Dr. Linda L. Baer
Great Plains IDEA Spring Meeting
April 8, 2014
We are educating for careers that have
not been created, using technology not
yet invented to solve problems that
haven’t been discovered.
“Shift Happens” UTube
“There are probably 500 colleges
who are out of business already
and they just don’t know it yet.”
2014: A Perfect Storm of Opportunity
2013: Our Vantage Point to the Future
• Information and Communication Technology (ICT)
•
•
•
•
•
has been a sustaining innovation not transformative.
Cost has grown at unsustainable rates.
Economical learning/developmental solutions are
ready to scale.
Personalized, adaptive learning will be
transformative.
Current models and institutions lack the capacity and
resilience to transform for the needs of tomorrow.
A perception gap exists between institutional leaders
and the campus community, on the urgency for
change and transformation.
Major Trends
• College and university tuition and fees continued to
rise, despite several tuition freeze experiments.
• Student debt rose throughout 2013, inspiring
widespread anxiety.
• A number of institutions took drastic steps to stave off
financial crisis, including merging with other campuses,
ending academic programs, and laying off faculty
“sacrificing the queen”. These events could be
advance signs of ongoing issues on the horizon.
http://bryanalexander.org/2013/12/31/trends-from-2013-the-higher-education-bubble/
Major Issues
• The number of students taking classes went down across many
sectors.
• Some graduate programs suffered badly in 2013, most notably law
schools, who saw declining revenues, applicants, graduates, and
jobs.
• Outside of campuses, political pressures remained steady. Some of
this occurred in partisan terms, as Republicans extended their
criticism of public K-12 to all of higher education, sometimes with an
anti-union dimension. However, 2013 also saw Democrats joining in
for a full-court bipartisan press on higher education, from a
presidential charge to build a new institutional assessment system to
high-profile governors and mayors calling for reduced higher
education fees.
http://bryanalexander.org/2013/12/31/trends-from-2013-the-higher-education-bubble
Sacrificing the Queen
Let’s call this strategy academia
sacrifices its queen.* That’s a
risky chess move where one
player gives up their most
powerful piece in order to win
the game. Bryan Alexander
http://bryanalexander.org/?s=queen+sacrifice
 Some American campuses are still cutting programs and
faculty five years into the Great Recession/some-sort-ofrecovery. The most recent examples: twelve Pennsylvania
universities, one Minnesota university, one in Washington
DC, one in Vermont. Added to the list: Maine, Franklin
Pierce and Long Island. Adjuncts go, of course, but also
tenure-track and tenured faculty. These schools are cutting
programs and departments, which means tenure’s
protection doesn’t matter as much.
http://bryanalexander.org/?s=queen+sacrifice
Transforming Higher Education
Jump Shifts
• Learning Franchise
• Teaching Franchise
• Provider Driven
• Individual Technologies
• Time Out for Education
• Continuing Education






• Traditional Courses/Degrees
• Combined Teaching,
Assessment and Certifying

• Fragmented, Proprietary Systems
Bureaucratic Systems

• Rigid Processes
• Technology Push


• Learner Driven
• Technology Synergies
• Just In Time Learning
• Perpetual Learning
• Unbundled Learning Experiences
• Unbundled Learning,
Assessment and Certification
• Open, Seamless Systems
• Self-Informing/Correcting
Systems
• Customizable Processes
• Learning Vision Pull
Michael Dolence and Donald Norris. Transforming Higher Education, 1995
Five Trends to Watch
1 Lecture model challenged by virtual
teams and shared courseware
11
Model challengers taking many forms
What is WGU Indiana?
 WGU Indiana is an online, competency-based university
established by the state of Indiana through a partnership
with Western Governors University to expand access to
higher education for Indiana residents.
 Over 50 accredited online bachelor’s and master’s degrees
in high-demand career fields.
 Flexible, online study, allowing you to balance work,
family, and school.
 Affordable tuition. WGU Indiana is a non-profit
university.
 Several states building similar partnerships.
http://indiana.wgu.edu/
Five Trends to Watch
•
Lecture
model
challenged
by
virtual
1
teams and shared courseware
2 Amazon/Ebay style analytics unlock
personalization
14
Analytics is the “universal
decoder” for education reform.
Strategic Intelligence for Higher
Education
What’s the best that can happen?
What will happen next?
What if these trends continue?
Why is this happening?
What actions are needed?
Where exactly is the problem?
How many, how often, where?
Solution Sets Coming to Market
Forecasting,
Risk Analytics
Reporting
Analytics
Optimization
Analytics
Advanced
Data
Visualization
Amazon features
19
The market is immature, but multiple solutions are
emerging in each application category
Education
Planning
Counseling and
Coaching
Risk Targeting and
Intervention
Transfer and
Articulation
Legacy
ERP/SIS/LMS
Vendor point
solutions
Homegrown
point
solutions
Direct-tostudent
Sinclair’s
MAP
Valencia’s
LifeMap
Austin Peay’s
Degree Compass
Central Piedmont’s
Online Student Profile
WICHE’s Predictive
Analytics Reporting
© 2010 Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Adaptive Learning
 Educational method which uses computers as
interactive teaching devices. Computers adapt the
presentation of educational material according to
students' weaknesses, as indicated by their responses
to questions.
 The motivation is to allow electronic education to
incorporate the value of the interactivity afforded to a
student by an actual human teacher or tutor.
 The technology encompasses aspects derived from
various fields of study including computer science,
education, neuroscience, and psychology.
Knewton
Course Signals
Purdue
PREDICTION AND INTERVENTION
EDUCATION AND CAREER
POSITIONING SYSTEM
 Map-in starting point
and





