PILOTed

Our thoughts from Sloan-C Blended Learning Conference 2012

Sloan’s Blended Learning Conference was held April 23-4, 2012 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is primarily a postsecondary conference, although there were a few sessions on K12 blended learning implementation. K12 often follows where higher education leads, so if you are primarily interested in K12 education, this might be a glimpse into your future as well.

Blended learning methodology graphic (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Blended learning is expanding, in types as well as numbers.  The face to face component might occur incidentally once or twice, or might meet as often as twice a week.  The drivers for expansion are both monetary and pedagogical, although, as you’ll see below, there are certainly obstacles and wrong turns in its implementation.   We think it’s important to note that this conference dealt with Higher Ed as it functions today, and did not provide a glimpse of future changes we might see there.  Perhaps that will be more apparent at the Innovations Conference Sloan runs in the summer. 

Cost drivers for blended learning

To the extent that money drives educational decisions, blended learning may be the most viable solution to two problems.

There seems to be a growing national shortage of classroom space, and no money to build more. Institutions are thus pressuring instructors to reduce seat time requirements for their course. In fact, the original definition of blended learning stated that 30 to 70% of class time be replaced by online activities. 

There are only two ways to substantially adapt to the huge cuts in state spending for higher education: raise tuition (the prime reason tuition rates have increased dramatically over the last 10 years), or increase efficiencies (larger classes, more classes per instructor, use of more adjunct faculty). Blended learning is looked on as a way to allow an instructor to teach larger classes and also potentially reach a larger audience, since there is a lower requirement to be in the same classroom. Changes in financial aid have also made it possible to spend less “seat” time to accomplish learning.

Improved pedagogy for blended learning

While these economic factors are probably driving the institutions to expand blended learning, there is a potential for more effective teaching as well. In fact, many students seem to prefer blended to online or face to face classes, and some studies indicate greater effectiveness of blended over either of the other two methods. After all, how engaged is a student in the back row of a 400 person class listening to a lecture?

Some of the enhancements that are now available include:

• Heterogeneous groups: Greater diversity often results in greater learning. One example is small groups consisting of students from different campuses who are taking the same course and who then work together in project or problem based learning. Students can form, or be placed in, asynchronous study groups as well, jointly taking notes on readings and lectures or commenting on each other’s’ summaries. (A session on long-term group project management proved most informative and is described later.)
• Peer review: giving students the ability to see and then review (using some rubric) the works of other students increases their awareness of good work while also potentially reducing the workload of the instructor.  Peer evaluation, which is related, also emulates the real-world work environment and has proven valuable.
• Gamification: converting reading, research, or assessment assignments into game-like activities can increase student engagement. For example, a research project can be made into a treasure hunt, or quizzes can be converted into games.  This design change really enhances elements of interactivity beyond what’s accomplished in traditional instruction.
• Flexibility and time shifting: In addition to making class lectures available online, tests can be scheduled not at a particular moment, but at the point the individual students feels competent.
• Assessment: Some schools are experimenting with letting students retake tests until they are satisfied with the results, converting assessments of learning into assessment as learning.  Testing can also emulate real world work scenarios by allowing resources to be used in test taking environments, testing not only what the student knows, but how well they can solve problems using the right tools.

The general practice for creating blended courses is for the individual instructors to determine how to incorporate online resources and tools into their classes: which resources to use and how much seat time to reduce. Schools support the instructors through training, use of graduate students for design and development, and school guidelines for look and feel. Experienced companies such as Erudient (Erudient is a client of ours) are available to assist with design, development, support, and resource selection.

Hurdles and some solutions for blended learning

The end goal of education is still to increase student knowledge, skill, and expertise. Some clumsy attempts at blended learning are to put PowerPoint slides online along with some narration, reduce face to face by one class a week, and call the course “blended”. This conference was to dispense with those types of efforts, and many sessions at the conference dealt with some of the problems in implementation blended classes and the ways that the speaker used in overcoming them.

One problem is students who sign up for hybrid or online classes, and then are not prepared for the differences between instructor directed classes and the self-motivation and organization required online. One suggestion was to have successful students make videos of how they successfully completed the course to be shown at the beginning of courses. Other instructors pointed out the importance of early warning systems to monitor when students start falling behind and then immediate engagement with those students.

