WASC Changing Ecology Concept Papers

7/27/2019 WASC Changing Ecology Concept Papers

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WASC Concept Papers2nd Series:THE CHANGING ECOLOGY OFHIGHER EDUCATION AND ITSIMPACT ON ACCREDITATION

Western Association of Schools and Colleges

Accrediting Commission for Senior Colleges and Universities

March 2013


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This 2nd series of concept papers was commissioned

by the WASC Accrediting Commission for Senior

Colleges and Universities to further inform the region,

the Commission, and WASC staff of the changes that

are occurring in higher education, identify ways in which

WASC can continue to be responsive to these changes,and provide a mechanism to engage member institutions

in this overall phenomenon.

These papers are offered under a Creative Commons license that al-

lows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercial-

ly, as long as they credit WASC and license their new creations under

the identical terms.


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Title Author Page

1. Changing Ecology Introduction Ralph Wol, President, WASC 2

2. Te New Ecology or Higher Education:Challenges to Accreditation

Peter Ewell, Vice President, NCHEMS 4

3. New Ecosystems in Higher Education and WhatTey Mean or Accreditation and Assessment

Richard DeMillo, Director, Center or 21stCentury Universities and DistinguishedProessor, Georgia Institute o echnology

10

4. From Educational Institutions to Learning Flows Marina Gorbis, Executive Director, DevinFidler, Research Director, and BettinaWarburg-Johnson, Program Assistant,Institute or the Future

15

5. Tinking About Accreditation in a RapidlyChanging World

Paul LeBlanc, President, Southern NewHampshire University

20

6. Changing Ecology: owards Accreditation orInstitutions Oering Courses, not Degrees

Sebastian Trun, CEO, Udacity 25

7. AASCUs Red Balloon Project George L. Mehay, Vice President,

AASCU

28

8. Te New Ecology o Higher Education: TeChanging Faculty

Adrianna Kezar, Proessor, University oSouthern Caliornia

32

9. Te Nexus o For-Proft, International, andAccreditation

Denise DeZolt, Chie Academic Ocer,Laureate Education

39

10. New Ecology o Higher Education in Asia-Pacifc:Implications or Accreditation

Molly N. Lee, Senior Prorgram Specialist,UNESCO

44

Table of Contents


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Changing Ecology IntroductionRalph Wol

WASC

WASC has had a tradition o commissioning series o concept papers when a new area or accreditation is tobe explored. Tese papers help to rame emerging issues rom multiple perspectives. Tis approach was used orthe 2001 Handbook o Accreditation to identiy major changes to both the Standards and the Institutional Review

Process. It was used again more recently with a set osix papers commissioned in 2010 (http://www.wascsenior.org/redesign/conceptpapers) that inormed the work o the accreditation redesign steering committee and therevision o the 2013 Handbook o Accreditation adopted by the Commission in February 2013. Key elements othe accreditation redesign in the 2013 Handbook are transparency, a ocus on retention/graduation, student suc-cess, and student learning. Te Commission also requested that the WASC accrediting process be responsive toinnovation and the rapidly changing environment o higher education. A task orce on the Changing Ecology oHigher Education was ormed in 2011, and it led to the inclusion in Standard 4 that, as a part o the institutionalplanning process, institutions should be responsive to this changing environment.

What could not have been oreseen when the task orce was created was how dramatically the changes to highereducation would be during the period o the 2013 Handbook revision. At the outset, we saw the rapid expansiono ree online content through providers such as iunes U, ED, Khan Academy, and University o the People,

as well as low cost course oerings through providers such as StraighterLine. Te development o massive openonline courses (MOOCs) through new companies such as Udacity, Coursera, and EdX drew immediate attentiondue to the involvement o the top research universities. As these and other enterprises began oering coursesor ree, hundreds o thousands signed up or them and continue to do so. Tis coincided with the developmento the rst competency based programs not using credit hours as the basis or determining student progress orcompletion. A pathway or obtaining ederal nancial aid or competency based programs was identied by therecent promulgation o guidelines by the US Department o Education in March 2013 using direct assessment.Innovations such as badges and other ways to acknowledge learning in non-degree rameworks were being de-veloped by those outside higher education and are nding their way into many universities.

What started as a ocus on the changing character o students and institutions within the existing community o

higher education has now exploded with new providers, many in the or-prot sector, and new combinations ocourses and learning activities within and outside traditional higher education institutions. Learning adaptivesoware and support systems have made the whole learning environment dynamic and subject to disruption.Not only has the change been dramatic, but the rate o change and the publicity around it (some would charac-terize it as hype) has also been more rapid and extensive than anyone could have predicted.

At the same time, signicant changes are occurring within traditional higher education, including: increasinginternationalization, the new majority o aculty no longer holding ull-time tenure track positions, innova-tions sponsored by national higher education organizations and oundations to innovate and restructure in theace o scal challenges, and the increasing development o online degree programs.

Troughout this dynamic environment, questions concerning accreditation have arisen, and institutions are wor-

ried about entering into such new arrangements without guidance as to whether or how accreditation rules mayapply. At the same time, WASC has been asking whether the ocus o accreditation on institutions needs to shiin some ways to courses, or even to individual students. Many o these innovative practices call or increased at-tention on learning outcomes and the ability o both institutions and accreditors to assure the quality and integ-rity o learning, even as the locus, ormat, and arrangements o learning takes on new orms.

o explore the implications o these changes, we asked nine authors to describe the changing ecology o highereducation as they saw it, and suggest what role accreditation might play in assuring quality or currently accred-ited institutions undertaking innovative practices and/or partnering with new institutions. We asked that theydiscuss whether WASC should consider accrediting new orms o education and institutional arrangements.


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Te ollowing papers address these issues rom multiple perspectives:

Peter Ewell, Vice President o NCHEMS, updated his 2010 paper, Te New Ecology or Higher Education:Challenges to Accreditation, which provides a comprehensive overview o these changes and their implicationsor accreditation.

Richard DeMillo, Director, Center or 21st Century Universities and Distinguished Proessor, Georgia Instituteo echnology, oers a historical and comparative perspective o change in the 20th and 21st centuries in hispaper, New Ecosystems in Higher Education and What Tey Mean or Accreditation and Assessment. He sug-gests that the current ecosystem is dramatically dierent, and a standards based approach o accreditation is nolonger workable.

Marina Gorbis, Devin Fidler, and Bettina Warburg-Johnson rom the Institute or the Future describe therapidly changing workplace where traditional jobs are being replaced with new orms o online enterprises thatcall or new skills and learning ows instead o traditional degrees in From Educational Institutions to Learn-ing Flows.

Paul LeBlanc, President, Southern New Hampshire University, explores disruptive innovations in higher educa-tion in Tinking about Accreditation in a Rapidly Changing World. He describes how competency based educa-tion provides a new and much needed approach to learning, and at the same time, could lead to the disaggrega-

tion o accreditation activities.

Sebastian Trun, ounder and CEO, Udacity, describes the innovative eorts undertaken by this path-breakingorganization and the need or accreditation to be involved in assuring the quality and integrity o MOOC cours-es in Changing Ecology: owards Accreditation or Institutions Oering Courses, not Degrees.

George L. Mehay, Vice President, American Association o State Colleges and Universities (AASCU), describesthe history and institutional approaches to innovation in AASCUs Red Balloon Project, reecting that innova-tions are occurring within traditional state universities to respond to scal challenges and new student character-istics.

Adrianna Kezar, Proessor, University o Southern Caliornia, provides a detailed overview o the new major-

ity o non-tenure track aculty (NFs) and the impact o disaggregated aculty roles. She urges accreditation tomore actively respond to these changes in Te New Ecology o Higher Education: Te Changing Faculty.

Denise DeZolt, Chie Academic Ocer, Laureate Education, describes the important role o or prot institu-tions in meeting President Obamas goals or expanding access. She also discusses the expansion o internationaleducation in Te Nexus o For-Prot, International, and Accreditation.

Molly N. Lee, independent researcher recently with UNESCO, Bangkok, ocuses on the changes occurring with-in higher education in the Asia-Pacic region, which includes new providers, new modes o nancing, and newquality assurance systems in New Ecology o Higher Education in Asia-Pacic: Implications or Accreditation.

ogether, these papers describe changes that are already occurring and trends that are likely to aect both higher

education and accreditation. Tey are available as a collection and individually on the WASC website at http://www.wascsenior.org/redesign/conceptpapers.

