A course syllabus is a communication tool. It’s one of the first pieces of information that you give to your students. It’s quite likely that they may have already heard about your course from a friend, or maybe it’s a requirement for all first year students whether they like it or not, or it might just have been the perfect filler for a Wednesday afternoon that let’s Jezebel enjoy a lecture-free Friday this semester. Whatever the reason is that your students find themselves in your class, the fact is that you have minutes if not seconds to entice them to stay. In a sense, you can look at the course syllabus as a marketing tool used to entice prospective pupils to sign up for your class, but we’ve gratefully not reached that point yet in the degradation of the education system (for the most part).

From your students’ perspective, the syllabus should be easy to follow, clearly outline exactly what they need to do to pass the course, and precisely list all deadlines. Aside from that, they’re not likely to care what you put in it, until, of course, the due date for their first assignment beings to loom.

The syllabus is also a communication vehicle between instructor and educational institution. Each institution is held responsible to abide by certain guidelines when validating programs of study. Most of you already know that course outlines are not generally the place to publish poetic renditions of what you hope your students will eventually aspire to become. Syllabi are meant to ensure that you follow the rules and include all the elements in your course that you promised you would when you stood before your program committee all those months ago.

When programs of study are developed, many people work very hard to ensure that all local, regional and sometimes even international requirements are met to ensure that students can benefit from accredited education. Yes, it can sometimes feel like a burden to have to meticulously address the details of a syllabus. I know that making sure that all learning outcomes are discussed in the course readings may not be as fun as reading the latest Dan Brown novel. I can also see how double-checking that the assignments adequately test students’ engagement with the materials might be less entertaining than shopping for new shoes. For these reasons, I understand how it can sometimes be tempting to just reuse last year’s syllabus. After all, the course hasn’t changed since the last time you taught it…right?

Hmm…I’m not so sure. You see, even if last year’s subject matter is still relevant, this year’s students are probably a little different from their predecessors, at least if you compare skill sets and habitual behaviors. The reason for this is that most of your students are technology sponges. How does their relationship with technology influence their relationship with you? Well, let’s think about it this way: Each year, many new technologies are introduced into the market but it doesn’t really matter how many get their 15 minutes of fame. What’s important to note is which ones get picked up by a critical mass of users – often termed ‘innovators’ (many of whom fill up your lecture halls). Once the critical mass is reached, the technology is integrated into mainstream culture, and that’s when you can bet it’s going to find its way into your classroom too.

What’s a teacher to do? How can one lonely soul standing in front of rows of students attached to digital gadgets get their attention? You can’t. Let’s face it, most of the time you don’t even have their full attention when they’re looking you straight in the eye. So, how can you still do your job of imparting age-old wisdom and timeless guidance to a group of freshly networked minds constantly engaged in…something or other? You get creative. You learn their language. You sit yourself in front of a computer and you start figuring out what tools they’re using. You look around the campus and you start to take notice of what mobile devices your students carrying and research how they’re using them.

Once you reach the point where you begin to realize how much there is you don’t know, you can rest assured that you’re on the right track. This is the point at which you begin to lose the fear of experimenting with different ways of communicating with your students. You don’t necessarily have to be fluent in the latest digital languages in order to get their attention, but you are expected to have some basic conversational knowledge of their speak.

That brings us back to the syllabus. Are you sure there aren’t a few changes you’d like to make to last year’s version? Maybe you want to check if the publishers of your required texts have released some new online resources to supplement your readings. After all, why reinvent the wheel when the tools have already been made for you. Speaking of which, have you taken a look through some of the free reusable learning object repositories available online? Maybe MIT World might inspire you to incorporate a video or two into your lectures this term. Note to all you YouTube addicts: try branching out. You can start by taking a look at what Columbia University, The Open University and even iTunes U has to offer. You might just surprise yourself and impress your students all at the same time (and who doesn’t like a little multi-tasking in this crazed workaholic age?).

Once you start exploring some of the digital resources out there, you’ll most likely find that last year’s syllabus no longer does justice reflecting what you can do with your course this year.

Why bring this up in the first place? Well, I was recently editing a syllabus of an online course for a client, and the exercise reminded me of how many twists and turns educators face when remodeling course outlines to reflect updated deliveries that integrate technologies into the mix. So I thought I’d put together a few tips for those of you facing this challenge – and I have a feeling that more and more of you will be doing just that in the near future, if you haven’t started already.

Since the structure of most course syllabi features standard headings, I’ll arrange the following suggestions under some of these common denominators. Please note that not every possible syllabus heading is addressed below. I’ve restricted the discussion to some areas that are particularly impacted by technology.

