Shout Out to UW Bothell!

Our colleagues at the campus up north are rocking the higher education world these days. UWB Learning Technologies made the coveted EdTech Magazine's 2013 Dean's List: 50 Must-Read Higher Education Technology Blogs. 

Each year, EdTech combs the HE blogosphere watching IT professionals grapple with the rapid change and challenges we all face. Each year, they choose 50 - just 50 - of the 1,000s of online IT publications as must-read pubs. With such diversity in topic and approach, it's hard to imagine how EdTech does it, but the criteria is clearly facing change and challenge head on. 

We're delighted Learning Technologies at UW Bothell are getting national recognition for the work they're doing, and even more delighted that the folks up north walk the talk of mission. Andreas Brockhaus, Director of Learning Technologies at UWB, tells us the staff turn much of the selecting, crafting, and writing their blog to student workers. Solving the "sticky" problems of creating meaning out of the mess o' technology is rightly left, with a bit of guidance, to the generation for whom learning with technology will be a life-long activity and pursuit. 

So, a shout-out to the students that created a "must read" publication in the eyes of the EdTech community. I''ve been following your blog since I arrived at UWT, and now the entire HE eLearning community will know why. 

Colleen

SXSW edu: Mostly Doing It Different

Dateline: Wednesday, Noon, SXSW edu in Austin.

An amazing couple of days, hearing more than my eyes and ears can absorb regarding new emerging tools and practices for infusing technology into the curriculum from K-12 - higher education. 

My own presentation, with colleagues Jill Frankfort and Angela Paprocki - More Diplomas -went well and here be my slides at Slideshare. Given it was sxsw, no talking heads us, we did the presentation part as Ignite! sessions (20 slides, 20 seconds per slide). A challenge for talking head HE administrators, but a hit as it kept us from what we do well - drone.

So, SXSW: Lots of start-ups, entrepreneurs, and new ideas. Some don't seem to have a bit of sense, business model, or grounding in what's real, but that's the energy and spirit of innovation at work.  A lot of stuff is going to fail and the innovators will pick themselves up and learn, do better next time. Some crazy ideas may just work and for some that I just sighed and slipped out of conversations on, I may be very wrong. Meanwhile, I comb the rooms, salons and halls looking for ideas that I can imagine in place and able to provide solutions. Those that held my attention definitely addressed the key challenges that hinder student success and keep me up at night:

• solving/enhancing lack of academic preparation
• the rising cost of an education
• lack of informed choice of those in school
• poor retention and even poorer engagement
• changing faculty culture so that all the above matter to them

Lots of talk about MOOCs (of course), about DIY, about BYOD, about big initiatives from the research 1's with deep pockets, and about how the little guys (that's me/UWT!) innovate on a shoestring, a prayer, and a deep commitment to our students and to public good. 

I passed out copies of the hot-off-the-press UW Provost's report on faculty innovators at UW - sixteen risk-taking, inventive faculty, SEVEN (yes you read that right: 7/16) of whom are from tiny UWT (W00t!); evidence that you don't need to be one of the very few, super-endowed, research 1 elites to do good work. UWT is doing innovation in small pilot projects and thoughtful implementation of the UW tools that we do have. A great conversation that started some possible collaborations with young, hungry, entrepreneurs at the conference. 

Past that, it was loud music and schmoozy moments. We are on the cusp of change, my head is full, and in a few hours I'm heading home. 

The Sky IS Falling, Dammit!

Ok, maybe that title was just to get your attention. 

The sky is not falling, but there are ugly signs of a of a huge storm building off higher education's coast. Some of my colleagues at the University of Washington Tacoma don't see it, laugh and suggest I'm Chicken Little. But John Hennessey, president of a cute little place called Stanford, agrees with me and recently said "There's a tsunami coming," regarding the change that will be forced upon higher education in the digital age. 

MOODY'S just entered the conversation by downgrading higher education to a negative rating. How can society make it any clearer to us that, like any living organism, we have to adapt and grow and change to survive in the new age in which we find ourselves? 

Young people, unmoved by our love of tradition and ritual, are weighing in with an incredibly dark sense of disappointment. They too offer predictions of failure regarding our ability to see ourselves through this coming storm. Nathan Harden's recent essay, The End of University as We Know It, was so depressing I had to read it in parts. 

The thing that is most disheartening is that these entities outside higher education have taken over the conversation and now may certainly shape the outcome. Because of our silence, our stuck-ness, and our unwillingness to change, society is changing its ideas about us. We squandered centuries of goodwill and wonder why we're feeling besieged.

Sadly, this is happening not from inability to innovate, but from simple hubris. As the world changes, HE proudly refuses to talk about what we must do to prepare ourselves and our students. We're happy as we are; teaching as we always have; researching as we please. We've got it handled!  

