[Note: This article is based on an email message sent to me by Ilene on 1.24.12. It's in response to "Sloan-C’s Definition of ‘Online Course’ May Be Out of Sync with Reality," published on 1.22.12. -Editor]

I’m wondering if some of those definitions of “distance/online courses” are just legalese.  Here in Florida, we have definitions like these two below:

Each community college may assess a student who enrolls in a course listed in the Florida Higher Education Distance Learning Catalog established pursuant to s. 1004.09 a  per-credit-hour distance learning course user fee. For purposes  of assessing this fee, a distance learning course is defined to  mean a course where a least eighty percent of the direct instruction of the course is delivered using some form of technology when the student and instructor are separated by time, space, or both. (From CS/SB 844 – Postsecondary Distance Learning [SPSC])

Then there is this:

Distance Learning Delivery Indicator denotes that the student and the instructor are separated in time and/or place during 50% or more of the instruction. (From Florida DOE)

The definition above is used for “Automated Student Information System — Automated Student Data Elements” (Florida DOE) and includes codes like these:

A  Web-based or Internet-based courses.
B  Video conferencing.
C  Other distance learning delivery.
X  Those combinations of Technology which do not meet the 50% requirement.
Z  Not a Distance Learning class.

I’m pretty sure there are even more definitions floating around in the state laws. Not sure any of it is rational or has anything to do with pedagogy! It seems like it is just a way to do accounting! <grin>

Politically motivated program, “Race to the Top” (RTT), hits state politics head on. What did Arne Duncan expect? By putting political goals into an education program, the Department of Education has ensured problems would arise.

(Valerie Strauss, “Hawaii Teachers Reject Contract in ‘Blow’ to Race to the Top,” Washington Post, 1.21.12.)

The Hawaii state teachers have rejected the RTT contract that required performance-dependent teacher evaluation and compensation for the simple reason that no teacher evaluation system shows an accuracy that would guarantee rewarding better teachers.

We can have national curriculum guidelines without harming education. RTT put some of Secretary Duncan’s personal preferences ahead of good education practice. Eliminating tenure would have much more benefit than these uncertain teacher evaluation programs. However, dropping tenure opens up the potential for schools firing the most experienced teachers to save money in times of stress. Instead, we might have a system where the teacher firing process has standards that increased over time so that teachers who have proven themselves for fifteen years would be more difficult to fire than those with only a five-year record.

It’s unclear exactly how best to fix things in the existing system, and I’d like to see comments from others. Moving forward, I would like to see higher pay for teachers tied to better qualifications and a way to eliminate tenure as it now stands. Getting a lifetime job after just three years makes no sense to me. Universities require seven years. Our K-12 schools are more important to our country.

[Updated 1.23.12, 3:30pm.]

Hailed by U.S. News & World Report as the “industry standard definition of what constitutes an online course” (Brooks 1.9.12), The Sloan Consortium’s nearly decade old “at least 80 percent” rubric was the basis for selecting education programs for its 2012 rankings. Here’s the rule, which has remained unchanged since the inaugural Allen and Seaman report in 2003:

Online courses are those in which at least 80 percent of the course content is delivered online. Face-to-face instruction includes courses in which zero to 29 percent of the content is delivered online; this category includes both traditional and web facilitated courses. The remaining alternative, blended (sometimes called hybrid) instruction has between 30 and 80 percent of the course content delivered online. (2011 report)

I’m not sure if the results of the U.S. News rankings would have been any different if it had not been based on this rule. Regardless, though, it may be time to re-examine the 80-percent rule, which, from its inception, seemed arbitrary, irrelevant, and practically impossible to apply.

For example, how would anyone possibly determine, with any kind of accuracy, that a course was 79.4% online and 20.6% F2F (face to face)? Six-tenths of a percent shy of 80% and the course is blended rather than online? This distinction is ultimately irrelevant and serves no practical purpose. And when you come right down to it, who cares? Or more importantly, why should anyone care?

The simple fact is that colleges need a workable “online course” definition for program planning, development, and evaluation. Those responsible for these types of operational decisions are practical. They have to be. Otherwise, they can’t function. Thus, to be useful, the rule has to be simple, clear, and applicable. As seems to be the case for the ones that work, the best standards can be found in the programs themselves. And the one that appears to fit most naturally is the fully online versus partially online division.

No hairsplitting here. A course is either fully online or it’s not. If it is, then it’s online. If it’s not, then it’s blended. The deciding factor is the F2F meeting requirement. If even a single in-person, on-campus class is scheduled and required, then the course is blended. Thus, students in online classes rarely if ever need to step on campus. (In this simplified dichotomy, proctored exams and orientation sessions aren’t considered classes. In any case, special sessions such as these can be managed at a distance or online, e.g., see the coverage below of San Antonio College.) [Update 1.24.12: John Sener, in his comment in the "Program-Level Definitions of Online Learning" (Sloan-C Commons, Nov. 2010) forum, suggested distinguishing "Fully Online Program" from "Online Program w/Visitation Requirement." "Most or all courses in the program," he explains, "are offered fully online; students are required to come to campus to complete limited but specified program requirements." Frank McCluskey's response to Sener's post is worth noting: "It is important that the orientation be online as well. Where an on campus orientation is required we restrict those at a distance."]

