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Category: Teaching & Learning

New Economies, New University

Yesterday, we looked at how the economy was being increasingly divided into a successful, productive globally-traded goods sector, and a more sheltered mostly public-service focused sector. I also noted how certain parts of the university such as engineering, computer science, biomedicine, and finance/management have tended to adopt the views of people involved in the first group of industries, while arts, education, social work, etc., align with the second. This matters because, increasingly, governments are getting concerned about productivity. Due to

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April 27, 2012 No Comments

So, Competency-Based Education, Then

Competency-based education is not rocket science; demonstrate mastery over a particular set of material and you get a credential. This approach is common in informal education: badges for swimming and Guides, belts for martial arts, etc. Red Seal apprenticeships also operate this way. Formal systems of education are more leery of this approach. In K-12, it is assumed that time served is more important than demonstrated skills in moving students from one level to another. Undergraduate education in North America

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February 10, 2012 1 Comment

Why MITx Changes Very Little

Just now, there are a lot of interesting online educational experiments popping up, like Sebastian Thrun’s Udacity, or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MITx project. But there’s a huge barrier to this happening, and that barrier is credentialism. People who focus on higher education don’t always get this, because they really care about learning. And because of this, they tend to focus on learning content rather than on the pieces of paper one gets at the end of it. But

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February 9, 2012 1 Comment

No Disruption Here, Folks

Dear God, save us from Margaret Wente. Someone handed her a copy of Clayton Christensen’s new book and the rest of us got this ludicrous piece of nonsense in our Saturday paper. This has to be the worst meme in higher education this year. I know I’ve gone off on this before, but just to re-iterate: There. Is. No. Great. Disruption. Coming. In. Higher. Education. Period. Yes, there are some very interesting educational experiments going on out there. But does

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February 8, 2012 4 Comments

Faculty Productivity

It’s easy to get distracted by arguments about whether faculty are paid too much or too little. The better question is: why does everyone get paid on more or less the same scale when the massive differences in productivity between staff are so obvious? Some interesting evidence about this came recently from Texas. Last year, Governor Rick Perry (yes, him… the one who makes Herman Cain look Presidential) asked the state’s public universities to make data available on each professor

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December 7, 2011 5 Comments

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One Thought to Start Your Day is our founder and CEO Alex Usher’s popular daily blog, brimming with up-to-the-minute insights and informed opinions on today’s higher education industry.

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