InformatIon EducatIon and tEchnologIEs Edited by diana G. oblinGer G ame C hanGers Changers Game G ame C hanGers InformatIon EducatIon and tEchnologIEs Edited by diana G. oblinGer Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies © 2012 EDUCAUSE This book is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). Authors retain the copyright to their individual contributions, which are released under the same Creative Commons license except as noted. For more information or for permission requests, please visit educause.edu/copyright. This book is available in its entirety on the EDUCAUSE website, at educause.edu/books. ISBN 978-1-933046-00-6 FROM THE EDITOR I would like to thank the many people who made this book possible, particularly Gregory Dobbin for managing the project and Karen Mateer for her research. —Diana G. Oblinger EDUCAUSE is a nonprofit association and the foremost community of IT leaders and professionals committed to advancing higher education. EDUCAUSE programs and ser- vices are focused on analysis, advocacy, community building, professional development, and knowledge creation because IT plays a transformative role in higher education. EDUCAUSE supports those who lead, manage, and use information technology through a comprehensive range of resources and activities. educause.edu Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies is published by EDUCAUSE, with generous support from Ellucian. Cover and interior design by Michael Brady Design (michaelbradydesign.com). Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies Today’s knowledge revolution isn’t about how much information is available. It’s about how fast knowledge can travel through vast, connected networks of people—and how it can grow exponentially. Ten years ago we knew that technology would change the face of education, and we were just beginning to imagine the ways. Today, learning can happen anywhere. More people, with increasingly diverse needs, are seeking education, and almost every country is promoting greater access to education. At a time when educational attain- ment is a global priority, the need to reimagine the education experience has never been greater. Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies explores the tools and processes that can improve the quality, flexibility, and scalability of postsecondary ed- ucation. The book takes a hard look at the education landscape today and asks what that landscape might look like tomorrow. It asks important questions and pushes us to open our minds about how technology will shape the universe of possibility for to- morrow’s students. • How will your institution negotiate the new geography of learning? Technolo- gies are reshaping how people learn and connect, and people are connecting to a global learning network previously inconceivable. • In a world where information is always accessible, how will teaching and learning change? Learning is no longer bound by classrooms, libraries, or even instructors. Online tools make resources available to learners everywhere. Open-source learning can reach thousands of learners in nontraditional ways. • What will constitute an institution of higher education in the future? More and more, competencies, not credit hours, determine credentials. A degree is no longer the only indicator of success. How we understand and assess learning is changing. Portfolios will augment standard assessment tools. • How do we ready our institutions, our students, and ourselves for what higher education can—and must—become? Many institutions are piloting innovative models for education, and the entire community can benefit from the lessons learned. These are questions that we at Ellucian ask ourselves every day as we work to help more than 2,300 colleges, universities, state systems, and foundations around the globe thrive in today’s dynamic world. We value our collaborative and long-standing relation- ships with EDUCAUSE and the amazing community that makes it strong. Working to- gether, our collective intelligence will help shape the future of education. Ellucian is proud to sponsor this book and support ongoing efforts to help higher education meet the challenges of today and those of tomorrow. John F. Speer III, President and CEO, Ellucian vii Contents Foreword xi Molly Corbett Broad Game Changers Introduction 3 Diana G. Oblinger CHAPTER 1 The Knowledge Economy: Challenges and Opportunities for American Higher Education 9 Paul E. Lingenfelter CHAPTER 2 The Questions We Need to Ask First : Setting Priorities for Higher Education in Our Technology-Rich World 25 Debra Humphreys CHAPTER 3 IT as a Game Changer 37 Diana G. Oblinger CHAPTER 4 From Metrics to Analytics, Reporting to Action: Analytics’ Role in Changing the Learning Environment 53 Linda Baer and John Campbell CHAPTER 5 IT Innovations and the Nontraditional Learner 67 Pamela Tate and Rebecca Klein-Collins Game Changers: Education and IT CHAPTER 6 Why Openness in Education? 