In fact, some of the top universities in the country use this simple dichotomy to differentiate between online and blended. They don’t belabor percentages. At Harvard, online courses are “solely online” or blended (“both online and on campus”)[1]. Its pitch is “Study from anywhere in the world”[2]. At Yale, the summer session “offered three online courses … in which students watched recorded lectures and joined live discussion sections with their professors and online classmates via video chat.” Some of the students were “thousands of miles away”[3]. UC Berkeley’s summer session offered “several online courses.” Students would be able to “experience the quality and excellence of UC Berkeley courses from the convenience of [their] own home.” The message to students: “Even if you can’t physically come to Berkeley, you can still experience the best that UC Berkeley has to offer”[4]. At Stanford’s Center for Professional Development, students are encouraged to “Discover the Online Experience.” The message addressed to them: “Take courses … at a pace that matches your life…. Access courses anytime and anywhere for the period in which you are enrolled”[5].

Furthermore, the high ranking programs mentioned in Greg Scott Neuman’s “U.S. News & World Report Releases Top Online Education Program Rankings” (U.S. News, 1.12.12) use the simple online-blended dichotomy. On its FAQ page, Florida Tech University Online’s answer to the question “Can I complete all of the required course work online?” is “Yes. All of the courses offered are available via the Internet. You will never have to step foot on campus — unless you wish to walk with your graduating class!” The University of South Florida Tampa Graduate Catalog 2012-2013 distinguishes between “fully online” and “partially online” (95). For the “online option,” the catalog clearly states that “all academic coursework is offered online” (332-333).

New York’s Pace University distinguishes between online and “web-assisted classes,” which are defined as “a combination of the traditional class and an online class.” Here, too, the Sloan-C rule is ignored. In an online class, students are told, “You will not be tied to the structure of the typical class that meets at a particular place on a regular basis. You’ll have the flexibility to complete your workload each week when and where it is convenient for you”[6]. Westfield State University, in Massachusetts, offers the Pathways Program for On-line Business, which is described as “an opportunity for graduates of a MA community college to complete years three and four of a bachelor’s degree program in Business Management via an exclusively on-line format”[7].

Quinnipiac University’s (Hamden, Connecticut) response to the question “Can I take classes completely online?” is “Most programs may be completed fully online, while others require an on-campus orientation. The flexibility and convenience offered by online learning provides you an opportunity to complete assignments without having to attend a specific weekly class meeting. You may do your work day or night”[8]. George Washington University distinguishes between “fully online”[9] and “combined online/on-campus” courses. The latter “blend[s] online and classroom learning”[10]. Auburn University Online is fully online: “Through AU Online and Auburn University distance education programs and services you can become an Auburn student without coming to campus”[11].

I did a random search on Google to see if the simple all-or-nothing dichotomy would hold up for other online programs. I found ample evidence that it does. McHenry County College, in Crystal Lake, Illinois, makes the online-blended distinction: “Access online course materials, your instructor, and other online classmates at any time and from any place.” In contrast, “Blended courses meet on campus for a reduced amount of time, and the rest of the course is delivered online”[12]. Butler Community College, in Kansas, does the same: “Blended Courses enable you to combine the best of both worlds — the classroom and the computer. Online Courses provide you with everything you need from the comfort of your own home” [13].

College of Mount St. Jopeph, in Ohio, uses the online-blended divide: “Online courses typically do not meet on campus except for course orientations and/or exams”[14]. At Grambling State University, in Louisiana, “Classes which are totally delivered via the Internet are defined as online courses.” Students are warned, however, that “on-campus visits may be required for an orientation meeting and testing”[15]. At the University of Alberta, courses are also either online or blended: “Online delivery refers to educational opportunities that are available over the Internet. This includes an entire course online or a blended course, one that is partly online and partly face-to-face”[16].

Some colleges attempt to skirt the entire issue by using other terms to describe their online courses. For example, the University of Iowa divides online courses into “Web, virtual classroom” and “Web, face to face.” For the first “no schedule[sic] meetings or log on times are required”; for the second, students are required “to participate in one or more scheduled meetings”[17]. Broome Community College, in Binghamton, New York, seems to be onto something with their use of “Distance Learning Asynch” and “Distance Learning Asynch (Blended).” They say that “the majority of online courses offered … are asynchronous [Distance Learning Asynch] which means that there typically is no specific time you have to be online or meet face-to-face.” The Distance Learning Asynch (Blended) courses meet “both on campus and online”[18]. In both cases, I’m tempted to say that “online” and “blended” might be less confusing, but I won’t go there.