Instructor Contact Information

The common headings under this category are usually:

Course Instructor:
Contact Telephone Number:
Email:
Office Location:
Office Hours:

Enter: technology.

Information about the course instructor probably won’t change in nature unless a human isn’t actually teaching the class.

Contact telephone numbers are still relatively common to include on course syllabi, but if we’re honest with ourselves, we should probably acknowledge that students are more likely to use telephone numbers to text teachers than they are to speak with them directly. This begs the question of whether you give out a number to a land-line or to a mobile phone, in which case, it might be a good idea to clarify that for your students.

Email is an interesting one, not because it’s necessarily still a shiny new form of communication, but rather due to the fact that email doesn’t sleep. Students can send you messages at all hours of the day. Continuous connectivity has conditioned us to expect immediate responses, which would be fine if each teacher was responsible for 5 student at a time, but when class sizes get any bigger than 8 students per instructor, we start facing a serious time crunch.

In order to avoid disappointing your students by representing yourself as anything other than constantly at their disposal, it might be a good idea to specify a reasonable time period within which they can expect your reply. For example, providing guidance like ‘Students can expect to receive responses to email queries with 48 hours’ might help ward off anxiety-ridden follow-up emails.

There’s also another issue with email that doesn’t necessarily impact the course syllabus, per se, but that I still think is worth noting. Email is a form of written communication. Emails are not the same as text messages. In text messages, one can get away with steering clear of grammar, ignoring proper sentence structure, and even eliminating the use of full words all together. In emails, however, the text messaging rules of abbreviation and colloquial mannerism do not apply. The difficulty comes in when we expect students who have grown accustomed to communicating in abbreviations to magically appreciate the eloquence of properly formed sentences.

How you choose to deal with this dichotomy of acceptable communication styles is up to you. Depending on what subject matters and at which levels you teach, you may wish to include a brief disclaimer next to your contact email helping students understand the standard to which you hold them. Alternatively, this is also information you could include in your student handbook (see more on this below).

Now we get to the fun stuff: virtual vs. physical space. What if you never meet your students in ‘real life’? What if you don’t actually have an office space either (unless you count your kitchen table)? And what if you don’t even live in the same time zone as your students? In these cases, what do you put next to Office Location and Office Hours?

Before you can answer that question, you have to be clear about how you’re going to interact with your students. It’s easy to say that ‘all the resources are up on the course website’ and all your students have to do is log on and download your lecture files from the site, but what if they need additional guidance? How are you going to support them in engaging with the course content?

Your office location may end up being a nook on your course website in the form of a link to a chat room. Your office hours might take place each week on Skype. It’s up to you how you choose to make yourself available to them. The important thing here is to decide before hand how to best support your students and then to start evaluating the potential benefits of your technology options. Not every technology suits every purpose, and not every technology adds value to every scenario. Be open to learning about different kinds of technologies, and remember to have fun exploring how they work.

You may also want to consider if there are other pieces of information you’d like to include in this section. For example, do you have a Twitter account? If so, would it benefit your students to follow your feed? How about a Facebook Fan Page? Would becoming one of your fans somehow help your students more deeply engage in their learning? It may sound like a silly question, but what if you are a world-renown musician teaching at a performing arts school? Is it possible that students would be more receptive to learning from a musician with a prominent presence in the digital world in which they feel most comfortable?  How about Facebook groups? Does your course or department have a Facebook page?  (If you’re not sure what the difference is between a Facebook Fan Page and a Facebook Group, Mashable provides a great explanation of the differences.) These are all things to consider, particularly if you’re teaching distance learning students who may benefit from any opportunity to connect online with fellow classmates and teachers.

Technical Specifications & Required Tools

Although not a mainstream heading on most syllabi, technical specifications may be quite important to outline for students at the beginning of your teaching term. Technical specs include anything from a description of basic software packages they’ll need, computer accessories you’ll require them to have like webcams, microphones and/or speakers, to the amount of time they’ll need to be logged onto the Internet. This information is actually so important for students to receive prior to the start of the semester that you may also want to consider including it in the course catalog. If you are fortunate enough to live in a place where everyone has access to a computer and T3 Internet connections are free-flowing, including these sorts of requirements in a syllabus may not come as second nature, but that’s not everyone’s reality.

System requirements are also important to specify. For example, if I couldn’t use a Mac to complete course work, I may think twice about registering for the class. But setting frivolity aside for a moment, technical requirements can also seriously impact on students with learning disabilities. All of these factors must be taken into consideration far before you start drafting your course syllabus, but if you haven’t put much thinking into the technical requirements of your course yet, this is as good a time as any to start.

