Batson Blog

Yesterday, the Times published a relatively long article, "Technology in Schools Faces Questions on Value."  The URL is below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/04/technology/technology-in-schools-faces-questions-on-value.html?pagewanted=1&hpw

For 26 years, working on various funded technology projects, as an academic computing director, and now as Executive Director of AAEEBL, I've read or heard the essence of this article over and over again.  Somehow, they say in these articles, technology has not magically resulted in higher test scores.

I always wonder, as I have read variations on this article over the last few decades, what would people do if they could somehow prove that information technology, by itself, does not improve learning?  Would they ban technology in classrooms? 

What is the basic question they are asking?  And what are their tacit assumptions?  That humans would actually stop inventing new technologies if the technology did not live up to expectations?  We have proven that automobiles kill people by the thousands, pollute the air, contribute to global climate change, disrupt cities, perhaps contribute to obesity, but I have not heard anyone suggesting we should stop investing in automobiles.  For half a century, we have read and heard that TV is bad for children; has that stopped TV? 

But, getting back to the educational perspective and information technology:  we hear of studies that show that learners get "distracted" by computers.  Do the researchers do a similar study of student "distraction" from lectures?  Why not?  There seems to be a common delusion that we can go back to an educational design that works better than designs inspired by and implemented with IT. 

We are in the first decade of broadly implementing technology, usually rashly and without an understanding of our goals, throughout education.  Information technology alters all interactions, all assumptions about knowledge, all social dimensions, and calls for new assessment of learning.  Information technology has a subtle but ultimately cosmic affect on humans.  It affects how we understand ourselves and how our cultures will evolve. 

How could we now, so early in this century-long human transformation, be able to judge?  We need assessment, not evaluation; we need exploration, not timidity. 

One of the most destructive delusions is that test scores provide the ultimate criteria for judging technology-supported learning.  Have test scores ever been valid for understanding or measuring holistic learner development?  [Why eportfolios provide a better opportunity to judge achievement is the subject of a future blog]

Information technology offers an undiscovered country.  Our visions of that country are mostly controlled, now, by pre-conceptions based on almost no experience.  Most visitors to this new country arrive unprepared and unguided.  It is not wise to just venture out with only pre-conceptions as a frame.  If visitors do just venture out, we will be reading articles like this re-hash in the Times for the next 26 years.

August 30, 2011 Wells Maine -- I am in the middle of an all-day faculty development day at York Country Community College. More than half of the faculty is here. We spent the morning in a mix of my talking and some group work. This afternoon, we are doing only group work. YCCC just acquired Digication.

On the 18th of August, 12 days ago, I was at North East State in Tennessee. There, a STEP program has been in place for years, aimed at incorporating more active learning designs. Almost no one at NE State had heard of eportfolios,but when I mentioned them in the middle of a long session about active learning, afterwards most of the questions were related to eportfolios. Then, in the afternoon session, that was all we talked about.

At both of these colleges, and in the work we are doing with the FIPSE project “Connect to Learning,” I am finding so much more openness about alternative, high-impact learning practice than even a few years ago that the conversation is now much easier. Practice may not have changed a whole lot at this point, but I have never before seen such receptivity to new models for learning. And I’ve been doing this for 25 years.

Since higher education in the U. S. is among the strongest and most vital institutions in our society, there is reason to hope for fundamental adaptation to the new facts of our lives today. There is hope that higher education can in fact re-vitalize our society.

–tb

From the Chronicle today"

"The best way to eliminate grade inflation is to take professors out of the grading process: Replace them with professional evaluators who never meet the students, and who don't worry that students will punish harsh grades with poor reviews. That's the argument made by leaders of Western Governors University, which has hired 300 adjunct professors who do nothing but grade student work.

"They think like assessors, not professors," says Diane Johnson, who is in charge of the university's cadre of graders. "The evaluators have no contact with the students at all. They don't know them. They don't know what color they are, what they look like, or where they live. Because of that, there is no temptation to skew results in any way other than to judge the students' work."