Some colleges make a halfhearted attempt to honor the 80-percent rule and mention it upfront, but they quickly give in to expedience when it comes down to describing their actual programs. For example, Adelphi University, in Garden City, NY, says that “The technical definition of an online course or program is one that is completed use[sic] 30% or less live classroom instruction.” However, after mentioning this standard, they go on to simply divide their offerings into “fully online” and “blended” without any further ado about percentages: “fully online courses where all of the instruction is delivered online, or blended courses where the course is split between live classroom and online classroom sessions”[19].

Missouri State University, too, mentions the Sloan-C rubric in describing blended courses, but ignores it in their working definitions. They simplify: An online course “meets entirely online, requiring no traditional classroom time.” Everything else that “[integrates] online and traditional face-to-face class activities”[20] is blended. No fussing over 80% quotas. San Antonio College uses 75 to 80 percent to define blended courses. However, percentages are conspicuously absent for online courses: “Online courses allow students to access courses by computer through the Internet.” They go on to say that students in online courses “are required to attend an on-campus or an on-line orientation on how to take an online course”[21]. The impression is that they are completely online except for an orientation, which could be onground or online.

Some colleges seem to have dibs on common sense in their definition of online courses. For example, Rochester Institute of Technology (NY), as described in Donna Dickson and Peter Osborn’s 2011 report, “Online Learning at RIT,” uses the following classification:

• Traditional course (F2F): a course in which content is delivered in a classroom or other face-to-face (F2F) environment
• Blended course (BL): a course in which some content is delivered in a classroom or F2F environment and some content is delivered using technology such as a course management system
• Online course (OL): a course where all of the content is delivered using technology and there are no required F2F meetings.

No messy percentages at RIT. But when it comes to no muss, no fuss, Monroe County Community College, in Michigan, takes the prize: “An online course delivers instruction in an entirely Web-based format. Some exams and assignments may be required at authorized locations as established by the instructor”[22].

Interestingly, a presenter at the 17th Annual Sloan-C International Conference on Online Learning, Nov. 9-11, 2011, also used the simple online-blended dichotomy. This is how Gail Krovitzm, of Pearson eCollege, described her presentation, “Recipe for an Effective K-12 Blended Online Program” (11.11.11): “The research will show how students succeed in effective blended learning or fully online learning environments…. It will have a K-12 focus and show teachers how to design a true blended/hybrid course which could develop into a fully online course.” Again, no percentages — just a simple split between blended, on the one hand, and fully online, on the other. And even more interesting is the apparent goal for blended courses — to become “a fully online course.”

[Update 1.24.12: John Bourne, in his Sloan-C Commons forum, "Definitions of Online Learning" (Oct. 2010), presents the following definition for discussion: "Online Course – All course activity is done online; there are no required face-to-face sessions within the course." Nan Chico's comment, Online really is different, is noteworthy: "Designing and participating in a completely online course is so different that it really needs to stand as a main category, with everything else (hybrid, enhanced, etc.) being 'other.'" Not surprisingly, the forum on programs (Nov. 2010) rather than courses generated similar definitions. Gary Miller offered the following definition: "Fully Online Program – All courses in the program are offered as fully online courses; no face-to-face courses.  Students can complete the program completely at a distance, with no required face-to-face meetings."]

Some researchers, too, seem to favor the online-blended division. For example, Susan J. Martin, in “Comparison Study: Teaching a Blended In-Class Course vs. a Distance Education Course” (Teaching and Learning Conference of the American Political Science Association, Feb. 6 – 8, 2009), addresses the question, “Is there a significance difference in the student’s learning outcome between a blended in-class course and a totally online course?” Bassou El Mansour, and Davison M. Mupinga, in “Students’ Positive and Negative Experiences in Hybrid and Online Classes” (College Student Journal, March, 2007), define online learning as “an instructional strategy in which the learners are geographically separated from the instructor, and the instruction is delivered totally through the computer (Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications, 2004).” For Thomas B. Cavanagh, in “The Blended Learning Toolkit: Improving Student Performance and Retention” (EDUCAUSE Quarterly, 34. 4 [2011]), blended courses is “where web-based online learning replaces a percentage of traditional face-to-face instruction,” and he contrasts them with “fully online learning.”

These examples were gathered quickly, in a few hours, so there’s no pretense on my part that this is a comprehensive, in-depth survey of all college online programs. Still, the almost random nature of the process implies that these findings may be representative of the field.

The question remains: Why does this simple dichotomy of online, on the one hand, and blended, on the other, work? The answer is simple, too. It’s because the Sloan-C rubric is flawed, based on the assumption that traditional, blended, and online share the same continuum. After viewing the examples above, it should be obvious that they don’t, or more accurately, traditional and blended do, but online doesn’t.

The continuum — or paradigm, if you will — for traditional and blended courses is the geographical campus and classroom. Using this as a base, it’s easy to see how courses could be nearly free of online tech, at one end, and nearly free of the classroom, at the other. The common denominator, again, is the physical location requirement. Regardless of where a course falls on the continuum, it still retains the geographical element.

