One thing leads to another

First Rule of Independent Scholarship

All education should be customized for the learner, according to Clayton Christensen and Michael B. Horn, the authors of Disrupting Class. One way to do that is to start with a topic you are passionately interested in and see where that leads. For me, that would be books and bookbinding. I love reading and writing, so of course, I would want to study literature and English, which could lead to linguistics and possibly other languages.

Studying the history of books would lead to ancillary knowledge of what else was happening in history. Science and agriculture contributed the materials needed to make books. Math enters the picture in figuring out the number of pages needed, the cost of publishing and determining the price. Marketing and other business topics naturally grow from the business of books.

Back to languages, which would take me to the study of anthropology, sociology, geography, religion, and art. Of course, any topic these days requires some knowledge of computers.

You get the idea. I’m convinced that this would work with any topic. As usual, “When it comes to innovations in teaching and learning, higher education seems like the last to know and the slowest to respond,” according to Randy Bass and Bret Eynon, who collaborated on a recent issue of Academic Commons devoted to new media and the technology of teaching and learning.

I see the frustration in my students who come to school to learn about accounting, say, only to discover that they have to spend two years taking general education classes before they can even look at an accounting class. How much more sense would it make for them to begin with an immersion into the field of accounting and see where that leads them. Ethics, for example, is a big issue in accounting, and that is closely related to cultural studies.

Okay, enough on this. Let me know what you think.

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Is More Money the Answer for Higher Education?

Is the answer to the crisis in higher education more money or less cost? Colleges and universities, which have a vested interest in keeping the status quo, clearly believe what they need is more money. With continuing cuts in public funding and diminishing endowments the cost of higher education has been rising at 2-3 times the inflation rate. Students routinely graduate with debts nearing $100,000 only to discover that their degrees only qualify them for entry level jobs.

The initial proposal from the new administration calls for more grants and loans for students to pay for the rapidly rising costs of a college education. Students, on the other hand, are searching for more cost effective ways of earning a degree. Enrollment at some community colleges has grown as much as 10-15% in the past year.

Savvy educators will seize the opportunity to find innovative ways to deliver education, including credit for prior learning, testing programs and ACE evaluated training. Programs like the competency-based learning at Western Governors University and open courseware at the University of the People.

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The University vs. The Universe

The university has always been a poor substitute for the universe as a learning resource.

The world’s first universities were established in the 5th century CE in various places including Constantinople, Egypt, India, China, and Persia. The University of Pennsylvania, the first university in the U.S., was founded hundreds of years later in 1740 by none other than Benjamin Franklin. They performed adequately, if not always admirably, through the industrial age. These days they aren’t doing such a good job.

As John Naisbitt pointed out twenty plus years ago in his groundbreaking research on Megatrends, “Things are changing too fast for people to specialize their education.” Therefore, the most important skill to master is learning how to learn. “Tasks are going to change, careers are going to change. If you know how to learn, you can continue to grow. If you don’t you’re going to be handicapped.”

Now that the Internet brings the universe into our homes, if we know how to learn, we no longer need huge bureaucracies to standardize learning for us. Three sites allow all of us to listen to lectures covering just about any topic we’d like to learn.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public for free.

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

This non-profit is “working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.” It vows to give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.

Launched less than two years ago, Apple's iTunes university offers college lectures on everything from Proust to particle physics to students and the public. Some universities make their lectures available to all, while others restrict access to enrolled students. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.

Podcasted lectures offer students the chance to replay difficult parts of a lecture and therefore take better notes, says Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who led the study.

As the iTunes website, explains, learning no longer happens only at a desk. Students now expect constant access to information, no matter where they are, which is exactly why more and more faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students.

The next time you have an immediate need to learn something, check out these sites and learn from the best.

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Disrupting Higher Education

Disruptive innovation, as described by Harvard professor and author Clayton Christensen in his 2003 book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, are new products and services that attract a previously unserved market because they are cheaper, simpler, smaller, and more convenient to use. Frequently, such innovations will not appeal to traditional customers because they are perceived as having inferior quality.

In last year’s Disrupting Class, Christensen, along with Michael B. Horn, applied the concept to education, suggesting that online education was the innovation that will provide the disruption to revitalize education.