And in terms of specifying required tools, the importance of listing them in your syllabus is very dependent upon the nature of your subject matter. Courses in disciplines such as painting, photography or mechanics, for example, would be candidates for this heading. Are students required to purchase safety equipment, art supplies, or special calculators before teaching begins? Be as clear as possible, and try not to assume that what you consider an ‘every day’ tool is commonplace for everyone.

Required Readings & Recommended Further Study

The textbook is still alive and kicking. Authors and publishers alike love required textbooks because they guarantee a certain number of annual sales for them. There’s nothing wrong with that because there’s nothing wrong with making a living. Publishers are quite aware of the threat of paper-based books becoming obsolete before they hit the campus bookstore shelves (or online bookstore equivalents) so they work hard at creating supplementary resources for both teachers and students to increase the functionality of their static products. Do you know what extras come with your chosen texts? Have you acquired information on how your students can access these additional resources?

Online study aids can often make or break the sale of a book for students. After all, why buy a new book if you can get a used one for a third of the price? Come to think of it, why buy the book at all if the instructor only intends to refer to one of its chapters. If that’s the case for you, have you thought about providing digital copies of key chapters to students? School libraries often have ways of digitizing certain percentages of books at no additional cost to the instructor. In fact, sometimes these digitization programs are actually fully sponsored by your institution. It’s worth learning about your options – both you and your students will benefit.

Supplementary readings often include articles published in academic journals. The further up the higher education ladder you climb, the more often you’ll come across the ‘journal article’. The problem is, students often have no clue how to access their institution’s digital library, and therefore won’t know how to download your supplementary readings, even with the best of intentions. The unfortunate thing is that instead of asking for help, students often tend to just skip over the readings they don’t know how to access, short-selling themselves and the quality of their education.

What can you do? The first step is to learn how to access online journal articles yourself. Please don’t be offended. I don’t mean to imply that you don’t know everything. It’s just that I’ve come across more than a few teachers who simply didn’t know how to log into their university’s digital library because they were never given formal training in the first place. That doesn’t mean that they don’t have other ways of accessing the materials, but if teachers don’t know how to go through the mainstream channels, they won’t know how to show their students how to do it either. Now, you may argue that it’s the librarian’s job to teach them, which is a good point. If your library does offer training on your digital resources, then schedule a training session for your students at the beginning of the semester and consider including those training times in this section of the syllabus.

Once you become comfortable accessing your institution’s digital library, you may want to also consider incorporating direct links to supplementary readings on your course site. This way, students won’t need to conduct online library searches themselves because the links can take them directly to the resources. On the other hand, learning how to conduct those searches is actually quite a useful skill to develop, so consider both sides before determining which way would most benefit both you and your students.

Grading

Grading is pretty easy to add into the course syllabus because it’s already been established during the curriculum development stage. That is, unless you decide to start integrating technologies into your teaching strategy post-validation.

What commonly happens is that a course is first taught using a face-to-face model, and then someone decides that it would be a good idea to start using a wiki here, dabble with the use of a discussion forum there, or go all out and migrate all taught courses into a course management system by next semester! The odd thing is that very seldom in these discussions does anyone mention the need to assess how student grading is going to be impacted by all these techno-tweaks. However just because a course is called by the same name, taught by the same teacher and held in the same room doesn’t mean the grading can remain the same if changes are made to the way students engage with its content.

I’ll tell you a funny thing about students: they generally don’t care how much work it took to convince your department head to let you use a wiki this semester, or how many man hours it required to develop your course website. If they don’t have to use the resource, it’s unlikely they will. After all, how much do you want to bet that the majority of your class is filled with surface learners?

That’s why it pays to take a moment to readjusting your grading scheme so that engaging with other students online will make it worth their time and effort. I know that sounds cold and cynical and that it contradicts the whole point of investing in one’s own education and personal development, but the fact that people are constantly inundated with information means that they have to have a good reason to draw their limited attention spans from one task to another. If you don’t give them enough of a reason to diverge their short bursts of focus in your direction, they’ll simply tune you and your fancy digital resources out.

The solution: make it compulsory. Are students graded for their wiki contributions? If so, how much of their overall grade do their contributions affect? Unless you answer that question with a number higher than 0% (I’d recommend at least 5%), you’ll see a lot of white space on your wiki by semester’s end.

Warning: Be careful about how you allocate your marks. Students may rationalize not participating in the wiki because they can afford a 3% cut in their overall mark – they’ll just make sure they do well enough in other parts of the course to get that passing grade. (Again, I’m generalizing here based on the average surface learner. My apologies to all you over-achievers out there. I’m one of you! I swear!)