destination
Routes to completion
Time to destination –
progress
Fuel for the journey
Travel time to “norm”
for the destination
Highway for optimizing
student success
Lone Star Community College
http://studentalignment.com/home.html
Five Trends to Watch
1 Lecture model challenged by virtual
teams and shared courseware
2 Amazon/Ebay style analytics unlock
personalization
3 Governing to Win
Complete College America
Complete College America has developed the
institutional roadmap to increase student success. The
components include:
 Performance Funding
 Co-requisite Remediation
 Full time is full time
 Structured schedules
 Guided pathways to success
http://www.completecollege.org/
http://www.grad.illinois.edu/sites/default/files/researchschemagraphic.png
Graduate Program Evaluation
Metrics
 Time-to-degree (master’s and doctoral)
 Completion rate (master’s and doctoral)
 2 year master’s
 6-8 year for doctoral
 Advancement to candidacy rate
 Number of degrees awarded per year
 Percent doctoral students receiving full support
 Competitiveness of stipends with respect to AAU institutions
 Student placement in context of program goals
 Master’s 2 years after completion
 Doctoral 5 years after completion
 Benchmark performance against national criteria by discipline
Association of American Universities http://www.aau.edu
Five Trends to Watch
Lecture
model
challenged
by
virtual
1
teams and shared courseware
2 Amazon/Ebay style analytics unlock
personalization
3 Governing to Win
4 DIYU is for real and new brands
emerge
Do It Yourself University
New Brands?
Five Trends to Watch
Lecture
model
challenged
by
virtual
1
teams and shared courseware
2 Amazon/Ebay style analytics unlock
personalization
3 Governing to Win
4 DIYU is for real and new brands emerge
5 Constructive Disruption, Reinvention and
Transformation
Disrupting College: How Disruptive Innovation Can
Deliver Quality and Affordability to Postsecondary
Education
Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, Louis Caldera, Louis Soares
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/pdf/disrupting_college_execsumm.pdf
HOW TO THINK ABOUT REINVENTION
Reinvention
Track A: Reposition the
core business of the
university, adapting
legacy offerings to the
disruptive marketplace.
Track B: Create a
separate, disruptive
business unit to develop
innovations that will
become the source of
future growth by
addressing new or unmet
value propositions.
Gilbert, Eyring and Foster, Two Routes to Resilience, Harvard Business Review,
December 2012
Reinvented Strategies
 Focus on real value propositions; enable learners to make
choices that personalize experiences and manage the
total cost of completion.
 Develop the organizational capacity for learning analytics
and personalized learning to optimize learner success.
 Improve flexibility in the completion and certification of
learning objectives and capacity to draw from external
sources and receive transfer and credit for prior learning.
 Double down on the best value propositions of reinvented
legacy programs, but add real-world experiences,
globalism, innovation/entrepreneurship.
Reinvented Business Models
• Consciously reinvent business models for education, talent
and leadership development, and research to achieve:
– Affordability – ways to control and reduce total cost of completion
– Greater Flexibility – ways to serve learners better, personalize experiences
– Reduced Time-to-completion – ways to accelerate and enrich
– Alignment with emerging needs of society and career and employer needs
• Track A: Reinvent business models for legacy programs to
compete in the face of disruptions
• Track B: Create new and separate disruptive enterprises to
develop innovations that will be sources of new growth.
Examples from the Field
 Low-cost accelerated, competence-based models for
baccalaureate degrees
 Western Governor’s University
 Southern New Hampshire
 $10,000 degree programs
 Accelerated completion
 Bridge programs
 Concurrent enrollment
 Credit for prior learning
 Transfer and course aggregators
 3-year baccalaureates
 Control costs by limiting and reducing tuition
 Cost reductions, reinvented processes, shared
services
See McKinsey Report Winning by Degrees
Examples from the Field
 Limiting time-to-completion for graduate degrees
 Personalized Learning Systems – Arizona State
and Knewton
 The university has rolled out an ambitious effort to
turn its classrooms into laboratories for
technology-abetted “adaptive learning” -- a method
that purports to give instructors real-time
intelligence on how well each of their students is
getting each concept.
 “No More Excuses” – analytics for success and
strategy
 New Alternatives and Competitors
Welcome to Strategies for
Success!
Graduate Student Success ASU
 https://graduate.asu.edu/grow/sfs
 Welcome to the Strategies for Success program of
Graduate Education. Our goal is to help you be
successful in your time at ASU and beyond. Your
professional development, all of the things done
outside your academics, can have a significant impact
on your success as a student, on the job market, and as
a professional.
Graduate Student Success
Brochure
University of Michigan
 How to Get the Mentoring You Want: A Guide for
Graduate Students (PDF) ... Outlines the services
offered by Rackham's Graduate Student Success office.
 Graduate Student Success Brochure - Rackham
Graduate School
www.rackham.umich.edu/.../GSSBrochure.pdf
Student Success Center
Graduate Student Success Center (GSSC)
The Office of Graduate Student Development seeks to provide you with appropriate
academic support services in the humanities, physical sciences, and social sciences.
To this end, students are enrolled in a password-protected Blackboard site called the
Graduate Student Success Center (GSSC). On this site, students have access to
information regarding:

