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"[S]tudents will be allowed to start classes anytime and earn credit for what they already know...."
“This new model for delivering higher education will help us close the skills gap at an affordable price to get Wisconsin working again,” Walker said in a press release. “As states across the country work to improve access and affordability in higher education, I am proud to support this exciting and innovative University of Wisconsin solution.”
More at this
PDF.
This model promises to offer a more personalized college experience to every student in which students can begin and complete courses at any time. Competency exams can be taken from home or work to ensure flexibility and special computer software can be utilized to ensure academic honesty.
One goal is to offer students smaller course segments or “modules.” Rather than molding coursework around a set timeframe, these modules can be designed to contain only the knowledge required within a specific competency. This could benefit working adults who need to start and pause their studies because of work and personal commitments. It could also benefit highly motivated students who are able to move through course materials at a faster pace.
Courses in this new program will be based on competency, not seat time, so students can move on to the next topic when they have mastered the current material.
Competency, not seat time...
Posts
83 comments:
RL is MMO more all the time. Just wait until the min/maxers get their hands on Walker's new achievement-based crafting guide.
99% of everything you ever learn, you learn outside of a classroom. And, now I bet most of us do most of our new learning on line already. This seems like an undeniable eventuality.
Image if the rest of the world did this, and we did not, could we compete? I doubt it. The world will do this.
And I'm guessing there won't be too many offerings in ----- "Studies."
You mean to tell me that compressing learning into over-priced, semester-long courses so that professors can get to their extended vacations ASAP was't the best model for learning?
Who'da thunk.
Crash! There goes general ed, the profit center of higher ed.
Truly revolutionary.
(What the heck is RL is MMO?)
I don't completely understand how that's supposed to work, but how about a Big 10 version of Coursera.
I got credits for several freshman engineering courses for having graduated from a Norwegian high school, which resulted in my being short several credit hours when i got ready to graduate from UNM. I had completed all my engineering requirements and humanities, but they said I had to have the number of hours; they did not care in what.
It was an expensive problem for me at the time, and I have never understood the reasoning, other than bureaucratic boneheadedness.
It sounds learning based instead of socializing based like much of legacy education is (for good or bad).
I wish them luck, but it's a lot harder than most people think. I work in math - one of the easiest subjects to demonstrate competency though objective testing. There are well established competency tests out there (e.g. the actuarial exams.) But online delivery and computer mediated instruction is a very tough sell. Probably because it's so hard to do well. I'm thinking online education is somewhere in the Theodoric of York stage of development.
And since the "Progressives" are always for change and looking forward they'll embrace this wholesale, right?
What are your feelings about a model like this being applied to law schools?
Are there conversations happening among faculty about this?
I know at seminaries, faculty really don't like the idea of online education--even as students flock to them.
Ann
Are you going to be involved in this at all?
This is the beginning of the end for the Education Establishment's power.
Bill Gates predicted "business at the speed of thought" in his computer world.
Now we have education at the speed of thought. Facebook Fun is already a digital record that is forever.
Will we need some very affirmative action? And who will keep these records from tampering? The Secret Service guys between their drunken orgies?
I've mentioned often that online works very well for students who want to learn. That is a subset of college students.
The difficulty will be getting Faculty buy-in. Can you still buy out your assigned classes so you can do research?
"This is the beginning of the end for the Education Establishment's power."
Perhaps Walker had this in mind as he contemplated the level of support he got from the university during the recent recall.
What do you suppose will be the daily job requirements for the very last tenured professor in the world?
More choices. More choices are a good thing.
This will be great for techies.
As bag notes, most of what you learn is by doing.
Kudos to Gov Walker.
Replacing the last incandescents with compact fluorescent bulbs, and then turning them off.
"Are you going to be involved in this at all?"
This is the first I've heard of it, and I'm not seeing anything about the law school.
Obviously, the accreditation requirements for law schools are a big deal here if people want to be able to practice law, and here in Wisconsin there's a special issue with the diploma privilege.
What do you suppose will be the daily job requirements for the very last tenured professor in the world?
New-course development.