While online education as it exists today, is certainly more convenient with the potential to reach hundreds of millions of people all over the world without regard to geographic location. However, colleges and universities typically charge a higher tuition rate for online courses, because of the required investment in technology. So, while online education is theoretically available to most people, the cost can be prohibitive.

Along comes the University of the People, (UoP) which promises to open the gates of higher education to anyone in the world interested in attending college because it is tuition free.

That’s right. Students pay no tuition. At its website, the university promises to revolutionize higher education by providing universal access to college studies-even in the poorest parts of the world. How is that possible? The university, which will start in April, uses the large and growing reserve of open courseware provided by an impressive variety of colleges all over the world. Students learn on their own and in online study communities led by qualified scholars. They will pay nominal application fee ($15-$50) and examination fees ($10-$100), which will be adjusted on a sliding scale based on the student’s country of origin. Initially, UoP will offer bachelor’s degrees in Business Administration and Computer Science, with more to come. Ironically, this innovation depends on traditional higher education for its curriculum, but has the possibility to destroy traditional higher education. It could happen quicker than you think.

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Use CLEPS To Save Time And Expense Of A Degree

Almost anyone who has to pay for a college degree these days is interested in finding ways to save time and money. CLEP stands for Colleg-Level Examination Program. It’s a series of 34 nationally standardized tests accepted for credit at more than 90% of US colleges and universities. Administered by the College Board (the SAT people) and offered at 1400 test centers around the country. Simply pick a test, find a study guide to help you prepare, and schedule the test at your local test center.

Cost varies, but should be less that $100 for a test, some of which will earn you as many as six college credits. A few things to remember:

1. You cannot earn credit for a topic that you have already taken a class for.

2. The national standard for passing the tests is around 51 percentile. Although some colleges require higher scores, this means that you must get just over half of the questions correct.

3. Credit will show on your transcript as credit only, with no grade, so it will not affect your GPA.

4. Always check first with your school counselor to make sure that the test you want to take will count toward your degree.

Although most colleges accept at least a few CLEPs, almost all of them limit the number of hours you can earn this way, for no good reason that I can see. Also, most college counselors will not encourage you to take CLEPs in lieu of classes, so you will need to be assertive and persistent.

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Sunday, February 15, 2009

Question Everything

Curiosity may be the primary ingredient for imagination innovation. It made Leonardo da Vinci the quintessential renaissance man. In his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael J. Gelb lists curiosità: “An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning” as the first of his seven Da Vincian principles. A later book, Innovate Like Edison, advises readers to “seek knowledge relentlessly.”

Albert Einstein famously said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” But he also warned, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Maybe dropping out of high school allowed Les Paul to pursue his curiosity and develop the electric guitar and the recording innovations of overdubbing and multitrack recording. In the documentary, Les Paul Chasing Sound, Paul recalls that when his brother flicked a light switch the light came on. When he flicked the switch he wanted to know why the light came on. He continued his search for a sound that no one had ever made before that led to his many inventions, took him to the top of the record charts in the 40s and 50s. Remember Mockingbird Hill and Vaya Con Dios with Mary Ford? Paul’s curiosity eventually took him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The DVD shows him being admired by musicians from Bing Crosby to Paul McCartney. An insatiable curiosity doesn’t retire at 65. At the age of 90, he won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.

Gelb suggests several exercises to increase your curiosity, including make a list of 100 questions that are important to you. “Do the entire list in one sitting. Write quickly, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or repeating the same question in different words.” Then go about finding some answers.

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Priced out of the Education Market?

Are colleges pricing themselves out of reach of their market? With shrinking government support and dwindling endowments, colleges and universities have had to increase already exorbitant tuition rates, making them out of the question for millions of potential students.

Since a degree remains a requirement for many desirable jobs, students are coping by flocking to lower cost community colleges. Listen to an interesting discussion of the economic effects on higher education on NPR.

Higher educational institutions are being told that they must become more entrepreneurial (see related post From Stepchild to Cinderella on 2/6/09) below. The problem is that they don’t know how. The only options proposed on most campuses are to (1) raise tuition or (2) cut expenses.