Perhaps the most compelling argument for placing online on its own continuum — besides practicality — is the opportunity that it provides for research and development. An obvious question that we can then ask is, What is the full range of possibilities for online, that is, once it’s freed from the geographical continuum? A construct that comes quickly to mind is the LMSs (learning management systems) that dominated the early days of fully online courses, on one end, and MOOCs (massive open online courses), on the other. Currently, many experienced online teachers are exploring the vast middle ground, testing the virtual landscape with one foot while keeping the other firmly grounded in LMSs. In this new continuum, the common denominator is freedom from location constraints. That is, regardless of where a course falls, it can always be accessed from anywhere.

[Update 1.24.12: Other colleges that reserve the "online" designation for fully online courses: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Highline Community College, University of Colorado Denver.]

As any resource that talks about it will tell you, plagiarism is a serious infringement whether intentional or not. As the saying goes, ignorance of the law is no excuse. However, despite the numerous books, articles, brochures, blogs, and websites dedicated to educating and warning about plagiarism and how to avoid it, it still happens and happens frequently. The Plagiarism Prevention Blog, for instance, highlights a case of an individual being stripped of his PhD in education at the University of Virginia when plagiarism was discovered in his dissertation. Unfortunately this is not the only case.

As an instructor I make it clear to my students that plagiarism is a violation of academic integrity and encourage them to use sites such as Indiana University’s How to Recognize Plagiarism tutorial and Purdue OWL’s Research and Citation Resources. If they are still not sure, they should ask me.

We also have at my university, Purdue University Calumet, a couple of proprietary resources that can check for plagiarism. I am reluctant to use these because they store the student’s work for future comparisons and I am not comfortable with that. However, I do often use the simple expedient of searching for the suspicious word or phrase in Google. By capturing the phrase in quotes, I can learn if this exact wording is used in any of the millions of documents linked through Google. Sometimes, a phrase may fall under “common knowledge.” However, that is usually a fairly easy call to make. There are two red flags that identify a phrase or sentence as suspicious. One is when it is referring to something that is not really common knowledge, such as specialized knowledge about a topic. The other is when the tone or voice of the paragraph changes. For instance, a student’s style in a paragraph is rather informal and, suddenly, a very formal phrase or sentence, very different in character from the surrounding text, appears.

Why am I writing about this topic? Unfortunately, it is not only students turning in papers or dissertations who resort to plagiarism. Today, I was reviewing an article submitted for possible publication in a journal, which will remain unnamed (not ETCJ), and the introductory paragraph sent up a red flag. I googled first one sentence then another. I soon discovered that the entire paragraph was taken word for word from an article that Google was able to access. Of course, I immediately notified the editor of the journal, and I assume that this article will be rejected out of hand.

Students and other writers have always plagiarized. I have been told that plagiarism is a serious issue among international students in the US because some cultures do not see plagiarism as an offense. Regardless of the reasons for plagiarizing, I do think that the Internet has proven to be a boon and a curse around this issue. On the one hand, it is very easy to find what you want and copy and paste it into your paper. On the other, as I can attest, it is also easy to find out where the suspicious materials came from.

Then there are SOPA and PIPA related to copyright infringement, which I see as a related issue. Perhaps someone else would like to go there.

If you’re a gamer like me, you fire up your Xbox 360 and await that glorious in-game moment when the flashing icon on your screen notifies you of an unlocked achievement, earning you a fancy graphical badge and additional points on your geek cred card. Even for non-gamers, small tokens of recognition can make the mundane feel special: that final punch on your coffee frequency card, the “good point” from a fellow book club member, the envelope notifying you that you, too, may already be a millionaire. Well, maybe not that last one. Students in today’s increasingly wired, competitive and rubricated classrooms frequently seek the same spark of achievement and, from what I’ve seen, ClassDojo can provide it.

According to Kalen Gallagher, “Grand Hustle” at ClassDojo, this award-winning application puts real-time classroom management in the hands of instructors. In-class behavior, learning habits and skills can be immediately assessed via Internet or smartphone.

Here’s How It Works

Instructors sign up for an account and are taken through an intuitive walkthrough tutorial showcasing the different functionalities available on the site including setting up a class.

While primarily aimed at K-12 classrooms, flexibility is provided for university and other settings.

Student name entry is also flexible, with an open data-entry system allowing for first names, student numbers, full names, etc. There does not appear to be an import function so large class setup has the potential to be time consuming. However, when I copied and pasted a list of student names from an existing document, I had no trouble.

Setting up the behaviors to track offered the same flexibility as the previous steps. ClassDojo accepted everything I entered. This flexibility in field entry may be the most powerful aspect of the application, making it possible to use ClassDojo for more than simple behavior tracking, including a variety of metrics.

To give awards, instructors simply click on a student’s name and assign positive or negative behaviors.

Graphically, behaviors are represented like this for individuals…

…and this for the class overall.

The Good

ClassDojo is extremely flexible. While I’ve not used it in an actual teaching scenario, I did try it as a form of meeting management, and it seemed to work well. The non-restrictive nature of the application’s design allows for a multitude of uses, not simply limited to classroom behavior management. With a little creativity, you could use this app to simplify metrics of almost any kind.