81 David Wiley and Cable Green CHAPTER 7 Early Days of a Growing Trend: Nonprofit/For-Profit Academic Partnerships in Higher Education 91 Daniel Pianko and Josh Jarrett CHAPTER 8 Scaling Up: Four Ideas to Increase College Completion 105 Vernon C. Smith CHAPTER 9 Western Governors University 115 Robert W. Mendenhall CHAPTER 10 University of Phoenix 133 William (Bill) Pepicello CHAPTER 11 SUNY Empire State College: A Game Changer in Open Learning 145 Meg Benke, Alan Davis, and Nan L. Travers CHAPTER 12 Athabasca University: Canada’s Open University 159 Dietmar Kennepohl, Cindy Ives, and Brian Stewart CHAPTER 13 Providing Quality Higher Education for Adults 175 Susan C. Aldridge CHAPTER 14 University of the People 187 Shai Reshef CHAPTER 15 The Open Learning Initiative: Enacting Instruction Online 201 Ross Strader and Candace Thille CHAPTER 16 The Postmodality Era: How “Online Learning” Is Becoming “Learning” 215 Thomas B. Cavanagh CHAPTER 17 Going the Distance: Outsourcing Online Learning 229 Susan E. Metros and Joan Falkenberg Getman viii [...]... higher education at $85 billion in 2009 and 2010 Due to enrollment growth, constant-dollar state support per student fell to $6,451 by 2010, the lowest level in twenty-five years Total-per-student revenues fell to 15 Game Changers: Education and IT $10,732 (below the 2000 peak, but well above 1985 levels), and 40.3 percent of educational revenue came from tuition and fees So while the twenty-first-century... the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) and the Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU); the Voluntary Framework of Accountability (VFA), developed by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) and College Board; and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities’ 19 Game Changers: Education and IT (NAICU) U-CAN framework are all efforts... intelligent use of information technology to enhance learning Many are looking to our colleges and universities for the answers; their future is up to us Molly Corbett Broad xii Game Changers Introduction Diana G Oblinger This book is dedicated to education We need more education, deeper education, more effective education, more access to education, and more affordable education While education works... for education? This book presents some of those game changers How one conceptualizes the educational experience can be a game changer Institutions such as Western Governors University, Empire State University, © 2012 Diana G Oblinger 3 Game Changers: Education and IT University of Maryland University College, Athabasca University, and University of the People began with unique ideas about how education. .. 9 Game Changers: Education and IT 7 Supply-chaining—Wal-Mart retailer to manufacturers 8 Insourcing—UPS services linked to shipping 9 In-forming—“Google-like” intelligent searches and data mining 10 “The Steroids”—wireless mobile digital communication3 As I write, popular uprisings in the Middle East are the latest example of the political and economic implications of these forces While events (and. .. Core State Standards for mathematics and English language arts and the Common Education Data Standards are creating new opportunities to help U.S educators meet the challenges of the knowledge economy Increasingly, information technology can help accelerate educational progress by providing better information about student needs and student performance to instructors, educational leaders, and policy... the power of IT to deliver educational value Beyond delivering information, IT can power recommendation engines, co-creation, and analytics and enable the unbundling and rebundling of traditional processes As Wiley and Green illustrate, openness is a philosophy, as well as a model for innovation and business Through sharing, remixing, and repurposing, value can be created and captured, whether the focus... address educational needs, they must understand the learner and design the desired experiences, taking into account the many social, technical, and intellectual interactions among students, faculty, and staff; the organization; and the infrastructure Institutions must design processes and experiences that will allow students to solve their problems and achieve their goals, as well as create long-term educational... could be transformed by education For education to do better we cannot just keep doing the same things This book is also dedicated to finding the game changers that will help us move education to the next level, whether those game changers are information technology, new models, or institutional vision Education is complex Each learner’s needs, preparation, personal circumstances, and aspirations are different... abilities to provide and continually improve the privacy safeguards required for education and the many other important areas of life where personal information is stored and analyzed in data systems The Demand for Productivity Gains in Education Some of those who deny the need for mass postsecondary education are surely worried about its cost And those who affirm the imperative for mass higher education are . InformatIon EducatIon and tEchnologIEs Edited by diana G. oblinGer G ame C hanGers Changers Game G ame C hanGers InformatIon EducatIon and tEchnologIEs Edited. oblinGer Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies © 2012 EDUCAUSE This book is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs