Today’s Friday Focus on e-Learning is a replay of the 2013 EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) session from 2/5/13. Dr. Barbara Means, Director of the Center for Technology in Learning @ SRI, an educational psychologist, is the presenter.

What is NGL?

• NGL better prepares students for a world that values and rewards deeper learning, collaboration, skilled communication, self-management, the ability to work across disciplines, and innovation practices.
• NGL meets each student where s/he is and provides content, pedagogy, & access opportunities to meet individual needs.
• NGL capitalizes on affordance of technology for learning.
• NGL collects detailed data about the process of learning that can be used to diagnose student needs, and provide feedback to the instructional developer.

Challenge areas:

1. Deeper learning – richly interactive technologies that increase student engagement and learning of conceptual content and 21st century skills. Example: U of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s U-Pace – self-paced intro psych course; mastery based, shorter modules & end of module quizzes; timely & tailored feedback.
2. Blended learning – combinations of online and teacher-led instruction to improve learning, increase completion, and lower costs. Example: Cal State U Northridge – redesigned gateway math course as hybrid alternative to conventional college algebra.
3. Open Core Courseware – high-quality, modular, openly licensed course-ware for developmental, gateway, & high-enrollment core courses. Example: Cerritos College’s Project Kaleidoscope – 12 different OER courses implemented on 9 campuses.
4. Learning Analytics – software for collection, analysis, & real-time use of learning data by students, instructors, & advisors to improve student success. Example: Marist College’s Open Academic Analytics Initiative.

What was learned:

• Most Wave 1 innovations didn’t really have evidence of effectiveness before the grants began.
• Many technology components weren’t completely developed before the grants started.
• The most commonly reported difficulties were technology problems followed by student resistance. Students often didn’t have comfort being in charge of their learning.

Broader implications of the data:

• There are campus impediments to a fast start.
• Many faculty volunteer to try out new learning technologies and they typically respond more positively to innovations.
• There are few online and blended learning initiatives set up to collect rigorous evidence of the innovation’s impact on students.

Barriers to collecting rigorous evidence:

• Campus policies or IRBs may prohibit assigning students to courses with significant online components at random.
• Some campus research offices weren’t willing to release student-level data.
• Different instructors often don’t want to administer the same assessment.
• Valid, reliable assessments weren’t readily available for many of the projects’ learning objectives.

U-Pace project Outcomes:

• compared 230 students in U-Pace psychology to 334 students in conventional psychology course
• positive effects on % of students earning an A or B (ES = +.96) and course completion (ES = +.35)

Cal State Univ Northridge outcomes:

• compared 4,479 who took the hybrid course to 1,825 students from past courses
• again, large positive effect sizes

The presenter went on to describe MOOCs and how the features of those course delivery models fit with or vary across different platforms.

Want to hear all of this session yourself while you’re at your own computer? Let Cindy Russell know and you can obtain the login to watch it at your place and time.