From a user perspective, the application was easy to learn and very quick to set up. Most of the time spent was in thinking about what to track and figuring out how to get a large number of names into the class. I personally find the graphics to be fun and engaging, but I can see where they may be an odd fit in a corporate or higher education setting. While these are not the primary demographic targets, a changeable look and feel would be an awesome addition.

The OK

I found nothing that I would classify as bad or even terribly irritating about ClassDojo so I title this section “The OK.” Pedagogical implications aside, this tool was designed by teachers and provides a valuable tool for needs analysis and classroom goal setting. However, it is largely extrinsic. It could be argued that this is a double-edged sword, as many rewards-based systems are. Personally, I don’t find ClassDojo to be as overtly reward-driven as it is a fun way to gather needed data and classroom trends.

A Story

In trying to more clearly understand ClassDojo’s value and the development mindset behind it, I asked Gallagher the following questions: Why ClassDojo? Why is this tool so much better than other pedagogical approaches, and why should I go onto ETC Journal and highlight this program? How does this get to the heart of educator struggles?

He responded with a  story that explained the design philosophy behind ClassDojo better than I could were I to attempt a re-encapsulation:

For the past two years I taught 7th and 8th grade Social Studies at KIPP Heartwood in East San Jose. One of the big focuses of our school was helping build the students’ character, everything from learning habits, skills, and how they interacted with their “teammates.” The idea is that if you can help students develop these skill sets and become intrinsically motivated to learn, then it does wonders for the amount they learn in a given school year. My school was not alone in these goals — I talk to a ton of teachers everyday who already have systems in place that address these “character” issues — but like my old school, they are not taking advantage of the benefits that come along with technology.

Giving a kid a gold star for participating, handing out a detention to a student who does X, Y, Z, etc. all have benefits to ideally help develop a stronger student, but all these systems are a bit limited. ClassDojo is better in a few ways including:

1. Real-time feedback  — kids get an instant check on their behavior and can adjust accordingly.
2. Ability to share with parents — no more waiting until the end of the term to find out your student hasn’t been turning in homework, or has been really improving on X, Y, Z — these are included in our parent reports
3. Data — by creating a strong set of data, teachers can spot trends they would never be able to see otherwise (without spending hours entering data into Excel sheets, etc).

 One teacher we’ve been talking to is using ClassDojo to do formative assessment of his students.  Before ClassDojo the time constraints alone were a huge barrier in his attempt to do so – http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2011/09/is-real-formative-assessment-even-possible.html

What Do You Think?

As an educator would you use ClassDojo? Do you use it already? Leave a comment, and let us know what you think about ClassDojo’s pedagogical implications: things you’ve tried, things you loved, and things you didn’t love so much.

Some ClassDojo Resources:

• Teacher-created walkthrough – http://youtu.be/b5uihmPlbvA
• A teacher’s story – http://youtu.be/Yg8NSW3sz_Y
• TechnoTeaching – http://www.cunniman.net/?p=1120

Connect with ClassDojo (No, really, connect with them!)

As a company, ClassDojo has been extraordinarily responsive and conversational during the writing of this article. I asked some – let’s just say – interesting interview questions, and was met with frank honesty and readily available information. Follow them, connect with them on LinkedIn, ask the tough questions. I’m confident they’ll rise to the challenges.

• Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/classdojo
• Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/classdojo
• Edmodo: http://goo.gl/4p0QQ
• LinkedIn:
  • Sam: http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/usamah-%22sam%22-chaudhary/7/706/b27
  • Liam: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamdon
  • Kalen: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kalengallagher

From: ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton
Link: http://cyberlearning.sri.com/w/index.php/Main_Page
January 18, 2012
National Geographic Society
Grosvenor Auditorium
1145 17th Street Northwest
Washington D.C.

NSF has the potential to lead a new wave of STEM initiatives through its CyberLearning: Transforming Education program and its cross-cutting initiatives in cyberinfrastructure. To continue to lead in an increasingly crowded space of contributors from other agencies, corporations, and interest groups, however, the community NSF funding fosters will need to realize the “transformative potential” called for. Realizing this transformative potential requires vision, strategy, engagement, talent, and commitment to moving forward.

The Cyberlearning Research Summit is a high-profile gathering in Washington DC, featuring top quality research-based speakers who will share visions for the future of learning with emerging technologies. In the style of the TED conferences, speakers will:

• Discuss big ideas on at the intersection of emerging technology and research on learning;
• Articulate the “transformative potential” of a direction or approach;
• Communicate a sense of the broad research on this topic;
• Engage, inspire, and stimulate thinking in this new program area.

This is the year 2020, and Bobby is a freshman at UC San Diego worming at the New York Einstein, a three-star hybrid. His holemate, Chiu Wai, is a sophomore at Beijing University. Bobby is from Hawaii, and Chiu Wai is from Singapore. They’re up early this morning to complete their online classwork. Their plan is to spend the rest of the day hanging out at Union Square with friends from other worms.