We hope these papers, collectively and individually, will stimulate much broader discussion throughout theWASC region and beyond.


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As American higher education nears the midpoint o the second decade o a new millennium, it inhabits alandscape that is rapidly being transormed. I current trends continue, college students in 2020 will participatein new kinds o learning experiences, access new kinds o learning resources, and deal with a broader range o

providers than ever beore. Meanwhile, providers themselves harness almost unimagined new technologies, willace escalating demands or perormance and be orced to operate in an increasingly seamless global marketplaceor higher education. ogether, these conditions constitute nothing less than a new ecology or higher educa-tion. Its characteristics are increasingly removed rom the environment in which current accreditation approach-es evolved. As a consequence, they are bound to pose challenges to these approaches. Tis brie paper examinesthe nature o these changes and the specic challenges that each poses to established accreditation practices.Tese changes are o two main kinds: one external to colleges and universities, and the other embedded in highereducation institutions and the system they constitute. Te paper then goes on to note the kinds o changes inaccreditation practices that are needed to meet these challenges and how WASC has responded.

External Challenges

A rst set o challenges resides within the wider social and political realm in which higher education mustoperate. Colleges and universities exercise little control over these orces and must in some way accommodatethem. Tey do have a choice about how they do so, however, because some adaptations are deliberate and proac-tive, while others remain unconscious and reactive.

Accountability or Results. Probably the most important shi in the external landscape or higher educationthat has occurred since the earlier version o this paper is an unprecedented demand or accountability onthe part o the U.S. Department o Education. Beginning with the report o the Secretarys Commission onthe Future o Higher Education in 2007 (the so-called Spellings Commission), each successive year hasoccasioned new calls or increased levels o perormance and public reporting. Just last year, or example,reports were issued by both the American Council on Educations (ACE) ask Force on Accreditation and

the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) that called or renewedattention to student academic achievement and public reporting. In addition, all expectations that thechange o administration in Washington in 2008 would reduce the pressure on colleges and universitiesto demonstrate student success and acceptable learning outcomes among graduates vanished with theObama administrations new postsecondary attainment goals and its accompanying accountability provi-sions. Whatever the ortunes o the respective political parties in the decade to come, thereore, the needto be accountable or learning will likely remain. What is more, the nature o the demand has shied.Accreditors have been asked by regulators with growing stridence over the last twenty years to requireinstitutions to pay attention to student learning outcomes in the course o a review. Tese eorts havemet with considerable success, as shown by the ndings o two recent surveys o institutional assessment

activities conducted by the National Institute or Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA). Now thereis a demand or accreditors to go beyond just doing assessment by examining the average perormanceo selected samples o students. Te new expectation instead is ensuring that all graduates measure up to

Te New Ecology or Higher Education: Challenges to AccreditationUpdated Version*

Peter EwellNCHEMS

* Te original version o this working paper was prepared two years ago as a resource or the task orces charged with updating theWASC accreditation standards and visit process. Although this was only two years ago, the conditions aecting American higher edu-cation and institutional accreditation as its principal quality assurance mechanism are suciently dierent today that a new edition iscalled or. Accordingly, this paper expands and updates the observations made earlier in October, 2010.

This is one of a series of concept papers commissioned by the WASC Accrediting Commission for SeniorColleges and Universities, to inform the redesign of its accreditation process.


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established learning outcomes standards. Te growing press or such standards is shown by the DegreeQualications Prole (DQP) issued in 2011 by the Lumina Foundation or Education to stimulate thediscussion o common standards or higher education and the college-ready standards or high schoolexit currently being implemented in most states. Regional accreditors have done a ne job o stimulatinginstitutions to build their capacity to do assessment over the past een years, but they have little experi-ence with engaging institutions constructively in conversations about actual expectations and perormancewith respect to student learning outcomes.

ransparency Demands. Accompanying these external demands or specic perormance in the realmo student success and meeting acceptable levels o learning are growing calls or both accreditors andinstitutions to become ar more transparent about what they do and the results they achieve. For manyyears, regional accreditations traditional practices o revealing only the accredited status o the institu-tions they review caused little public comment. In an age o accountability, though, this stance has becomeuntenable. Accreditors are now pressed to publish the broad ndings o all reviews by identiying areaso challenge and exemplary perormance. At the same time, they are under greater pressure to broadenpublic participation in what is perceived by many outsiders to be a secretive process by increasing thenumber o public members on Commissions and,where appropriate, expert public participation onreview teams. Institutions are simultaneously being

asked to show more about their internal opera-tions (standards o student academic achievement,quality o resources and learning experiences, andso on) and their academic results. Accreditors arethe vehicle or these demands, so they are increas-ingly called upon to require institutions to disclosecertain things and check up on how well they aredoing so.

Changing Demographics. Meanwhile, the composition o Americas student body is beginning to mirrorits wider population with respect to race and ethnicity. Arican American and Hispanic students compriseover 27% o current college students, with Caliornia, the WASC regions largest state, leading this nationaltrend. Most o this growth is in the youngest population quartile which is about to enter college. Despitetheir best eorts, established colleges and universities do not have a very good track record o retain-ing such students o color into their second years o enrollment and seeing them through to graduation.Because student success among traditionally underserved populations will be increasingly critical tomaintaining baccalaureate degree production in the coming decade, accreditors must pay particular atten-tion to statistics on student success, disaggregated by race/ethnicity, and to using the discussions gener-ated by reviewing such indicators to reocus institutional attention on targeted retention and academicenhancement programs.

Constrained Resources. Te current global economic downturn was preceded by a long period o statebudgetary shortalls and consequent disinvestment in public higher education. And available evidence

suggests that most states will be in structural decit throughout the coming decade, even i the economyrebounds more broadly. Growing gaps between rich and poor accompanying these economic trends,moreover, already mean that higher education has become unaordable to growing numbers o students.Tese conditions put pressure on accreditation to ensure that institutions are paying proper attention tothe stewardship o their scal resources or uture survival, demanding attention to eciency as well aseectiveness. As above, they also raise questions o equity i institutions are turning their backs on quali-ed but less-well-o potential students in their admissions and nancial aid policies. Finally, they putpressure on accreditors themselves to make the accreditation process more ecient by reducing duplica-tion, streamlining reporting, and harnessing technology to enable virtual presence and collaboration.

A Global Higher Education System. Finally, the U.S. higher education system is not operating in isolation

External Challenges Accountability or Results ransparency Demands Changing Demographics Constrained Resources A Global Higher Education System


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rom those o the rest o the world. Just as students move rom institution to institution and state to statewith greater requency, oreign students are coming to the U.S. and U.S. institutions are operating abroadin greater numbers. Distance delivery is accelerating these phenomena and it is likely that 2020 will becharacterized by a atter higher education world. Increased globalization has several dimensions thataect accreditation. First, it means that academic standards or undergraduate and masters-level work areconverging across national contexts. Te Bologna process in Europe is the most visible maniestation othe emergence o aligned global standards, with counterparts in Australasia, as well as Central and SouthAmerica. o be acceptable abroad, U.S. standards or student learning outcomes will need to be aligned

with these new prototypes and be assessed in similar ashions. Another dimension o going global isthat the quality o U.S. institutions operating abroad must be assured. At the same time, in order to gaincredibility, non-U.S. institutions are beginning to seek and receive recognition rom American accreditors,including WASC. Both o these should entail extending partnerships between American accreditors andother national quality assurance agencies, which need to know what U.S. accreditation entails and whatthey can expect when dealing with it. Finally, a attening world demands that U.S. college graduates haveglobal competencies including an understanding o other cultures, geographic knowledge, and oreignlanguage skills. One implication o these trends is that these should be added to established lists o genericcompetencies that accreditors require institutions to teach and assess.

Internal ChallengesParalleling these external developments is a series o signicant changes within colleges and universities thathave an important bearing on the meaning o quality and, thereore, the conduct o accreditation as qualityassurance. Here it is important to remember that despite changes in the number and scale o higher educationinstitutions, underlying eatures such as structure and organization, curriculum and pedagogy, and aculty rolesand responsibilities did not change very much in the century that ollowed the establishment o the rst regionalaccrediting organizations in the late nineteenth century. Accreditation standards and review processes weredesigned specically to t this environment and did so appropriately and eectively or many years. With theseelements in ux, however, existing standards and review processes become increasingly problematic.