For group work, many pointed out that you can’t just assign remote students into a group and then expect them to productively accomplish something. Students need time to form, which can be provided by icebreaking or get-acquainted activities. One school requires groups to record their online interactions so that, if there are disagreements among group members about certain participants not contributing, the school can monitor what actually happened.

Similarly, some faculty are used to traditional settings and haven’t managed the nuanced differences such as building the community of learners, structuring activities and projects in a way to help students manage the time to complete long term projects.  One particular session covered techniques to help students by building team activities including peer evaluations and assigning a grade to completing a task. Milestones ensured that students move through the activity without creating bottlenecks or problems for one another.  Peer evaluation on the various iterations of the project ensure that by the time the end is reached, the final output is already in good shape.  While this technique is used in writing all the time, a group activity in a blended scenario requires real project management planning and skills.

One interesting use of blended learning in K12 is the WCATY (Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth) Academy, which is a middle school. This group serves about a third of the districts in the state, with about 1300 students a year. Their goal is to make students responsible for their own learning and understand their own learning processed by digging deeply into one topic. For example, a  course on the French Revolution is called “Off with their Heads” and starts with a virtual tour of the Versailles palace. A course on meeting up with aliens actually teaches communications techniques. WCATY teachers focus on learning, and assessing learning, through storytelling, with a combination of virtual and face to face activities for students.

Another session was presented on blended learning in a studio course, and the research showed clearly that while the activity was accomplished by individual students, group evaluations and expert feedback were critical to the final result and greatly enhanced the learning of both the students evaluated and the students evaluating.  To learn more and to see the research, including some of the best use of graphics in a research paper, contact Mahmoud Reza Saghafi at saghafi@student.qut.edu.au, (Queensland University of Technology.)

One of the financial goals for institutions to implement blended learning is to increase class size, which can cause a cascade of issues. Aisha Jackson, Amanda McAndrew, Jackie Moriyama, and Viktoriya Oliynyk of the University of Colorado at Boulder maintain a website of mostly free tools to help with these large classes, and which can also help with face to face large classes: http://bit.ly/largecourseinfo

In conclusion

Blended Learning can be a magic button; reducing the costs of education while also enhancing learning. There are many resistors and still some hurdles to overcome to successful implementation, but, as one participant pointed out, if the lecture format for classes were introduced as a new technology today, it would like be universally panned.

This conference would not have been possible without the energy and organization of Tanya Joosten and the folks at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. We would like to put a plug in for Dr. Joosten’s book Social Media for Educators as a big thank you for your successful efforts.

 

Related articles

• Brainstorming ideas for blended learning (tsegaygirmay.com)
• What Does Blended Learning Look Like? (ruthcatchen.wordpress.com)
• Blended Learning: An Excellent Investment (effecetivelearning.wordpress.com)

Summary of Educause 2011

Educause 2011, the huge higher education technology conference took place last week. There was a lot of buzz around online learning and the changing face of IT.

On a broad brush, students are increasingly taking one or more online classes during their higher education tenure and more schools are offering classes and programs of study. The schools are grappling with how to develop and fund these courses, and then how to support the students and faculty. Below are case studies from three sesions: Outsourcing Online Learning at USC, Engaging Learner Across Time and Space at U of Minnesota, and Effective Support for Online Learners at Bay State.

Technology departments have been facing declining budgets for four years, but technology demands have not receded. Additionally, IT is being asked to provide better and more usable data to drive academic and business decisions. These concerns are summarized in Problems Faced by CIOs, CTOs and Technology Departments and Data to Dashboards below.

Outsourcing Online Learning

Joan Falkenberg Getman, Susan E. Metros, Jade Winn, all from USC

Why did USC start online programs?

The goals for establishing new programs were and continue to be:

• Remain current and competitive
• Reach working professionals
• Reach new markets
• Extend global reach
• Build new revenue

USC made the following requirements for all new online programs:

• Only graduate programs; undergraduates should get the full brick and mortar USC experience
• No tuition differentiation; same costs as face to face programs
• Only where there were new revenue opportunities; not in areas that would cannibalize existing students
• There had to be both synchronous and asynchronous content and interactions with the students (and faculty)
• There had to be active learning activities and rich interaction (interaction with content and also with other students and faculty). USC wanted to make the online experience as good as a good face to face classroom experience.