Today, “going away to college” means selecting a college and a worm, a shortened version of worldwide dorm. All worms serve students from anywhere on the planet. Three-star worms offer shared holes, or rooms. Hybrid worms serve students from different colleges around the world; pure worms are reserved for students from specific colleges. The vast majority of worms are hybrid. Students are accustomed to and prefer international social networking, both online and onground.

In the context of worms, wormhole also refers to the spacetime curvature that theoretically shortens the distance between two points. Similarly, via the internet, students are able to instantly interact with classmates and professors from anywhere in the world.

Worms developed naturally as a result of two seemingly opposed forces colliding during the first decade of the 21st century. One was the value students, parents, and educators placed on “going away to college,” a rite of passage that boiled down to living in a dorm and experiencing a rich and full social life away from parents. The other was the virtual learning environment, or VLE, which theoretically negated the need for college campuses. College students grew up in and were comfortable in the VLE. They expected to take most if not all of their classes online, and this held true even when they lived in dorms.

As the VLE grew exponentially in response to a generation that actually lived in it outside of school, colleges began to not only upgrade but rethink the idea of dorms (see Cliff Peale’s “These Aren’t Your Parents’ Dorms: Residence Halls Provide More Amenities,” Cincinnati.com, 8.15.11). They realized that campus life was shifting from classrooms to dorms, where students were beginning to spend more of their formal learning time. In fact, most of the students who lived in dorms were taking classes online, and this trend was growing, fueled by an influx of younger professors who were equally at home in the VLE. In many large universities, students were registering in courses on different campuses throughout the system, and because the courses were online, students could do it all from the comfort of their dorms.

Gradually, colleges realized that dorms didn’t have to be on campus or in walking or biking distance. For students who enrolled in many online courses, commuting was preferable especially if it meant living in dorms or similar facilities that were closer to the urban hub, recreational areas, nightlife, or scenic locations. For example, in the University of Hawaii system, some student housing facilities are located in Waikiki and other exciting resort or urban areas. To avoid the commute to campus via car, moped, or bus, many opt for online classes. This way, they’re able to spend more time in their rooms and exciting surroundings. Instead of being isolated in dorms and cafeterias on out-of-the-way campuses, they can study in their centrally located rooms and spend their free time with friends on the beach or in shopping malls with lavish food courts.

With this drain, campuses became increasingly quiet and, dare I say it, empty. Lecture halls and classrooms stood empty for most of the day. Cafeterias and libraries, too, were nearly empty. Faculty office buildings echoed with silence, with the vast majority of faculty working from home or exotic locations in the world while connecting with their students and colleagues 24-7.

By 2015, colleges also realized that the quality of their dorms were the key to the vitality and success of their institutional brand. Furthermore, the VLE made it feasible to separate, once and for all, dorms from campuses. Worms could literally be anywhere on the planet, and the only criterion would be student interest. Thus, the key was to build them where students would come. For example, Stanford students could worm in major U.S. cities such as New York, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, and Miami or in other cities in the world such as Paris, London, Rome, Rio, Tokyo, and Beijing. Regardless of where the students wormed, they would still be Stanford students. The brand would thrive even though — and perhaps because — it was no longer anchored to Palo Alto.

To be continued.

… Why not get them to tell us the story of their learning?

Since Facebook announced its Timeline feature last fall, some of us have been waiting anxiously for them to deploy it to its users. Now that the process has begun, we ought to be considering the implications of this development for teaching and learning!

Three years ago, I was already experimenting in a college information technology course with the concept of a course “lifestream,” which I subsequently renamed to LearnStream. I aggregated the social media identity of that course at a Netvibes site.

I have continued to develop those original ideas into a framework for encouraging their adoption in the school district in which my daughter is currently enrolled. For that reason, I was especially excited when Facebook announced its Timeline feature because I recognized the opportunity for these ideas to enter the mainstream of social media.

I published my own Timeline shortly after the Facebook announcement. Subsequently, I began publishing my own lifestream to my Timeline using techniques which I’ll describe later. I had been hopeful of using my Timeline to suggest how students might craft their digital identity by publishing their LearnStreams to their Facebook Timeline, but it’s been pointed out to me that students would be likely to resent doing that on Facebook because of the “creepy treehouse” effect!

Therefore, I am merely suggesting that the acceptance of socially sharing one’s musical tastes via Spotify or one’s reading habits via the Washington Post Social Reader may motivate students to socially share their learning. If they’d be willing to do that on their Facebook Timeline, imagine the possibilities if a service such as Diigo social bookmarking would use Facebook’s Open Graph to enable us to publish our bookmarks to our Timeline? Or imagine the possibilities if we used Friendfeed to publish our lifestreams to Timeline? That’s how I did it, by publishing my Friendfeed RSS feed with RSS Graffiti. Remember, Facebook owns Friendfeed!

Is it time for social media to be taken seriously by those who don’t “get” its implications for learning?

