Internet bandwidth is being used by streaming media (mostly digital video). I have been shooting, editing, and putting short mini lectures (many shot in the field out on beaches around the world) for many years. I found ISU to be very unhelpful in this regard and I had to pretty much scrounge around for help.
Now i plan to develop a whole series of small docu-lectures and post them on YouTube. ISU still has no user freindly video serving system except Camtasia. We need a revolution in this regard!
]]>The students don't see the professor.
The Professor does not see her/his students.
What to do?
Easy!
First, make images of yourself available. An easy way to do this is to open a Flickr account - http://www.flickr.com/ - and post some picture of yourself. Use images that may help the students understand you as a professional. Students can also open an account and post images of themselves -
Second, everyone has some sort of video camera or can borrow one for five minutes. Shoot a five minute or less introduction of yourself, create a "Group" or "Channel" on Youtube and post the short videos there. That way you will all at least gave a short mind map (a mental picture) of each other when you interact in the class. I have a coastal zone management group that will be used for my Coastal Politics and Policy class http://www.youtube.com/group/coastalzonemanagemen
Of course, the other way to do this is to use one of the many video enhanced communications tools such as Skype or Instant Messenger. In fact, this semster my TA Mike McCoy is Skyping with the students in a small course on Identity Theft Prevention we are teaching this semester. It works very well and it's also an excellent way to have "virtual office hours" with distance students.
If we are going to make distance leraning ever better and more exciting we must use all the tools of IT and enable our students to go there with us. I am certain that the future of distance education lies in making it as rich and diverse and engaging an experience as possible. Technology lets us do that.
]]>In distance learning classes where you don't see your students and they don't see each other, the level of passion and importance had to be significantly higher than in a face-to-face class.
In my 37 years of teaching, and five years of teaching 100% asynchronous distance learning classes, I am convinced that in DL we need to have higher "thresholds of intensity". Every course regardless of the discipline has very high thresholds of emotional and normative tension. In traditional classes we may actually want to diminish this passion. In DL clases we need all the passion we can find!
In distance learning classes the passion is a fuel for creating incentives for students to engage, participate seriously.
I use the moments of tension and apprehension about the subject of my classes - Identity Theft Prevention, The Politics and Policy of Coastal Areas, Electronic Democracy, the Iowa Caucuses and The Selection of American Presidents - as a useful "teaching moment".
]]>
The Iowa Department of Education web site got hacked - GED applicants files were compromised.
"The GED web application includes names, addresses, dates of birth, social security numbers of individuals who obtained a GED from Iowa between 1965 and 2002.
Question: Who is affected?
Answer: Individuals who obtained a GED from Iowa between 1965 and 2002. The application contains approximately 160,000 records, but at this point in the investigation it is estimated that no more than 600 records may have been viewed. "
Sure, I really believe that they know what files were "viewed"! Isn't that a great term for compromised, stolen, highjacked, absconded with, or even TAKEN!
Of course, recently 25 MILLION military files were compromised, bank card holder files have been "viewed", terrorists have used people's identities to commit acts of violence, illegal immigrats work under assumed names which are obtained by stealing the "real" persons identity.
We are at war!
No not in Iraq and not against terrorists, this is a war against the people of the United States! Of course, it is the one war for which we were not prepared! Now we ae paying the price for our indifference and over 50 million Americans a year have some part of their identity compromised.
At Iowa State University we have launched several classes and seminars on ID theft prevention. I and my co-author Michael McCoy have also written a book "Who is You? The Coming Epidemic of Identity Theft".
We are working with colleagues around the country and the world on this issue. We are also working on a National Science Foundation NSF grant and working with the Principal Financial Group on a major ID Theft education and training program.
Stay tuned for more news!