By: Patrick Lyons
Technology and higher education are popular topics for conversation, research and debate within many post-secondary education institutions. A key challenge when thinking about higher education and technology is keeping an eye on trends, issues and developments within the large higher education community as well as external trends that could significantly influence education. Perhaps one of the most significant recent examples of these types of trends has been the widespread excitement, interest and explosive growth in Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs).
So how does higher education identify trends or developments? One source is the Educause Learning Initiative (ELI) crowdsourcing survey that solicits responses from 530 international higher education professionals (Note: Educause is a very large community of information technology leaders and professionals in higher education). A few days ago ELI released its 2013-14 survey and six themes/issues floated to the top (view the top 15 issues here):
1) Assessment of Learning
2) Online and Blended Learning
3) Emerging Technology, Future Models, and Academic Transformation
4) Digital and Information Literacies
5) Mobile Learning
6) Methods for evaluating technology based instructional resources.
Looking at theses issues, I see that many align closely with some of the concerns and developments at Carleton. With 18 out of the 21 Ontario universities (Carleton included) specifically mentioning online learning in their Strategic Mandate agreement to the province, I suspect these trends/issues are mirrored with my colleagues at other Ontario institutions.
I’d like to focus briefly on the number one identified issue, the “Assessment of Learning.” In some ways it’s an unusual to see this issue at the top of the list, because it appears to have come out of nowhere. It hasn’t been mentioned in any other recent annual ELI list, let alone appearing at the top of the list. As teachers, we know that the assessment of learners is perhaps the most important part of teaching and learning. How do we know that learners have learned? How do learners know that they have learned? How can we assess what learners have learned? Is the assessment methodology fair? Does it provide the information that we need as educators to decide or for the learner to demonstrate what they have learned? And how can we make our assessments relevant and rich, particularly in large enrollment classes? These are challenging and important questions.
So why are IT higher education professionals and leaders identifying “Assessment of Learning” as the number one issue? I think the likely reason has to do with the second item in the ELI list: “Online and Blended Learning.” There is extensive and intensive interest in large-scale online learning in higher education (again just take a look at the Contact North report), and assessment of online students can present significant challenges. How do you assess large numbers of online students effectively and efficiently? How do you know who is being assessed? There are all questions being asked by senior administrators and there are IT solutions that could be implemented to help solve some of these challenges.
Certainly there are online proctoring services (Kryterion, ProctorU), but tests and exams are not necessarily always the best assessment of student learning. Online tools like e–portfolios (Mahara) and learning logs (Google Drive, WordPress) can document a learner’s progress and provide rich information; their assessment thus far requires significant investment in time by an instructor or teaching assistant. Or does it? EdX, a nonprofit consortia (in some ways a MOOC aggregator) founded by Harvard and MIT has introduced an artificial intelligence technology tool that marks essay type questions.
Issues and trends in IT in higher education? You better believe it.