[Note: ETCJ associate editor Bonnie Bracey Sutton invited Chris Dede to submit this article. -Editor]

Educational transformation is coming not because of the increasing ineffectiveness of schools in meeting society’s needs – though that is certainly a good reason – but due to their growing unaffordability. We now see student-teacher ratios in some urban settings climbing to unworkable levels of 40 plus, even 60 pupils per class (Dolan, 2011; Dillon, 2011). This is not a temporary financial dislocation due to an economic downturn, but a permanent sea-change that has already happened in every other service sector of our economy.

Further, in K-12 schooling, our stellar illustrations of success are based on personal heroism, educators who make sacrifices in every other part of their lives in order to help their students. These are wonderful stories of saint-like dedication, but such a model for educational improvement is unscalable to typical teachers. We have not found a way to be effective and affordable at scale, and our resources are now dwindling rather than growing.

Events of the last few years and projections of our nation’s economic future paint a bleak picture of the financial viability of schools as we know them; we can no longer support an educational system based on inefficient use of expensive human labor. These inefficiencies are not simply within the walls of the school but reflect our lost opportunities to help students learn in all the hours and all the places they spend time outside of classrooms.

Social media, immersive interfaces (such as online videogames), and mobile broadband devices are at the heart of this issue: empowering new forms of learning and teaching while simultaneously contributing to the obsolescence of traditional schools/universities as educational vehicles. The 2010 U.S. National Educational Technology Plan (U.S. Department of Education, 2010) provides some important ideas on the impact of these advances in learning technologies, sketching both opportunities and challenges. Given the goal of transforming today’s schools and colleges to a new 21^st century model of formal education that would support people’s learning across their entire lifespan, the following elements from the Learning section of the NETP are suggestive about foundations for this redesign (Dede, 2010):

Learning

• Learning can no longer be confined to the years we spend in school or the hours we spend in the classroom: It must be life-long, life-wide, and available on demand. (page 9)
• Technology provides access to a much wider and more flexible set of learning resources than is available in classrooms and connections to a wider and more flexible set of “educators,” including teachers, parents, experts, and mentors outside the classroom. (pp. 11-12)
• Engaging and effective learning experiences can be individualized or differentiated for particular learners (either paced or tailored to fit their learning needs) or personalized, which combines paced and tailored learning with flexibility in content or theme designed to fit the interests and prior experience of each learner. (page 12)

Taken together, these ideas suggest to me a different type of formal educational system for the 21st century. In such an educational model, our society would take responsibility for providing universally designed, personalized learning experiences lifelong and lifewide, delivered in and out of dedicated educational settings such as schools and colleges by a variety of educational roles spanning teachers, mentors, coaches, and tutors. Such a system would be roughly analogous in its social services to the various investments localities, states, and the federal government make in institutions that support wellness and medical care, which return valuable benefits to society on multiple dimensions (reduction of healthcare costs, economic productivity, quality of life).

For instance, many talented people not in the teaching profession would be happy to serve as tutors, mentors, and coaches for students if our formal educational system provided training, certification, resources, and formal recognition of those roles. Modern technologies provide ways of coordinating such a distributed system of learning/teaching so that teachers can both benefit from and guide the efforts of others who help students learn outside of the school’s location and hours.

As an illustration of a complementary role in a distributed model of formal education, collaborative media could help to coordinate between museum educators and both teachers and students. Teachers could use technology to make public the progression of curricular goals through the school year and the content/skills on which students need most help. In turn, museums could gear their exhibits and activities to foster these types of learning, making special outreach efforts to students for whom school-based learning was insufficient.

Museums also could craft strong professional development experiences for teachers, with abstract concepts richly grounded in artifacts and with curators providing content expertise. Virtual outreach beyond the walls and schedule of the museum could include both web-based educational activities, such as immersive educational simulations, and “augmented realities” that help people learn about digitized artifacts virtually embedded in physical settings throughout the region and accessible by cellphone.

Members of a student’s family or community could choose to play a different type of complementary educational role in a distributed model. The local context – present and past – in which a student lives provides numerous ways in which to ground, exemplify, and practice the knowledge and skills teachers are attempting to communicate. A learner’s family and people in the community who are close to that student can much better understand how to engage, motivate, and facilitate personalized learning than can a teacher confronted with many students in a classroom.

Schools of education could shift their training and credentialing to encompass not only teachers, but also parent tutors, informal-educator coaches, and community mentors. The inclusion of adult students with substantial life experience might aid in the transformation of education schools, as faculty would confront learners more sophisticated about life and children than their typical students now. Such a shift would extend ideas in the Teaching section of the NETP:

