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My Solstice Epistle – Personal

Written by terrya

A break from tradition and sending this annual post publicly this year.

Dec. 2013

Dear Friends, Colleagues and Family

Fast away another year has passed and it is time to recollect and share our lives with those we see too little of!  Thus the Annual Christmas/Solstice Epistle below:

The year 2013 began with reflective time as we mourned the passing of my Mother and Grandmother Ethel. In many ways she was “ready to go” but after she died,  I realized I may not have been ready to let her go. In any case, life goes on, but it was a different Christmas and New Years without her.

My first trip of the year  was to do a keynote at a Thailand E-Learning Conference in Bangkok that turned to be somewhat eventful. The weeks before, Sue and I had attended a study on Buddhism at our Unitarian Congregation and learned that the First Noble Truth was that all life is suffering. Being a relatively healthy, happy, overconfident, middle (barely) aged guy, I had to put my hand up and say that I didn’t really think of my life as all suffering. A week later in Northern Thailand I was struck down with an acute gastritis attack and spent 2.5 days in a hotel room watching Thai television and suffering!!

I survived the winter with a bit of skiing, a few good books, a bit of music (I’m picking away at the hammer dulcimer lately) and the usual teaching, marking and grad student advising. Sue continues to work at her two counseling positions. She is a partner in the Community Counseling Centre and sees a diverse set of clients with a host of concerns and issues. Her initial focus on suicide issues has expanded with her practice to include couples, family and individual counseling. She also travels to Leduc once a week for work with Karuni a variety of clients at a counseling service run by a friend.

Solanna has remained in Vancouver and is now working at The BC Centre of Excellence in HIV/Aides research and is a qualitative research working on assessing a variety of strategies for AIDES control and prevention. Her partner Andres, successfully completed a Web Design program at BCIT and has been developing web sites for a variety of clients.  His latest was a 3 month contract to develop a Spanish web site for the World Bank and he is now in Washington DC fulfilling that contract.  Both Solanna and Andres will be home for the holiday so we look forward to hearing of their adventures in the US capital.

Leif continues to pursue his degree in Philosophy and Psychology at Grant McEwen University.  He spent a good summer tree planting in Central BC and then rented a small apartment in an historic apartment building in Rossdale, not far from our home.

Our long term tenant Dwight has moved out to his own apartment after 12 years with us, and we are relieved to say that he seems to be doing OK on his own. So, the Anderson nest is empty and we are enjoying the freedom associated with that and have a spare bedroom.

Our big event from the past year was to accept an offer to be a visiting professor for two months at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona Spain. Barcelona is a truly amazing City and we fell in love with the architecture (especially the Sagrada Familia Basilica), the people, the food and the climate. We had our first taste of high-rise living, on the 20th floor of an apartment overlooking the city and the harbour. My work tasks at UOC included giving 5 talks, consulting with a variety of masters, PhD and project teams and leading an evaluation team for their E-Learn Centre. This was our longest time away from Canada and it was a great change and opportunity for both touristing and getting to know our Catalonian colleagues and their families.  Despite our challenges with the Spanish Internet servers, and with lots of help from our Catalonian friends, Sue was also able to maintain contact with 7 of her clients using telephone and Skype.

The summer found us for 10 great days with Susan’s Father at his cabin near Blind River, Ont.  He is well and we connected with Susan’s brothers.  We had a great drive back home across the prairies. However, WARNING don’t get home with 1 Audio CD left (of 10 in the series) in a such a gripping novel, that you can’t now bother to find out the ending.

My summer continued with a week bare-boating a 30 Catalonia sailboat out of Nanimo and except for the Captain (me) running us aground briefly it was a great trip.  Finally, all four of the Anderson Bros and their partners rendezvoused in Canmore for a week of bicycle riding, hikes, hot tubs, laughs and talks. I was relieved to actually try an extended bike trip (well 30 kms. anyways) and find it was fun, and not too taxing. Of course, I didn’t try to pass my younger brothers!