I have recommended this myself in an article in The International Journal of ePortfolio, in the issue to be release on August 15, 2011 (next week) at http://www.theijep.com.  Students developing evidence of their learning in eportfolios can can easily be evaluated by educators other than the teacher.  The trend toward documentation of learning leads logically to the question, "why should teachers both teach and grade?"

The transport of humans on rails began in the U. S. in 1834.  The first railroad cars built in the U. S. were flatbed railroad cars with 3 wheel-less stage coaches mounted on the flatbed in a row. 

Humans had never moved at speeds above 30 mph in all of human history before railroads.  A man crossing the tracks at that time, who looked and saw a train coming, walked across the tracks anyway and was run over, he being incapable of compensating for something moving as fast as a train. 

Creating a car with steel wheels to run on tracks was a transformation so enormous, humans had to evolve to understand and use powered vehicles moving that fast. Trains changed the form of human mobility.  But placing stage coaches atop railroad cars was a failure of imagination. 

Importing actual railway cars from England in those early years also failed because American rails ran over rougher ground than in England and English cars therefore tended to de-rail.  The Troy Car Works in Troy, NY, came up with "trucks" on which the railroad car would ride. The loosely-attached trucks provided the flexibility appropriate for the American landscape and have been part of railroad car design ever since. 

The trucks were an innovation to make a transformation work in our context.

Information technology presents us with the potential for the greatest transformation ever because it partners with the core of humanity, our brains and our minds.  Web technology has already demonstrated its transformatonal power socially and management technology has already demonstrated how it can transform business and work. 

But, so far, education has transformed around the edges only.  Beliefs about teaching and learning are deeply entrenched throughout our culture and therefore highly resistant to change among parents, young learners, teachers, administrators, and the entire education establishment:  great initiatives to improve education often amount to putting better stage coaches on railroad cars.  The stage coaches, like traditional classroom concepts of teaching and learning, are segmented, ill-fitted for the new technology they ride upon, and demonstrate no understanding of the potential of the technology. 

Electronic portfolios are like the trucks designed at the Troy Car Works:  an innovation that enables the technology transformation to work.  Eportfolios let us go full speed.

AAEEBL is dedicated to the electronic portfolio because we see that documented learning, or "evidence-based learning" as in our name, enables learners to also go at "full speed," to be active, to connect their learning experiences, and develop the habit and need to continue learning all through life. 

Institutional transformation based on building evidence of learning in electronic portfolios is not only a viable way to guide institutional transformation, but is also a wise and "electrifying" way.  This idea is gaining recognition and adherents. 

The transformation going on in education worldwide affects all aspects of the educational enterprise, from the credit system, seat time, evaluation and assessment, and the role of faculty and students, to the alignment of academic structures with social and economic structures that have evolved so rapidly in just the past 10 years.

But, in the end, we value most highly how young learners learn and how they develop.  Now matter the shape of the enterprise, learners remain at the center of our interests. 

AAEEBL has a cool venue right on the Boston Harbor, across from the Skyline.  The Seaport Hotel and World Trade Center:  a great place to spend 3 or 4 days.

I always enjoy meeting new friends, sometimes putting a face to a name that I've known for awhile, sometimes meeting people who are doing great work I didn't know about.  I hope you'll be in Boston July 25-28 and that I'll get a chance to meet you.

Below is our latest up date on the conference.

-- trent

Hi Colleagues,

The AAEEBL2011 ePortfolio World Summit is only 2 weeks away.  Now is the time to register while hotel rooms and seats for the Monday pre-conference workshops are still available.  AAEEBL member discounts still apply as they will continue to right up to the conference:  $200 USD for each of the first three registrants from a member institution. 

• ·      AAEEBL2011 is a gathering of most of the leading lights in the world of electronic portfolios in the U.S. and internationally.  The venue is exceptional; the program is extensive and informative; the opportunities for hallway schmoozing more bountiful this year. 