Except for the world beating at the gate suggesting...we don't. The cost, relevancy, value, and meaning of an education today are being questioned. Higher education must respond. We must talk about transformation from the inside to meet the challenge of educating "as many students as possible, as well as possible, as affordably as possible," as Harden says. If we don't change, we will BE changed.

WE have to make a case for what is worth preserving and also acknowledge what we are clinging to simply because we hate change. There are so many insulting rules and regulations against new practice, lowering cost, or increasing engagement at my university, my head spins. Tradition is protected and change is fought and innovators questioned every step of the way.  

We have a problem, reflected in the Moody's rating and the noise growing outside our gates. We know that. The cost of an education is too high and too many students are going into debt that they may never pull themselves out of in getting their degree. Too many students are not completing, disappointed and in debt. We have to be sympathetic to this problem, we have to be creative in helping them achieve more affordable and meaningful education, and we have to do it while preserving what we hold dear and valuable. 

WE have to fight for equal access to education as it becomes once again more the right of the elite and a struggle for the less advantaged. And it seems we have to do it while frightened, stressed and stretched to our limits.

Batten down the hatches; we can do this!

Never Can Say Goodbye

I keep thinkin that our problems
Soon are all gonna work out
But there's that same unhappy feeling and 
there's that anguish, there's that doubt

The Jackson 5 song keeps playing in my head as the world says goodbye to Aaron Swartz this week. He was 26 and he did more for an open internet, for freedom of information, for access, for digital rights - for everything I believe in and hold dear - than peers three times his age. 

He was a co-author of RSS. He was the founder of Demand Progress, and one of the most ardent and effective voices against SOPA/PIPA. He created Reddit. He wrote code that tapped into academic library resources - opening them up to those not privileged to the secret society of the Academy, and he made government documents available to people not as smart as Aaron. He believed publications on academic research, paid for by citizens, should be available to all citizens and he used his coding talents to make that belief a reality. 

And for that, for access to academic research for all, for access to government documents that we still pay 9 cents a page for citizen-owned information, Aaron willingly took heat for his actions, for his beliefs, for social justice and information free and unfettered. 

He was braver and smarter than any of us, but not smart enough to know the cost he would pay for prosecutorial over-reach and how the powers-that-be like to make examples of our best and brightest. Aaron, who had no interest in making money from his brilliance, faced insurmountable legal costs and tens of years in prison for his belief in freedom of information.

To lose a talent like Aaron - skills of code, of kindness, of creativity, of dedication to social justice - because the U.S. Justice Department and MIT knew choosing him as their scapegoat would stop other digital freedom fighters? It's heart-breaking and the consequences are provoking sadness, rage, and revenge across the land. 

Some are working inside the legal system and some, well, not so much. Here's to the beginning of push back - too little, too late, but a tribute nonetheless.

• Working to amend the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA)
• Working to rein in and hold over-zealous prosecutors accountable
• Anonymous and their multiple front hacktivist plans

Aaron was our hero. And he's gone. And a collective response is just beginning. 

Change the Paradigm. Now!

Greetings, dear reader and happy happy Thanksgiving week. We have so much to be grateful thankful happy about and daily I attempt to remember and express my awareness that I have been given so much and feel a great pull to give it back.

In the time I have left, I'm trying. I'd like to make a dent in the closing of American higher education to the masses of young people being told they're not smart enough, wealthy enough, or special enough to understand the "boring stuff" (Robinson, 2012) that no longer seems relevant as we drift out of the industrial age. I'm driven in urgency as I see students who love learning be pushed from education by the deadening anaesthetization of self in passive, industrial, factory education.

But, when I talk about this broken broken hurtful paradigm, so many roll their eyes and ask me to say it more nicely, say it with more feminine flair, say it without being heard. It's hard to change a broken machine from the inside, but it matters that I'm here, because this is where our learners put their trust. So here's my latest attempt to soften voice: do it with a brilliant, funny British accent.

Sir Ken Robinson is much more brutal about saying the Emperor has no clothes, but he's so charming no one rolls their eyes or complains. I wish I were charming. I have to settle for determined and persistent. So, in my best British voice I coo "WATCH THIS VIDEO. NOW!"

Wicked Wicked Wicked Problems for November 6

CC No-Derivs http://www.wickedthemusical.com/

I've decided that the late-emerging theme of 2012 here at GridKnowledge is wicked problems (see Rittel and Melvin 1972, and Conkel 2005 or heck, just go to Wikipedia). It's what we have  in higher education (HE) as we drag ourselves into the digital age. Problems that are:
tough to understand let alone solve, dynamic/shifting/elusive, no stopping rules, lots of possible paths to solution. 

Another type of wicked comes in the resistance to change we're seeing in so many stakeholders who just want the world to stay the way it was just moments ago. And maybe I should add a third wicked: a new generation of learners (choose your pocket: X,Y,Z, D+, or iGen) that will not have the skills to face the next 15-20 jobs they'll do when they leave the halls of the Academy.

