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?