Sometimes it’s better to be vague. For example, this course taught by Professor Martin Irvine at Georgetown University breaks down the marking scheme quite broadly with 40% of the overall mark going to ‘seminar participation and collaborative Wiki contributions’. I’d say that that’s a more bitter pill to swallow than a measly 3% cut in your final grade. Alternatively, this Wiki Grading Rubic available at the Flat Classroom Project is a much more intricate grading scheme for assessing wiki contributions and is definitely worth taking a look at if you’re finding it challenging motivating your students to be more engaging online learners.

Whether you want to encourage your students to use wikis, discussion forums, chat rooms, blogs, videos or some other application of technology, I strongly encourage you to consider the impacts that counting it toward final assessment could have on the quantity and quality of your students’ contributions. Yes, it may mean getting up in front of that validation panel again, but it’ll be worth it. Not only will you be able to formally reward your students for their hard work, but you’ll also create a valuable precedent for other teachers facing the same challenges.

Attendance & Class Participation

Attendance in a physical classroom equals engagement in the online environment. Is attendance part of your marking scheme? Do students get awarded a certain percentage of their final grade for making it to class on time? How about if part of your course is taught online? How do you account for attendance then? Not everyone has the luxury of teaching in a computer lab where online attendance can be measured by simply counting students sitting in front of terminals (although how much of a luxury that would be is questionable at best). Online attendance is a slippery slope and it’s worthy of a bit of forethought before you decide how to approach it.

The first question you might ask yourself is how to measure online engagement. The simple answer is site traffic statistics. Now we’re getting into a bit of a controversial area because not many people like to believe that they’re being observed. We tend to shy away from this concept of ‘Big Brother watching us’, so much so, in fact, that we do a pretty good job of avoiding the topic altogether. But is there even a question in students’ minds that teachers have access to site traffic statistics showing exactly how long they spend on course sites and what information they access? Is there even a question in teachers’ minds that students occasionally attempt to skew these statistics by appearing to be logged on for extended periods of time when, in reality, they’re just catching up on their favorite shows on Hulu?

The key here is to create your own definition of ‘student engagement’ as it relates to your course subject matter. At the early stages of course develop or curriculum re-design, start to think about how you want to structure your online resources to create a student-centric learning environment. This could mean that you steer clear of posting links to your coveted PowerPoint presentations and start roaming reusable learning object repositories in search of engaging activities through which students can work outside of class time to re-enforce their face-to-face learning. It could also mean, for example, that you assign specific online activities during Tuesday’s lecture that become the topics of conversation during Thursday’s tutorials.

There are many advantages to integrating technology into your teaching, one of which is that it has the potential to grant many more people access to an education. However, there are just as many ways to approach online engagement as there are to manipulate online traffic statistics, so my advice is to get creative and get your students so excited about your subject area that they lose track of time and forget about their reality TV fix all together. Oh, what a beautiful world that would be!

Class participation is another pickle. First of all, it’s measured very subjectively in a face-to-face environment. Teachers observe students, assess the quality of their responses to questions and evaluate how they engage with their peers during group activities. When it comes to online participation, everything becomes very black and white – literally. Every comment a student posts in a discussion area is recorded with a time stamp and sometimes even with a word count. This is great for the teacher because reviewing student participation over the semester is as simple as digging through discussion archives (if you’re assessing solely bases on quantity, that is!).

For students, however, online participation can become a much more daunting endeavor than its face-to-face counterpart, especially if they don’t feel confident in their ability to express ideas in writing. This trepidation can, and most often does, turn into virtual silence in which teachers end up having drawn out conversations with themselves. I won’t get into the complicated area of how to stimulate online community engagement (let’s leave some of the fun for future posts), but I will point to the importance of being clear with students about the nature of the online participation expected of them, particularly if it’s summatively assessed.

One note, if I may: Requiring your students to post a certain number of comments in an online discussion area could result in a virtual flooding of senseless commentary. Online engagement can take on many forms. Even using Twitter as a tool to share reference sources or a group wiki to develop the initial draft of a group research paper could very nicely qualify as online participation, and may even turn into much more engaging forms of social learning than getting together once a week in a physical classroom.

And a few words about student handbooks…

Any topics that you feel require in-depth explanation can simply be referenced in the syllabus and then explained in detail in your student handbook. Topics like plagiarism, safety procedures (if applicable), breakdowns of grading schemes, etc. are common to expand upon in student handbooks. This information also fits very nicely on course webpages.

It’s up to you how you structure the publication of your course information. The important thing to remember is that entering the online learning environment changes the playing field in many ways. It’s up to you to be flexible, open to learning new things, and confident in your ability to learn from mistakes, because no matter how much you plan ahead, you’re sure to get a few surprises along the way.

