The History and Future of Online Education:

What should you do?

John Bourne, Ph.D.Chief Academic Officer

American Sentinel UniversityExecutive Director Emeritus, The Sloan

ConsortiumEmeritus Professor at Olin College and Babson

College

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Outline• My background• Your Challenge• Brief history of online education• The dimensions of online learning• Are there problems? - yes, people just don’t know

what is going on and how to do online education correctly!

• The frog – just what is the problem?• What are solutions? Why should we consider the

problem.• What are our solutions – take the best of on-ground

and make it great online by replicating the best on-ground in an anytime-anywhere world.

• Add things to do in the online world that can’t be done onground

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John Bourne Ph.D -- Background• B.E. Vanderbilt• M.S.E. University of Florida• Ph.D. University of Florida• Professor at Vanderbilt (31

years)• Professor at Olin College

(10 years)• Professor at Babson College

(10 years)• Executive Director, The

Sloan Consortium (6 years)• Chief Academic Officer,

American Sentinel University ( 2 years)

• Fellow: IEEE, Sloan Consortium

• Interests• Innovation in online

education• Technology for teaching

and learning• Social networking• Entrepreneurship• Analytics• French Horn playing

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The Challenge for this morning• In your discipline, as I present ideas, think

about how could online education improve teaching and learning here at UMKC. • What can be done that cannot be done easily

onground.• What affordances do you see for your discipline

• Write things down and we’ll collect and organize – and have discussions with Devon Cancilla

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Why talk about online learning now?

• Online learning is changing! The first phase is over.• How is it changing?

– New technologies– Widespread acceptance by the public and government– Increased competition in a huge market

• What does this mean for us?– What are the best steps to be leaders in this increasingly

competitive market? - especially in the regional market.– Our direction: We should focus on affordable high quality

online education for learners delivered at scale in markets that have sufficient growth in our focus programs. Focus on regional markets.

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Some people worrythat we have an Online Education

crisis1• “Friedman’s term quiet crisis, which others have called a

“creeping crisis,” is reminiscent of the folk tale about boiling a frog. If a frog is dropped into boiling water, it will immediately jump out and survive. But a frog placed in cool water that is heated slowly until it boils won’t respond until it is too late.” – from the Rising Above the Gathering Storm report.

Picture from Wikipedia

1 – After Our StemCrisis

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History of Online Learning

• Sloan Foundation funded projects starting in 1993 in the “Learning outside the classroom” program spearheaded by Frank Mayadas and ultimately spent nearly $100M on projects, mostly in US.

• Online learning = ALN (asynchronous learning networks) grew in parallel paths: e-Learning (training) and in higher education. K-12 lagged significantly.

• Significant scholarly research proved the efficacy of online learning

• Sloan-C was established and grew into a prime mover organization for online education.

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The Pillars

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The Changing Landscape• The Internet became widely available

– The original pillar of access was largely realized. Scale became more important.

• Better ways of learning were introduced but often often poorly utilized – often largely duplicating drawbacks of the classroom model (e.g., MOOCs)

• Known learning theory discoveries have not been widely implemented (e.g.,Community of Inquiry (COI), immersive learning, simulation, learning by doing)

• We believe schools that will be successful will embrace change and organize their offerings according to the educational needs of the student

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The Online Learning Landscape

• Immersive simulations– Immediate feedback– Assessment

• MOOCs– Videos and Assessment

• Mobile• Video, audio, text, COI (e.g.

voice thread)• Competency-based; e-portfolios

• Cohort learning – COI and the bush taxi

• Self-paced to scale• Curated Collections of Content

– videos, papers, texts• The changing role of the faculty

– guide-on-the-side and/or Content creators?

• Learn-by-doing– “Challenges” and “Failures”

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MOOCs: Yes, No, or Maybe?• Question: What is a MOOC (massively open

online course)?• Answer: Basically you provide a recorded

lecture that anyone can view, coupled with testing and feedback given frequently– Coursera, Udacity, Edx, others

• Question: How does it differ from the traditional classroom style?

• Answer: (1) only the very best lectures provided and (2) assessment is more rapid. Many drop out.

• Q: should MOOCs be important to you?• A: Maybe, maybe not.

Example: free MOOCs for regional presence

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MOOCs: Yes, No, or Maybe?• MOOCs are “elitist.” Often used for

marketing purposes.• MOOCs hurt one-on-one and small group

teaching. Possibilities for integration – thus, helping?

• Unless you have a “pinnacle of excellent” in your academic quiver, you will likely not succeed with MOOCs.

• Don’t do it or maybe try out with the pinnacles of excellence only

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Affordances: Consider how a university can benefit from online learning

• Arts and Liberal Arts

• Business• Education• Sciences• Health care•

Medicine• Nursing•

Pharmacy•

Dentistry• Law• Engineering

• Improve access, quality of learning, student satisfaction, faculty satisfaction and reduced cost

• Learning through “doing”• Community of Inquiry created• Higher quality learning through

knowledge organization and delivery

• Computer–based methods work for anywhere anytime learning

• Connection with the region and the world

• Improved student performance

• Life-long learning model for the institution

The World of Educational Simulations

“my favorite topic”

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Steamer – circa 1980s

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2D Simulations

Above from Concord Consortium

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Work in South Korea – 15 years ago. Appeared in IMEJ; with permission.

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Work in South Korea – 15 years ago. Appeared in IMEJ; with permission.

Health Simulations are being implemented to teach:

Diagnostic SkillsCommunication SkillsHealth Promotion Environmental Health

Tox Town: National Library of Medicine (NIH)

Health-Related Areas

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Serious Gaming

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Serious Gaming

Through role play the length and outcome of the simulation is determined through decision making.

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A Serious Game – National University

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The Virtual Campus

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The View the Student Sees (campus)

Hello: This is Rick, I’m your guide-on-the-side. Ask me about things you want to know about using this learning system:

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Virtual Learning Center

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More features for the Virtual Campus

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The Appalachian Community Environment

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The India Simulation

• Purpose: • Teach

how to filter water in an Indian Village that has arsenic in its water

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Some Examples• The Windshield Survey

– A learning exercise deeply rooted in the community health curriculum in nursing

– Students ride a bus, take notes, discuss and report about the aspects of the community that might affect health and livability of that environment

• Nursing Theorists– Nursing students learn the theories propounded by

giants in the field• We have migrated these activities to online

simulations that permits a variety of affordances

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Affordances of SimulationsAffordance DescriptionOnboarding Introduction provides explanation tutorial and

practiceInteraction Robust interaction with simFeedback Immediate feedback givenIdentity Learning identifies with own identity in-worldImmersion Immersion provides “Flow” (Csikszentmihalyi)Pleasurable frustration Provides challenges that are overcome with workManipulation Objects in-world can be manipulatedIncreasing skills/knowledge

Scaffolded learning is evident and clear

Rules Rules are provide at outsetInformed learning Students understand what the rules are

Pedagogy The material could not be taught without the simMulti and single player COI is evident and NPCs used for anywhere-anytime

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The Windshield Survey

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The Windshield Survey

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Sentinel Citytm

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A playground in Sentinel City

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Next GenerationBot Example

The Florence Nightingale Bot Dialogs

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Museum and Resource Center

• Nursing history (walk around, talk to simulated nursing theorists review slides, talk to docents)

• Resources for how to use tools (e.g. Turn it in, ePortfolios, Moodle)

• Staffed by bots and student success advisors

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Virtual Hospital/Health Assessment

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The Next Immersion step: Oculus Rift and Razer HydraHow do you

teach how to draw blood?

Millimeter accuracy

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So, what should we do?

? Immersive simulations? Immediate feedback? Assessment

? MOOCs? Videos and Assessment

? Mobile? Video, audio, text, COI (e.g.

voice thread)? Competency-based; e-portfolios

? Cohort learning – COI and the bush taxi

? Self-paced to scale? Curated Collections of Content

– videos, papers, texts? The changing role of the faculty

– Guide-on-the-side and/or Content creators?

? Learn-by-doing? “Challenges” and “Failures”

And – it can all tie together in sims on a virtual campus

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1.800.729.2427www.americansentinel.edu