Internationalizing the Curriculum at BCIT

BCIT's new strategic vision emphasizes internationalization; in this project, attitudes, strategies, and challenges around internationalization of the curriculum were revealed through surveys and interviews of BCIT instructors and students, as well as a literature review, and phone interviews of faculty at other institutions. Download the Internationalization of the Curriculum at BCIT report (PDF).

Principal investigators: Terry Fuller and Qin Liu

Digital Learners in Higher Ed Report Released

The Phase 1 report of the Digital Learners in Higher Education research project concludes that there is no empirically-sound basis for most of the claims that have been made about the Net Generation. The study reviewed the net generation literature and research and surveyed a random sample of BCIT second year students. The findings show that there are no meaningful differences between Net Generation and non- Net Generation students at BCIT in terms of their use of technology, their behavioural characteristics and learning preferences.

Read the full report.

Factors for Successful Implementation of Online & Blended Learning

I participated on a panel of postsecondary administrators at the The Future of Online and Blended Learning conference this morning. My contribution focused on the key factors for implementing online and blended learning in campus-based institutions that is sustainable, strategic and programmatic as opposed to ad-hoc and experimental. The factors I identified:

1. Institutional culture
Teaching must be valued and online and blended learning must be part of the strategic direction of the institution.

2. Support
There must tangible support that integrates pedagogical and technical and face-to-face and online. There needs to be a balance between centralized and school-based support.

3. Program and Course Development Processes
These need to be consistent and program design needs to be based identified needs.

See my presentation for more details of these three factors.

Open Ed Tech 2009: A Call to Action

An official communiqué has now been issued by the Open Educational Technology 2009 summit. The Call to Action provides the context for the summit and the final action items. Interestingly, the eight action items agreed to by the participants have been reduced to five.

1. We must encourage the reuse and remixing of rich media. In order to achieve this, it

must be easier to find, use, and cite pieces of media, especially for educational

purposes. Contextual tools that perform these tasks, co-developed by students as the

end-users, must be created and made available to all. We must also develop ways to

translate rich media, not only between languages, but also between modalities, such

that content produced in a certain geographical area and medium may be accessed

and reused in other places and in other forms. Portability of rich media is key; content

must not be tied to a certain platform for delivery, nor to a specific medium or

environment.

2. We must embrace the full promise of mobile devices as learning platforms. Mobiles

— not simply phones, but all kinds of handheld and portable devices — are a

powerful tool for learning because they are controlled by the holder. With mobile

devices, users can direct their own learning experiences, accessing information where

and when they need it. It is critical that we effect a paradigm shift toward recognizing

mobiles as a primary platform for delivery of educational content — not content that

is translated for use on mobiles, but content that is designed for such use from the

outset. We must actively encourage development practices that remove platform

independency. Likewise, we must advocate for a global mobile network that is as easy

to use, as inexpensive, and even more ubiquitous than the web.

3. We must award credentials based on learning outcomes. It is time to recognize the

learning that occurs outside of courses and beyond classroom walls. The model of

awarding credentials solely on the basis of participation in established programs must

give way to a more flexible design that separates credentials from coursework and

recognizes mastery regardless of where or how it is attained. As more learners choose

alternate means of education, including non-university programs, mentoring,

apprenticeship, and other informal or innovative options, we must accept and

recognize their achievements as equivalent to those gained in more traditional ways.

4. We must enable a culture of sharing. Recognizing that the sharing and reuse of

scholarly work is a key component of the university of the future, we advocate

building a culture of sharing in which concerns about intellectual property, copyright,

and student-to-student collaboration are alleviated and the model of proprietary work

dissolves in favor of a more open one. To this end, we must establish reward structures

that support the sharing of work in progress, ongoing research, highly collaborative

projects, and scholarly publications of all kinds, including reputation systems, peer

review processes, and new models for citation of such content. We must empower

students to share knowledge with one another in ways that are viewed as

collaboration rather than cheating. Assessment models must change to support these

practices. Ultimately, we see a culture of sharing as a crucial piece of the infrastructure

of a scalable educational system that can support the millions of learners who will

participate in it.

5. We must take care that open resources include the context that will enable its use and

understanding. Content out of context is at best easy to misconstrue, and at worst,

too difficult to use. Producers of open content must consider ways of attaching

pedagogical narratives to content that will help provide necessary context. One

approach is the notion of “pedagogical wrappers” — specific guidelines and processes

that can ensure the content is placed in an appropriate context — or in the case of

broadly useful topics, a variety of appropriate contexts. Such wrappers would ensure

that the focus remains on learning objectives and process, rather than on the

technology used to deliver the learning materials.

Read the full communiqué.

Open Education 2009

Action Steps Towards Open Access Higher Education

The second Open Educational Technology Summit wrapped up yesterday with the adoption of eight action steps or goals that define a vision for open access education. The event brought together 40 participants from around the world with expertise in different areas of education. We we worked in teams of ten to brainstorm around four themes:

1. Access to high quality education for all, and the role of open content

2. Informal learning, and the role of the mentor in choice making

3. Personalized learning, and learning standards that work across borders

4. Applications of digital video, mobile devices, social media, and the global network

The idea was to think about how these themes could be incorporated into a hypothetical new post-secondary institution with a mandate to provide high quality education in an environment of open access. The event was organized by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and the New Media Consortium.

The summit settled on eight action steps:

1. Annotate, index and share rich media

2. Move to a paradigm of mobiles as personal learning devices/environments

3. Base credentials on outcomes not seat time

4. Enable cultures of sharing

5. Develop pedagogical wrappers for content

6. Support leadership that takes risks

7. Extend multiple literacies/digital literacies

8. Create sabbatical experiences for learners

I think it is probably more useful to think of these as the key themes of a vision for this new institution rather than concrete action steps. Clearly each needs some definition to be meaningful as they have multiple interpretations. They each emerged out of the small group brainstorming so they are based on some specific ideas. Over the coming days, the action steps will be elaborated and defined.

More information about the Summit is available from the Open Ed Tech 2009 Wiki