Meeting+Summary+4.19.10

Blended Benchmark Discussion April 19, 2010 v Need for establishing benchmarks and metrics for evaluations of blended learning. v What is different about BLENDED that is independent from others. o What is the POLICY for/ rules of blended learning. § No metrics exist to say “this is good, or this is bad” when it comes to the pedagogical methods used by different faculty in reference to blended courses. o What are we trying to accomplish with a blended learning course? § ** Karen Swan: ** Integration? How is that measured? § ** Tom: ** If you are trying to measure “discussion” and one is done in a classroom and the other is done in the virtual medium, how do we measure the two? § ** Tanya ** (UWM)**:** What LEVEL of metrics are we talking about? v There has been a reverse evaluation of blended o ** Mary: ** Presentations, article in JLAN**:** What’s your goal? The extension of that is the measure of success. o If the problem you are trying to solve is “time to degree”, then what is the solution? § How do you blend? And how do you know if you’ve succeeded? § In the grid, a problem was identified and blended was used as the solution. § Now, blended is the given, and needs to go back from there. v Benchmark-based v There is a period of assessment. o ** Tony (Sloan): ** What level? Is it something we identify BEFORE and then attempt to measure? § Develop a test ->evaluate -> results speak for themselves = Benchmark o Can you separate out the modality from the overall course? § There’s a core part of the course that is common to any modality · It may be the most significant determinant of the outcome · If the goals that are set for the course, the program, and the institution, and those goals are being met, it then becomes harder to separate out the modality. · We look at “what are the issues pressing higher education over the next 7ish years” · We should identify bigger higher education issues vs. micro issues. v ** Tanya: ** Time to degree seems to be the highlighted standard of administrators and institutions due to current economic situation o Consider the audience. § The current state of our economic situation will dictate who is interested in what sort of evaluations should exist. o ** Karen: ** What issues are there to which Blended is a solution § Tony agrees v ** Tony: ** The faculty starts to assume ownership of the students in higher level courses and professional programs in ways that that they don’t in the GEN EDs (at the program level) o ** Tanya: ** When I was an instructor, my colleagues could care less about time to degree. They are concerned with the student’s experience. § What will they take with them? o ** Tony: ** They are not exclusive. v ** Stephen ** : COST- opportunity cost, as it sits now, is unsustainable. o What does blended do? § It supports brining down the total opportunity cost to successful degree. § The total cost can be driven down by offering a lousy program § You can start there (total economic costs), and decompose from there. (Similar to DuPont model in business) o Part of this would include intake methods. § How many people you retain in degree programs · Failed attempts created. v ** Tony: ** Policy Issues- set by state legislatures. Failed open-door policy. o 75% of Higher Ed is in public universities (policy implications) v ** Patsy: ** There are multiple audiences o Administrative, Faculty, Student § Defining issues may be better than defining metrics § Will end up at “What percentage online does it have to be blended to be blended” v ** Karen: ** Time to degree, persistence, retention, success, post degree employment/graduate school, access o Does this all fold into the economic costs that Steve mentioned v Strategic question- Do we follow the money? (i.e. do what the check-writers want to get the money) o Stimulus packages, grants. v ** Mary: ** What about the institutional drivers for going to blended? o Access**:** the institutional issue is the restriction of access due to certain limitations. § Classrooms, faculty, instructional staff o There are general issues that effect student completion which is the main reasons the institutional drivers are in place v ** Chuck: ** Get down a huge laundry list of issues instead of limiting it down. o We tend to gravitate to stuff we CAN measure. § We are really successful when we cant measure anything. v ** Tony: ** I am not in the mind to have the Gates foundation moving us in terms of what were doing. v ** Stephen: ** Education, next to healthcare, is the second most unsustainable business model there is. o Pricing most of the country out of. § We should have a way to explain how “blended provides value” · If we cant do this, we are suspect of wasting resources. v ** Mary: ** Show me where it is cost-effective? o Unless you’re willing to scale the courses, they DO require more resources. § ** Stephen: ** Value creation vs. Cost (cheapest education is the one not delivered) · Very hard to evaluate value to society. v ** Stephen: ** Sloan should be creating the framework by which institutions can evaluate the progress of blended. v ** Tony: ** Are you talking about value-added? More value to those students in risk than to those who aren’t. o Value to who? o Student? **Stephen:** Society? (wont be on social assistance, wont be involved in crime) v ** Tanya: ** Comes back to access. We need to think about pricing people out. o Is a degree even going to matter in 20 years? Do you need 