New Kinds o Providers. One o the most rapid and striking developments o the past ve years has been

the growth o new kinds o postsecondary providers. Pure distance-delivery institutions are becom-ing more common and, according to the National Center or Education Statistics, the or-prot sectornow serves over 12% o the nations undergraduates. Particularly striking has been the growth o someor-prot institutions that have doubled enrollment annually over multiple years. Such rapid growth raisesundamental questions about the ability o such institutions to match enrollment increases with necessaryinrastructure and breadth o administrative experience. At the same time, the or-prot business modelis not well understood by regional accreditors and poses challenges to established notions o governance.Finally, looking even arther into the uture, some providers are not higher education institutions at all:expansion o corporate training opportunities and the growing number o resources that learners canaccess on their own now allow a dedicated student to master all the material contained in a baccalaure-ate program without attending an organized institution o higher education at all. Accreditation standards

developed in an era dominated by ace-to-ace classrooms and aculty-centered approaches to teachingand learning are not well suited to these new institutions. In parallel, standards and review processesevolved primarily to address traditional instructional and scholarly activities are out o step with institu-tions or which awarding degrees and certicates is the dominant activity.

New Patterns o Participation. Te dominant pattern o college attendance in America no longer hasindividual higher education institutions at its center. Several dimensions o this dominant pattern can bediscerned, some established and some emerging. First, Department o Education longitudinal surveyshave or twenty years reported that the majority o students earning a baccalaureate degree attended twoor more institutions, with a h attending three or more. Tese developments are raising issues abouthow learning transers rom one institution to another in a cumulative and coherent ashion as a student


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works toward a credential. Adding to this ractionalization, some parts o an institutions curriculum maybe developed and delivered by third-party providers, raising parallel questions about transer o contentwithin the curriculum. For-prot companies such as StraighterLine, or example, allow institutions toessentially outsource many commonly-taken lower-division courses that are required to earn a baccalau-reate degree. Te growing availability o credit-bearing courses on the web through modalities like MassiveOpen On-Line Courses (MOOCs) will only add to this trend. Both situations render accreditationsdominant paradigm o accrediting individual institutions increasingly obsolescent and demand greaterattention to how institutions ensure that quality is protected when so much o the instructional process is

outside their direct control.

A New Paradigm o eaching and Learning. Also ading into history is the traditional academic calendarbased on xed time-based terms (semesters or quarters) and one-way transmission o content. Incontrast, the emerging new paradigm o teachingand learning, best illustrated now by a handulo competency-based institutions like WesternGovernors University (WGU), is based on a masterymodel in which students make academic progressby successully completing, at their own pace,successive examinations, demonstrations, or peror-

mances. In contrast to the traditional seat-timeapproach, this model is not only asynchronous,but it is also characterized by a wide diversity oindividual learning experiences. No two students atWGU, or example, will have engaged in the samecurriculum, although all will be expected to meet common outcomes standards. At the opposite end othe continuum, another eature o this new paradigm o teaching and learning is characterized by ar morestandardized and structured learning experiences built using insights about how people learn providedthrough cognitive science. Institutions employing this mode, like the British Open University and manyU.S. or-prots, rely on a centrally-developed, standardized curriculum delivered by adjunct aculty or at adistance. By 2020, it is very likely that a majority o the nations college students will be experiencing one o

these two transormed modes o provision. Both o these approaches challenge accreditations traditionalview o instructional quality based on resources and processes. Tey also require established standards omastery based upon an agreed-upon array o intended learning outcomes consistent with the needs o the21st century. Tese approaches challenge accreditation to help establish what intended learning outcomesought to be.

A ransormed and Contingent Faculty.For most o accreditations history, the aculty workorce at all typeso institutions was overwhelmingly centered on ull-time aculty on a tenure track. Faculty members inthese roles are expected to serve as colleagues or one another in developing new courses and curricula,setting academic standards and policies, and engaging to various degrees in scholarship and creativeactivity. Full-time appointments also meant that most aculty were available to participate in proessional

development to build their skills in such areas as eective collaborative pedagogy, use o technology inteaching, and assessing student learning outcomes. Since that time, the ace o Americas aculty has shiedmarkedly. According to NCES gures, about a third o the current proessoriate now consists o part-timeaculty hired on a contingent basis to sta introductory or lower-division courses with high studentdemand. Meanwhile, growing numbers o those employed ull-time are not on a tenure track and remainemployed on a contract basis as instructors. Tese trends are especially prevalent at open-admission publiccolleges and universities and are overwhelmingly the case in the rapidly growing or-prot sector. In lighto accreditations heavy ocus on the aculty role in designing and approving all aspects o the teaching/learning process, and accreditations historic emphasis on the role o aculty in participatory governance,these trends must be re-examined. Especially salient are questions about how the quality o teaching andlearning is monitored and assured when the aculty role is unbundled so that dierent individuals are

Internal Challenges New Kinds o Providers New Patterns o Participation A New Paradigm o eaching and

Learning A ransormed ContingentFaculty


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responsible or instructional design, content delivery, mentoring, and student assessment.

Implications o Tese Changes

It is easier to dene these emerging changes and identiy the challenges they pose to current accreditationpractices than it is to delineate the specics o how these practices ought to change. Nevertheless, these trendssuggest the ollowing:

Accreditors will need to perorm a more overt accountability role, with processes more attuned to public

concerns about quality. Tis will include greater public participation in the accreditation process byincreasing the number o public members on Commissions and, where appropriate, lay members o reviewteams. One implication, already visible as o June 2012 at WASC, is that the results o reviews be reportedin more detail to external audiences, including summaries o ndings and an enumeration o institutionalstrengths and shortcomings. Another is that WASC ensure that all institutions make learning outcomespublic, together with appropriately justied levels o student perormance on them.

Accreditors will need to shi some o their attention toward monitoring how students progress longi-tudinally toward credentials, using the services o many educational providers. Tis may require specialattention to examining how the increasingly disparate parts o a students experience t together toconstitute an eective path to a given credential or degree. How institutions treat, monitor, and evaluateincoming transer courses will also be an important part o this. In addition, accreditors will need toincreasingly recognizeand possibly reviewoutsourced providers o packaged courses and inorma-tional websites. At the very least, they will have to pay more attention to examining the criteria by whichinstitutions decide to use licensed providers such as these and accept their credits.

Tese trends, as well as the changing paradigm o teaching and learning, will require even more emphasisto be placed on aligned standards o academic achievement, as well as solid evidence that these standardsare being achieved. Tis will require attention to what the common elements o a bachelors or mastersdegree ought to be, as well as how institutions set perormance benchmarks on these learning outcomes asgood enough. Tis was the reason WASC revised the contents o CFR2.2a and is according new promi-nence to institutions eorts to assess these competencies. Te Lumina DQP may provide institutionswith useul guidance in doing this.

Accreditors will require new standards and review approaches to deal with an unbundled acultyroles. Reviewing aculty credentials and how aculty members are deployed will no longer be enough.In addition, attention must be paid to how the unbundled components o the traditional aculty role arere-integrated to yield coherent learning experiences and how individuals are developed and evaluated inthese new roles. Current accreditation standards, including WASCs, are properly ocused on the acultyrole in delivering content, but less attention is typically paid to the aculty role in mentoring students andassessing their perormance. Also, as these distinct roles are increasingly enacted by dierent individuals,review attention must also be devoted to examining how institutions ensure that they are appropriatelyintegrated and coordinated.

Review processes will need to be more visibly cost-eective, employing, where appropriate, more virtual

communication and less paper-and-pencil reporting. What reporting remains must be indicator-basedand ruthlessly ocused on institutional eectiveness and perormance. Tese revisions are apparent in theinstitutional review process established in the 2013 WASC Handbook o Accreditation, which emphasizeindicators. A ocus on perormance, in turn, means continuing to develop new requirements that everyvisit include a ocused conversation about graduation rates and eventually extending such requirements toinclude mandatory conversations about student learning results.

U.S. accreditors will increasingly need to partner with and mutually recognize the actions o qualityassurance authorities in the rest o the world. As they do so, moreover, they will need to align their expec-tations o what degree recipients at various levels should be expected to know and do with the Qualica-tions Frameworks already established by other countries. For WASC in particular, this means reviewing


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and aligning the outcomes standards noted in CFR2.2a with the Lumina DQP and some o the majorQualications Frameworks o nations where institutions rom the region do business. Tis also meanscreating more proactive partnerships with the quality assurance agencies o these countries.

