We've seen a lot of reporting coming out of this year's EDUCAUSE conference. In this report, Joshua Kim says that this year's conference felt different than previous events - and that the Gates Foundation is the reason. Below, some language from this brief report. Here's a link to the Next Generation Learning Challenge website. Planners need to pay attention - this could be a major turning point in, for example, online learning.

This EDUCAUSE Conference has felt different from all the rest, and the reason I think is Gates Foundation Next Generation Learning Challenges. This is the first EDUCAUSE Conference that I've attended where there is a real feeling of confidence that information technology can be the lever for structural change in our higher ed system.

The real power of the Gates Next Generation Learning Challenge is not the money, although that helps, but the ability to focus the problems in higher education around a defined set of issues. Gates has us all speaking the same language. In talking with Cameron Evans (Microsoft), Ray Henderson (Blackboard), and Don Kilburn (Pearson), the conversation kept coming back to the role that their companies can play in addressing the issues that have been identified by Gates.

Leadership from technology, LMS, and publishing companies are now all focused on utilizing the power of their companies to work on the specific issues that the Next Generation Learning Challenges are designed to address.

We all know by now that with the higher ed realm leadership of Mark Milliron, the Gates Foundation is investing big in our future. Here's an interview with the person who is directing the educational technology push to be announced yet this fall, in partnership with EDUCAUSE and others:

Q: You’ve teamed with Educause, the college IT group, to start a program called Next Gen Learning Challenges. Describe the project.

A: What we envision is a multiyear, multiwave program, where every six to 12 months we issue a new set of challenges. And we’ll issue a set of challenges this fall around shared open-core courseware, around learning analytics, around blended learning, and around new, deeper forms of learning and engagement using interactive technologies. There’s a big gap between R&D and high-impact solutions at scale. We’re trying to participate in some of the effort to help those most promising solutions get across that chasm.

 

Q: What are the big challenges you see in online education?

A: Breaking down this division between online education and education. Increasingly, we’re bringing digital assets and digital experiences into the traditional classroom or at home. One of the big challenges is the reunification, if you will, of online learning with offline learning. And creating these blended contexts, which, based on the U.S. Department of Education meta-study and other work, seem to be the place where it’s not an either or, it’s trying to figure out how to do the best of both.

Secondly, given some of he conversations in Washington and other places around for-profit education, there’s a real danger that we overlap the actions of the bad actors in the for-profit sector with all of the for-profit sector, and overlap all the for-profit sector with all of online learning in general and all strategies that might be different and innovative. There’s a real risk that in looking at some bad actions within the for-profit sector, that we take a step backwards from some of the innovative strategies that institutions are using.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Click on the title, Top-Ten IT Issues, 2010, to access the resource described, below.

This is the eleventh year that EDUCAUSE has published a top-ten list of IT issues in higher education. The 2010 list is of special interest to planners, as Strategic Planning returns to the list after a couple of years below the surface.

[M]ore of the IT leader's time is being consumed by Governance, Organizational Management, and Leadership . . . IT leaders are spending an increased amount of time plotting long-term responses to both the acute pressures and the systemic changes that they and their institutions face, and IT leaders must work to make sure there are appropriate campus bodies from whom they can solicit input and vet new directions in services and support.

Top-Ten IT Issues, 2010

      1. Funding IT

      2. Administrative/ERP/Information Systems

      3. Security

      4. Teaching and Learning with Technology

      5. Identity/Access Management

      6. (tie). Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity

      6. (tie). Governance, Organization, and Leadership

      7. Agility, Adaptability, and Responsiveness

      8. Learning Management Systems

      9. Strategic Planning

      10. Infrastructure/Cyberinfrastructure

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Click on the title, Shaping the Higher Education Cloud, to access the resource described, below.

As well, this recent issue of EDUCAUSE Review is focused on higher education's computing cloud, including these two feature articles:

• Cloud Computing and the Power to Choose
• Looking at Clouds From All Sides Now

Read all of this and you will be a cloud computing expert!

Is collaborative planning regarding the shape of the higher education information technology "cloud," possible? What should we plan to put on the cloud? What should stay out of the cloud? This white paper, the product of a joint project of EDUCAUSE and NACUBO, should be required reading for anyone who might be part of campus teams considering IT planning issues:

The unsustainable economics of higher education’s traditional approaches to IT, increased expectations and scrutiny, and the growing complexity of institutional operations and governance call for a different modus operandi. So too does the mass consumerization of services, for which students and faculty are more likely to look outside the institution to address their IT needs and preferences, noted James Hilton, vice president and CIO, University of Virginia. Cloud computing represents a real opportunity to rethink and re-craft services for the academy. Among the greatest benefits of scalable and elastic IT is the option to pay only for what is used. Robust networks coupled with virtualization technologies make less relevant where work happens or where data is stored. Cloud computing allows the flexibility for some enterprise activities to move above campus to providers that are faster, cheaper, or safer and for some activities to move off the institution’s responsibility list to the “consumer” cloud (below campus), while still other activities can remain in-house, including those that differentiate and provide competitive advantage to an institution.

Don't miss out on joining nearly 1,500 of your colleagues and peers at higher education's premier planning event of 2010, SCUP–45. The Society for College and University Planning's 45th annual, international conference and idea marketplace is July 10–14 in Minneapolis!

Here's your SCUP Link to 7 Things You Should Know About Analytics (PDF)

This is part of the series of excellent brief summaries about Things You Should Know, published by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI). They're all good resources, even better than Wikipedia   ;-0

Analytics tools provide statistical evaluation of rich data sources to discern patterns that can help individuals at companies, educational institutions, or governments make more informed de- cisions. In commercial usage, analytics software may evaluate data mined from purchasing records to allow a web-based retailer to suggest products that might interest customers or allow a search engine to target ads based on an individual’s location and demo- graphic data. Colleges and universities can harness the power of analytics to develop student recruitment policies, adjust course catalog offerings, determine hiring needs, or make financial deci- sions. In a teaching and learning context, data from such sources as the learning management system, college application forms, and library records can be used to build academic analytics pro- grams that use algorithms to construct predictive models that can identify students at risk for not succeeding academically.