Visioning the Future

The potential and promise


Ray Schroeder
Senior Fellow, University Professional and Continuing Ed Assn.
Professor Emeritus/ AVC, University of Illinois Springfield

https://sites.google.com/view/mchenry-county-college-vision/home

First: A word about presentation format. For the past fifteen years, we have been "power-point-less" at the UIS Center for Online Learning, Research and Service. Rather than using a static, aging format, we prefer to create Web pages for our presentations to assure that they are easily accessible, updatable, and always available. I will not be following every link. The intent is that this will serve as a reference meta-site for you on the topic.

Please follow along on your own device (or visit at a later date) to delve more deeply into the links and videos that interest you.

Visioning the Future of McHenry County College

Trends, Technology, Pedagogy, Practices, and Society

We are on the cusp of a seachange in higher education. The number of traditional-age students is shrinking. College graduates are laboring under $1,700,000,000 in debt at rates higher than the average today. Employers are dropping their baccalaureate requirements. The average American worker changes employers every four or five years. Students became accustomed to anytime/anywhere learning in the pandemic. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us, this time it is impacting white collar jobs, not just blue collar jobs; and it is creating no collar jobs. It is in this context that we will reimagine learning at McHenry College. We will visit pedagogies, practices, the "new" students, student networking, and forward teaching.

Background Readings (Listenings):

New Article - released Wednesday by IHE

Trends in the Near Term and an Emerging Concern for Higher Ed - Ray Schroeder

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/trends-near-term-and-emerging-concern-higher-ed

The Dwindling Supply of Traditional-Age Students

Surveying the Higher Ed Landscape 2021: declining enrollments, increasing competition, debt aversion, 4th Industrial Revolution, changing marketplace for graduates.


For-profit enterprise has found a lucrative market in higher education (note that these entities have chosen online delivery)

    • Coursera - now a for-profit traded on the stock exchange - is serving more than 75,000,000 students! https://campustechnology.com/articles/2021/01/05/mooc-enrollment-explodes-in-2020.aspx

    • Other large-scale providers take a big piece of higher ed - edX has merged with 2U, ASU, SNHU, and internationally, Udacity, FutureLearn (UK), SWAYAM (India), and a host of others.
      https://www.classcentral.com/report/mooc-providers-list/

    • Very large corporate competitors have entered the continuing and professional education market - Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn
      Google Certfiicates begin at $39/month - they claim 82% of their certificate holders report hiring/promotion success within 6 months
      https://grow.google/certificates/
      Microsoft Certifications have long been a standard in computer applications and engineering with instruction from many entities
      LinkedIn Learning offers nearly 17,000 courses

At the same time as overall enrollments in higher education have declined, the online enrollments have increased!

Exemplary of this trend are the data graphed below from Oregon:

Technology, Pedagogy, Practices, Self-Paced, Adaptive, Industry Collaborative

Plethora of Models

There are many models of modes of delivery


Which Colleges Will Command the Enrollments?

The programs that thrive will be ones that meet the needs of industry and the wants of students:

  1. Affordable programs will prevail - Americans are now breaking under the burden of $1,700,000,000 in student loan debt - much of it carrying higher interest rates than are common today. There are senior citizens on Social Security who are still paying off their student loans!

  2. Flexible programs - anytime, anywhere, and self-paced are premium considerations for prospective students.

  3. Learning that leads to relevant new jobs that are likely to sustain for at least a few years. Those that have ties to employers are most popular.

  4. Certificates and credentialing are valuable. Stackable courses that lead to certifications or industry credentials have great appeal.

  5. Skills (both hard and soft) that make for an effective, efficient, and amicable employee are sought after. E-portfolios that document those skills are sought by HR departments that screen applications. LinkedIn regularly mines their data to list the most in-demand hard and soft skills https://zety.com/blog/linkedin-skills

  6. Those programs that are effective in injecting students into industry and corporate networks will have greater success in completer placement and advancement.


Strategies, Gadgets and Gogies Will Engage Learning

Andragogy

https://elearningindustry.com/the-adult-learning-theory-andragogy-of-malcolm-knowles

https://www.quiddis.com/en/elearning-adults-training-six-principles-andragogy/

4 principles that are applied to adult learning:

1) Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their instruction.

2) Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for the learning activities.

