Risk – Page 3 – Music for Deckchairs

Edtech and the evolutionary arms race

Kate Bowles October 25, 2011 3 Comments

In 1944, in response to a question about whether there could be a “purely American art”, Jackson Pollock said this: The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me just as the idea of creating a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd … the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any country. It’s a famous move in the history of exnomination that plays differently, I think,…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, Risk

Analyse this

Kate Bowles October 23, 2011 3 Comments

Like Jonathan Rees, I’m really trying not to arc up in response to each inflated claim about technology’s power to save education from its own dismal, maladjusted, unimaginative future. Maybe it’s the EDUCAUSE effect, but it’s a whole keg party of edtech Kool Aid out there at the moment, and I’m feeling like someone’s disapproving mother. The problem is the tsunami of corporate PR from edtech large and small that goes well beyond spruiking individual products, and extends to a generalised Mexican…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, Risk

Open is as open does

Kate Bowles October 20, 2011 1 Comment

Openness: everyone’s at it. All of a sudden higher education is a hive of managed promiscuity, and it’s only a matter of time before we’re all throwing our keys into the fruitbowl. First Pearson announce (and, at last, demonstrate) their new “free, open, easy, amazing” OpenClass. Now Blackboard have announced a more open approach to content developed by academics and hosted on Blackboard sites. As Audrey Watters points out quietly, the game-changing technology here is … a ‘share’ button. What…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, Risk, Student engagement

One professor at a time

Kate Bowles October 18, 2011 6 Comments

I’m still worried about the missed potential for edtech entrepreneurs large and small to engage in more substantial dialogue with educators at an earlier stage in their thinking. At the moment, the pattern of bringing a mostly non-negotiable product to the RFP table involves both parties in an awkward clash of expectations that Joshua Kim has aptly described as a “bake-off”, and that certainly has reminded me of MasterChef more than once. So the award for persistence in communicating with…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, LMS evaluation, Risk

Waiting for disruption

Kate Bowles October 16, 2011 17 Comments

This week’s excitement has been the announcement by Pearson of their shakeup of the LMS experience. On the OpenClass website, where we’re told in very big letters that this is all Open, Free, Easy and Amazing, the promotional video starts with Adrian Sannier, Senior VP, making the big claim that the LMS “as you know it” is dead. Sannier brings serious university research and administrative experience to Pearson’s push into the edtech market, and I’m confident that he knows what…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, LMS evaluation, Risk

Small is good

Kate Bowles October 4, 2011 4 Comments

I’ve been thinking back over the initial response I (and many other educators) had to Jarrod Drysdale’s heartfelt outburst about the story of his web app, Knack. He designed this to help teachers generate learner analytics that they might in turn use to agitate for change or demonstrate their accomplishments, and I’ve been engaged in a brief exchange of views on his blog on the way he reacted to its failure. First, I do think he’s right that in a culture that…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, Risk

Competitive advantage?

Kate Bowles September 19, 2011 9 Comments

It’s not really my business, but it seems to me that the promise that competition delivers consumer benefits is in the “If I had a dollar for every time … ” category of overuse. Mostly this proposition seems to be based on the assumption that if I’m selling lemonade next to someone else selling lemonade, we’re going to compete for the lemonade market either by offering superior or cheaper lemonade, and either way, the passing parade gets a better deal…

Edtech and online learning, Higher education, LMS evaluation, Risk

Standards

Kate Bowles September 6, 2011 0 Comments

I’m struck by the coincidence of Jonathan Rees and Ferdinand von Prondzynski both writing, in different ways, about the significance to academics of being able to set their own compass. Not only do we hope to be able to research and teach in areas that are the best fit with our skills and principles, but we also prefer to work for institutions that are able to determine the best mix of features that suits their operating context. Whether you call this…

Higher education, Risk, Student engagement

One of these things is not like the other

Kate Bowles August 30, 2011 3 Comments

Ploughing through the Pew Research report on whether university presidents think the same as members of the general public when it comes to the value of online learning, I’m thrilled to discover that the opposite of online isn’t bricks and mortar any more. Such a relief, as this image is wearing out from its current overuse in Australian media commentary as a symbol of both capital investment in the physical fabric of universities, and cultural investment in traditional teaching practices,…

Edtech and online learning, Higher education, Risk, Student engagement

Actual results may vary

Kate Bowles August 7, 2011 1 Comment

Here’s another quick finding in the tealeaves of educational technology prediction. Providing you can get through the argot of the deals, mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, and patent showdowns, sometimes you find yourself face to face with the poetry of the safe harbor statement. It’s hard not to read it over and over to check that it still says what you think, and that it says it so beautifully. The safe harbor statement is a get-out clause currently derived from the Private…

Change management, Edtech and online learning, Higher education, LMS evaluation, Risk