USC used Embanet and 2Tor to help develop and offer the two programs. There are relatively few quality providers to partner with, and they can be very different. It’s important to find a provider that matches weel with the particular program at the institution. Different programs for the same institution may work better with different providers, depending on chemistry, outlook, reach, and financial considerations.

Who was responsible for what?

The partner financed all of the development, there was no upfront cost for USC. Partner paid USC faculty for subject matter expertise and curriculum design, coordination, and approval, and did the graphic and interactive design.

USC Professors develop the content, the partner works with the professors on online instructional design, and the partner does the graphics and develops any videos, animations, or interactive media. USC has final approval on the work product.

The Professor owns the content, but cannot use any media that was developed outside of USC if they teach outside of USC. USC can use the content at no extra charge for their brick and mortar students.

Partner is responsible for obtaining admissions candidates and marketing, including training admissions staff. USC reviews and approves applications and collects fees.

Partner provides the platform, including online social networks and communities that encourage academic and extracurricular student activities.

Partner provides 24x7 technical support for students, faculty, and staff from a service level agreement. Partner reports major issues and solutions back to school.

USC Professors teach the courses.

Engaging Learners Across Time and Space: Models for Distance Learning

Mary Davis, Ron Fitch, and Jude Higdon from University of Minnesota

A 2010 meta-analysis by the Dept of Education on previous studies found “students in online learning conditions performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction.” (Personal note, isn’t it interesting that the NY Times interviews one school district and comes to the conclusion that technology doesn’t affect education results, while the Dept of Ed reviews more than 500 studies and concludes that it does? Guess the Dept of Ed missed the one district that matters.)

Defining goals is key step in online instruction design, because it dictates so many other aspects about the pedagogy and technology. The goal of the online program for the U of MN Dept of Pharmacy was to provide specialty classes for schools that offered degrees in pharmacology, but were too small to offer specialized courses.

When developing the curriculum and syllabus, you need to map content and activities to learning goals, accreditation standards, and industry standards (for example OSCE and NAPLEXS in Pharmacy).

Doing the video segments in a studio produced a much higher value video than videoing a lecture, and postproduction to insert key points and graphics into the video made for more engaging and didactic content.

U of Minnesota felt it was important to provide a way for students to audit courses, possibly at a lower cost.

Online tracking of student activities yields a gold mine of data which can be used to improve the course, monitor student engagement, and provide support to reduce dropouts.

Graduate students can provide a high quality, but also relatively inexpensive way, to develop curriculum.

Effective Support for Online Learners

David Demers, Peter Testori, Amber Vaill, Bay Path College

A required orientation course, before a student’s first online course, increases the likelihood of student success. Bay Path College’s course consists of 4 sessions, and covers the LMS, meeting technology requirements, time management strategies, submitting assignments, understanding online communities, netiquette, and how to get assistance. The course is conducted by one of the support coordinators.

Support coordinators for online students can also make a big impact on retention. At Bay Path, each student is assigned to a support coordinators, who

• Monitors the amount of time students are logged in
• Monitors whether students are submitting assignments on time
• Provides technical support
• Is the first point of contact for any question from an online student
• Calls the student when usage is down or assignments are late
• Assists faculty when faculty notice that a student may be having problems

A good amount of support time is helping students with time management, and time prioritization.

Problems Faced by CIOs, CTOs, and Technology Departments

This section is a summary from a variety of sessions, working groups, and interviews during the course of Educause 2011.

IT departments are being asked to measure effectiveness, and schools are afraid that accreditation will depend on measuring effectiveness, but it is truly not possible to determine. You might be able to tell what classes are being attended, what content is being accessed, but you can’t isolate successes or failures to any particular activities.

Many institutions have had compounded IT cuts for each of the last three years. At best, this will be a flat year.

The demand for services does not decrease. Students are demanding more online courses and resources, students and faculty are demanding new technologies, but there is little acknowledgement in institutions about the full cost of complying with those demands.

Even when a technology solution will have a clear payback, there are often no funds available for the startup or transition costs.

A Biology Professor needs to use a microscope, because it’s an integral part of the class; why is it okay for professors not to know that online learning tools that their students are using? When faculty members incorporate technology into their classes that they don’t know how to use, it escalates support costs.