This Fall found us back at work, busy with Westwood Unitarian Church activities (Sue is on the Board and I edit the newsletter). I was also back on the keynote circuit with visits in Mexico, Costa Rica, China, Germany and Spain.

Which brings us back to preparations for the coming festivities.

We hope this Season is special for you and your families and that you find the peace, the quiet and the rest of many warm winter evenings.

All the best!

Terry

Personal

The Man who Invented Distance Education

Written by terrya
5 Comments
The Man who Invented Distance Education

Although it is true that “success has many parents, while failure is an orphan”, I didn’t really think I would have a chance to meet the very person who first coined the term “distance education”.  The term “distance education” has been in wide-spread use for over 30 years as made official when the International Council for Correspondence Education changed its name to International council for Distance Education in 1982. And for 10 years, I wore the moniker as the Canada Research Chair in Distance Education.

This afternoon  during my visit with Olaf Zawacki-Richter at Oldenburg University, Germany (and accompanied by old friends and DE gurus Ulrich Bernath and Thomas Hulsmann), we took a drive to visit Otto Peters, the Founding Rector (President) of the Fern University in Hagen.  We zoomed down the autobahn – can’t quite get used to no speed limits and soon arrived at Hagan, a former coal mining city in north central Germany. Otto is now 87 years old and graciously invited us to his home where his wife shared  apple cake and we enjoyed a bottle of wine.

After this, Otto insisted on taking us to his favorite Italian restaurant (where the picture below was taken). After an excellent meal, and yes more wine. Otto recounted memories of the the establishment  of the Fern University- Germany’s distance university.

Otto noted that in the sixties German universities were hesitantly ready to reform higher education by establishing some forms of correspondence education. Plans for this purpose were devised by two Government committees which were assisted and coordinated by the Deutsches Institut für Fernstudienforschung at the University of Tübingen. At that time Otto was a member of this Institute. He was charged to present some of these German plans at a conference initiated by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. When preparing the necessary conference papers it was awkward to him to have to translate the German term “Fernstudium” which applies to higher education only and is funded by the state, into “correspondence education” which invokes an association with commercial correspondence schools which quite often were in bad renown because of commercial misuse or even criminal practices. In no way should the new form of teaching at German universities compared with them. What did he do? He simply translated the German “Fernstudien” literally into English and called the new kind of teaching and learning “distance education”.

At that time Professor Norman MacKenzie, who had been a member of the Open University Planning Board, visited this Tübingen institute. Otto took a chance and asked him what he would think about the newly invented term “distance education”. His answer was definite: “This is not English at all – in any way!”  How can you educate distance??  Otto disregarded his expert objection and used the new term consequently in the conference papers. The Council of Europe had invited experts from twelve countries. All of them heard and understood the new term for the first time. And they carried it home in their conference papers. Thus the term became internationally known and was adopted. More and more people used it and finally it became current and even popular.  At the 1982 conference in about Otto’s efforts recommended that the name of the International Council of Correspondence Education (ICCE) should be changed into International the International Council of Distance Education (ICDE). A majority of the participants agreed and voted for this change. In this way the new term was finally adopted universally and even globally used.

Otto Peters and me

Otto Peters and myself enjoying the moment in Hagan, Germany

Now, you may think that a visit to a 87 year old would be a nice and friendly social occasion, but you may not know Otto Peters.  After the usual pleasantries and reminiscences of the one time we had met previously, he pulled out two large cards on which he had written questions about a paper I had written a few years ago and a few more from the video recording of a keynote speech I had presented in Sweden last year. He was not easily put off by glib answers and soon I was thinking about skyping my colleague  George Siemens for reinforcement when the talk turned to Connectivism.

