A Vision of 21st-Century Teaching and Learning: A New Way of Life

• Nancy Zimpher, President, University of Cincinnati:

Interesting that she seems to have chosen not to use a slide stack... I like this because it removes distraction - and provides a bit of a contrast as she talks about 21st century teaching & learning.  Hopefully the addiction to Powerpoint just for the sake of Powerpoint will start to die off as we move forward. :)  It does make it more difficult to take notes.

Talking about how the community has become so heavily oriented toward using email as a feedback channel - directly to the President.  One of her dreams, developed by the NSF task force on higher learning, talking about mobile nature of accessing data, using online media to collaborate with peers, and how the instructor can track the progress of the student, and be proactive in making sure that students's don't fall through the cracks.  This is already in place for some, but not for everyone.  Looking at systemic approach to adapting to the needs & communication style of current students.

Educational system, in many places, is lagging behind by about 100 years in method.

Instead of focusing on the teacher, the education of the future must focus on the student.  Instead of lecturing, the instructor will act as a guide and collaborator, etc.  In many large school districts, high school graduation is only achieved by about 5 out of 10 students, and in some it's worse than that.  Those learners who fall through the cracks generally wind up poor, alone, and without adequate resources to even stay healthy.  This has massive societal implications.  1 in 4 freshmen at 4 year colleges, and 1 in 2 in 2-year colleges don't make it through the first freshman year.  Business leaders complain that the schools do not adequately prepare workers.  Teacher retention is also awful - dropout rate as bad as 50% of all new teachers don't continue as teachers.  Over $86 million/year is said to be lost in teacher turnover just in Chicago alone.

It's fine that she's outlining the doom, gloom, and challenges... because it's helpful to put some metrics behind what we know is going on, but I hope she gets to the vision soon.

In her community, they have launched a campaign to attain 100% graduation rate in high school and college.  Many schools all over US have joined this initiative.  One approach of this initiative is to reach out beyond the university and to engage the community - early childhood through workforce development.

Ok, so this is lame, she does have one slide of a timeline, but it's on paper - sheets being passed out among attendees, but doesn't seem to be enough for everyone.  People are now reading and talking together instead of paying attention to her.

I do appreciate that this approach is societal and not technological.  It is far too often that people try to throw technology at a problem as an easy fix, instead of trying to (finally) address the societal issues that really contribute to the problems.  The means by which a community communicates and works has changed, but the structure of society as a whole hasn't begun to adapt to these new changes.  The University of Cincinatti CIO has approached local K-12 schools in an attempt to give them access to Blackboard.  She notes that there is currently no continuity in the flow from primary school through higher-education, everything from teaching methods, access to modern media, funding methods, etc.

Her thesis is that we belong to an educational system that, at every juncture, is disconnected.  The need is to knit this disconnected, somewhat dysfunctional confederation into a somewhat contiguous whole.  It lies upon us, as the experts, to reach out to our community.  She hopes that the current US administration will no longer isolate the different segments of US education, and try to address things wholistically.

One tool they are looking at in Cincinatti is something they are calling a "virtual backpack"(Fordham Institution) that contains complete educational records for each students... kind of like tracking on steroids, that can be share with parents, school systems that they transfer to, etc.  Seems to me like this will have to be an overwhelmingly massive undertaking to try to make this kind of data universal and relevant to so many discontiguous entities.  There is already a gap between levels of education, let alone regional differences (or even differences between individual schools in the same system in some cases).

Advocating for partnerships with local corporate partners like GE (whom they're working with in Cincinatti) to take advantage of their expertise.  GE is a heavy user of the Six Sigma methodology which has proved very useful to the effort in making decisions based on concrete evidence.  Based on the fact that they've used such transparent and data-based methods, they can now prove that they have gotten better than 80% retention between the freshman and sophomore years.

One need (infrastructure-wise) for the "backpack" idea to work is a replacement for SSN, and a way to track individual learners and determine factors like whether they've had access early childhood development, in-home assessments, etc.  Need for information and tracking also leads to "exchanging ignorace" with regard to 3rd party institutions that are rushing in to help students, but who have no access to the educational background and history of the learner.  At the very least, so much assessment and background information has to be re-collected and recreated every time a new group touches the student, and that is highly inefficient.

She is less concerned about privacy issues than she is about students falling through the cracks and getting lost.

As far as tools, she mentions everything from Blackboard to social media tools like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook, as well as specifically mentioning Starfish for advising and retention.

More than 1/3 of the world's population is under 20.  Without major changes, it will be impossible for Universities to meet the needs of this community to provide advanced training to all of them.  Centers of learning must be life-affirming organizations for learners, their families, and their communities.  Learners must be prepared so that they can give back and contribute to their communities to meet the economic, environmental, societal, and political challenges facing the world today.

Question: Who should be the drivers of this initiative?
Answer: We've tried it other ways, but it really needs to be driven by the communities.  Starting small, and having a local success that leads by example and shares with other communities is probably the best method.

Question: How much data should go in to virtual backpack?
Answer: Just about everything, but like all systems it should be focused and applicable.  She hopes that teacher comments (and student comments) can be included.  Should probably be backpacks for teachers as well.