As shown by the past ten years, change can happen quickly and become transormational. Aer all, tools that wenow take or granted, ranging rom Google to GooMeeting, were only created in the last decade. Te standardsand review processes that WASC has developed or the current Handbook looking toward 2020 anticipatesimilar rates and directions o change. Tey are positioned or an era o greater accountability and rapid instruc-

tional transormation, while they provide institutions with a sound basis upon which to examine themselvesobjectively and systematically improve. As such, they represent an appropriate response to the new ecology orhigher education that aces us today.


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Introduction

In its American incarnation, accreditation exists because o a conuence o two otherwise unrelated historicaltrends. Te rst involved the massive outpouring o philanthropy to institutions o higher learning at the

beginning o the 20th century. Shocked by the dismal state o university administration and accountability,industrialists like John D. Rockeeller and Andrew Carnegie demanded minimal standards as a conditionor receiving grants and gis. Tese were men o industry who were enamored with industrial managementpractices, including quality control and measurement. Te second trend was spurred by the massive increase inenrollments in the mid20th century, increases that threatened to overwhelm the nations colleges. Te solutionwas to make institutions more ecient. Eciency in postWWII America meant actory eciency, and socolleges and universities adopted the methods o the actory oor.

By the 1950s it was ocially decided: universities were going to operate on a actory model. Raw materials(students) were to be moved eciently through (classes, majors, high studentteacher ratios) a actory (univer-sities) in which deects were discarded (selective admissions and normative grading) and highquality products

(graduates) were stamped with seals o approval (degrees). Accreditors were the quality control department othe actory. It was a role they adopted enthusiastically. Te mission statement o nearly every accrediting bodybegins with a recapitulation o the need or quality control in higher education.

Te actory model that is crumbling, and it is being replaced by a new ecosystem or higher education. Tis doesnot bode well or traditional accreditation. It is technology that has shaken the actory model. Tis is the Yearo the MOOC. A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course, a kind o online reimagining o what a collegelearning experience should be like. echnologyenabled teaching to global classrooms o 150,000 studentshas been the subject o everish coverage by virtually everyone with a passing interest in the dire condition oAmerican higher education. Te New York imes called it the sunami1. Salman Kahns academy o thousandso short instructional videos has drawn hundreds o millions o viewers, and his ubiquitous thoughts about howthis technology might redene higher education has attracted the attention o Charlie Rose, David Brooks andom Friedman2. Te technology o higher education has become sexy.

It is easy to dismiss this, as many o my colleagues do, as a addish rush to an overhyped, shiny new technology,but there is a serious rationale or what is taking place in higher education. Te technology itsel is just ametaphor or change.

Hype Factors

Tere is a lot o hype in current discussions o educational technology, but that does not diminish its impor-tance. In act, hype actor is an important part o innovation. For that reason alone, there is much known abouthype curves and the role they play in longterm change. Whether that change endures depends on how much

value it creates, but in the beginning, when longterm prospects are unclear, there is a kind o mania that uelsinnovation.

In the case o the British Railroad, that mania began with this announcement in the May 1, 1829 edition o theLiverpool Mercury:

Te directors o the Liverpool and Manchester Railway hereby oer a premium o 500 (over andabove the cost price) or a locomotive engine which shall be a decided improvement on any hitherto

New Ecosystems in Higher Education and What Tey Meanor Accreditation and Assessment

Richard DeMilloCenter or 21st Century Universities, Georgia ech



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constructed, subject to certain Stipulations and Conditions, a copy o which may be had at the RailwayOce, or will be orwarded. As may be directed, on application or the same, i by letter or post paid.

It did not hurt that the winning steam engine could reach uphill speeds o 24 miles per hour, that the legacytechnology deeated itsel when a horse crashed through a wooden oorboard, or that Queen Victoria declaredhersel charmed by the technology, and thereby deemed the technology to be the 19th century version o sexy.Te hype began in earnest.

Business innovation (ticketing, rstclass seating, and agree-

ments allowing passengers to change carriers midtrip) wasrapid and ueled as much by intense competition as by achaotic, renzied stock market in which valuations soaredbeyond any seeming sense o proportion, causing John Francisin 1845 to despair: Te more worthless the article the greater thestruggle to attain it.When the market crashed during the weeko October 17, 1847, in no small measure due to the 18456crop ailure and potato amine, and established companiesailed, railway nanciers like George Hudson were exposed asswindlers.

In the end, the modernday equivalent o $2 trillion waspumped into the investment bubble, as even desolate and economically insignicant outposts were connected bysome o the 2,148 miles o railway capacity that entrepreneurs built during the British railway investment maniao the 1830s. Conventional wisdom is that early investors in British railway companies were played or suckers,but as my colleague Andrew Odlyzko pointed out3, conventional wisdom is sometimes alse.

Te collapsing bubble is not the end o the story. Between 1845 and 1855, an additional 9,000 miles o trackwere constructed. By 1915, Englands rail capacity was 21,000 miles. British railways had entered a golden age.But what really happened to all that early investment? Te surprising conclusion is that during the height o the1830s hype cycle, railways were built that were viewed as triumphant successes in the end. Early investors wererewarded or the wildly speculative exuberance o the 1830s.

Te term hype actor is a code phrase or rejecting innovation cycles, and there is a great danger that legacyinstitutions and processes in higher education will all into that trap. Te conclusion that is usually drawn romBritish Railway Mania may lead markets and investors astray because it seriously misrepresents actual patterns.Te whole point o a cycle (hype, innovation, or investment mania) is that it can be used as a riskaverse templateor rejecting sales pitches that start with Tis time is dierent.But that does not mean that this time is neverdierent.

Tis ime is Dierent

Critics have had colleges and universities in their sights or a long time, and there have always been innovationsaimed at xing the problems with higher education4. Like Detroit concept cars, classrooms o the uture come

and go. Internet connectivity, interactive clickers, ubiquitous computers, and distance education were all sold assolutions at one time or another to the ills acing higher education. But these were solutions or legacy organiza-tions that had no particular motivation to change. Te critics who demanded change had ew options and noleverage at all.

raditional institutions, or the incumbents, had no overwhelmingly hostile economic reality to cope with. In actthey had an overwhelming economic advantage: they were gatekeepers, and anyone who wanted a universitycredential had to respect their boundaries. Society and the marketplace put a high value on those credentials,and the incumbents could charge accordingly.

MOOCs have exposed a bypass. Te gatekeepers are no longer in charge, and that is why this time is dierent.

raditional institutions...were gatekeepers, and anyonewho wanted a universitycredential had to respect

their boundaries. MOOCshave exposed a bypass. Te

gatekeepers are no longer incharge, and that is why this

time is dierent.


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Around the time o the market collapse o 2008, public sentiment about the cost o a college degree began to shidramatically. Millions o disadvantaged students, recent immigrants, returning military, non-traditional andolder students poured into universities. Driven by shrinking state budgets, public institutions began hiking theirprices at shocking rates. Recent graduates ound themselves unemployed and unemployable, but still respon-sible or paying o college loans. A debt crisis emerged as college loans passed credit card debt (second only tomortgage loans) and deault rates rose. It was a cumulative eect. By 2010, polling showed that a majority o theAmerican public no longer regarded a college degree as aordable and not worth the price 5.

In a ight to quality, students tended to bypass lesserknown schools which, in an attempt to compete on price,oered unsustainably steep discounts. Institutional debt rose as private donors retreated in the ace o thedeepening recession6.

It had not escaped the attention o employers that the value o dearly purchased credentials had been eroded overthe years. Te gap between what course catalogs promised and what was actually taught in the classroom beganto grow7. Grade ination awarded As and Bs to two thirds o all students8. Silicon Valley companies placed solittle regard on university credentials9 that they instituted their own screening exams to determine which appli-cants actually had the required skills.

In short, conditions were right or the destruction o gatekeeperenorced boundaries10. In such situations

markets seek bypasses. Open Courseware, edX, Coursera, Udacity, Kahn Academy, Codecademy, Udemy,iunesU, Youube, ED, and dozens o similar services showed students how universities might be replaced byoutside networks with hidden assets at low or no cost.

Tis time is dierent because economic reality is dierent: a bypass economy is springing up at exactly the timethat the higher education market is seeking a bypass.

Te New Ecosystem

Around the crumbling boundaries o incumbent universities is an odd combination o traditional institutionsthat seem bent on redening their value, and institutions that see change around them but are convinced thatthey will be unaected. Tey are trying to nd their way in a marketplace that is growing accustomed to therapid pace o change and an investment culture that seems to have learned the lessons o the investment mania o1830s England.

