A Review of College Unbound, by Jeffrey J. Selingo

College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students by Jeffrey J. Selingo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For someone who follows the Chronicle of Higher Ed or popular coverage of higher ed in general, there is not much new or surprising here. But Selingo personalizes and contextualizes the facts and figures being thrown at us in the media with his own reporting of anecdotal realities for students, parents and universities. The book cover review quotes focus on the technology disruption elements of his book, but this focus seems only to serve his broader and deeper indictment of the current system in general.

My takeaways from Selingo's coverage:

-Most universities are out of touch and slow to respond to what is a major shift in educational needs and expectations of higher ed students & parents.

-Current degree and major models may hinder more purposeful and future looking learning. Other models, such as those presented on pg. 149 could be explored.

-A gap year could help students mature and be ready to start college.

-Flexibility in course delivery models and certification methods is an emerging need.

My criticisms of Selingo's coverage:

-Selingo shares several stories of exceptional faculty with excellent teaching practices, but when he discusses "faculty" at large he shows some disdain. He writes this book from a student and parent advocacy standpoint and sometimes puts too much responsibility on faculty shoulders and often colors them as dispensable.

-Similar to the prior point, Selingo makes some messy causal claims about institutional responsibility for student success that are a little heavy handed. His logic gets a bit convoluted in trying to answer the question of individual or institutional responsibility for students finishing their degrees. He acknowledges the confounding variables for why students might drop out, but then still wants to argue that because Princeton graduates students at such a high rate, every student should have an equal chance of graduating from any institution. In some logical contortions he tries to support this claim by talking about high achieving students who undermatch- or go to schools with lower graduation rates. But he doesn't follow this up to show if those students, who might also have gotten into a top tier school, finish the lower tier programs with lower rates- he just says they lowered their chances of graduating by merely entering the school. Give me data on some of these individual, undermatched students' graduation rates, and I might see his point better. But whenever he can't find the data, he implies some institutional conspiracies and proceeds to speculate.

-Where he does have data- earnings comparisons between schools, I start to cringe a little. Though he acknowledges that colleges should be for more than setting ones' future wages, he can't stop talking about it and letting that data influence his recommendations for the future of education.

What inspired me in Selingo's work:

- He focuses on ways to encourage universities to get to the "sweet spot" of their students' learning needs. This is my favorite quest. In interviewing some Indian students about a training program they attended once, I saw a student describing his favorite college professor. With reverence, his eyes lit up and he said,"Oh! did he know how to get to the crux of the matter." I replay this in my head often for its passion.


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Teaching Online: A resource & some experiences

One goal of this blog is to provide resources and reflections for other parents like us who have ventured into online teaching as a way of working from home. The following resource is a good one for any online instructors.

Ally's chapter "Foundations of Educational Theory for Online Learning" in Athabasca University's free web book Theory and Practice of Online Learning provides a very useful summary of the three major theoretical frameworks of learning and shows how they can all be used to offer effective online learning. It is impressive to see how the author concisely reviews the theories, along with supporting paradigms for the theories, into cohesive guidelines for online learning.

I have these comments to add:

1) Ally says that "online learning knows no time zones, and location and distance are not an issue." I disagree. I believe this is a common misconception about online learning that creates unrealistic expectations for learners and facilitators. Even asynchronous learning is highly dependent on a certain flow of discussions, activities, group collaboration and feedback. These components can be affected by disparate time zones and locations. Is it more flexible than a face-to-face classroom? Yes. But time and space are still factors.

2) Ally offers three diagrams for basic information mapping. Here are some great resources for making concept maps (for instructors and learners):

• Wisemapping 
• Coggle 
• Smart Art in MS Word

3) Ally says that "information should be placed in the center of the screen for reading." I'm surprised by this comment, and there's no support cited for it. I have done extensive research on visual communications and reading from computer screens, and this is not a principle I have ever seen supported or espoused. Eye-tracking studies on web users show varied results for predicting where users' eyes will travel across a screen and for what types of information. Yes, centered text will attract attention in some contexts, but this advice needs more context than provided in his bulleted list. My research and experience would lead me to advise attention to font size before page placement. 

4) Ally addresses learning styles in this overview, a controversial topic because the data around this concept is complex. First, it's difficult to find evidence to support any of the current ed psych models of learning styles; second, it's difficult to predict what approaches would or would not enhance learning for those styles if they do exist. Yet, most K-12 and Higher Ed professional development and best practices include advice or requirements to address learning styles. 