Otto also penned a very nice inscription in the copy of his latest book, published this year – Against the Tide: Critics of Digitalism, which contains Otto’s interpretations of the writings of 20 “warners, sceptics, scaremongers and apocalypticists” concerned with the current rush to all things digital.  I can’t say I agree with all or even most of these critics, but thier ideas are important and need to be taken critically and seriously.

I only  hope that I will be able to think and digest complex ideas as well as Otto, when I am 85! Right now as the Beatles aptly noted “When I’m 64” seems daunting enough.

Against the Tide  is available for free download.

 

Distance Education

All MOOCs don't work for all students. Are you surprised?

Written by terrya

Both the commercial and the unpaid online blog pundits have been having an armchair quarterback’s field day over MOOC poster boy Sebastin Thrun’s confession that his Udacity MOOC platform doesn’t work.  None of this outcry from the “I told you so” critics is more biting (nor more witty) then the critique by Slate columnist Rebecca Shuman.

Shuman aptly blames Thrun, for blaming the students – they have personal problems, they don’t have access to multiple tablets and they are not Ivy League rich kids – suggesting that the MOOC depends on students who don’t really need them and who can learn under any conditions – as evidenced by their succeeding in crowded lecture halls their whole post secondary career.

But I don’t equate Udacity’s supposed failure with “ordinary” struggling students is evidence for the failure of online learning and Shuman’s contention  that MOOCs can now be dismissed as “neoliberal wet dreams”.  Shuman goes on to claim that distance education (at least in the form of correspondence courses) tells only a sorry tale of failure and that it has “never worked”. She may have trouble convincing the million plus students at the Open University of China, Anadola University in Turkey or Indira Gandhi National Open University in India that their education (largely print based ‘correspondence’) doesn’t and has never worked. Truman seems to argue that it is only elite students who can succeed at MOOCs, – discounting the 50+ years of research showing that distance education (including its latest instantiation in online formats) does work for many students- including the second chance, and poverty stricken.  No form of education works for all students -including the ‘tiny, for-credit, in-person seminar”. Doesn’t everyone know of students from campus based schools that have failed to complete their program? Haven’t you ever dropped a course – I certainly have!

But perhaps most appalling is the staggering debt load, the wasted time and energy of both students and teachers and the coddling and cover up of poor teaching that marks much of campus based education today.  That model is as badly broken and just as expensive as MOOCs driverless car !Read More

Distance Education, MOOCs, My Work, OERs

Accreditation – for Learning Accomplishment or for Presence and Persistence?

Written by terrya

Offering degrees and certificates is the currency of higher education. Degree and certificates are very highly valued by students, parents, employers and postsecondary institutions. Despite occasional challenges to the authenticity of this form of learning recognition, attaining this final parchment is seen by both institutions and students as the culminating and arguably the only important manifestation of accomplishment, after years of study in higher education.  The problem is that learning itself, much less wisdom, is not measured very well by these large scale certificates of generalized accomplishment.

One concern is that the degree as a unit of accreditation is much too large- does a four year BA in economics reflect the same amount of learning as a three year BA in classics? Does a BA obtained at a distance equate to the same learning as a BA delivered on a campus? These are very challenging questions to answer. Institutions are clear to set the number of courses required, the degree of specialization and the minimal grade scores for a degree, but these are, at best, very rough indicators of learning.

Efforts by the Mozilla Foundation to support institutional awarding of much smaller credentials (known as badges) certainly addresses part of the problem. The creation of a badge-full portfolio that details a student’s individual skills and knowledge accomplishments potentially provides a much more articulate and public record of accomplishment than a degree. However, these have (to date) been only sporadically adopted by higher education institutions despite student interest (see Santos, C., Almeida, S., Pedro, L., Aresta, M., & Koch-Grunberg, T. (2013).