On new projects involving technology, IT has to make sure that

1. The full cost of the technology (including support and maintenance) be factored into the life of the project
2. There is a built-in way to measure the success (or failure) of the project. One of the biggest headaches is pilot projects that are not scalable but meet a faculty member’s needs; ongoing support can be a huge issue.
3. There is an understanding of next steps if the project succeeds or fails.

Some of the biggest success for IT in institutions is when they have given faculty (or administration) something that they didn’t even know they needed (such as an online scheduling system to meet with faculty advisors that made it a lot easier for both faculty and students to schedule).

The concerns of IT have become a lot more fragmented over time. Ten years ago, over 2/3 of Postsecondary CIO’s said that their most pressing issues were instructional and security related. Today, there is no one issue that is of primary concern to more than 15%.

While there is a lot of talk about clouds, the biggest use of clouds on campus is with email systems. Over the next couple of years, it is more likely that LMSs will start moving to the clouds, and after that ERP systems. Currently, over 70% of institutions are not considering clouds for ERP or CRM systems over the next two years.

Data to Dashboards: Creating and Using Analytics

Stephen Grieco, Susan Hauck, Celeste Schwartz, Montgomery County Community College, PA

The purpose of creating a dashboard is not to create nice looking reports and graphs, it is about taking information and changing the way decisions are made to increase efficiency and effectiveness. A dashboard provides a summary, visualization, or filter of data. Dashboards should allow decision makers or service providers to predict, drill down, plan, benchmark, make decisions, get feedback, and become more effective.

What is propelling the need to more effectively utilize data?

• Shrinking resources
• Accountability, being asked to prove that what you do has value
• Assessment driving data driven decision making
• Desire to use the data you have to improve processes or spur actions

Examples:

1. By monitoring the support calls by day of the week and time, the help desk was able to be staffed more efficiently and for better support.
2. By looking at class sizes at different times, and demand for sections on different days, the school was able to increase instructor and class utilization while also making class schedules more convenient for students
3. By analyzing the types of related classes that students were taking, the school was able to determine that there was a need for new degrees

 

 

BMO Back to School 2011

The BMO Back to School Education Conference was held on Thursday, September 15, and there was a ton of information. With three concurrent presentations, it wasn’t possible to follow everything, but here is a distillation of some of the points made by the CEOs running leading publishers, charter schools, and for-profit colleges.

General Observations from Farimah Schuerman

The conference expanded its program this year to include more general and informational panels. As usual, Higher Ed had the lead role, but not as much as in past years, and with a much sharper and defensive tone. The For-Profit Higher Ed sector has been under a lot of pressure, with some organizations seeing declining enrollments, and facing increased scrutiny from Congress, the Dept of Education, the press, and the states. In Postsecondary, the core technology segments (LMS, SIS, course tools) are pretty mature, and newcomers aspire to be absorbed.

 

Image by York College of PA via Flickr

There seemed to be a lot more Private Equity activity than Venture Capital, and there seemed to be a number of folks managing private wealth (possible Angel Investors) who were investigating but not yet investing. Of course, these may reflect more the people we know and work with, since we gleaned this information from our conversations.

 

There was more interest in K12 than in the past. The acquisitions from Pearson and News Corp seemed to have spurred some real interest, and possible transactions involving McGraw-Hill wove their way into conversations.

There is lots of room for innovative, specialized applications. Textbooks and instructional materials are in upheaval still, with rental, online, and freemium instructional materials vying for market share, and new online channels competing against the existing sales forces.

A few companies talked about their success this year, in that they maintained revenue levels. This leads one to believe that not slipping is cause for pride in this difficult market. Companies seem to be looking for new positioning and expanding their market niche in order to access other revenue opportunities and not give up ground.

Difficult economic conditions call for creativity (which is both true and a blatant self plug for Academic Business Advisors).

Ronald Klausner, CEO, Cambium Learning

Education is a $4.6 Billion industry. The current twin concerns are to reduce costs and increase effectiveness. With teachers accounting for half of all spending, districts and states are looking for tools to reduce the number of teachers and make the surviving teachers more effective. In addition, there is going to be a big shortage of teachers, with 1/3 of all new teachers leaving the profession in their first three years, and 1/3 of existing teachers expecting to retire in the next five years.

Special education accounts for ¼ of all spending, with 1/8 of the students; it’s the area where schools have the most latitude to spend. About 2/3 of all districts have either already deployed or are in the process of implementing RTI (Response to Intervention) programs.