• ·      Here are some names you may recognize:  Helen Barrett, Darren Cambridge, Kathleen Blake Yancey, Melissa Peet, Bret Eynon, Helen Chen, Tracy Penny-Light, Evangeline Harris Stefanakis, Terrel Rhodes, Susan Kahn, C. Edward Watson, Marc Zaldivar, Gail Ring, Trent Batson, and Gary Brown. 

• ·      AAEEBL2011 offers a dazzling array of half-day and full-day workshops on Monday, July 25:

• o   MA1: Shane Sutherland, PebbleLearning – learn from the creator of PebblePad, one of the world’s most popular eportfolio platforms.
• o   MA2:  Candyce Reynolds and Judith Patton, Portland State University, eportfolio veterans at a leading eportfolio university
• o   MA3:  Linda Amerigo of Molloy College and Gigi Devanney of Chalk and Wire leading you through the development of an institutional assessment plan.
• o   MA4:  Helen Barrett, best-known eportfolio advocate in the world and Eileen Brennan of Mercy College on Digital Stories and Deep Learning.
• o   MP1:  Gina Rae Foster of Lehman College, how to lead a professional development workshop focused on eportfolios.
• o   MP2:  Teggin Summers and Jennifer Sparrow on ExPo at Virginia Tech where eportfolios are reaching 100% usage among incoming students at this large university.
• o   MP3:  Nancy Pawlyshyn and Dr. Braddlee of Mercy College, about moving strongly toward sustainability on the campus and a new focus on the integrative knowledge eportfolio approach developed by Melissa Peet.
• o   MP4: Helen Barret, in the afternoon workshop, working with a colleague form Puerto Rico, to help participants understand how to implement eportfolio with Web 2.0 and mobile tools.
• o   MF1: Jayme Jacobson and Jenine Cordon of the University of Idaho; Jenine “is a genius with Wordpress.” See a preview of their workshop.  Cyri Jones of Capilano University in Canada will continue the focus on Wordpress in the afternoon part of this full-day celebration of the capabilities of Wordpress for eportfolios.
• o   MF2:  Terrel Rhodes and Wende Garrison of AAC&U on the practical steps toward institutional assessment using eportfolios.

• ·      If you have already registered for the conference, you can still add any of these workshops to your registration.  We hope you will. This is an amazing set of workshops.  If you are registering in the next few days, be sure to add one of these workshops to your registration.

• ·      AAEEBL2011 is held right on the Boston Harbor, with a view of the Skyline (and the Boston Red Sox are at home at Fenway during the conference).  If you were here last year, you remember how splendid a conference venue Seaport is; if you were not here, you are in for a treat.

• ·      AAEEBL2011 is the only eportfolio conference in the world that meets jointly with a technology conference, offering attendees the choice between attending an eportfolio session or a campus technology session.  You also have the choice, during exhibit hall hours, between touring the technology exhibit hall or attending a special session on an eportfolio horizon topic.  The whole World Trade center is completely open to you:  you can attend any of the sessions on two floors of the World Trade Center. We have complete reciprocity with Campus Technology this year.

• ·      Many of the leading electronic portfolio vendors will have a booth that you can visit.  Learn about new options, new platforms, new releases, market trends.

• ·      Keynotes: 

• ·      Phil Long, one of the best known technology and education leaders in the world, a contributor to the Horizon Report, and the Director of the Centre for Educational Innovation and Technology at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, will let us know what to watch for regarding technology innovation.

• ·      Beverley Oliver, Professor and Director of Teaching and Learning at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, helps lead a major eportfolio program at Curtin, a major Australian University.  She also has been instrumental in developing the annual ePortfolios Australia Conference.  Beverley is one of the most entertaining speakers I’ve had the pleasure of listening to so we were very pleased when she agreed to speak at AAEEBL 2011.

• ·      The International Panel of eportfolio Leaders will be fascinating as you learn about how eportfolios “live” and thrive in other countries. You may be surprised to learn how differently educators in other countries use eportfolios.  Darren Cambridge, with his long history of international travel on behalf of eportfolio research, moderates the panel with representatives from Canada, the U.K., Germany and Australia.