The credential crisis has been exacerbated by the arrival of vast numbers of open educational resources (OERs) and more recently by Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) which provide a host of opportunities for learning- but to date only very limited opportunity for credentialing and public acknowledgement of that learning.  MOOCs and OERs allow learners to participate in learning, either alone or in groups, from teachers and institutions around the globe.  After watching an excellent Ted Talk, brushing up on your statistics skills by reviewing a Khan Academy video or enrolling in a 10 week MOOC, there is little doubt that learning can occur. But measuring and accrediting that learning is today, all but impossible. A few pioneering institutions are developing “challenge for credit” or credentialing examinations, but for most institutions this alternate (and potentially competitive) form of accreditation strikes too near to the heart of the current business model for comfortable adoption.

The OERu (http://wikieducator.org/OER_university/), a non profit collaboration of over 35 public universities, colleges and networks from around the globe is attempting to develop a better or at least an alternative model for teaching and credentialing.  Each of the collaborating partners commits to providing a small number of courses, for free and independent study on the open net. Students are free to select and study any of these courses and if they choose to do so, they may apply to the delivering institution to write an examination or to do other work demonstrating accomplishment and in return they receive full course credit for that accomplishment. The content is available free of charge and efforts are made to allow for and encourage students to work cooperatively to locate and help each learn.  The credential process requires examiner time and institutional effort to assess and to register this learning- thus the OERu partners can charge whatever fee for this service that they require. To date, the Open University of Catalonia is the only Spanish institution to join the OERu.

It is yet too early to measure how well this free learning opportunity, but paid for accreditation will be accepted- by students and employers and likely the most challenging, by postsecondary institutions themselves. But it is clear that we need credentials that are meaningful, that reflect real learning accomplishments, and that can be obtained at affordable cost by all students and life-long learners on our globe.

Distance Education, My Work, OERs, PLEs,

Online 3 Minute Thesis Contest at Athabasca

Written by terrya

I’m intrigued by this “speed dating” approach for disseminating and promoting thesis research. A thesis is a LOT of work, and results are usually buried in 150+ page tomes – thus the need for new scholars to be able to present their work succinctly and efficiently.  The 3 minute thesis (originally developed at University of Queensland Australia) seemed like an ideal format for developing communications skills and confidence and be fun for both contestants and the audience.  Other 3 minute thesis contests have been held F2F, however, Athabasca graduate students are located around the globe (literally) and so we needed to use a distributed platform to host the event. Of course, the organization of the event also had to be easy and inexpensive so as to fit into my busy schedule and budget as well.

In this post I detail how this, to my knowledge, world’s first online 3 minute thesis contest worked, with a hope that it inspires similar contests.Read More

Distance Education, My Work, Open Scholarship

Is Online Learning Cheaper?

Written by terrya
1 Comment

My friend Tom Carey and David Trick have complied an excellent summary report on costs and benefits of online education, with context and recommendations for the Ontario public higher education system in mind.

The report was described by Tom as  ” 1/3 research report, 1/3 a teachable moment for faculty and academic leaders, and 1/3 a call to collective action”  I think it strikes near the bull’s eye on all three targets.

The report: Carey, T., & Trick, D. (2013). How Online Learning Affects Productivity, Cost and Quality in Higher Education: An Environmental Scan and Review of the Literature. Toronto: Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario.  http://www.heqco.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/How_Online_Learning_Affects_Productivity-ENG.pdf 

Covers the recent reviews and meta analysis on both costs and effectiveness of online teaching and online assessment. As expected, it continued the persistent whine for more empirical data.  We really don’t have even a fraction of the research funding enjoyed by medical and drug communities and thus educational studies are too limited, too few and often flawed.  But nonetheless the data continues to show the “no significant difference” results overall. The report  highlights that online learning does not work equally well with all types of content and learners (what mode does?) and notes that it is especially useful for highly motivated students. Those with educational disadvantages and heavy extra time and family commitments may well do better in teacher paced and supported F2F contexts.