3) Adults are most interested in learning subjects that have immediate relevance and impact to their job or personal life.

4) Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented. (Kearsley, 2010)

Heutagogy - Self-Determined Learning

https://heutagogycop.wordpress.com/history-of-heutagogy/

http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/1076/2087

https://thehimalayantimes.com/opinion/cybergogy-to-heutagogy-for-engaged-learning

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/rise-do-it-yourself-education


A do-it-yourself mindset is changing the face of education worldwide, according to new survey results. Learners are "patching together" their education from a "menu of options," including self-teaching, short courses and bootcamps, and they believe that self-service instruction will become even more prevalent for lifelong learning. In the United Sates specifically, 84 percent of people said learning would become even more self-service the older they get. https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/09/17/diy-mindset-reshaping-education.aspx

engaging learners

https://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/teaching-with-technology/engaging-students/

https://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/online-education/online-course-delivery-and-instruction/five-ways-to-engage-students-in-an-online-learning-environment/

Engaging with the instructor (from Iowa State link above)

Define your online presence

Maintain an active daily presence in the course

Solicit (in real-time) immediate formative feedback

Ask students to share one burning question about a content topic

Ask students for feedback about the course regularly

Interact with students as they work

Provide interactive feedback to students is essential

Host virtual “student” (office) hours

Nudge students who are not engaging in the course

Send personalized “how’s it going?” messages via Canvas Inbox two times a semester

active learning

https://teaching.cornell.edu/resource/active-learning-online-teaching


VR future for "hands-on"

https://edtechmagazine.com/higher/article/2020/02/virtual-reality-advances-bring-new-possibilities-higher-education

Low-latency of 5G enables real-time VR that had not been possible previously at a distance.

self-paced to adaptive learning to personalized learning

https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/adaptive-learning-personalized-learning

Teaching through the Windshield, not the Rearview Mirror!

One of the most prevalent failures of our professional and continuing education courses is that we fail to update them every time they are offered with a view towards the future. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is upon us bringing change at an incredible rate. Fueled by AI, VR, and quantum computing, this revolution promises rapid, radical changes every month, week and day.

Faculty members, accustomed to the slower pace of the 20th century, review ane revise syllabi every year or two. Now, we must update materials every term, and in some cases even more often.

We owe our learners the newest, most up-to-date information with a view toward where the industry will be in one, two and three years.

In order to remain up-to-date, each department or certificate perogram should have an "industry advisory council" that enlightens the curriculum and methods. Consider creating the advisory board with local, regional and national representatives. They can inform you of trends and opportunities in the field even before these are published and broadly known. Building the curriculum will become a partnership with industry. https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/oer-and-teaching-through-rearview-mirror

It's not what you know, rather, it's who knows you!

One of the least attended-to responsibilities of universities is of huge importance. Too often, we lead students to knowledge and skills, but we fail to connect them to professionals in their fields. The rare program that attends to making those connections deep into businesses, corporations, NGOs, government agencies, associations, and other entities related to the discipline will rapidly build a reputation for relevancy and success. I discussed this in a recent article in which I give examples of how to build these connections: https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/blogs/online-trending-now/networking-gets-graduates-and-certificate-completers

Some Keys for Faculty, Staff and Students to Consider

  • Redefine target audiences; they are changing - lifelong learners needing 60 year curriculum

  • Competition will continue to grow (Google, LinkedIn, Coursera, edX, and many others)

  • Teach through the windshield rather than the rearview mirror

  • Build network-expanding exercises into your classes

  • Include both industry and learners in curriculum and course designs

  • Affordability

  • Just-in-Time

  • Stackable

  • Self-Paced

  • Adaptive

  • Certificates and Certifications

  • Subscription rather than tuition


How can you keep up with the daily developments and trends?

Online: Trending Now: Ray's bi-weekly columns in Inside Higher Ed

https://www.insidehighered.com/users/ray-schroeder

Ray's Daily Curated Reading Lists and Social Media. Blogs with daily updates on the field of online / continuing learning in higher education


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Contact Ray

rschr1@uis.edu ~ rayschroeder@gmail.com - ray@upcea.edu

@rayschroeder

Associate Vice Chancellor for Online, Professor Emeritus

University of Illinois Springfield

Senior Fellow, University Professional and Continuing Education Assn.

https://rayschroeder.com

217-206-7531