4 years of seat time? o Don’t care about your degree…rather, what can you contribute? v ** Chuck: ** 4 models of making money by giving things away. § Unbundling of higher education. Anderson Book. o ** Stephen: ** I can see rapid consolidation § Its already going § Why so many programs/disciplines? Why 115 universities in Boston? v ** Karen: ** Consolidation in profit and non-profit. v ** George: ** Information transfer is not education…crystallizes around blended learning. o The exposure to and application of information is something that happens that non-learning environment, where will it happen? o We cant get stuck on what blended is, but we need to say it’s a good thing. v ** Karen: ** We need people who are going to be good citizens. o Having people who are simply competent to do jobs, that may not be the case. v ** Tanya: ** Some research says that the education students get and the jobs they will get isn’t even here. o Students are getting an education to solve the world’s problems. o We need to think outside of the box o People who are taking blended learning aren’t taking an 8yr program just to get a Job X, or do Task X. v ** Tom: ** Wouldn’t each institution define value depending on their mission? o If your ultimate benchmark is value added to this blended learning process, who do you measure that? v ** Stephen: ** Similar to accreditation….What are your goals for doing it? Why are you in blended? Can you even articulate them? Have you thought about them? o Maybe Sloan offers an audit service § Engage in this process § Help them think how the institution gets better v ** Tony: ** Sloan not interested in the accrediting/auditing business. o Send a team in. Pure support. Not an audit. § Updating the pillars. o Cost of education keeps going up. § However, more people keep wanting to come to college. v ** Tanya: ** Social change o 50 years ago, only the privileged could come to school o Didn’t care about “priced out”, different learning style o Now, different. Everyone should have access to higher ed. o Due to social change, there is an institutional change § Different needs, different markets § Benchmarks should be reflective of the current impact o Students are seen as clients/customers with needs o Often times, pedagogy is forgotten. v ** Mary: ** The issue of access keeps coming up. o The pedagogy is an important part of it o Institutional mission is also key § The reason your doing blended learning has to be consistent with the mission, or else it will fail. § The mission needs to change v ** Chuck: ** Not be worried about the granularity, but rather identify the constructs that drive this o Identify the guiding pillars to come to a framework for evaluation. v ** Stephen: ** Will the pillars stand up? v ** Karen Swan: ** I think we want a little smaller grain size. o The pillars didn’t have good metrics to begin with § Saying its as good as F2F didn’t help because I didn’t think F2F was that good to begin with v ** Tanya: ** To get there, we have to go bigger before we can come down o Pillars very focused on a certain level of metrics § Need to get into bigger constructs before getting more granular v ** Stephen: ** Start with pillars, map the next level down. o Play around with the cost pillar o Even below the sublevel, define each institution for itself. o Real problem**:** No pillar really gets at the institutional issues o No way at getting consolidation prices with pillars v ** Stephen: ** That’s a market force that just happens o Everybody is doing this, maybe we should too. o The pillars aren’t silos. They are systemic. v ** Mary: ** A key issue we must be realistic about is the resource/sustainability issue. o Most of the blending doesn’t bring in new dollars like online does. o Blended makes room for new students, but the pipeline exists. v ** Tanya: ** Resource pillar instead of cost effectiveness. o Encompasses institutional, societal, unit resources (HR, physical). o Scalability issues. o Scalability and sustainability issues are not independent. v ** Stephen: ** Model a new institution with just blended. o The reason blended looks appealing is because they are starving it of resource o It can be more cost consuming. o Retraining employees and retooling them o Bringing in new people wouldn’t really do that. v ** Tony: ** Student outcome (value added) gets really complex o CUNY could not afford to sustain o The issueswith the students isn’t just that they aren’t reading, write, arithmetic. o There are social and cultural reasons behind that o Support system v ** Chuck: ** Let’s aggregate the models of blended learning to see if they inform in some way. v ** Tony: ** Two aspects of the workshop 1. Identify issues (bigger than metrics) 2. Identify models that could possibly resolve those issues. o Forget about the word metrics o Its different in this country. Access has been in US since WWII o The rest of the world only started the idea of access 20 years ago v ** Stephen: ** This is giving them a competitive advantage. Very focused approach to learning v ** Tony: ** Why do blended? Put the models on the table o Tie them to the higher issues to provide a provocative workshop. o Identify several models. Agrees with Chuck v ** Mary: ** That is the one thing people ask for at every conference. We have these models and have done some of presentation. v ** Stephen: ** Its been done in pieces, we’ve never pulled it together v ** Tony: ** They can identify to College A doing