What pumps energy into this new ecosystem is the optimistic view that old limitations can be overcome. Tecant dos have changed mainly because technology has taken down barriers. Let me mention three o them.

Cost. College costs are controlled by high labor costs, the high cost o physical plants, and high materialscosts. All three o these actors have held university budgets hostage or decades, but technology enables newapproaches. For example, open courseware and online delivery allow both deskilling and the use o lowercost more exible physical plants, both o which lower costs11.

Learning. It has been known since Benjamin Blooms 1982 landmark study12 that the best classroom

outcomes are achieved by nonnormative mastery methods in which student progress is tailored to theindividual, an approach that is prohibitively expensive without technology. With computerassisted masteryclassrooms, student perormance can be reliably improved by two standard deviations at negligible marginalcost.

Individualization. Te trajectory o American higher education has been toward increased specialization andindividualized instruction. New program costs increase nonlinearly without technological support but newinternetbased personalization technologies enable tailored curricula, contentbased advising and individu-alized analytics that would otherwise be impossible. Te idea, viewed as a pipedream as recently as last year,that students can hack degrees13 to suit their goals and expectations, is now gaining support as tens othousands o students are beginning to combine courses rom dozens o toprated universities.


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In this new ecosystem, value dominates. It is open by design and construction and so incumbents risk playinga diminished role as attention shis rom institutions and programs (where accreditation and assessment havetraditionally ocused their attention) to individual students. Economically, it is the scale o the Internet thatdominates. Hundreds o millions o new students, combining courses oered by many institutions in unexpectedways require not authorities, bureaucracies, and processes, but platorms that are exible and adept at scalingto the demands o the new bypass economy. Te question or all legacy organizations in the new ecosystem is,What value do I add?

Te Challenge or Accreditation and AssessmentIt is now economically easible or a student anywhere in the world to piece together, jigsaw like, a curriculumthat matches his or her needs and to have both the curriculum and the students perormance certied in a waythat is accepted by academic institutions and employers alike. Tis is not a actory. Te ocus on higher educationhas irrevocably shied rom institutions to students. Te actory model with its manuacturing vocabulary willbe irrelevant, and so will the language o quality control that has dominated higher ed policy or the last hundredyears. Tat is a shi that accrediting bodies need to be prepared to make.

In the midst o a growing realization that a diploma does not represent quality, or even a close match or whatthe job market demands, the challenge or accreditation is to nd a new value proposition that, even i it doesnot replace the traditional quality unction, is better suited to the new ecosystem.

Competencybased assessment, once regarded as a poorcousin o real assessment, will almost certainly play animportant role in the new ecosystem. MOOC providers likeCoursera and Udacity have recently embarked on moneti-zation strategies modeled on the successul LinkedInmodel o reerrals. In this model, noninstitutionalproviders oer proo that a student has accomplished a goal,learned a skill, or demonstrated an ability that an employerseeks. Te American Council o Educators (ACE) hasalready signaled its willingness to equate such demonstra-

tions to standard university credit14.

Tis is an approach to assessment that is outside the bound-aries o existing institutions. It is an approach whose onlyrole is to provide transparency and accountability so thatrealistic assessments can be made. Federal regulators and accreditors who try to create standards that accom-modate such arrangements will realize quickly that standardsbased approaches do not scale to the number ocombinations o students, courses, instructors, providers, and reerrals that are possible. raditional accreditorsmight be tempted to kick the problem back to institutions and require compliance or each universityprogramcourse combination. Tat burden is too heavy.

Accreditation is a standardsbased industry in a marketplace where standardization is being marginalized. It is adicult position or standardssetters and evaluators to be in and heaping more institutional requirements on analready strained system is not the answer.

Tere is a promisingsounding, but apparently unused section o Federal itle 34 Regulations called DirectAssessment that allows or the substitution o direct assessment o student learning or the recognition o directassessment o student learning by others.15 Rather than let course outcomes speak or themselves, 668.10 doesexactly the opposite. It attempts to equate a direct assessment outcome with credit or clock hours and requireseach institution that oers a direct assessment program [to] apply to the Secretary to have that program deter-mined to be an eligible program or itle IV, HEA program purposes, an overwhelming burden or any insti-tution.

In this new ecosystem, valuedominates. It is open by

design and construction andso incumbents risk playing adiminished role as attentionshis rom institutions and

programs (where accreditation

and assessment havetraditionally ocused theirattention) to individual students.


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Te world will still need a way to judge who has learned what (in the same way that Amazon.com and eBaycustomers need to know the quality o products and merchants). So what will replace accreditation? Te outlineso an answer are just beginning to take shape. In act, some o the answers have already been tried. ake highschool Advanced Placement (AP) exams or example. Universities o all stripes routinely grant college credit orsuccessul completion o AP courses upon presentation o satisactory exams scores, a model not unlike the onerecently proposed by the American Council o Educators (ACE) or accrediting MOOCs.

Other approaches that should be tried include accrediting course repositories. Tat would require only accred-

iting the courses themselves, not the processes in which they are embedded, and letting the market place sortout the value o an individual curriculum. Crowdsourced ratings or courses already exist and as technologymatures will be an increasingly accurate reection o actual course content and quality. Community colleges,corporate training programs, and online schools like Western Governors University will have access to highquality online materials that can be packaged or traditional degree programs at reduced costs. Most importantlythe new ecosystem allows higher education to establish a market or quality.

Te business o running the nations colleges and universities is not on a sustainable path or reasons that havebeen vividly described elsewhere, and, while there are many ngers pointing in dierent directions, almost noone has ocused on the unique role that accreditation and accreditors play. In the new ecosystem, value is king,and any approach to accreditation that does not draw a straight line rom assessment to value on a certicate or

diploma is doomed.

Reerences

1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/17/education/consortiumocollegestakesonlineeducationtonewlevel.html?smid=plshare

2. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/opinion/brooksthecampustsunami.html?smid=plshare

3. Tis time is dierent: An example o a giant, wildly speculative, and successul investment mania, AndrewOdlyzko, University o Minnesota School o Mathematics (http://www.dtc.umn.edu/~odlyzko/doc/mania01.pd)

4. Abelard to Apple: Te Fate o American Colleges and Universities, Richard A. DeMillo, MI Press 2011

5. Is College Worth It? College Presidents, Public Assess Value, Quality and Mission o Higher Education,Pew Research Center, May 16, 2011 (http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/HigherEdReport.pd)

6. Failing: Results o New ests o Financial Strength (http://innovateedu.com/2012/01/05/ailingresultsonewtestsonancialstrength/)

7. What Will Tey Learn? (http://www.whatwilltheylearn.com/)

8. Where A is Ordinary: Te Evolution o American College and University Grading 19402009, StuartRojstaczer and Christopher Healy, eachers College Record, 2012 (http://www.tcrecord.org/content.asp?contentid=16473)

9. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/02/ashion/sayingnotocollege.html?pagewanted=all

10. Te Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode o Capitalism,Shoshana Zubo and James Maxmin, Penguin Books, 2004

11. C Reerence 4.

12. Te 2 Sigma Problem: Te Search or Methods o Group Instruction as Eective as OnetoOne utoring,Benjamin S. Bloom, Educational Researcher Volume 13, Number 6, 1984, pp 416

13. C [4] Chapter 17

14. http://chronicle.com/article/MOOCsakeaMajorStep/135750/

15. Code o Federal Regulations, itle 34 Education Subtitle B Regulations o the Oces o the Departmento Education, 668.10


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IntroductionA combination o drivers is breaking learning (and education overall) out o traditional institutional environ-ments and embedding it in everyday settings and interactions, distributed across a wide set o platorms and

tools. As connective and mobile technologies spread, content prolierates and becomes increasingly availablethrough open sources, and new modes o value creation emerge, we are moving away rom the model wherelearning is organized around stable, usually hierarchical institutions (schools, colleges, universities) that orbetter and or worse have served as main gateways to education and social mobility. Replacing that model is anew system in which learning is best conceived o as a ow, where learning resources are not scarce but widelyavailable, opportunities or learning are abundant, and learners increasingly have the ability to autonomously dipinto and out o continuous learning ows.

We have experienced early elements o the new system in our own daily lives. Tis probably sounds amiliar:you are with a group o riends arguing about some piece o trivia or historical act. Someone says, Wait, let melook this up on Wikipedia, and proceeds to read the inormation out loud rom her mobile device to the whole

group, thus resolving the argument. Such an event is a genuine learning moment. Everyone is motivated to learnsomething at that particular time, everyone is curious, everyone wants the inormation and gets it in a quick,easy, and socially embedded setting. I you multiply this kind o moment and add to the mix a rich ecology ocontent and easy access to others who can provide help, answer questions, and oer mentoring or support, youbegin to see the outlines o a society and an economy that rest on rich learning ows .

Te transormation rom educational institutions to learning ows is proound and disruptive, and no existinginstitution will have the luxury o remaining unchanged. Such transormation requires us to rethink all othe assumptions, structures, and principles that have worked thus ar. It also raises a new set o questions andchallenges that educational institutions, accreditation agencies, and our society as a whole will have to grapplewith, such as:

How should we motivate people to tap into ever-expanding learning ows?

How will we assess competency levels and learning outcomes in the era o learning ows?

What are the new regulatory mechanisms needed in the era o learning ows? Who should ll this role?How should this be done?

Beore discussing specic implications o learning ows or accreditation, lets explore some key underpinningso the new system and their potential evolution over the next ve to ten years.

Te Rise o Content CommonsWide availability and easy access to content is what enables learners to acquire knowledge, inormation, andideas in a highly distributed and continuous ashion. Learning becomes a ow when learning resources arewidely available. Te commons is a concept used to describe resources that are owned in common or sharedbetween or among communities and populations. While the term still encompasses physical resources, like theair or public land, it increasingly relates to the tidal wave o open digital materialstext, simulations, video andaudio recordings, photographs, and learning toolsthat are becoming available to people around the world viathe Internet.

Te total amount o inormation available to individuals is no longer xed by material and physical constraints. Historically, books and broadcast media were limited by production costs and the constraints o physical

From Educational Institutions to Learning FlowsMarina Gorbis, Devin Fidler, and Bettina Warburg-Johnson

Institute or the Future



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binding, recording, and storage technologies. Individuals could access additional content in libraries, o course,but even then available materials were extremely limited in quantity and type. oday, this constraint is quicklydisappearing as shared and open content accumulates into a massive worldwide open resource.

Inormation and content are also increasingly becoming commodities. While these commodities exist in rawormats (uploaded videos, blog entries, text), they are also being organized into highly complex and sophisti-cated packages that provide context, application, imagination, and explanation. Tis includes highly structuredand media-rich Khan Academy video modules, compelling lectures, and various open online courses.

Te nature o this content is also changing in a number o ways, including becoming more immersive andengaging. Already, a combination o cheap editing tools, more media devices, and higher media literacy isenlarging the possibilities or communicating ideas and inspiring learning experiences. Te ED alks ormat,or example, has helped raise the bar or presentations worldwide and shows how powerul a well-designed,media-rich message can be.

Commons materials will also be ever more specic andtargeted. A traditional encyclopedia contains only alimited number o articles. Wikipedia contains a muchlarger and constantly growing set o articles. But even

Wikipedia holds only so much specic inormation. oll this gap, new communities are emerging that shareinormation about much narrower and more ocusedtopics, rom the autumn mating cycles o certain butter-ies to the geological history o a specic valley.

Finally, content is getting integrated to communicate complex processes, not just simple inormation. In additionto traditional materials, people are creating and sharing an array o open-source soware tools, mashups, anddesign templates. Moving orward, these shared resources will serve as a oundation or innovations that wouldnot have been possible in the past.

Embedded and Embodied LearningLearning becomes a ow as new tools and technologies go beyond growing the content commons and turnthe whole world into a classroom, making learning possible anytime and anyplace. Tink o a simple app onyour iPhone, such as Yelp Monocle.1 When you point the phone in any direction, the phone displays Points oInterest, potentially interesting venues in a particular location, such as restaurants, stores, and museums. Butthis is just the beginning.

Increasingly, along with restaurant and store inormation, we will be able to access historical, artistic,demographic, environmental, architectural, and other kinds o inormation embedded in the real world. Tisis exactly what a project rom the University o Southern Caliornia and UC Los Angeles called HyperCities2is doingit is layering historical inormation on the actual city terrain. As you walk around with your mobile

device, you can point to a site and see what it looked like a century ago, who lived there, what the environmentwas like. Interactive tools are not limited to any one topic. ake the Smithsonians ree iPhone and iPad app,Leasnap3, as another example. Aer you take a photo o a tree lea, Leasnap responds by instantly searchinga growing library o lea images amassed by the Smithsonian Institution. In seconds, it returns a likely speciesname along with high-resolution photographs o and inormation on the trees owers, ruit, and so orth.

We are also able to query real people rom around the world to help us learn in real time. Platorms suchas Fluther4 allow anyone to post a question or the community to answer. Posts vary rom relatively trivialrelationship questions like How many days o silence mean that it is over? to complex math. Not only do wehave access to question-and-answer platorms that help us learn, increasingly we also have access to world-classexperts who can provide personalized advice and mentorship. Expert Insight5, ounded by Brandon Adams, a

Learning becomes a ow as newtools and technologies go beyond

growing the content commonsand turn the whole world intoa classroom, making learning

possible anytime and anyplace.


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PhD graduate o Harvard Business School, allows people to gain access to experts in multiple disciplines. Expertslist their rates and availability, and those interested can select an hour or two rom their chosen experts scheduleand can pay online. Some o the experts are academics who also teach at colleges and universities, includingJerey Miron, senior lecturer and director o undergraduate studies in the Department o Economics at HarvardUniversity.

Te movement o inormation into the real world rom restricted physical settingsclassrooms and desktopswill greatly increase occasions and opportunities or learning. It will indeed become possible to embed learning

into the ow o everyday experiences, making it something we do continuously while walking, riding a bus, orsitting at home or in a park. Learning will potentially underpin every moment o our lives.

Socialstructed WorkAs work itsel becomes de-institutionalized and people are called on to contribute to ows o tasks based ontheir skills and abilities rather than degrees and certications, learning will need to be a continuous processrather than limited to particular settings or periods o time. A decade ago, workers worried about jobs beingoutsourced overseas. oday, companies such as oDesk6 and LiveOps7 can assemble teams in the cloud to dosales, customer support, editing, research, and many other tasks. In act, the new generation o digital platormsis changing the nature o work and jobs as we know them, necessitating a careul rethinking o how to pose thepurpose o learning itsel and the kinds o skills people will need in order to live productive and ullling lives.

Te era o stable 9-to-5 jobs in large companies may be undergoing a rapid demise. In its place we see theemergence o new orms o value creation. We call this process socialstructing and dene it as the developmento a orm o value creation that involves microcontributions rom large networks o people utilizing social tools andtechnologies to create a new kind o wealth. Socialstructing is aecting every domain o our lives, rom manuac-turing to consumption, rom business to health care, rom governance to education. People, not institutions,become the new nodes in the value creation system. Small bits o eort created by each node, when broughttogether, can create massive impactsproduce new health treatments, new collective works o art, new learningsystems, and powerul new social movementsor better and or worse.

Microcontributions are a key eature o socialstructed creation. Such lightweight contributions can take dierent

ormsa hundred people coming together or a hackathon to create new products in bursts o inspired activityor people simply sharing some o their health data, which takes hardly any time at all. Facebook, witter, Google,Flickr, and many other stalwarts o todays digital economy are enablers and beneciaries o such microcontribu-tions.

Te launch o Amazons Mechanical urk8 service embodies this type o work. Users can upload work and haveit divided into very small tasks, to be tackled by thousands o anonymous workers. MI and Stanord researcherMichael Bernsteins Soylent9 platorm takes the tools o Mechanical urk urther by using them to orches-trate dozens o anonymous contributors to the platorm in such a way that they can eectively co-author textdocuments in near real time.

Te next iteration o microcontributions can already be seen on sites like oDesk that now act like real-timeglobal online stang agencies. Tis type o online task routing has become still more granular and sophisticatedas sites such as askRabbit10 allow people to hire others in their neighborhood who are looking or odd jobs. Notonly are askRabbit workers not anonymous, they are actually screened via background checks. Currently, a newgeneration o platorms is creating soware that automatically replaces many human management unctions.MobileWorks11, or example, is working on code to match tasks with the exactly right person to complete them.