“To better your education, you’re always gonna better your status.”

We still rely on myth to fuel the higher education system in this country. We base our policy decisions largely on the perceived truths of yesterday. This Public Agenda report prepared for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shines a glaring light on the reality of college students’ lives in today’s America.

The number one reason for dropping out of school before earning a two or four year college degree is not being able to manage the stress associated with juggling work and school. The majority of these young adults work an average of 20-hours per week while taking on full course loads. Whether it’s because they’re not managing their time properly, or that tuition fees are too high, or perhaps because they weren’t properly prepared for the requirements of studying at a higher education level, the devastating fact is that not many are able to achieve academic success beyond high school. Since cash buys bread and a diploma can only promise the prospect of a better future, schooling takes the brunt of the downfall of today’s society.

“Many of the young people we interviewed believed that they could not afford not to work for the time it would take to complete a degree. They had to have a paying job to make ends meet. Far from being slackers, as some people imagine, they were often assuming responsibilities and financial burdens that traditional full-time college students do not have to shoulder. It is a test of maturity and perseverance that more affluent students are usually not required to face.” ~ Report 1

The report cites that over the last 25 years, college costs have risen by 400 percent while average household income has only climbed 150 percent, painting a undeniable picture of why higher ed isn’t a priority on middle Americans’ minds.

Location of teaching establishment was also cited as a huge obstacle for those who failed to complete their college studies. Many admitted that they found it difficult to access a college close enough to their home or work that offered classes at times that aligned with their work schedules.

“Among those who did not complete college, two-thirds say they selected their school primarily for its convenient location, nearly 6 in 10 because its schedule worked with theirs…”

Reading through the report, I couldn’t help but refer back to my experiences studying and teaching with educational technology. Why aren’t more students considering blended learning options? I understand that students just starting their college careers find the idea of face-to-face time with instructors comforting, which is why I’m not suggesting everyone take a look at fully online degree programs, but what about mixing a bit of online study with the bricks and mortar approach? Is my experience as a borderless student still out of the norm?

But, you know what? Why don’t we set all the fancy research results aside for a moment? I’ll even put my experiences in my pocket and practice opening my mind. Let’s have a listen to what the students had to say for themselves…

What does ‘open’ mean in the context of education? Many have shared their opinions on what they think ‘open’ represents, but that’s not really the point, is it? I mean, sharing our views may contribute to the discussion, it may open some eyes and maybe even change a few perspectives, but it hasn’t led us to the answer yet. Does that mean no one really knows the answer? Merrily skipping a little further down this stream of thought, I wonder, if no one really has the answer, there’s no reason for me not to share my point of view too. What’s the worst that could happen – I look silly, unaware, perhaps a touch confused? However I look, everyone else is varying shades of the same color, so here’s me jumping into the debate.

To this humble student of life, ‘open’ education means accessible education. If it weren’t for openness, I wouldn’t be picking up my masters degree in a few weeks, I wouldn’t be singing the potential benefits of technology to whomever will listen, and I most certainly wouldn’t have had the pleasure of collaborating with brilliant minds from all over the world, all interested in pursuing their passion to explore how technology can impact the way they learn and teach.

‘Open’ doesn’t necessarily mean free, but it definitely means affordable – at least to the consumer. Case in point: I am still paying off my undergraduate loans, but I closed the account that funded my masters quite a few months ago. ‘Open’ may not necessarily represent the cheapest option for the institution, but once all that front-end heavy investment has been made, it most certainly has the potential to represent the most efficient, scalable and transferable option. Perhaps if I had waited just a few years, I could have accessed my graduate course materials for free on iTunes U where the OU ranks in the top 5 most downloaded sources in this fruity academic database. That wouldn’t make me eligible to receive my coveted competitive ammunition (a.k.a. my degree certificate), but that doesn’t mean I still wouldn’t be smarter for it.

To technologists, ‘open’ has a lot to do with trying to figure out how to avoid reinventing the wheel. For legal teams, it’s predominantly about how to navigate the slippery slopes of copyright laws. To academics…well, that one is a bit difficult for me to answer. You see, I’ve spent many years working on the ‘other side’ of the academic profession. I was a part of university administration, which essentially means that I was not ‘one of them’. However, I did have the privilege of working with many of ‘them’ (to at least attempt) to expand their awareness of what educational technology could mean to them and to broaden their understanding of ways in which ed tech could be incorporated into their worlds if they decided to give it a chance. So you see, all I can do is tell you how I perceive the way academics interpret ‘open’.