something. We should come up with an overall model that applies to Higher Education in general would be a great service. v ** Mary: ** Sent model to CFO- 4 courses that had been F2F and blended. Attempted to capture costs through the elements of the course. Enrollment change. Classroom costs savings. Show a tuition dollar at the bottom o UIC doesn’t know what it costs to deliver a course, maintain classrooms. o Shows that Blended offered more net tuition revenue. o Lots of unknowns. v ** George: ** Think about the erosion of public support for public education o Trajectory moving towards 25-50% of state support. o Student want more bang for the buck, cheapen the enterprise v ** Mary: ** I think the instructional cost of teaching Blended is higher o More thought o More design into true integration o Maintenance v ** Tony: ** Instructional Design**:** Started thinking about teaching effectively before the technology was here. o Technology sped up the process o How do we move this course to this modality? o F2F is lagging v ** Mary: ** If we are looking to compile models and having people be able to use the models, the model should include the driver for that model in the first place. o Aggregation of the models v ** Chuck: ** Not thinking about integration-oriented models, but more so theoretical models. v ** Stephen: ** Orientation models cast a wider net. v ** Karen: ** The community model is the one I like best. o Can you separate institutional/theoretical models? o Commonalities will arise, maybe even inform a question that hasn’t been asked yet. v ** Patsy: ** Implementation v. Theoretical? **Tanya** says both and I agree. (To Chuck) You originally said separate. v ** Chuck: ** My immediate interest lies in the theoretical models. Some people would be better at articulating why and how they implemented their Blended learning. v ** Karen: ** If we are doing this for people who are thinking of how to apply it to their institution, it should be done at a theoretical level. v ** Stephen: ** What would I want answered? o Why do Blended? o How do you do it well? v ** Tanya: ** They have a theory in their mind. They probably know why they do blended. o There is something they are trying to overcome. o Its going be one of these issues and the models will provide the solution v ** Chuck: ** “Yeah, but you didn’t tell me how to do it.” v ** Karen: ** A general idea of how it can be implemented. o What you want is an analytical model o Something that bridges the jump from why to how? o Slow them down and show connections between purpose and actual gain. o Models? o Ecosystem model**:** how EVERYTHING is put together. (**Stephen and Mary**) v ** George: ** Reasons to do blended learning could be tied to the pillars. o Put problems into categories and under those, address how your institution addresses those. o Faculty satisfaction- faculty cant make the jump at once o Student satisfaction- students aren’t regulated enough to be applied. v ** Tanya: ** Macro issues are often looked over. Providing the bridge is key. v ** Mary: ** Systemic approach. o It can’t be successful if its simply at a course level o All goals and issues aren’t addressed. v ** Stephen: ** Can’t be just pedagogically focused (need student support service) o Can’t be successful just based on technology o Can’t be successful just to make money o There must be this ecosystem which is allowed to flourish. v ** Tony: ** Collect case studies of failed programs o Good to highlight the failures. o Summary of Outcomes Next Steps: v ** Tony: ** We set up a workshop in Oct/Nov. Discuss the macro issues and provide conceptual and practical models for addressing these issues v ** Chuck: ** I will volunteer the UCF group to begin finding as many theoretical models as can be found and begin circulating them to the group. Collage-based v ** Tony: ** I think we need to get a list of big issues. I will need help. We could probably pull from EduCause??? (Sept 15). Critical Issues for Blended Learning. v ** Mary: ** I will contribute to the Wiki on things to consider when doing blended. v ** Mary: ** I will circulate the case study template. UIC will also be responsible for meeting coordination. Resurrect grid that was done with George. o Once a month conference call. v ** Stephen: ** We have an opportunity to frame the conversation. Get there quickly before someone else makes the argument for us. To bring this to a chancellor, it needs to be packaged. v ** Tanya: ** Set up Wiki to consolidate brainstorming of issues. Move to…
 * ATTENDEES
 * Tom Cavanaugh
 * Chuck Dziuban
 * Tanya Jootsen
 * Stephen Laster
 * Patsy Moskal
 * Mary Niemiec
 * George Otte
 * Tony Picciano
 * Karen Swan
 * Norm Vaughan
 * Karen Vignare
 * Anne France
 * Anthony Fusco
 * Identify Issues
 * Models (conceptual/applied)
 * Use workshop to test out ideas. If feedback is good, move to writing a paper.
 * Get support from powers that be (presidents, chancellors, etc)
 * Must be packaged to do this.
 * End outcome is to send out something to the policy makers.
 * They are already legislating. Game is already starting.
 * Accrediting bodies are changing the definitions of what online/blended is.
 * Retraining a population- life long learning
 * Blended/online learning is good for that end
 * This is another aspect of the “value added” conversation.
 * Go after the alumni
 * Support them through blended learning by continuous training
 * Harvard supports 5000 alumni right now