What are the skills needed by people increasingly working in a world in which they can access contributionsrom thousands o people globallyor make contributions alongside thousands o people globallyaided bysoware and algorithmic task routing? Tis is the question every educational institution needs to be asking.


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Instant and Continuous Feedback and AssessmentLearning ows are enabled by and require new orms o assessment that capture and analyze massive quantitieso data and eed results back to the learner on the spot. An emerging tsunami o data rom cheap digital systemsand sensors is bringing the advantages o data analytics to a wide variety o new industries. Tese analytics areenabling new orms o automation in managing complex systems, such as municipal water, and opening newinsights into complex processes, such as history and learning, letting learners know their levels o cognitive loadsor how well they are mastering a particular task. Tis trend will intensiy as every interaction, every encounter,every object becomes enveloped in the cloud o data.

Te prolieration o data streamsbrings withit the opportunity to develop new types oanalytical insights.Longitudinal data, or datacollected over a number o years, or example,allows or a better understanding o changein individuals or systems over time. Emailanalytics programs, or example, already allowusers to evaluate their entire email history andto visualize changes over time. From KhanAcademys monitoring o students progress in

learning to sophisticated neuro-devices thattrack whether someone is paying attention (orher level o cognitive load), a new panoply oassessment tools provide learning eedbackand analytics on a continuous basis.

A new suite o tools and technologies promises to move measurement and assessment rom being heroicendeavors that measure maximum perormance with targeted eort (or example, once-a-year tests, onetimevisits, episodic assessment) into continuous, embedded, oen invisible experiences that integrate not one but acomplex ecology o indicators. Tese more multidimensional and deeper data streams provide an opportunity toimprove eedback mechanisms and to adapt conditions in real time to best suit ones needs. Ultimately, it is the

dierence between measuring uel with an old-ashioned dipstick or a dashboard with a real-time gas gauge.

In addition to these types o quantitative measurements and eedback loops, we are seeing the growth oreputation markets. Ken Goldberg, a robotics and new media proessor at the University o Caliornia, Berkeley,argues that we are moving rom the age o inormation to the age o opinions. Enabling this move are the multi-tudes o platorms built or people to express opinions, share views, and review products, services, and otherpeople. Tese platorms are becoming new avenues or providing eedback and assessment o an individualsskills. Your reputation as a seller on eBay, your LinkedIn endorsements, reviews o the quality o your work onoDesk, and the number o your witter ollowers are all becoming de acto markers o a persons reputation and,increasingly, levels o expertise. In a recent survey asking people who hire others through oDesk about criteriaor their hiring decisions, the last on the list was possession o a college degree. Te #1 criterion or hiring was

the assessment o a persons previous perormance on a similar or related task.12

Tese reputation and peror-mance scores are increasingly being used instead o signals such as college degrees, attendance at Ivy Leagueschools, or other proxies or assessing knowledge and competency levels.

Conclusion: Te Future o AccreditationTe new economy o learning ows is making it necessary or educational institutions and accreditation agenciesto act with oresightthat is, to understand the larger underlying orces that will be reshaping the learninglandscape and to begin to prepare or the uture as it unolds. Specically, with the changes outlined above, it isimperative to think through the new who, what, and how o accreditation.

Who gets accredited? With the transition rom institutional delivery o knowledge to learning ows

Te movement o inormation intothe real world rom restricted physicalsettingsclassrooms and desktops

will greatly increase occasions andopportunities or learning. It will indeedbecome possible to embed learning into

the ow o everyday experiences, makingit something we do continuously while

walking, riding a bus, or sitting at homeor in a park. Learning will potentiallyunderpin every moment o our lives.


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enabled by a panoply o new content and learning tools, who needs to be assessed? Is it necessary to assess/accredit institutions? Curricular materials (courses)? Individuals? All o the above? Can accreditationinstitutions develop exible orms o accreditation to assess all o these levels, or will the niches be lledby new processes and platorms that lie outside traditional accreditation boundaries? We are beginning tosee organizations oering alternatives to institutional accreditation: the American Council on Education isconsidering accrediting Coursera courses, and Purdue University uses Mozilla Open Badges with its ownclassroom apps to award digital badges.

What gets accredited? What skills and abilities do our learning entities need to demonstrate they helplearners develop, given that the new world o socialstructed work depends less on individual expertise andmore on microcontributions by hundreds and thousands o workers and that smart soware will increas-ingly let humans and machines work symbiotically to accomplish many tasks? It may be necessary orassessment and accreditation agencies to start assessing new kinds o skillssuch as collaboration, compu-tational thinking, and the ability to work well with smart machines.

How does assessment get done? Finally, in the world o big data, advanced analytics, and growingreputation markets, how can we move assessment rom episodic, tour-de-orce quantitative and qualitativeencounters to a continuous eedback mechanism? And how can we ensure that this mechanism takesinto consideration a complex set o actors to enable exible adaptation and improvements in learningoutcomes? We need to start thinking about assessment as a way to guide continuous improvement in

learning outlines rather than rendering zero-sum judgments. Platorms such as Khan Academy are pavingthe way in providing eedback on perormance and measuring a learners level o mastery rather thanassigning grades.

In the era o learning ows, accrediting agencies will need to think beyond ensuring that education provided byinstitutions o higher education meets acceptable levels o quality to laying the oundations or supporting andenriching the next-generation learning ecology. Tis involves broadening the array o objects o accreditationbeyond institutions to courses, individuals, and learning tools. In the era o big data and content commons,accreditors will also increasingly be called upon to make the process more transparent, continuous, and drivenby massive amounts o data. Tey will also be called upon to provide meaningul assessment that aligns with thekinds o skills and competencies that are relevant to learners in the new world o socialstructed work.

Reerences

1. Ben Parr, EASER EGG: Yelp Is the iPhones First Augmented Reality App, Mashable, August 27, 2009,http://mashable.com/2009/08/27/yelp-augmented-reality/.

2. About, HyperCities, http://hypercities.com/about/.

3. Leasnap: An Electronic Field Guide, Leasnap, http://leasnap.com/.

4. What is Fluther? Fluther.com, http://www.uther.com/help/.

5. About Us, Expert Insight, http://www.expertinsight.com./pages/about-us.

6. How it Works, oDesk, https://www.odesk.com/ino/howitworks/client/.

7. All About LiveOps, LiveOps, http://www.liveops.com/company.

8. Introduction, Amazon Mechanical urk, https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome.

9. Michael Bernstein, Soylent: A Word Processor with a Crowd Inside, Youube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_miZqsPwsc.

10. How askRabbit Works, askRabbit, https://www.taskrabbit.com/how-it-works.

11. How it Works, MobileWorks, https://www.mobileworks.com/.

12. Quentin Hardy, Te Global Arbitrage o Online Work, New York imes, Bits section, October 10, 2012,http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/the-global-arbitrage-o-online-work/.


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Enormous change is underway in higher education driven by a perect storm o crisis (around cost, access,quality, and unding), technological innovation and what that makes possible, the growing presence andinuence o or-prot providers, abuses (o various kinds), opportunity, and workorce development needs in

a global and technological context. Any one o those might ll an agenda or a commissioners retreat or smallconerence, but accreditors now have to wrestle with these various orces across a broad landscape o change andurgency.

Historians o the period, possessing the clear sightedness that only time provides, will likely point to onlinelearning as the disruptive technology platorm that radically changed an industry that had remained largelyunchanged since the cathedral schools o medieval Europe; ootball, beer-pong, and ood courts notwith-standing. Many are looking to new technology-based or at least enhanced solutions to the problems o highereducation and online learning has in many ways paved the way. While many non-prot institutions are justnow catching up with online programs, oen entering that market because o economic pressures, onlinelearning is already well understood, well established, and well respected by those who genuinely know it. In act,

as Clayton ChristensensTe Innovators Dilemma

predicted, the question o 15 years ago, How can we makeonline learning the equal o traditional delivered learning?, has been reversed and we know ask, How can wemake traditionally delivered learning the equal o the best designed online learning? Tis is because disruptiveinnovations always start as inerior to incumbent models, but their technological core improves at a steepercurve than the incumbent model (which in our case has remained undamentally the same and thus resistedproductivity improvement, as explained in part by William Baumol) and they eventually surpass the incumbent:

Quality

Traditional

Online

1995 2005 2015

Time

As Christensen also predicts, when traditional aculty teach online, they bring back to their traditional class-rooms new pedagogical moves and technologies such that online education is actually helping to improve tradi-tional delivery models.