There is one school of thought that shuns the concept of digitizing any intellectual materials that it undoubtedly took these brilliant minds centuries to cultivate. These ‘inner two-year-olds’ barely feel comfortable releasing 8th generation photocopies of PowerPoint presentations to their well-paying students (6 per page so as to ensure maximum note-taking real estate). The idea of adapting their materials to fit an electronic learning environment suitable to enrich the lives of an exponentially larger group of eager beavers is simply out of the question. Why? Good question.

The other school of thought, the one with which I had much more of a pleasure working, accepts the notion that perhaps there may be some benefit to learning new ways of communicating. They concede that there may in fact be some truth that changing the way we communicate might better enable the current generation of teachers to convey information to their audiences in inspirational ways. As you can see, the title of ‘information sharer’ fits this Generation 2.0 of teacher much better than the ‘sages on dusty stages’ that precede them. Think of it like an iPhone versus a telegram – both get a message across, but the quality of the message, the way we go about receiving it and how we choose to interact with it are very different. Students may be sitting in lecture halls, texting and doing their very best to provide evidence of just how many twits there are in the crowd, but in this unfortunately common act of ignorance, they’re also sending a very valuable albeit crudely packaged message to their leaders and guides: we use technology to get our messages across, why aren’t you?

I realize I’m generalizing, but at this stage of the debate about openness, it’s difficult to deny that we haven’t yet come close to finding a middle ground. But why look at technology through bitter colored glasses smeared with resistance? After all, technology is as much a vehicle of information transfer as paper is. The difference is that whereas paper can be viewed as the byproduct of massacred forests, the Internet (for to use the term technology would be much too gnarly a maze to navigate in the context of this discussion) could just as easily be seen as a voracious devourer of our privacy. The production of paper is contaminating our planet. The Internet is home to evil predators. Producing paper pollutes our water supplies. Surfing the electronic waves of the Internet is dangerous because ‘they’re watching you’.

Is it at all clear how ridiculous the argument against anything can become whenever we refuse to bend our perceptions just enough to see things a little differently? Paper has also been an invaluable tool facilitating communication through generations. Some of the most important decisions made on the planet have been recorded on paper. Art, history and love have been created on paper. As for the Internet, it has provided access to medical care in some of the most remote places on this planet, given the opportunity for children to learn in areas where traditional schools don’t exist, and facilitated the cultivation of countless communities of like-minded individuals seeking ways to connect and contribute value to society.

And what about teachers teaching teachers? Isn’t it possible that there are new instructors out there, just entering into the world of knowledge sharing, who would greatly appreciate a benchmark approach to course development? Wouldn’t having access to some of the most renown higher education institutions’ courses (Yale and MIT come to mind) have the potential to add value to the educational offerings provided by any countries at all interested and able to access and make subsequent use of the information, regardless of whether it’s to inject new lifeblood into university, high school or even elementary school curricula?

All I’m saying is…try being open. The middle ground isn’t that far away.

HigherEd Careers published a feature this month on employment indicators in the higher education sector. For a general overview of what’s been happening in the US job market and the mechanisms affecting employment, have a read through the discussion between Andy Brantley, President and CEO, College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR); Bruce Steinberg, Employment Researcher; and John Ikenberry, President, HigherEdJobs.com. In the piece, Steinberg notes that employers are not cutting as many jobs in recent months as they were in the beginning of the year, but I have to wonder if that’s because there just aren’t as many jobs to cut. I also don’t agree with his assessment that the housing sector was what got us into this mess in the first place but rather that it was the first to show signs of what was coming, but that’s neither here nor there.

To his credit, Steinberg does suggest an interesting approach for academics to adopt in order to gauge the health of their specialist sectors and, in turn, the marketability of their positions:

Higher Ed Employment Indicators: What Matters?

To be able to know what the employment and financial health is of the areas outside academia that they are educating students about would be most helpful to make strategic plans about staffing and the allocation of resources. In this manner, they are providing the educational grounding for the next generation of workers and professionals in sectors/industries that will lead the next economic cycle.

www.higheredjobs.com

However, what most interested me was what Ikenberry had to say in this interview about the ‘fresh off the virtual press’ Higher Education Employment Report – Q1 2009. Its four key findings suggest that the total number of jobs in higher education has remained relatively stable over the last 18 months BUT the number of advertised job openings in the sector has decreased significantly. It also found that in the first quarter of 2009, colleges and universities shifted their hiring towards faculty and part-time positions and away from administrative hires and full-time employees. Does that mean there’s a growing market for freelance work in HE?

