AAC&U Board Meeting

Randy BassVice Provost for Education

Georgetown University

September 27, 2015

Liberal Learning and the Digital Future

”Liberal Education Re-bound: Seizing the Digital Opportunity

University

Randy Bass (Georgetown University) Bret Eynon (LaGuardia Community College)

Making the Case publication AAC&U

GEMs Project

What could liberal education look like if we were inventing it at this moment in history?

How might the new digital context help us

renew a vision of liberal learning and make it

widely available to and meaningful for an

expanded population of college students?

Purdue-Gallop Poll on Engaged Work and Flourishing

Two most important predictors of success:

1) Adult mentor who cared about you

2) Sustained project

The great tension of our time in education is between integration and dis-integration.

The split logic of the learning paradigm

Integrative (holistic, coherent):

Design of whole learning experiences

Curricular and co-curricular

Competencies conceived as part of a whole

Connections & integration

Disintegrative:

Design of discrete or granular learning experiences

Competency-basedlearning

Learning decoupled from formal boundaries

Analytics that track narrow or micro learning

Reframing Core Elements of Liberal Education

Engagement that builds from interest to purpose, knowledge and capacity for lifelong learning

Community and mentorship that shapes ability to have impact in the world

Integration that develops a capacity for dealing with complexity and change

Reframing Core Elements in the New Ecosystem

Engagement Community and mentorship

Integration fundamentally

shaped by networks

Data-driven Algorithms x Human Judgment

Horizontal access to Creation and Production

In this new environment, what is the digital opportunity?

Digital Opportunity:Holistic advising and integrated services

Are we in a better position than ever to connect what has typically not been connected?

Academic Affairs + Student Affairs

Advising + Career Placement

Curriculum + Co-curriculum

Curriculum Design + Outcomes Assessment + Institutional Research

15-week Traditional Statistics Course

8-9 weeks with OLI materials + Professor

Applied projects on student Interests

Advanced topics and problem-solving

Remaining 5-6 weeks

Digital Opportunity:Adaptive learning intelligent tutors

Open Learning Initiative

Machine/Algorithm+

Human Judgment & Support

Habitable Worlds – Online Course at Arizona State University

Digital Opportunity:Inquiry-driven online environments

Digital Opportunity:Inquiry-driven online environments

University of Mary Washington

Emory University

Georgetown University

A DOMAIN OF ONE’S OWN

Digital Opportunity:Open Web Domains for Digital Fluency

“Every hour spent online inside an LMS is one in which students are not engaging the wider web in a spirit of critical inquiry.”

Jim Groom and Brian Lamb, “Reclaiming Innovation,” Educause Review Online, 2014.

Digital Opportunity:Open web domains for digital fluency

Audrey Watters

“Giving students their own digital domain is a radical act. It gives them the ability to work on the Web and with the Web, to have their scholarship be meaningful and accessible by others. It allows them to demonstrate their learning to others beyond the classroom walls. To own one’s domain gives students an understanding of how Web technologies work. It puts them in a much better position to control their work, their data, their identity online.”

Learning Portfolios

Digital Opportunity:Integrative Learning Portfolios

What Difference does ePortfolio Make?C2L evidence supports 3 preliminary claims

Sophisticated ePortfolio initiatives:

1. Advance Student Learning & Success2. Make Student Learning Visible3. Catalyze Institutional Change

My (ePortfolio-enhanced) course engaged me in… Quite a Bit/Very Much

Synthesizing & organizing ideas, information or experiences in new ways

83.1%

Applying theories or concepts to practical problems or in new situations

77.2%

My course contribued to my knowledge, skills and personal development in understanding myself

78.6%

+

Digital Opportunity:Open and Integrative Platforms

Dialectic between the openness of “Domain of One’s Own” and the integrative power of ePortfolio, especially for outcomes assessment and institutional learning.

Domains

Portfolio

What might the fitbit dashboard for learning look like?

Digital Opportunity:Data for empowerment of learning

Student curated dashboard on their learning

Digital Opportunity:Data for empowerment of learning

+

+

Reflective Portfolios

Dashboard / Analytics

Alumni Pathways and Career Services

Digital Opportunity:Holistic advising and integrated services

Reframing Core Elements in the New Ecosystem

Engagement Community and mentorship

Integration fundamentally

shaped by networks

Data-driven Algorithms x Human Judgment

Horizontal access to Creation and Production

Liberal Education Re-bound

Are digital environments fundamentally engaging and empowering all students for a life beyond the institution?

Do learning environments put social learning at the center?

Are we fully harnessing the power of adaptive data-driven learning tools to support an integrative vision of education?

Are we designing for the porosity of institutional boundaries?

Are we maximizing the use of digital tools—quantitative and qualitative—to make our institutions adaptive learning organizations?