Are traditional colleges headed the way of the music industry? Time will tell. Right now, however, significant opportunities exist for any schools who can offer accredited degrees for a lower cost. Community colleges are one option. Another is for students to take advantage of alternatives such as CLEP or DANTES tests, ACE-evaluated credits for military and corporate training and credit for prior learning.

For those who are completely fed up with the education system, innumerable opportunities for learning exist on the internet. I’ll cover each of these options in future posts.

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From Stepchild to Cinderella

Continuing Education has long been viewed as the stepchild of higher education. College and University continuing education departments typically handle a huge variety of programs that includes anything outside the realm of traditional academic programs, such as:

• Non-credit courses, workshops and seminars
• Corporate training
• Professional development
• Evening and weekend classes
• Off-campus classes
• Certificate programs
• Distance learning
• Adult degree-completion programs

Even as these programs became wildly profitable, they remained an almost unacknowledged revenue stream to shore up the finances of the programs considered more “central” to the institution’s mission. Ironically, that allowed them to become the creative, entrepreneurial department within some pretty hidebound schools.

In these times of rising tuition costs, cutbacks in government support, and decreasing confidence in a degree as a job guarantee, many public colleges are turning for help to their continuing education departments. “We have to address the fact that universities have to get very serious about generating revenue,” said Bernadette Tiernan, director of continuing and professional education at William Paterson University in Wayne, N.J. “We’re more reactive to market forces.” Being open to shifting market trends is a whole new idea to colleges which have long refused to accept that they are in the business of education.

One advantage is that “Continuing education is a “12-month operation,” Tiernan said, “without the down cycles in traditional academia.”

Rutgers University now has 50,000 students enrolled in noncredit programming statewide, said Ray Caprio, vice president for continuous education and outreach. That equals the total number of students enrolled at the University’s three campuses. “The overall strategy is that we all must become more entrepreneurial,” he said.

It should be interesting to see how they accomplish that trick. Maybe the stepchild will turn into Cinderella. I’m looking for innovative programs to feature here, so let me know about any you know of.

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The Return of the Liberal Arts Degree

I’m not a big fan of Fox News. Calling yourself fair and balanced doesn’t make it so. I know this because I’m a good critical thinker, and my critical thinking skills come largely from my liberal arts background. In the 30 years since I earned my degree in sociology from the University of Colorado at Denver, the liberal arts have fallen more and more out of fashion, surpassed by the ubiquitous business major.

So I was more than a little surprised, when channel surfing during the Super Bowl, to find erstwhile Republican presidential candidate turned Fox talk show host Mike Huckabee holding forth on the advantages of a liberal arts degree. A college with an undecided major asked his advice on choosing a major. Go with liberal arts, he said, not to be confused with liberal politics. The more general degree offers exposure to different fields and arms the student with the capacity for adaptability and ability to retrain.

Steven Rothberg, founder and president of CollegeRecruiter.com, agrees. When interviewed by Fortune magazine, he explained, "Most employers look for candidates who are bright, well-rounded, and have some practical experience under their belts." A liberal-arts degree, plus good communications and computer skills, signal to recruiters that you'll be adaptable to a wide range of jobs.

Strong communications skills are the single most important attribute a candidate can have – as well as the one most lacking among job applicants, according to a poll of hiring managers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

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Call to Reform Schools to Teach Innovation

Governor Ted Strickland of Ohio called for radical transformation of the school system in his State of the State address last week. "It is absolutely clear to me that simply tinkering with centuries-old education practices will not prepare Ohio's children for success in college, in the workplace or in life,"

He also said he wants state education standards to be reworked to reflect modern skills such as innovation, creativity, problem-solving and media literacy. “And you know, good ideas shouldn't be something we stumble on accidentally.” That's why his plan creates a Center for Creativity and Innovation within the Ohio Department of Education. The Center will monitor research and results from across the country and across the world to keep Ohio schools and Ohio educators informed of new advances.

Among other things, his plan calls for mandatory kindergarten, lengthening the school year by 20 days and a four-year residency program for teachers.

I just finished reading chapter two of Dr. Ken Robinson’s book, The Element, in which he presents a compelling argument that the one thing our schools do best is stifle creativity and innovation. You can hear a very entertaining twenty-minute speech on his ideas at TED.