Accreditors have largely come to understand online learning and readily access it as part o any institutionalreview. State regulators are another story and the crazy quilt o 50 dierent state regulatory approaches, many othem built in anticipation o on-the-ground physical campuses and avored with a protectionist bias, is actuallyimpeding access to high quality online programs. But thats another sad story or another day. What we now seein higher education is a new wave o innovation that uses online learning, or at least aspects o it. Te meteoricgrowth o the or-prot sector, the emergence o MOOCs, new sel-paced competency-based programs, adaptive

Tinking About Accreditation in a Rapidly Changing WorldPaul LeBlanc

Southern New Hampshire University



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learning environments, peer-to-peer learning platorms, third-party service providers, the end o geographiclimitations on program delivery, and more all spring rom the maturation o online learning and the technologythat supports it. Online learning has provided a platorm or rethinking delivery models and much o accredi-tation is not designed to account or these new approaches.

Perhaps most importantly, this new wave o innovationrelies on a disaggregation, a common phenomenon inmature industries, but one that higher education has

remarkably resisted or centuries. Indeed, one could arguethat the core o the educational enterprise has alwaysbeen vertically integrated in the body o the aculty.Tat is, aculty members thought up new courses andprograms, developed syllabi, outlined learning objec-tives, curated the necessary content and learningartiacts (mostly choosing books and chapters andarticles), walked the proposed courses/programs throughnecessary approvals (governance), taught the courses/programs, advised students, stepped in when studentsneeded help, administered assessments, and graded perormance, and periodically revised the course/program.Tat was the way o the world until online technology entered the picture.

Online learning has disaggregated the model and now various players perorm various aspects o what was oncethe exclusive province o the aculty. For example:

A aculty member might be hired as subject matter expert to develop a course, but never then teach it orbe involved in it again;

Faculty might be hired to teach a course that is already developed and handed to them with little room orthem to change the course (common in large scale programs where standardization is important);

Tird party providers like Smart Tinking might provide student tutorial help;

Students might turn to a peer-to-peer learning network like OpenStudy instead o their aculty when theyrun into trouble;

Adaptive learning technologies might intelligently guide the students pathway through the learningcontent;

Te person assessing the students work might not be the aculty member teaching the course (as atWestern Governors University);

Sel-guided learning models like Southern New Hampshire Universitys College or America (CA)program have no aculty instruction at all.

Te great displacement o traditional aculty roles in the new delivery models, though we know that whentechnology enters a cra proession, the highly skilled and expensive craspeople at the heart o that industrywill see their world irrevocably changed. Tis will be much less true or aculty members in research, elite, and

residential coming o age programs, but certainly true or those involved in the education o working adultsand those who cannot aord the increasingly expensive residential college experience that so much shapes ourmyth o higher education, but represents less than 20% o all college students. Slightly more encouraging is thatwe will see new and dierent roles or aculty members not lucky enough to be situated in the research/elite/residential sectors o higher education, even though they are not the ones that inspired many o them to enteracademia.

Disaggregation now plays out in other ways as well. Here are a ew examples:

Credentials. Part o the vertical integration in higher education was that colleges and universities ullyowned the credentialing that came at the end o the educational process. We now see growing acceptance

Tis new wave o innovationrelies on a disaggregation

within higher education, acommon phenomenon in mature

industries, but one that ourindustry has remarkably resisted

or centuries.


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o prior learning assessment (PLA) at the ront end o the learning process (though still largely under thecontrol o the institutions, both CAEL and Kaplan are building businesses around PLAs), a prolierationo industry certications now oen pulled into the learning equation, and a lot o discussion o alter-native credentialing, especially the notion o badges. MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) providersare sorting through what kinds o credentials they might oer and industry stalwarts like the AmericanCouncil on Education (ACE) have signaled their willingness to work with them on assigning credits.raditional higher education may be losing some o its monopoly on credentialing, i not in the criticalarena o itle IV unding, at last among employers.

Non-institutional Faculty. Faculty have always been somewhat independent contractors working withinand thus aliated with institutions. However, Sebastian Truns 2011 departure rom his home insti-tution, Stanord, to create Udacity, a or-prot MOOC provider, may signal new possibilities or howaculty members are situated within the industry. For-prot StraighterLine has announced a model orsel-employed aculty to teach courses setting their own price models and sharing the tuition revenue.Similarly, Udemy oers 5,000 courses in which the proessor sets the ee and shares 30% o the revenuewith the company. In yet another variation o this theme, Antioch University has announced that it willoer college credit or Coursera courses, a model that has an outsider aculty member oering an Antiochcourse (at least in terms o validation through credit) while Antioch provides advising and other learningsupport. While these new models are not likely to be impactul or some time, i at all, they reinorce thenotion o learners grazing or assembling their learning rom multiple sources and some o those sources

may be newly independent aculty providers.

What is the Institution?In the past, institutions largely managed all o their own activities with a ew exceptions (ood service, maybe maintenance, creation o marketing materials). oday, there is an enormousrush into the higher education services sector with massive or-prots like Pearson either investing in oracquiring or-prot companies that manage large parts o university activities ranging rom its learningmanagement systems (LMS) to marketing activities to admissions and nancial aid processing to contentand course development to tutoring. As cash-strapped institutions struggle to establish themselves inthe new online marketplace, they are increasingly turning to other third-party providers or some or allo what they need and venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and traditional publishers (now re-inventingthemselves as they see their print world disrupted) are pouring money into the opportunity. Examples

include Pearsons recent $650m acquisition o Embanet and Compass Knowledge Group, John Wiley& Sons $220m acquisition o Deltak, and, in a reverse o this dynamic, Apollo Global Managements$2.5b acquisition o McGraw-Hills education division. Accreditors routinely ask institutions to demon-strate control and quality in areas that are increasingly being contracted out to or-prot providers. Tisexpanded use o third parties poses interesting questions.

Overall, accreditation has been based on a review o an integrated organization and its activities: the college oruniversity. Tese were largely cohesive and relatively easy to understand organizational structures where almosteverything was integrated to produce the learning experience and degree. Accreditation is now aced withassessing learning in an increasingly disaggregated world with organizations that are increasingly complex, or atleast dierently complex, including shiing roles, new stakeholders and participants, various contractual obliga-tions and relationships, and new delivery models. Tere is likely to be increasing pressure or accreditation to

move rom looking only at the overall whole, the institution, to include smaller parts within the whole or alternatives to the whole: perhaps programs, providers, and oerings other than degrees and maybe provided by entitiesother than traditional institutions. In other words, in an increasingly disaggregated world, does accreditationneed to become more disaggregated as well? MOOCs might be one such example.

For all the attention that MOOCs have received this last year, I remain an intrigued skeptic. MOOC providerstoo much ignore that their principle attraction is their elite brand aliations. I a local state college oers aMOOC it is more likely to be a SOOC (Small Open Online Course). But when MI or Harvard or Stanord,brands built on saying no to almost all interested parties, oer ree (!) courses to all, it is hardly a surprise thatso many enroll. Teir numbers are impressive, on one hand, and not very interesting or surprising, on the other.Tere are issues. MOOCs reiy very traditional educational notions: sage-on-the-stage teaching, the traditional


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semester structure and three-credit-hour model, and a ocus on content over learning. Tey are most decientin the areas that adult learners need addressed to be successul: learner support, motivation, and persistence, thesocial aspects o learning, and the other, messy human aspects o learning. However, in their deense, MOOCproviders are orging new ground and it is early in the development o the models. As disruption theory tellsus, the early iterations o new models are oen not very good, but the improvement curve is steep and ast anda lot o very smart people are working on MOOCs. Yet, already ACE is exploring providing transcript credit toMOOCs and is this not a kind o accreditation at the course level and thus disaggregated accreditation?

More proound, i less discussed, isthe emergence o competency-basededucation (CBE). Our own [SouthernNew Hampshire University] CBEprogram, College or America (CA), isthe rst o its kind to so wholly moverom any anchoring to the three-credithour Carnegie Unit that pervades highereducation (shaping workload, units olearning, resource allocation, space utili-zation, salary structures, nancial aid

regulations, transer policies, degree deni-tions, and more). Te irony o the three-credit hour is that it xes time while it leaves variable the actual learning. In other words, we are really good attelling the world how long a student has sat at a desk and we are really quite poor at saying how much they havelearned or even what they learned. CBE ips the relationship and says let time be variable, but make l

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