study skills

test-taking strategies

time and stress management

tutorial support

writing assistance

research skills

career planning and preparation

online course readiness assessment
Students can log into the GSSC through Blackboard or through the Pfeiffer University
website.
METRICS FOR BEST ONLINE GRADUATE
EDUCATION PROGRAM RANKINGS
 Student Engagement
 Interact with instructors and classmates
 Instructors are accessible and responsive
 Instructors create an experience rewarding enough to stay enrolled
and complete in a reasonable amount of time
 Admissions Selection
 Entering students have proven aptitudes, ambitions and
accomplishments to handle the demands of rigorous course work
 Peer Reputation
 Industry opinion accounts for intangible factors on program quality
 Degrees with strong perceptions of quality among academics may
be held in higher regard among employers
http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/articles/2014/01/07/about-the-toponline-education-programs-rankings-2014
METRICS FOR BEST ONLINE GRADUATE
EDUCATION PROGRAM RANKINGS
 Faculty credentials and training
 Strong online programs employ instructors with academic
credentials one would expect rom a campus-based program
 Invest resources to train these instructors on how to teach
distance learners
 Student services and technology
 Incorporates diverse online learning technologies which
allows greater flexibility for students to take classes from a
distance
 Outside of classes, a strong support structure provides
learning assistance, career guidance and financial aid
resources commensurate with quality campus-based
programs
EXAMPLES
Arizona State University
https://graduate.asu.edu/progress
https://graduate.asu.edu/progress/steps/critical
_policies_to_remember
https://graduate.asu.edu/faculty_staff/policies
TA and RA Policies
https://graduate.asu.edu/faculty_staff/tara
Graduate Program Evaluation
Metrics
 Time-to-degree (master’s and doctoral)
 Completion rate (master’s and doctoral)
 2 year master’s
 6-8 year for doctoral
 Advancement to candidacy rate
 Number of degrees awarded per year
 Percent doctoral students receiving full support
 Competitiveness of stipends with respect to AAU institutions
 Student placement in context of program goals
 Master’s 2 years after completion
 Doctoral 5 years after completion
 Benchmark performance against national criteria by discipline
Association of American Universities http://www.aau.edu
Recommendations for Institutions
 Apply the correct business model for the
task.
 Drive the disruptive innovation.
 Develop a strategy of focus.
 Frame online learning as a sustaining
innovation.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/02/pdf/disrupting_college_execsumm.pdf
The future is…..
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
What do great programs look and feel like?
What’s the competitive marketplace that’s impacting
this environment?
Higher education practice, technology and policies
that need to change?
What matters in online education to students,
faculty, universities?
What might higher education marketplace look like
a decade from now?
QUESTIONS
 Dr. Linda L. Baer
 lindalbaer0508@gmail.com