The study concludes with wide ranging recommendations. These take aim at the high costs of independent universities each making their own competitive decisions, and no economy of scale beyond the institutions domain. In part this is due to government policy to pay for instruction, thus a disincentive to grant equivalent credit for course credits obtained at other schools. One solution proposed in the report is to gain some centralized economy of scale by producing a number of high quality courses that will be accepted for credit at all Ontario universities. This makes sense, but likely not welcomed initiative by independent minded College presidents nor faculty associations.

Time will tell, if this remains yet another, in the long list of recommendations for using technological innovations as catalyst to necessary system reform in Canada. I hope this one makes the difference

 

Distance Education

How much time does it take to teach online?

Written by terrya
7 Comments
How much time does it take to teach online?

I’ve long been fascinated by studies on time factors in online learning. The issues of teacher time are especially relevant given the high cost of teachers, the threat to the profession, MOOCs offering much less teacher-intensive education opportunities and my own online equivalency theory.

This study

Mandernach, B., Hudson, S., & Wise, S. (2013). Where has the time gone? Faculty activities and time commitments in the online classroom. Journal of Educators Online, 10(2).  http://www.thejeo.com/Archives/Volume10Number2/MandernachHudsonWise.pdf.

This study was done with 80 FULL TIME online teachers, teaching 4 online courses during the same semester. This is a much less common administrative format for online teaching in that most online teaching is done either by part time adjuncts or by teachers teaching both online and on campus.

Teaching in any context varies a great deal based on personal teaching style, use of synchronous tools, discipline, level and motivation of learners, support and funding for teachers and a host of other contextual factors. Nonetheless aggregate data is very interesting and helps paint the reality as well as vanquish some myths about online teaching. As expected the data confirmed that teachers did spend slightly more time online than literature reports for oncampus. (Averaging 44 hours/week for the 4 courses). But perhaps of greatest interest is the tasks that made up these 44 hours.

Teacher tasks onlineRead More

Distance Education, My Work

Two Days, three Museums, two Cathedrals and 576 Kms on the Costa Del Azaharhone

Written by terrya

This is my first blog post from my 2 month position as a visiting professor at the open University of Catalonia (UOC). UOC is a 100% distance University (like Athabasca U.) but founded not as a correspondence university, but as an online university in 1997.  There is a large open university (UNAD) in Madrid but UOC was founded with a mission to teach in Catalonian (think Quebec) – though to reach the Latin American market they teach in Spanish and of course, some graduate programs in the lingua franca – English.

My tasks at the University are to meet with grad students about their thesis, meet with various faculty about “hot” research topics of the day -notably MOOCs and do presentations at 4 conferences.  UOC has an E-Learn Research Centre which undertakes and champions elearning research, teaches a Masters and a PhD program in E-learning and is responsible for faculty development at the University. I chair the E-learn Centre’s International Advisory Committee which meets annually (next week) to provide assessment and other collegial advice to the Centre and to the University.  The rest of the time, I chat informally with staff – who are very helpful whenever Sue and I get into problems and thanks to the Internet, keep up my duties at Athabasca – time shifted by 8 hours.

Susan has had six or so sessions by telephone with her counseling clients, but getting to SKYPE video conferencing has been a problem to date from home. Speaking of which, the University rented us a great apartment (our first experience of high rise living) on the 20th floor.  As I write I get a terrific view of the boats anchored off the Barcelona harbour, the old Gothic quarter, the mind blowing Gaudi Sagrada Familie and the Tibidabo mountain that broods over the City. Hopefully tomorrow, we get Internet at home – and I can post this blog!

The title of this blog comes from our most recent trip to Valencia. We have twice rented cars and driven first North – Costa Blanca and last weekend south to Valencia. We began last weekend’s adventure, by me forgetting we had the car for Friday evening and arriving on Saturday morning  to pick up the car, but they were all out of GPS systems. But we had the faithful Iphone (more later) so we ventured forth with and the car rental map and my faithful navigator Sue (when she remembers to put on her reading glasses on) guiding the adventure.Read More

My Work, Personal