Tracking Online Education in the United States Babson Survey Research Group Report (Jan. 2014)

Grade Change - Tracking Online Education in the United States, the 2013 survey of on-line learning report, authored by I. Elaine Allen and Jeff Seaman, is the eleventh annual report in this series on tracking online education in the United States. Originally the Sloan Online Survey, in recognition of the founding sponsor, the report is now produced through the Babson Survey Research Group.

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2014)

This from the on-line announcement:

Using responses from more than 2,800 colleges and universities, this study is aimed at answering fundamental questions about the nature and extent of online education:

Is Online Learning Strategic?
Are Learning Outcomes in Online Comparable to Face-to-Face Learning?
How Many Students are Learning Online?
How are Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) faring?
And much more...

This survey also reveals that in 2013:

--7.1 million of higher education students are taking at least one online course.
--The 6.1 % growth rate represents over 400,000 additional students taking at least one online course.
--The percent of academic leaders rating the learning outcomes in online education as the same or superior to those as in face-to-face instruction, grew from 57% in 2003 to 74% in 2013.
--The number of students taking at least one online course continued to grow at a rate far in excess of overall enrollments, but the rate was the lowest in a decade. (Sloan Consortium, 2013 Survey of Online Learning Report)

 The survey may be downloaded: click here to download a copy of the survey.

The executive summary follows:

The AAUP Issues a Revised Version of "Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications"

(Pix (c) Larry Catá Backer 2013)

Since the AAUP last issued a report on Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications in 2004, the higher education landscape has been significantly transformed by a number of factors, including: (1) the emergence of social media as vehicles for electronic communication; (2) increased outsourcing of information technology resources; (3) cloud computing; (3) expanded security concerns, and (4) new communications devices.  Moreover, the conception of the classroom has been transformed by technology and de-centered by administrative efforts to move education from a faculty driven effort to a markets driven effort to satisfy the demands of wage labor markets.

These changes have emboldened universities to begin to assert more complete control over the efforts of individuals who are employed as faculty.  I say it in that way because it appears to be a strategic calculation by universities to suggest that the mere entry into an employment relationship with faculty entitle them to "own" everything that comes from the individual.  While some might suggest that this transformation begins to touch on the incidents of slavery (there is no space that the individual may call her own, because it is all owned by the university), the courts have not yet confronted that issue.  Yet the trend is felt strongly as universities have sought to exploit all creative activities of faculty however tenuously tied to the scope of employment (on the theory that the scope of employment includes everything that an individual does, at least to the extent that the university wishes to claim it for itself).

This post includes the press release announcing the revised version and the executive summary of the revised version. The revised version may be accessed here:  Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications; Download:

Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications.pdf

Digital Humanities From the CIC

The CIC was pleased recently to announce the report by the CIC Digital Humanities Committee that is the product of the first CIC Digital Humanities Summit, held at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in April 2012. The paper is said to reflect the consensus reached by the sixty faculty, librarians, and administrators attending that there are significant shared requirements necessary to foster thriving Digital Humanities communities, and a common belief in the importance of interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and open access and open source models.

Read More HERE.

Between Scholar and University--Sharing Knowledge, Protecting Revenue and Control--Is the UCSF Approach Worth Considering

It has become something of a truism that information is power; it is also true that power is money, or at least income.  These truisms speak to a larger issue now confrontation academic institutions--contests over the control of knowledge produced by academics. 

 (Pix from Happy 3rd Birthday, Open Access Directory!, Charlotte Law Library News, May 26, 2011)

But should a faculty to make each of their articles freely available immediately through an open-access repository, and thus accessible to the public through search engines such as Google Scholar?  And should a Faculty Senate spearhead such efforts?  The Faculty Senate of the University of California San Francisco has answered both in the affirmative.  It would be useful for Penn State's Faculty Senate to consider the same.

On-Line Courseware--A Faculty Governance Issue? Take the Poll!

Like many universities, Penn State is constantly under pressure to manage its computing capacities..  This involves not merely hardware, but also software.  While much of this is substantially administrative in character, there are times when it may be possible to see in decision making a substantial faculty interest, and thus a greater interest in being sensitive to the shared governance aspects of decision making.

(From Dennis Carter, Open Courseware on Every Campus by 2016?: UC Irvine Official Makes a Bold Prediction During Meeting of Open Courseware Advocates From Across the Country,  e-Campus News, Feb. 14, 2011; "Nine in 10 MIT undergraduates say they use open courseware.")

One of my colleagues recently reminded us of the implications of technological decisions on faculty teaching. It also serves as a reminder that old labels and customary divisions of authority do not always serve as a guide to shared governance decisions. The issue is an important one, at its most basic level touching on the extent to which the scope of shared governance must adjust to changes in technology and academic practices and culture.

Please take the informal POLL located at the top RIGHT HAND SIDE of this WEB PAGE to tell us what you think!