The message Ikenberry sends out to job seekers looking to snatch up the few opportunities out there at the moment: competition is high, but rest assured that the challenges you face are likely not because of something you’ve done (or failed to do). We’re all facing tough times. Just as you and everyone else on the bus is counting pennies to make it through the rest of the month, so are universities and colleges. Investments are being scrutinized from every direction. Persistence is key. It looks like ‘employers are looking for reasons to exclude, not include, candidates from consideration’. Having said that, from my own job hunting experience, I’ve seen job openings pop up on a number of occasions for directors and associate deans of educational technology. The significance there: learning technologists were few and far between when I entered this industry. Now formal divisions of being established within institutions to support these efforts. That’s a good sign.

It might take some time, but those divisions will start to grow and become more and more a part of the strategic vision of many universities. Growth means new opportunities, and I think that just like with so many other areas of our global economy, we have to see some significant changes in the makeup of industries before we start seeing real upward trends.

So to end off on what I think is an inspiring note that actually ties into supporting the growth of our industry, here’s Brantley‘s advice to higher education professionals looking to further our careers:

Higher Ed Employment Indicators: What Matters?

Those looking to further their higher ed career should be committed to constant learning. If you would prefer to seek a new position, but prefer to stay put for the short-term, invest time and effort into learning new skills and abilities–on the job and outside of the job. The things we do every day to enhance our skills and abilities definitely impacts our marketability now and in the future. There are some great opportunities available, so now could actually be a great time to find that next career opportunity. Job seekers should be focused on their true career aspirations and apply for positions that really match their short and long-term career goals.

www.higheredjobs.com

I’ve started looking for a job this week, so I can tell you that the economy is much more of interest to me now than ever, particularly how it’s affecting higher education. I subscribe to a number of job search engines and associations that also syndicate new openings, so I’ve been observing the job market in California for a couple of months now. I’ve noticed very few instructional designer roles opening up, and even those that are published directly on university websites come with a disclaimer that although you can apply, they are currently under a hiring freeze so you might never hear back from them.

I’ve also noticed some phenomenal roles – policy makers, strategists and managers of institution-wide educational technology initiatives. These are generally posted by higher education institutions that have newly established ‘elearning units’ – hubs or centers of excellence with remits to expand hybrid and fully online course offerings for their universities. These jobs sound great, not only because of the stimulating challenges that lie waiting for the people who land the roles, but also because they show signs of greater understanding and openness on the side of the institutions who are ready, willing and eager to invest in educational technology initiatives.

So, now back to some thoughts on the economy…

Alan Tait wrote an interesting post on the EDEN President’s Blog about Scotland’s economy and how, through direct engagement with employers, higher education in the UK is able to design custom training for the workforce to ensure that the teaching is relevant, and that the industries feel the benefits. I wanted to include below a snippet of his impressions of the ways in which the oil and gas sectors view the relevance of education:

I was surprised by the almost total focus on the recruitment of the brightest and best of new graduates, and on coping with the difficulty in persuading new graduates that the Oil and Gas industries are attractive places to build a career. There was almost no focus from the industry representatives on the development of people in their existing workforce. My only contribution was to point out that if the competition for the brightest and best new graduates was already fierce this would only get worse because of the demographic down turn, in many developed countries at least, of this age cohort. This would mean development of the current workforce would become even more important than it was already, and that the emphasis on non-campus based forms of study that supported learning in and around the workplace rather just the campus would become all the more important.

Some industry giants must have heard Tait’s call because they’re already starting to do their part. Microsoft announced the launch of a new program in February designed to ‘provide up to 2 million people over the next three years with the technology training needed to succeed in the 21st-century economy’. A very important step considering that our focus can’t just be on current college students struggling to get heard in the blogosphere, and kids in K-12 who we’re trying to teach about technology at as early an age as we can. How about the current workforce – those still in it that is? Companies are not likely in the position to invest in on-the-job training, and employees are probably juggling with the new responsibilities faced by so many families who have had to transition from 2- to 1-income households. These types of new training initiatives only require time and determination from the life-long student…and the payoffs of self-empowerment would be priceless.

So, as the sun spills onto my carpet as I sit on my sofa (a change of pace from being proverbially chained to my desk – the magic of laptops!) and I can still take advantage of the quiet while the commuters are still on the roads returning home, I’ll post this message and get back to work. First point on the agenda: finish watching a webinar entitled ‘The Economy’s Impact on Higher Education’ – part of Educause’s monthly series discussing how the economic climate is impacting upon the education sector. Let’s hope they have some good news…

When I graduated from my first degree, I didn’t know that the job I have today even existed. What does that mean about what I chose to study? If the jobs that today’s students will have tomorrow don’t exist yet, how does a student know how to choose the right course of study? What subjects will be relevant to their profession? What tools are going to help them in the workplace after they graduate?

