My A.T. Still University Experience

Bloggers and Press Freedom

2009-11-19T20:12:00Z

“The casual conversational tone of a blog is what makes it particularly dangerous.” — Daniel B. Beaulieu

Recently I came to the defense of Kareem Amer, an Egyptian blogger who has been imprisoned in his native country for the last two and half years supposedly for having defamed Islam, but in reality for having insulted Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak. Fair is fair, however, and in my opinion a recent news event shows that bloggers are not always in the right.

Down in Ave Maria, Florida, not far from Naples on the Gulf Coast, there's a new Catholic institution called Ave Maria University that was founded by Tom Monaghan, the billionaire who founded Domino's Pizza. As the name suggests, Monaghan and his partners didn't just found the university, but also the town around it, on a large tract of previously undeveloped land deeded to them by Collier County, Florida.

The founders had a very specific vision about what they wanted in founding the university, specifically an institution that was completely faithful to conservative Catholic teachings. Their intention was to build a community there that supported those ideals, and they did so in an empty piece of land that displaced no one.

Now, knowing that much is enough for me to know for certain that Ave Maria, Florida is not the place for me. They own the property and they want to use it in a way that doesn't interest me. Live and let live. But others don't necessarily see it that way. Recently Ave Maria University had to enlist the help of the county Sheriff's department to bar a critical blogger name Marielena Montesino de Stuart from their campus.

The bit in that article that sort of got me was when after having been banned from campus she issued a statement saying, in part, “This is another way in which the university’s administration silences public opinion, which is a violation of our constitutional rights.” Now, I've read the constitution, and it's very clear on freedom of speech and of the press (if one considers bloggers to be journalists, which I guardedly do). Nowhere have I see it say that it's okay to go anywhere you want, even if the property owners don't want you there, nor to consider yourself invited to any event, even one that's billed as a press conference. So even though personally the Ave Maria folks strike me as being kind of out there, I'm with them on this issue — they have the right to stick to themselves and keep those whose mission is to criticize them off of their property. In fact, I'm a little irritated with Ms. De Stuart because when someone drops a bomb like “constitutional rights” card when it doesn't apply, it just weakens it for when real censorship rears its ugly head.

Image courtesy of Brett Lider

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Is Harvard Extension School Really Harvard?

2009-11-18T16:35:00Z

“I won't say there aren't any Harvard graduates who have never asserted a superior attitude. But they have done so to our great embarrassment and in no way represent the Harvard I know.” — Derek Bok, President Emeritus of Harvard University

For many years I've seen people mention the Harvard Extension School as a possible way for eLearners and others to earn a Harvard degree at a reasonable price. HES is one of thirteen schools that make up Harvard University, along with Harvard College (the campus-based school for undergraduates), Harvard Law, Harvard Business School, Harvard Medical, and others. HES offers evening and online courses that apply to certificate programs, as well as Associate's, Bachelor's, and Master's degree programs.

The primary difference between HES and Harvard University's other twelve schools is that anyone who meets basic eligibility criteria is welcome to enroll in HES courses, and if one does well enough in those courses, to apply them to a degree. Unfortunately for eLearners, degree programs from HES require at least one semester in residence taking courses on campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Still, for those who live in the Boston area, or who might conceivably live there for a few months, it's an enticing possibility.

Now, over on the forum, the subject of HES has come up again. This time, though, someone has referred to an opinion piece by an IT consultant named Don Burleson on HES and its relationship to Harvard University. Now, I've seen some whoppers in my time, but I have to say that this piece ranks as one of the most poorly-informed screeds I've ever read about higher education. Basically, Mr. Burleson believes that people who earn degrees from HES have not only not earned degrees from the "real" Harvard, but are liars and frauds for saying that they have!

As pretentious as this shows this fellow to be, before we summarily dismiss him as a crank, why not get it from the horse's mouth and see what Harvard University itself has to say? We can start with the About Us page on the HES site, which offers this:

As Harvard University's primary resource for continuing education for a century, Harvard Extension School offers an open and comprehensive academic curriculum, with courses and programs to meet the interests and needs of a diverse public. Explore a subject in depth. Gain advanced training for a career change. Earn specialized field credentials. Whether you take a course or work toward a degree, we have options for you.¹

That's clear and concise, but since that's merely on the HES part of Harvard University's web site, maybe it's just part of the vast conspiracy of fraud that has Mr. Burleson so upset. Fortunately, for those who want more, there was also a lengthy article just three weeks ago in the Harvard Gazette celebrating the centennial of HES. Since the Gazette is an official university publication, it's undeniable that HES is not only part of Harvard University, but an integral part of which they have long been very proud indeed.