• ·      Pre-Launch announcements about contents of The International Journal of ePortfolio.  The first issue of IJeP will be available on Monday, August 15.  But the authors and titles in this first issue will be announced at AAEEBL2011 during the Tuesday opening session.  The launch of IJeP coincides with AAEEBL’s new scholarly initiative. 

• ·      I will comment on the development of the eportfolio scholarly field and the new scholarly initiative within AAEEBL.  I will also report on AAEEBL’s new non-profit status and the implications of that status as AAEEBL seeks grants and forms collaborative relationships with other non-profits. 

• ·      Helen Chen, Gary Brown, and Jayme Jacobson will present preliminary results of the annual AAEEBL Survey.

• ·      The Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) has it own series of sessions that run for the three days of the conference. 

• ·      The two FIPSE projects, at LaGuardia Community College and the University of Michigan, will have their own sessions.  Learn about these two projects 6 months after the two projects launched.

• ·      The theme for next year’s conference will be announced and we believe you will want to submit your proposal for AAEEBL2012 right after you hear about this theme!  You will also be introduced to the new AAEEBL Board of Directors and the new Chair.

• ·      AAEEBL 2011 has an amazing 100 sessions on eportfolios.  The conference will pop this year; I hope very much to see you in Boston. 

Trent Batson, AAEEBL executive director

[Published in Campus Technology; one of the most popular articles of the eighty I published in CT -- tb]

6-15-11

Trent Batson

In a time of knowledge stability, teach; in a time of rapid change in knowledge, learn.  Clearly, we have left the time of knowledge stability and entered a time of incredibly rapid change.  Web 2.0, a term coined in 2004, is a description of the new Web architecture, but is also a historical marker between the era of comfortable stability and the era of unsettling change.  Many in higher education say we have accordingly turned to learning and away from teaching, but in fact we haven’t.  Most educators I talk with are unaware of the degree of change necessary today or of the degree to which deep change will continue over the coming decades.  And so, the dominant emphasis on teaching remains.

There is no requirement that faculty in higher education understand learning theory.   Even saying that, and knowing it is true, seems astonishing.  How is it possible to make the turn from teaching to learning without knowing what that means?  This is the 800 pound gorilla in the middle of the room.  Faculty members in higher education are researchers.  The focus of their research has traditionally been on disciplinary knowledge and not on how humans learn.  To make the turn from teaching to learning become a reality and not just a phrase, the first step should be toward a faculty development effort across the board to dramatically increase awareness of the basic research in learning theory of the past 30 years.  Those who have been teaching for years without this awareness may find astonishing discoveries:  “oh, that’s why that innovation worked that I tried three years ago,” or “ok, now I see why problem-based learning can work so well if designed correctly.”

Such discoveries can be epiphanies.  Having a theoretical construct within which to work and grow is so much easier than reactivity or conformity without knowing why.

When we in higher education do talk about learning, we use the word “pedagogy.”

Pedagogy, the word itself, refers to studying teaching.  It is about teaching, about being, well, “ped-antic.”  At its root, the word pedagogy also refers to “leading children,” which is, again, mis-leading in a time when undergraduate students, on the one hand, must get ready for an adult world that is less forgiving than ever, and on the other they often have children of their own, as the average age of undergraduates continues to climb.  We need to understand how adults learn and design the undergraduate experience accordingly. 

Faculty in higher education have been nibbling around the edges of learning research for decades, and have dealt daily with the issues of learning.  They may find it actually refreshing to become more firmly grounded in learning theory.  One research thread that seemed to lead to a rich lode of ideas about learning started with a Google search of the term “situated cognition” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situated_cognition).  Situated cognition, and related research threads, seems to me a useful concept for beginning to understand the tendencies of information technology for teaching and learning. 