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From Phone to Study Machine

Sometimes it seems as if today’s students put more energy into figuring out how to cheat than any other school topic. They use their phones to text the answers to one another or to take pictures of the test for friends in later classes. They record the answers on an iPod so the teacher will think they are innocently listening to music during a test. They post instructional videos on YouTube to teach others how to cheat. They download pre-written papers from the internet. As soon as schools figure out how to stop them from using one method, they invent another. Ironically, if they would spend that much time studying, they wouldn’t need to cheat.

Finally, publishers are taking a cue from students and marketing study guides to use on iPhones and iPods. Kaplan SAT Flashcubes is the perfect on-the-go study guide to help students prepare for the Verbal section of the SAT exam. Kaplan's Medical Terms for Nurses is designed to help nursing students learn important terms needed in both the workplace and for licensure exams.

Kaplan has more apps in the works, and other publishers are offering similar study guides to the potentially massive market of high school and college students. The guides are available at the iTunes store.

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Five Ways to Squeeze as Much Learning as Possible from your Job

One of the benefits people look for from their jobs is the opportunity to learn and grow. Here are five ways to take advantage of the resources available:

1. Tuition Reimbursement. This is a huge benefit because education is something you don’t lose when the job ends. Even if you already have the degree(s) you want, find individual courses or certificate programs that will help in your career. Technology and innovation are moving so quickly now that there is always something new to learn. Online classes make sure that anything you want to learn is available wherever you are.

2. Corporate training. Take advantage of all the corporate training available. Make sure to document everything and add it to your resume or portfolio.

3. Informal on-the-job training. Most learning occurs casually, outside the classroom. Make it a point to learn whatever you can about the industry/company/department through discussions with your colleagues. Cross training can also be valuable and give you more flexibility for your next job.

4. Professional organizations. Join and participate in at least one professional organization related to your job, especially if the company pays for your membership. This gives you additional learning or certification opportunities and the chance to get to know people in your field from other companies—always a plus when job hunting.

5. Magazines, books, software. Use every resource available to enhance your skills. Even if you don’t have to know Visio (or whatever) in your current job, learn how to use it. The more you know, the more valuable you are to your employer and the more you have going for you in the job hunt.

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Preparing for a Second Career

During his 36-year career in the Denver television news business, Ernie Bjorkman saw the business change and grow through several technological shifts. Last year, with the merger of his station with another local news outlet, he saw his job disappear. Bjorkman advises other baby boomers, “Don’t be comfortable after 45.” Companies in all industries seem more eager than ever to trade in older employees for younger, cheaper workers.

Now 57, Bjorkman had planned ahead because he knew that the job wouldn’t last forever. He had always loved animals, but wasn’t interested in signing up for eight years of veterinary school. Instead, he enrolled in a two-year vet tech program at the Community College of Denver. By the time he was laid off of his news anchor job, he was finishing the training for his second career.

His annual salary will drop from $250,000 to about $30,000. "We'll start living the simple life again,” he says. He and his wife Susan will sell both their Denver condo and mountain home and plan to buy a small ranch in the San Luis Valley where he will open an emergency animal clinic.

Bjorkman feels blessed that he had the opportunity to meet the pope and presidents and ride in Air Force One. But he’s looking forward to the future. “You’ve got to have a plan.” You can watch his story as it was reported last week on ABC News 20/20.

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The Learning Business

Jonathan Fields was “the kid with the lemonade stand in 6th-grade, the landscaping business in high-school and the mobile-DJ business in college.”

He went on to be a securities and hedge-fund lawyer before ditching the law to open a yoga studio. That led him to learn about copywriting to promote the business. Did he go back to school to study writing? Nope. He went online and searched for information on copywriting. He found the websites and blogs of several top copywriters, red everything he could find and took notes. He found samples of their work and analyzed it.

Next, he bought and read all the books that his virtual mentors mentioned. Finally, he felt the need for more concentrated and personal information and attended a three-day seminar. “I am not someone who likes to surrender to the notion that I need help,” He explained in his book, Career Renegade. “I’ve always pretty much mastered whatever I needed to master on my own. This experience, though, opened my eyes both to the importance of finding a mentor, seeking out live attention, and copping to the fact that I don’t know everything.”