Cambium Learning itself is a $200M company with 140 sales reps. Their strategy for new products is a combination of acquisitions and looking for academics who have had success with specific student populations, and then to productize and monetize those practices.

Kevin Modany, Chairman, ITT Educational Services

We need to better define the outcomes we want from education. Reducing dropouts or student default rates are not outcomes. Do we want schools to increase employment, increase salaries, get students started on good careers? Then we need to measure those outcomes and adjust our practices.

Folks with skills get the jobs, and we need to get the story out about how for-profit schools are giving kids skills to help them get meaningful employment.

Richard Barth, CEO, KIPP Foundation

 

Two lessons learned: 1) once parents see that their kids can learn more, they will demand more from both the charters and the public schools, 2) you can’t just come up with a good system and expect it to work, you need to work to continuously improve it based on student outcomes and feedback.

 

The margin for error in a for-profit is tiny; for-profit schools are held to a different standard from non-profit or public schools. One reason is that the reporting on education is not good, usually the education reporter is a starter position, and another is that you get more readership with a story bashing for-profit education than one showing good things happening. There is a strong recognition that charter schools provide a way to move the needle for all schools.

We need to have a national assessment. Absent a national test, where you are educated will determine what you know, and will perpetuate inequalities. We know that a Kipp child education in Louisiana learns what one in NYC learns. But when you look at state test scores, even though a public school student in Louisiana may pass that state test, he or she cannot hold a candle to one who passes the NY State test.

Michael Connelly, CEO, Mosaica Education

Not a single parent has ever raised the issue with him about whether his schools were for-profit or not. The question of for-profit or public seem more a concern for unions and politicians.

Andrew Fitzmaurice, CEO, Nord Anglia Education

Parents aren’t as concerned about whether you are for-profit or not, they are more concerned about getting the best possible outcome for their particular child.

Private pay, premium schools is a lot easier environment than government pay or charter, there are fewer regulations. They can do things like have classes in Warsaw working with classrooms in North America or the Middle East working together, which would be more difficult if they had to meet very specific standards.

There are still restrictions. In China, every student has to have 5 hours of Mandarin a week. In Abu Dhabi, every student needs to take 5 hours of Islamic studies a week. Some parents don’t seem to understand that you need to follow local laws.

Chris Whittle, CEO, Avenues

Over regulation can really impede education. For example, certain countries do not allow nationals to attend foreign owned schools, even though they have a shortage of schools.

It takes about three years to start a school from scratch.

Mac Gamse, CEO, Meritas

All schools have to use technology. Technology can personalize the education for our kids, and it can reduce the administrative tasks of teachers so they can spend more time and effort teaching. We have a unit on uses of water, where we have students in Manhatten, Montreal, and the deserts of Mexico providing completely different insights into water management.

Mark Dreyfus, President, ECPI University

With the new for-profit regulations, schools are starting to realize that they can no longer grow by increasing tuition. Tuition is going to have to follow the types of jobs you are training for, and there will be a reward for the schools who can deliver jobs effectively and efficiently.

For example, we will still provide some soft skills where they are needed to complete a degree, but we won’t be able to offer anything that is not needed.

Our management is focused on installing local controls, instead of thinking about improving instruction.

Tim Foster, Executive Chairman, Concorde Career Colleges

The new for-profit regulations is going to put a lot more cost discipline into the sector.

These particular regulations are not particularly onerous, but the fact that there is now a thermometer that has been installed means that the metrics can be changed by a strike of a pen. That’s a good amount of uncertainty and hinders our ability to plan.

Duncan Anderson, CEO, Education Affiliates

The regulations, because they are going to focus schools on costs and very specific measurable outcomes, are going to have the unintended consequence of driving less education. If something is not necessary for a degree or a job, it’s going to be eliminated.

A positive by-product is that we are getting a lot better at our processes. We audit every single placement, we record every conversation and review them daily. But it still keeps you up at night knowing that there are 400 people talking to students every day, and you don’t fully know that every one is in compliance.

 

Related articles

• Proposed Government Regulations on For-Profit Schools to Benefit Students (prweb.com)
• Kipp (socyberty.com)
• NewSchools CEO Ted Mitchell: My Best Idea For K-12 Education (forbes.com)

Three Things You Should Know About the Postsecondary Market

These are the slides and notes from a webinar I gave for the SIIA. The webinar is an introduction to the SIIA's Expert's Guide to the Postsecondary Market. There is a sampler from that report on the SIIA website. I'd written a section of the guide, Five Things You Need to Know About the Postsecondary Market, which is part of the sampler.

These are the five different aspects of the postsecondary marketplace that are reviewed in my report. If you are going to sell into higher education, you need to know how the market size and demographics, online courses and content, accountability for postsecondary institutions, new technologies, and student attitudes toward e-content and online classes are changing the face of higher education.

Because the report is available free here, rather than repeat what’s already in the report, I decided to talk about three other aspects of the market which are also critical to success, the fact that there are at least four different markets, not one, the content areas that are growing fastest, and a little about the financial drivers for higher education.

If you develop a product or service, and then go into one of the large public university systems and tell how you’ve been successful at Trinity College or some other small liberal arts institution, you are not going to be successful. You can’t be successful speaking to Higher Education with a one size fits all approach.

 

The most common breakdown is shown above, Public 4-year, Public 2-year, Private not-for-profit, and Private for-profit are the four main sectors. The last two, dealing with private 2-year schools are tiny in comparison.

 

Over the past 15 years, the private for-profits have been on a roll, growing from less than 1% of the market to almost 10% of the four-year market. However, changes in how the federal government finance student tuitions (loans and grants) to for-profits may throw a curve at the industry. For example, one pending policy is that these institutions, in order for their students to receive tuition assistance, will need to show that most of their students do, in fact graduate and earn enough to pay back student loans. This touches on the broader accountability issue which is covered in greater depth in the Five Things report.

 

Notice the big difference at the 2-year schools, where almost twice as many of the students are part time. That means that the way you define and position your services for two year schools may need to be very different from the way you talk about them to four year schools.

 

These are just two examples of how you need to know your market niche, and prepare your product or service toward your potential buyers.

With an increasing emphasis on jobs, it helps to know which occupations are growing. These projections are taken from the Bureau of Labor statistics. We pulled professions that earn more than $30,000 a year and were growing and here are the top 6.

 

Some things to note. Two of the top six involve accounting. Elementary school teachers are fourth, despite the short term disruption with state budgets and spending. This is because the elementary school population is starting to grow again, along with the fact that there are sleighted to be quite a few retirements of senior teachers over the next 5 to 10 years. Truck driving, with a median income of about $50,000 and no education requirements doesn’t look that bad, does it?

 

The National Center of Education Statistics records the number of students receiving degrees for different majors.

 

For 4 year schools, what do you think the number one major is?

 

Business, 350,000 graduates, almost three times as many as the second biggest, which is Health Professions at 120,000. However, health has grown at a 10% annual rate for the last five years, while business has grown at 2.5%.

 

Education, which is the third largest major at 101,000 graduates, has been shrinking by just under 1% per year.

 

What do you think the number one major is at Community Colleges? Liberal Arts with 260,000 graduates, growing at 3%. Healthcare and nursing is second at 140,000, growing at 10% per year, and Business and Accounting is 3 with about 80,000 also growing at about 10%.

 

If you’re looking at content, these are the largest content areas to concentrate on.

The final of these three additional things you need to know about the postsecondary market has to do with costs. Expenses have been increasing faster than inflation at all types of institutions, but this especially hits the public ones.

 

Above is the breakdown of major costs for public postsecondary institutions. If you look back at the original slide, more than 2/3 of students attend public institutions, either 2-year or 4-year. Increasing costs, as states are all decreasing spending, at a time when the number of students is increasing, so schools are being hit with a triple whammy.

 

Thus if you target one of the niches and can come up with a solution that attacks costs in instruction, academic support, student services, institutional support, or the operation and maintenance of the physical plan, or which allows institutions to increase students without increasing costs, or allows them to teach more students with the same or lower costs, you’ve got a decent chance of being heard.

 

Related articles

• A Call to Action on College Completion (whitehouse.gov)
• Basic Skills / US : strategies to help lower-skilled adults and out-of-school youth (skillsinfo.wordpress.com)
• Why Do Students Borrow So Much? Recent National Trends in Student Loan Debt (education.com)

Looking at the 2011-12 Education Market

On March 2, the Center for Digital Education gave a webinar on the 2011 Education Market Landscape. Here are my notes.