The underlying issue here is that some people, for whatever reason, just can't accept the idea that a program that is open access could possible also be rigorous. And that's nonsense. It is the coursework, assignments, and examinations that determine whether a course or program is rigorous. In no way does it diminish that rigor just because a school's policy is to let anyone who want to find out if they can handle that course or program give it the old college try.

So basically, when it comes to whether a degree from Harvard Extension School is really one from the "real" Harvard, we have two choices. Either we can believe an elitist curmudgeon who, as it turns out, never even went to Harvard, or we can believe Harvard University itself. I don't know about you, but that's the easiest thing I've had to decide all day.

Next up, bloggers and freedom of the press.

Photo of John Harvard statue courtesy of Tim Sackton

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Open Educational Resources and Open Learning Management Systems

2009-11-17T20:10:00Z

“Alternatively, let this be a call to arms to develop [open educational resources] broad enough and deep enough to make situations like this moot in the future.” — CWE

So for the last few days I've been talking about the present and possible future of Learning Management Systems (LMS), those online classroom systems with which eLearners quickly become very familiar. And before that I touched on the reasons why open educational resources (OER) are useful, not just because people don't have to pay to use them, but because they can be adapted by anyone for any purpose without payment or permission.

The need now is to find better ways to fit all the pieces together. My friend Wayne Mackintosh, the founder of WikiEducator, remarked recently, “Education is an act of sharing knowledge freely. So where are all the free education materials that we can adapt, modify and reuse without restriction? Why has humanity taken so long in achieving a free knowledge base for us to share for the common good of education and society? Why are the majority of our global population under served when it comes to education?”

Fortunately this is happening. For some time now there have been efforts to build free educational resources, but now there is effort not just in developing content, but also in making it easier for fellow educators to use. I think one of the best ways to facilitate this, and it's something we're not doing that well yet, would be to put together packages of free educational content that fit seamlessly into Learning Managment Systems. I'm especially referring to Moodle, as it's the dominant open source LMS.

This isn't an original idea. Pearson, the academic publishing giant, bought an LMS called eCollege, and their strategy for marketing it seems to include making it very easy to drop in pieces of Pearson's vast supply of content. Indeed, many textbook publishers have related content that they make available to instructors who can then drop it effortlessly right into their online courses. In this way they make both their own textbooks and their LMS more attractive, so that the odds improve that either or both of those resources will be adopted.

Those of us producing open educational resources should get better that this. For example, MIT gets a lot of attention for its impressive OpenCourseWare project. It's possible to access materials from nearly two thousand courses on their site. Wow! But it's one thing to make lots of content available, and another to make it easy for others to adapt to specific use. They do tend to make their courses available in a format that's easy to import into an LMS. But just imagine if everyone out there producing free content did the same thing, so that educators who were willing to try Moodle, or to try OERs, would know that each would work well with the other. By packaging that content in such a way, its value would be that much greater, and the appeal of the overall system would be multiplied.

I do realize that there are some who are doing this, like MIT. Sites like MoodleShare offer course archives that can be used as is. But we need more of this — a lot more! The better that content people and delivery people cooperate, the sooner we can fulfill the dream of a complete set of free curricula that can be used the world over.

Next up, is Harvard Extension School really Harvard?

Image courtesy of geishaboy500

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Will Google Erase Blackboard?

2009-11-17T01:55:00Z

“A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.” — Lars Rasmussen, Lead Developer on Google Wave

Yesterday I gave a reasonably factual, if admittedly opinionated, rundown of different Learning Management Systems (LMS). I've used most of them in one capacity or another, and Blackboard the biggest, with the problems that suggests, a few other commercial competitors are out there, the biggest left probably being Pearson eCollege, and there are a few open source alternatives, the most important of which is Moodle, which also happens to be my favorite.