Reading the body of research about learning is important right now.  Most of us are still at the point of not knowing even the basic theoretical terminology to use so we can better understand the changes underfoot now and make informed decisions about changes.  And this is after decades of the movement called “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” (see http://www.issotl.org/ -- the next ISSOTL Conference is in Milwaukee October 20-22, 2011).   The Association of American Colleges and Universities (http://www.aacu.org) as well offers sessions and conversations related to the turn to learning – the next AAC&U Conference is in Washington, DC, January 25-28, 2012.

The Association for Authentic, Experiential and Evidence-Based Learning, also addresses new ways to think about the teaching-learning relationship and the changing roles of both teachers and students (http://www.aaeebl.org).  The next AAEEBL (“able”) conference is in Boston, July 25-28.

There is movement underfoot.  This is not about technology, despite the crucial need to deploy and use technology in the best ways, but about how humans use our new technology. 

Four months after Bb received an unsolicited buyout offer, Providence Equity Investor Group purchased Bb, providing a windfall for Bb stockholders.  Bb had already created new divisions and new product lines just before this buyout, adding new top leaders.  Michael Chasen, co-founder and president, does not plan to leave and Bb most likely will remain focused on the higher education market.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/capitalbusiness/blackboard-agrees-to-164-billion-buyout-by-providence-equity-investor-group/2011/07/01/AGn4setH_story.html

In the article cited below, a survey of research into evolutionary human cooperation and "fairness," we can see that cooperation allowed human to out-compete and become dominant.  Such a basic amygdala-based instinct doesn't seem to be well leveraged in the way teaching and learning are structured at the moment. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/science/05angier.html?hpw

How can we do a better job?
--trent

Homework help at Piazza from Stanford:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/04/technology/04piazza.html?hpw

Institutions don't need to change; the students are changing on their own.

--trent

I remember very well as my university in 2003 and 2004 began to roll out an eportfolio system that was really a tracking system for re-accreditation.  At the time, many people seemed to like the idea:  it seemed so in keeping with how education is "done."  The idea that we could re-think a number of courses with learning goals in mind, create rubrics, and therefore re-vitalize and re-organize the learning process was attractive to many people. 

However, within a year, the leaders of this effort (I was among the leaders and thus complicit) realized that if faculty could better see the path toward the newly established learning goals, then students could, too.  Therefore, the group began to work with the vendor to create an academic roadmap -- it would help the students plan their academic career, they said.

All of this work was described as "tracking student progress toward learning outcomes."  Now, looking back, I see this effort in a different light.  I see it mostly as amplifying the worst aspects of higher education, for obvious reasons:  technology is being used to extend even further faculty control and initiative while students remain passive objects.

Underlying this effort is not only the behaviorist mindset higher education is still slave to, but a fundamental metaphor that influences all that we do:  the path.

Higher education in almost all respects implicitly declares that the way toward knowledge and wisdom is pre-set.  In a way, thinking this way 60 years ago had an element of truth since knowledge, compared to today, was stable. When knowledge is stable, it makes sense to emphasize teaching. 

Today, knowledge is not stable.  It is more fluid, dynamic, and foundationally disrupted than ever in recorded history.  In a time of rapid change, emphasize learning.  Or, in other words, get away from the metaphor of the path.  The path leads to anachronistic conceptions.  Or, there really IS no path any longer. 

Good academic thinking should now start with the mental image, the metaphor, of a field.  If you walk into a field and follow a path through the field, you see only what everyone else has seen.  It will be new to you, and you will learn on that path what others have learned earlier.  However, maybe the path now leads no where. 

If you walk into a field and just explore and discover, going in all directions, you find new experiences.  You will find multiple ways to move through the field.  And, you will know the field as no else has known it before.  If you are on your own unbroken path through the field, you must pay attention. 

The path metaphor suggests the behaviorist model of education we have followed for a long time.  The field metaphor suggests, instead, a learner-centered, experiential, situated and active model of learning. 

A path and a field are simple metaphors to keep in mind but represent vast differences in how we view learning.