The 95 million Millennials are the largest US generation in history, pointing to an increasing long term demand for education, and, hence, education products.

The K12 market

 

Image by IK's World Trip via Flickr

Classrooms and materials are being transformed over the next 10 years to digital: digital labs, mobile interactive social-aware content, and interact-and-communicate as opposed to display-and-present classrooms. Already, 89% of districts offer digital field trips, 84% offer some online classes, 82% offer at least one advanced technology class, 69% use push technology like alerts, and 88% have classes to counteract cyberbullying.

Technology spending is expected to be flat over the next year or so. The edtech market for K12 should be around $9.5B. This is spread over 14,000 districts, although the top 100 districts account for about 30% of the total. The number one reason for purchasing content is to save money, including counteracting the effects of staff or service reductions, to implement consolidation or efficiencies, to standardize, to automate, or to move to cloud based computing.

 

Image by Jacob Anikulapo via Flickr

Looking at overall education spending, there should be about a 3% increase in federal educational funds in 2012, to around $77.4B. At a state level, at least 30 states are expecting to decrease K12 spending, and states contribute about 50% of educational funds.

Technology directors are concerned about providing access to the Internet, they are confused about the proliferations of devices, they are worried about bandwidth issues, they are looking into changes in SIS, ERP, and LMS systems, and are starting to become concerned about blended learning and the transition to digital content and Web 2.0.

The Postsecondary market

 

Image via Wikipedia

Edtech spending in Higher Education is also expected to be flat in 2012, at around $10.3B. Many of the largest institutions are state run, and 41 states are expecting to cut HE spending. This is resulting in a need for institutions to look at economizing, and they are expecting technology to help them increase efficiency, accommodate mobile computing, improve student retention and recruitment, improve tech support, and reduce demand on IT resources.

Some areas of growth are data storage, disaster recovery, ERP, identity and access management, security, and help with staff research. Higher Ed is also grappling with the textbook to digital transition, including looking for the ideal interactive learning environment that integrates well with other institutional systems.

The biggest reasons for purchasing are cost management, productivity gains, data driven decision making, and online education.

Related articles

• Sec. Duncan Pushes for Productivity and Flexibility in Education Amid Budget Crisis (blogs.abcnews.com)
• Six Edtech Predictions for K12 (edreformer.com)

The Higher Education Market

I gave a talk on the Higher Education market at the SIIA Ed Tech Business Forum in San Francisco a few weeks ago. Here is a summary of the talk.

College Enrollment Trend

As you can see, enrollments are expected to be flat for the next eight years.

While you could say that this does not bode well for anyone looking to sell into higher education, that's actually far from the truth. Below, we'll go through some of the market niches that are, in fact, growing.

Growth in Online Courses

Over 4.6 million students were taking at least one online course during the Fall 2008 term. This is a 17 percent increase over the number reported from the previous year, and far exceeds the 1.2 percent growth of the overall higher education student population.

More than one in four higher education students now take at least one course online.

Growth in For-Profit Enrollments

The for-profit market is growing at 12.5% a year. Currently, they are under a 10% market share, but they were under a 3% market share at the beginning of the millennium.

The for-profits have capitalized on three trends: the ability to provide federally backed student loans, their ability to adapt to job-related education, and the adoption of online courses.

Growth in Minorities

While there has been an increase in White students, there have been huge increases in minority students. The compound annual enrollment growth rates of different races are shown below:

White	0.7%
Black	4.7%
Hispanic	9.1%
Asian	8.8%

The increasing numbers of minority students provides opportunities to target services specifically for their needs. Below shows the total enrollments for the different groups.

 

Technology budgets

While many think in terms of publishing content for students (which, in higher education, the students are the ones who actually purchase), there are opportunities selling directly to schools, both in academic and administrative products and services. Below is the breakdown of academic spending in 2009.

Changes in the way content is sold

Historically, textbooks have been sold to students through the campus bookstore, on recommendations or requirements of the professor. the student would purchase the book from the book store, or perhaps buy a used book, as below.

With this increasing use of the Internet, online materials, new devices, and e-books, the distribution channels have become more confused:

Education publishers still go to professors, but they can select from an ever-increasing universe of free materials, and students can choose from a plethora of sources. Look for continued channel confusion, disaggregation, and disintermediation until the channel finally gets sorted out, sometime in the next ten years.