Usually it's not a great idea to make predictions. If you do, then when you turn out to be spectacularly wrong there's evidence out there of what a terrible prognosticator you are. But this case there's something that I've been predicting for at least a year now, and that is that sooner or later, Google will be entering the fray of the LMS marketplace.

The reason I think they will is that they've made a very strong push to become integrated within as many schools IT infrastructures as possible. They do this by offering schools the ability to connect students accounts seamlessly with Google's email and applications services, Gmail and Google Docs. Especially when it comes to email, this is an enormous burden that they're lifting off of the backs of schools' IT departments. By doing this, Google accomplishes a number of things. They get students hooked on Google's email, one they're likely to keep using even after they graduate. They earn considerable goodwill from school IT departments. And they conveniently position themselves as already a friendly and reliable part of the schools IT plan, so that when they do release their LMS, schools are much more likely to feel confident about switching to it.

Interestingly, their latest offering, Google Wave, is already being called a possible LMS by some, such as Jeff Young from the Chronicle of Higher Education. This new service includes a variety of different ways to communicate, to store information, and to control access that might make it useful as an online classroom. But it doesn't include the sort of student records infrastructure that would be necessary for most schools to consider it as a replacement for mature systems like Moodle or Blackboard.

So time will tell whether Google really gets into the LMS market. Even if they don't, however, Google Wave has a plugin architecture that supports third party expansion of its capabilities. Perhaps if Google doesn't move fast enough to build an LMS, someone else will use their own service to do it for them. Stranger things have happened!

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Should Universities Consider Erasing Blackboard?

2009-11-15T16:00:00Z

“Martin Dougiamas is the Linus Torvalds of the LMS world and his software is the Linux of this software.” — Brent Simpson

Recently Ashford University announced that it's ditching Blackboard, the most commonly used system for delivering online courses. Called a Learning Management System, or LMS, these sorts of systems are the ones you as an online student log into and through which you do you class discussion and similar activities.

Blackboard has dominated for quite a while, especially considering that the industry isn't all that old. A few years ago they shored up their dominance by buying their largest competitor, WebCT. Earlier this year they announced they were repeating this move by buying yet another competitor, called Angel Learning.

Their rapid growth hasn't been effortless. Along the way their technical support has earned the scorn of many Blackboard administrators. And their system doesn't come cheaply. Schools that use the more comprehensive systems that Blackboard offers will easily pay over one hundred thousand dollars per year in licensing fees. Wow!

Even with their healthy appetite to gobble up their competitors, however, they are far from the only LMS available. Ashford is moving to a system that was called eCollege, which has since has been bought up by academic publishing behemoth Pearson. There have also been a number of open source systems developed, which means systems that are free for anyone to use, copy, modify, and adapt to meet their own specific need. The two most often cited open source alternatives are Sakai, which was developed by a consortium of universities, and (by far the more often used) Moodle, an independent project which was founded by Martin Dougiamas as part of his doctoral research.

I'm familiar with most of these different systems. I was a Blackboard administrator for nearly three years, and while it has a useful array of features, I can testify as to the difficulty one can have with their technical support. Before that I used to train new online students how to use eCollege, and thought it pretty well designed, especially the expanding/collapsing discussion board feature — I can see why Ashford liked it, and I hope Pearson doesn't mess it up. As a student at A.T. Still University, I've used WebCT, although by the time I got to try it it had already been melding with Blackboard for some time.

And then there's Moodle. This one is my favorite for many reasons. Obviously, I appreciate that it's open source, and there aren't ridiculous fees involved just to get one's hands on it. I like the design of its courses, where the main page of a course can be laid out like a clickable syllabus, and students never have to root around to figure out what they're supposed to be doing in any given week. I like that it's easy to develop and teach courses in it, which I've done as an adjunct faculty member for LCOOCC. And I especially like that there's a whole ecology of third party support and consulting providers that have grown up around it.

You see, a lot of times one of the objections raised about open source software is that there's no central company that offers support for it. I like to think that in Moodle's case this is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Whereas with Blackboard one is stuck with them whether they bother to respond to pleas for support or not, with Moodle, if your provider is unresponsive you can replace them with another. If for no other reason, this should give university IT departments cause to take a look at ditching someone who charges six figures but often can't be troubled to pick up the phone.

Next up, part two, where I speculate whether everything I just said in this post might be swept away by a wave from a certain company whose name rhymes with MacDougall.

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