Teaching

• Connected teaching offers a vast array of opportunities to personalize learning. Many simulations and models for use in science, history, and other subject areas are now available online, including immersive virtual and augmented reality environments that encourage students to explore and make meaning in complex simulated situations (Dede 2009). To deeply engage their students, educators need to know about their students’ goals and interests and have knowledge of learning resources and systems that can help students plan sets of learning experiences that are personally meaningful…. Although using technology to personalize learning is a boost to effective teaching, teaching is fundamentally a social and emotional enterprise. The most effective educators connect to young people’s developing social and emotional core (Ladson-Billings, 2009; Villegas & Lucas, 2002) by offering opportunities for creativity and self-expression. Technology provides an assist here as well…. Digital authoring tools for creating multimedia projects and online communities for sharing them with the world offer students outlets for social and emotional connections with educators, peers, communities, and the world at large. Educators can encourage students to do this within the context of learning activities, gaining further insights into what motivates and engages students – information they can use to encourage students to stay in school (pp. 41-42).
• All institutions involved in preparing educators should provide technology-supported learning experiences that promote and enable the use of technology to improve learning, assessment, and instructional practices. This will require teacher educators to draw from advances in learning science and technology to change what and how they teach, keeping in mind that everything we now know about how people learn applies to new teachers as well. The same imperatives for teacher preparation apply to ongoing professional learning. Professional learning should support and develop educators’ identities as fluent users of advanced technology, creative and collaborative problem solvers, and adaptive, socially aware experts throughout their careers. (page 44)

Overall, in the past five years social media, immersive interfaces from the entertainment industry, and ubiquitous mobile broadband devices have coalesced in powerful ways to empower and integrate learning in and out of school. Too often, I have seen educational technologies used to put “old wine in new bottles.” Now, if we seize the moment, we not only can have new wine – such as peer mentoring anytime, anyplace – but also can move beyond the “bottle” of the stand-alone school to lifewide learning. “Plan” is a verb, not a noun. The NETP as a document loses value every day it sits on the shelf. Active dialogue about the draft Plan may be our best next step towards improving education for the 21^st century.

References

Dede, C. (2010). Reflections on the draft national educational technology plan 2010: Foundations for transformation. Educational Technology 50, 6 (November-December), 18-22.

Dede, C., & Bjerede, M. (2011) Mobile learning for the 21^st century: Insights from the 2010 Wireless Edtech conference. San Diego, CA: Qualcomm. http://www.wirelessedtech.com/

Dillon, S. (2011). Tight budgets mean squeeze in classrooms. New York Times (March 6). Downloaded on April 16, 2011 from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/education/07classrooms.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

Dolan, M. (2011). Detroit schools cuts plan approved. Wall Street Journal (February 22). Downloaded on April 16, 2011 from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703610604576158783513445212.html

U.S. Department of Education. (2010). Transforming American education: Learning powered by technology [National Educational Technology Plan 2010]. Washington, DC: Office of Educational Technology, U.S. Department of Education. http://www.ed.gov/technology/netp-2010

In “Internet Access Is Not a Human Right” (NY Times, 1.4.12), Vinton G. Cerf argues that internet access is neither a human nor a civil right. It is, simply put, a means to and end, “a tool for obtaining something else more important.” For Cerf, civil laws should focus on the rights themselves and not the means to achieve them. He views technology as a tool, “an enabler of rights, not a right itself.”

Cerf makes a lot of sense, but I’m not sure it’s a good fit for the internet. In most cases, the means and ends are clearly separate, e.g., the means to work (a horse, using Cerf’s example) and the right to earn a living. Everyone would agree that a right to own a horse is ridiculous. In other cases, however, such as schools and compulsory education, the means and ends aren’t so clearcut. In this case, the end would be unattainable without the means. Thus, the law specifies schooling. In the case of health and health care, too, the means and ends are, literally, one and the same.

The Internet (Opte Project 2007)

I believe the same logic holds true for the internet and the means to access it. That is, without access service, the internet would be out of reach. Thus, legislation that guarantees a right to access information without provisions to act on that right would be meaningless.

Cerf argues that we already have the freedom to access information and that it is sufficient to cover access to the internet. But is it?

For all practical purposes, the internet is invisible so it’s difficult to define. In general, it “is a global system of interconnected computer networks that … serve[s] billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies” (Wikipedia).

With the internet, “information” takes on a whole new meaning. It’s no longer local but global. It’s no longer static but dynamic. It’s no longer one-way but interactive. It’s no longer the construct of powerful publishers but of every individual on the planet. It’s no longer just news and announcements but work, education, entertainment, social networking, and politics.

In other words, the internet has changed forever the landscape of information and communications and what it means to be human. We’re in the midst of the greatest migration in the history of our species, but most of us aren’t aware that we’re moving because we’re still in the same geographical location.

This migration is from our earth-bound locales to the virtual world of the internet, where we’re freed from the restrictions of time and space. We can access information from sources around the world at anytime, communicate with anyone from wherever we are whenever we want.

The problem is those who are being left behind. The gap between them and the emigrants is not just technology but quality of life. The internet is no longer a luxury but a necessity. Like water and oxygen, we all need it to survive and thrive.

Finland has it right. Broadband access to the internet should be a basic civil right, and we can’t escape the fact that this translates to providing internet services to those who can’t afford it. Yes, the technology changes rapidly and the cost to keep services up to date will be great, but we can do no less for our fellow human beings.