I think this is because we all get the sense that something like this is at work in how we learn and that people do learn differently. After a lifetime of being a whiz at all standardized tests, verbal or quantitative, but a total doofus in a laboratory setting (what is it that you people are seeing through that microscope???), I was faced with my first real learning challenge when trying to learn my husband's family's language: Kannada. There's no Rosetta stone, and they don't use our alphabet. Since my only path to learning it seemed to be through my ears, I came to realize- I don't learn well that way. I learn through reading and understanding written symbols. Lucky for me our entire education system has been heavily weighted towards learners like me. If we were still in the days of Socrates' preferred oral tradition, I may have been labeled a slow learner early on. 

I am highly conscious of this as an instructional designer and look for ways to make sure that information is presented in a variety of ways. However, looking at the specific inventories and models presented by Ally in this article is not too helpful since these models have not been well-supported in research. 

5) Ally presents some additional information on motivating learners by including the two stalwarts of this body of research: intrinsic v extrinsic and Keller's ARCS model. I want to add a caveat to the C, for Confidence, in Keller's model. Yes, success helps build learners' confidence, but how many of you remember with absolute clarity every answer you got wrong in your learning endeavors? I know for me, getting it wrong or feeling conflicted about new information tends to increase my chances of storing information in my long term memory. I like to build in ways for learners to be surprised by something they hadn't considered or to even feel irritated or annoyed at points. Our competitive sides can often be motivated from a sense of failure as well as success.

6) I was surprised by Ally's comment that lectures are only instructor-centered in traditional classrooms and that this is no longer an issue in online classrooms because learners encounter content "first-hand." Yes, many online facilitators have moved away from lectures, but many still include them. In my experience of reviewing 200+ faculty-developed online courses at a state university over the last 5 years, I'd estimate at least 50% are still including recorded lectures. Plus, even those faculty who become more like "curators" of outside content instead of presenting their own lectures, are still choosing and framing information through their perspectives and expertise. This is a primary role of the faculty. It is also a responsibility of faculty to design ways for students to personalize the information in both traditional and online classrooms. I think Ally's comparison is false here.

All in all this was an impressive feat of compiling the dense learning theory basis for current online learning guidelines and best practices. 

Spelling Bee: Letter to the Editor

My letter to the editor:

When I opened the Free Lance Star on Thursday, May 30, I was elated to see a young girl from Virginia on the cover participating in a national spelling bee. However, my delight turned to dismay when the first 3 paragraphs focused on this intelligent girl's “lucky dress” and whether it would "make the cut" for the preliminary rounds at the Scripps National Spelling Bee. To add to my shock, the first 5 paragraphs included comments about this smart girl’s “turquoise dress” and “sparkly silver heels.”

My first thought was, I wonder how many readers (to include men of course) are now focused on this sixth grader's "above the knee" dress - yikes! My second thought was, I wonder if any journalist would focus on what a young "boy" was wearing at a spelling bee.

Readers actually have to turn to the back of the section to learn about the details of Jessica’s spelling accomplishment at the spelling bee.

  

If I were writing this article, I would focus on the fact that this is Jessica’s “first” time at the national spelling bee, which demonstrates her intelligence, dedication, and tenacity, and she is a “homeschooler,” which was mentioned only once.

Why not focus on the potential future for this young spelling-bee winner? According to a 2012 article in Slate, “the last six [National Spelling Bee winners] to graduate from high school have attended college at Harvard, Cornell, MIT, Yale, Tufts, and Duke” (Palmer, 2012). Impressive!

When will the world stop accentuating the physical appearance of young girls (and women) and only emphasize their extraordinary cognitive abilities?

Lauren Kane-Sample

Homeschooling mother of 3 girls and 1 boy

Composition Instructor for 4 Universities

Reference citation:

Palmer, B. (2012). Doctors. D-O-C-T-O-R-S. Doctors. What do spelling-bee winners do when they grow up? Retrieved from ww.slate.com/articles/life/explainer/2012/06/scripps_national_spelling_bee_what_happens_to_the_winners_later_in_life_.html

Padagogy Wheel

I've just been introduced to an awesome resource for moms and teachers to help visualize and use Ipad apps for learning. This model offers layers from learning objectives to activities to suit the needs and style of different learners and instructors. Each section is interactive and links to apps that can support different approaches to learning.

http://www.unity.net.au/padwheel/padwheelposter.pdf