Textbook market concentration

Of a total market of about $4 billion, the top three education publishers, Pearson, Cengage, and McGraw-Hill, control about 75% of the market.

Their national sales forces give them the ability to reach US college or university faculty in any state and of any size institution. On the other hand, the additional pressure of institutions to reduce the costs of textbooks, the availability of free materials, and the flexibility of smaller competitors to create targeted content, does not guarantee that this situation will continue indefinitely.

Where are the opportunities

Following, from our vantage point, is a summary of five big opportunities:

1. Remediation: over 85% of community college students cannot do college level math, and over half cannot do college level reading and writing. In total, over half of all entering higher education students need remediation.
2. Dropout prevention: since the 1950's, about half of all college entrants do not graduate; this is a prime goal of the Obama administration.
3. Online: the use of online courses and online materials are far outstripping the growth in enrollments
4. For-profits: the for-profit institutions have been able to move quickly to meet market needs, and with cutbacks in state funding, their growth may continue.
5. Community Colleges: this is the cheapest way to get a degree and to spend the first two years of college. With a dismal job market, they are more in demand than ever. But, with state spending cuts, they are in distress. They have a huge need to meet the demands of more students at a lower cost.

A lot of this material came from the 140+ page report we wrote for the SIIA on the Postsecondary marketplace, available here: http://www.siia.net/estore/10Expand.asp?ProductCode=EPMR-09

A difference in teaching

My daughter goes to Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, and she is now taking a semester in Singapore.

She just took her mid-term exam for one of her engineering courses. The mid-term was five questions. Each questions was pretty complex, and, in one of the questions, she misread that something took place once a day instead of once per month. Except for this error, she did every step of the problem correctly, but her answer was 30 times too high.

The professor announced he gives partial credit for wrong answers. But, she got zero credit. When she asked why, she was told, the answer was 10,000. If you got the answer you got 20 points. If you got within 10% of the answer, you got 18 points. If you got within 20% of the answer, you got 16 points, etc.

To me, this highlights a huge difference in teaching emphasis between the two cultures. In the US, we are more interested in process: does the student understand the process to tackle the problem.

In Singapore, the professor was more interested in results, how close did the student get to the right answer.

If you really think about it, if you were building a bridge, which would be more important: the correct understanding of the procedures, but a calculation which was 30 times too high, or an answer which was calculated incorrectly, but within 10% of the correct result?

It's an interesting and different way of thought.

New Writing Teacher Webinar

Webinar Title

Why Can't Suzie Write?

Designing a Writing Program for the At-Risk Student

Webinar Description

With almost half of all students entering college needing remediation to bring them up to college level reading and writing, many colleges are struggling to support at-risk students.

Dona Young, author of Writing from the Core and Which Comes First, the Comma or the Pause?, will describe the five steps that make a difference in designing a writing program for at-risk students. This webinar will help you structure your remediation programs around proven techniques.

Why Can't Suzie Write is being hosted by Farimah Schuerman of The Writing Teacher and is sponsored by College Starter skills remediation from LearningExpress, LLC and the Wimba Collaboration Suite.

Webinar Date:

Thursday, September 24, 2:00 Eastern Daylight Time

To Register:

http://www.wimba.com/company/events/1714

Cost:

None

Webinar on SIIA Postsecondary Market Report

Farimah Schuerman, Matt Villano, and I recently completed the SIIA Postsecondary Market Report, and Farimah and I will be participating in a free webcast on the report's highlights on Wednesday, June 17 at 2:00 PM EDT.

The executive summary of the report is available here: Download SIIAPostsecondaryExecOverview.pdf (180.6K).

The report itself is over 100 pages and includes the following chapters:

1. The Changing Characteristics of Postsecondary Institutions
2. Growth and Rising Enrollments
3. Changing Characteristics of the Student Population
4. Rising Financial Pressures
5. Technology Spending and Budgeting
6. Instructional Technology Spending and Online Learning
7. Other Institutional Technology Spending
8. Student Technology Habits
9. Future Challenges and Opportunities

The full report is free for SIIA members, and is also available for purchase from the SIIA for $189.00 here.

The webinar is free for anyone and you can register here.