Here, we like to pretend younger learners already "get it" so that we don't have to incorporate technology in our 200-year-old lecture format, but as a technology researcher and an instructor, I can tell you that they don't get it. Sure they FB and FourSquare, 18% of them now Twitter, and they love gadgets. They text and they upload pics taken with their cell phone. Many do so inappropriately and publicly. Many have no idea how to use these digital skills in academic or professional ways. Many don't have the digital problem-solving skills to tackle new technologies and they become frustrated when I ask them to use a new tool. This does not bode well for them when they graduate.

I see most of my colleagues abdicating  responsibility for this lack of preparation in basic  digital literacy. We didn't learn, why should our students? We foster fear and resistance in non-technical students by creating a rigorous hold-the-line defense against technology change or innovation. "It makes it harder for them to learn MY material."

I daily fight processes, policies and people in attempt to infuse needed and exemplary technology into the curriculum. It wears me out, this triple wicked threat to the success of our learners. Some days, I feel that without a supportive and dedicated community of practice out on the Inter-tubes (shout out to: eLearning Guild, WCET,  and NMC) and a boss who will not be deflected from her course, I would call it quits. Other days, the sheer force, speed and power of technology to make learning more accessible, flexible, engaging and affordable sweeps me along as I cry for change.

Often, I forget to look up at a bigger picture of progress as I work day by day, course by course, tool by tool, instructor by instructor, learner by learner. Perhaps big ideas never really solved big problems until a tipping point of one-to one-resistance? So please: resist and promote and cry out! Here's my yelps of the month. I'm sending them out into the digital dark right before our national elections. Hope someone is listening and like a fire fighter's response line, passing the bucket hand to hand until it reaches the fire.

• K-12: Here in Washington, the charter school initiative is up for a vote AGAIN. Why anyone would want to limit a small experiment (40 schools through out the state) in innovation that allows socio-economically disadvantaged parents a choice, and an ability to help their child, is beyond most of us in educational reform. But there it is. Pass the bucket, get out the vote. Whether you have young children at home, whether or not you're seeking options for children at home, take a stand for change that will make for a stronger, adaptable nation.
• Higher Education: Closer to home, tuition keeps rising and universities are slow to change in responding to need. This is because our hands are tied. Our elected officials continue to cut support to HE institutions, continue to push students deeper into loans and debt, continue to press a new notion that education is a privilege and not a right. The Obama administration took this problem on with the Education Reform Act, but we need much more. Like most of Europe, China, India - education should be sponsored for those who focus, study, get good grades. The GOP's notion that bright young people in need should just "ask their parents for money" massively misses the mark. Whether or not you have college age children, whether or not you're sitting on a nest egg for the tens of thousands of dollars education now costs, the issue of access is vital to a strong America. Please advocate and vote for reform. Vote for candidates that understand the power of an educated nation. 

Vote for a future where we're not afraid of wicked, wicked, wicked problems.
I'm Colleen Carmean and I approved this public service announcement.

Let's think through the skinny on QR Codes

Quick Response (QR) codes. OK, they're convenient. You see them everywhere now, if you're looking. If you're not looking, you don't notice them or you're so immune to over-information that you don't care. And isn't that the way and isn't that just perfect? Quick for mobile folks with smart phones and no time to type long addresses on tiny keyboards; just a tiny bit of ignorable black ink for the digitally-adverse.  

Brilliant mobile app for a generation that seeks information on the go, when they need it, where they need it. How does it work? We want more information, we find the QR code somewhere on the page or site or billboard or pamphlet or wall, we point our phone and we're online. No surprise that you never see them in higher education, even though we're ground zero of endless information delivery. 

What we are NOT is aware of technology, convenience, mobility, ease of use, or information design. It's why most of our Learning Management Systems still look like the 19th century classroom: the instructor controls the announcements, discussions, assignments, and exams. The students throw themselves into the flow of the information and hope for the best. 

But what if...? (I love that question!) What if we took the simple step of creating QR codes for material we want our learners to access in the near moment and we made it so quick and easy for them to do so that they  increased time on task available by reading course materials on the bus, in a waiting room, between meetings? And what if more time on task (one of Chickering's seven principles!) means better grades?

Wouldn't that be the right thing to do and doesn't it just feel great doing the right thing? If only our intentions and the right thing to do were more closely aligned. So, if the only thing that has stopped you from creating QR codes for your assignments and readings were knowing HOW to do it, here's the skinny on how:
1) Go to a free QR creator site and enter the URL of the page you want to be the target
2) Add the captured image to whatever locations (syllabus, course Web site) will be handy. 
3) Tell your students to search for a free QR Reader app for their smart phone. 

You're done. Here's a nice site that walks you through step-by-step:  How to Create a QR Code. Once you're done, go ahead and find out where the QR code above leads you.