This leads me to two of my favorite quotes about learning:

I’m not sure who said “All learning is self-taught,” but I agree with the sentiment. On the other hand, I also agree with Harvey Mackay that "If everything a (person) learns over a thirty-year career is self-taught, you can bet some of it is dead wrong." Maybe the best learning comes from maintaining the tension between those two points of view.

That said, I have just finished reading Career Renegade, the best, most information-packed book on work that I’ve read in many years. I plan to use it as a workbook to grow my own renegade career.

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A Bachelor’s Degree: America’s Most Overrated Product?

Is college really worth it? That’s the question the John Stossel ABC News 20/20 asked in a provocative story last Friday. With the cost of college rising faster than inflation, Stossel wonders if a bachelor’s degree is the big lie.

The piece featured several students whose degrees saddled them with student loan debts of up to $125,000 and who ended up in entry-level jobs they could have gotten right out of high school. They understandably think "College was a rip-off.”

"You're led down this path of needing to go to college," he continued. "The college diploma is the new high school diploma."

Personal finance guru Suze Orman, who holds a BA in social work from the University of Illinois, says college is not for everyone. Those who are not the best students may be better off earning marketable skills at a community college or technical school.

Dr. Marty Nemko, an education consultant and career counselor, explains that the students who do well in college are already more likely to be successful than those who don't.

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree that college is not for everybody, but I am very glad I have a degree. On the other hand, it took me 12 years to earn my degree, partly because I refused to go into debt for it. Most of my students at the University of Phoenix are pursuing their degrees because they know or believe that they cannot go further in their careers without a degree. The lucky ones work for companies that pay their tuition.

While I know that a degree is the ticket required to enter certain professions, I also know that it is not a guarantee of success. And plenty of people who didn’t go to college do just fine. Maybe my most radical opinion is that a bachelor’s degree has intrinsic value and was never meant to provide job training.

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Kaplan University A Different School Of Thought

“I stand in front of you today to apologize.” The speaker, a college professor continues, “The system has failed you. I have failed you. I have failed to help you share your talent with the world when the world needs talent more than ever. Yet it’s being wasted every day by an educational system steeped in tradition and old ideas.”

This is one of six provocative television ads currently being run by Kaplan University, a subsidiary of the Washington Post Corporation. If I were looking for a degree program, this ad would make me look.

According to the website, Kaplan is using technology to rewrite the rules of education, creating innovative programs “to analyze how you learn best, so we can teach you better.” This is done by a free learning assessment which prospective students complete at the same time they request program information.

Kaplan is hardly alone in offering online degree programs. One would be hard-pressed these days to find a college or university that doesn’t offer at least a few programs online. Anyone who thinks online learning is the wave of the future has clearly not been paying attention for the past 10-15 years.

Is Kaplan really a different kind of university, as the ad claims? Hard to tell, but they are definitely saying all the right things.

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Persistence Pays

Bruce Johnson, the inventor of BreatheRight nasal strips describes in a commercial how he tried everything he could think of to open up his nasal passages and allow him to get a good night’s sleep. Among other materials, he tried padded paperclips and straws fitted inside his nostrils. Finally it dawned on him that he needed something to apply to the outside of his nose and BreatheRight strips were born.

Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy (it never is). First, he had to create a prototype and then make the rounds trying to sell it. Even after it finally sold to CNS, it took two more years to hit the shelves. The company sent samples to NFL trainers, and when it started showing up on football players, it really took off.

Johnson’s story illustrates several principles of innovation. First, Johnson is an engineer, and he spent time and effort trying to solve a problem he shared with millions of others. When his first ideas didn’t work, he didn’t give up; he persisted, trying different things until he finally found the solution. Being laughed out of a number of companies didn’t stop him either.

These are qualities I don’t see enough in my students. Too many of them expect to hit a home run their first time at bat. If they don’t earn an A on the first assignment, they get mad or give up. They blame me or the textbook or the university or anybody they can come up with—except themselves.

The students I like the most are the ones who utilize my feedback to focus their studies and try harder the next time. They accept responsibility for their own learning and seem determined to wring every bit of learning possible out of their education. God bless ‘em.

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