A business degree was a marketable degree so that’s why I chose to study it, but the closer I got to the fourth and final year of the degree, the further I found myself diverging away from the values and beliefs representative of that community. Perhaps it was a lesson I had to learn for myself, but it made me wonder how my first university experience could have been different if my passion for what I was studying grew with each new thing I learned rather than dissolved into the background of a down turning economy.

I’m not trying to imply that we need a mechanism that would enable prospective students to see the future before they have to pick their course of study, but I am wondering whether it’s realistic or even practical to expect a higher education institution to be able to equip students with the skills and tools they need to not only function but also flourish once they get into the real world.

I’m afraid it comes back down to the teachers once again. If the teacher’s talking to the board, and the student is plugged into the technology, where’s the connection?

Where's the connection?

I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have access to my Sprouts, and as a result, I’m not sure how much longer the Sprouts that I’ve published on this blog will be accessible. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough resources to recreate all of my Sprouts in alternative formats, but there is one in particular that I would like transfer here into this post so that the information can continue to help those interested. This way, we can also build upon it as a community and let it grow.

On 02 Jan 2009, I published a collection of links to various reusable learning object repositories that provide access to free electronic learning tools covering a broad scope of disciplines. I’ve transferred them below (listed in alphabetical order) in case that Sprout becomes inaccessible in the near future.

I wholeheartedly encourage teachers, tutors, teaching assistants, instructional designers, learning technologists, librarians, students (both formal and informal) and anyone else who’s interested to take a look at what’s out there. These are resources for all levels of learning (K-12 through to higher and continuing education) and the list even includes some resources for the mobile learner. They can help you create blended/e-learning lesson plans, stimulate discussion among peers about how to begin integrating technology into your curricula and support your students in the development of connected learning strategies. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel. There are accessible resources out there, produced by people with subject expertise and a genuine intention to share information with the world. Take advantage!

Please note, all links below will open in new windows/tabs.

We’re all afraid of loosing a job – whether its our own, or of that of someone close to us. Unemployment is at an all time high. So imagine my wonderment when I received a job posting (see below) this morning for a Learning Technologist position at the London School of Economics.

Take a look at the salary. Normally these jobs go for £23,000 to £35,000 GBP, depending in what part of the UK you are. (Input on what the going rate is in other countries is welcome ) So it looks like LSE has a bigger budget then most. Not surprising considering their ranking, but let’s set that aside for a moment and start asking ourselves what started happening to the field of educational technology once the global economic reset button was pressed.

What sort of things do people do when they loose their jobs in the masses? Some discover new industries, new trades, new identities. Others contribute to the campaign of mass re-production (anyone remember how the Baby Boomers came about?!), and then there are those who either fall into deep depressions or succumb to the last resort of going back to live with their parent(s). How do you think the first group – those reinventing themselves – manage to develop those new skills they need to perform their new roles?

What’s that? Did you say ‘education‘? Well that’s right! That’s the correct answer! Well done. Here’s a sticker!

So, people with no jobs have little disposable income to invest in their futures. This brings us to the point about affordability of higher and continuing education. Do you think that this group is more likely to opt for the $30,000+ USD/yr Stanford full-time education (that requires the physical presence of the student) or the more accessible £5,000 GBP Open University degree (that can be completed at a distance and at the student’s own [affordable] pace)?

Looks like there might be potential for a big boom in online and distance education. Is your institution ready for the new opportunities? The OU seems to be…

Downturn not bad news for all universities

The British Council fears the economic downturn may deter international students from coming to the UK to study, in a statement released today, but it’s not bad news for all. The Open University Business School is defying the trend through offering relevant and responsive business and management education to around 43,000 students in nearly 70 countries.

Carmel McMahon, Associate Dean International at The Open University Business School said: “Our international reach and unique student support model ensures we can provide a high quality British education to our students in their countries, rather than requiring students to travel to the UK. The economic downturn is being experienced globally but our practice based approach to business and management education enables students to improve their career prospects without having to give up their jobs and to continue their studies if relocated.”

The Open University Business School has seen an increase in the number of new MBA students in Continental Europe, while numbers in Russia and Romania are holding their ground. It has also very successfully just launched the BA in Business Studies programme in southern Africa.

Richard Wheatcroft, Masters Programme Director at The Open University Business School, confirmed the upward trend saying: “In our experience people who lose their jobs often decide that it’s a good time to do an MBA while the labour market is unattractive. Studying through us allows them flexibility between study and pursuing new employment, ensuring they do not miss any opportunities. And those in employment also have an incentive to take up further studies, as they want to make themselves more valuable to their employer.”

www3.open.ac.uk