@ PatCA
Real Life is Massively Multiplayer Online
I've mentioned often that online works very well for students who want to learn. That is a subset of college students.
Well, there's your problem. Why doesn't somebody explain to these nice young people, if you're not here to learn, GTFO and stop runiously indebting yourself while wasting everybody's time.
"(What the heck is RL is MMO?)"
I think Scott is saying that Real Life has an increasing resemblance to Massively Multiplayer Online games. Specifically with reference to the gameplay style that narrowly targets ones in-game activities to maximize specific achievements, while neglecting (from this perspective) the less competitive aspects of the shared gaming environment.
Of course, the educational establishment has been doing this for a long, long time. Which is why we have the bizarre concept of FTE. If they're upset now it's just because they're not the only ones writing the rules anymore.
By the way, I am already serving as law professor to the world... on line.
But there's no tuition and no degree in sight. Still, it's law professing.
Hope you like it!
Wow- the Repubs have some good ideas and may leave the Dems in the dust. And that is a good thing!
I have a masters and enjoy learning. I've tried taking courses at night at UW-Milwaukee to add to my education and continue my professional development with some GIS courses.
For these courses where I stared at a computer two evenings a week I had to fight my way through 40 minutes of traffic during rush hour, find a place to park (not easy at UWM) and then walk by all sorts of college amenities designed for the full-time, on-campus student. After a few hours of class, I had a 20 minute drive home. Heaven forbid if I had work travel going on that week.
That is alot of unnecessary hoop jumping for the average adult learner. There is something to be said about the "college experience" but I was 37 at the time and been there, done that. All I wanted was the information and some basic facilitation to put it all together.
If this works the way it is supposed to, then this will be a great thing for those who want and need some college courses but can't or won't put up with the hassle and expense of an inflexible system of instruction.
Wonderful! The ability to start and stop is also most excellent. I had a friend who already had a BA in music but went back for a BS in nursing and had a terrible time trying to plan semesters around a birth and cancer treatments. What a relief it would have been to her to have been able to so easily work around these events.
Might we extend this to high school? Or have we already, with the GED?
Years ago, when we first went to the all volunteer army, I remember discussing high school diplomas and GEDs with an army recruiter. They wanted high school graduates. After all, if a recruit couldn't put up with the bullshit in high school for 4 years, how would they complete their enlistment? But a high school diploma should signal more than an ability to put up with institutional nonsense. I would hope a college degree means more than putting up with institutional nonsense, but I'm not so sure. Clearly, both the high school diploma and the college degree are supposed to signal something other than knowledge learned.
I've been thinking of putting together a proposal for either Costco or Wal-Mart for a discount college degree.
I like the "affordable" part.
Teaching productivity in higher ed. is (or should be) a scandal.
Mass-produced online courses may not be for every student or every subject, but they can surely be made to work for many.
Don't forget that thanks to a Supreme Court decision, employers are extremely limited in their in-house evaluation exams for prospective employees. Ya'know, that whole racism thang. So employers moved toward accepting credentials. Now we have loads of credentialed idiots, bigger loads of people with student loan debt, and few advances in academic achievement amongst our high school graduates. The system needs reforming.
Once upon a time, we needed public universities. So why are we still subsidizing public universities to compete with private schools?
In the early 1990s colleges and universities figured out that if they raised tuition and fees, students would just borrow more because the Feds would lend more. So they have gone on a spree which would shame the proverbial drunken sailor. Believing their lives would end without college, high schools students have bought in the program. High schools have contributed grade inflation to help students get into college, and their quality has diminished. This proposal sounds like a good start for stopping the merry-go-round.
Why doesn't somebody explain to these nice young people, if you're not here to learn, GTFO and stop runiously indebting yourself while wasting everybody's time.
It's like you're trying to burst the Education Bubble!
"There is something to be said about the "college experience" but I was 37 at the time and been there, done that. All I wanted was the information and some basic facilitation to put it all together."
After I retired, and spent a year in the East getting a masters degree that never did me any good but was an interesting year. When I came back, I signed up for computer science classes at the local JC. Each semester (I did it for several years of night classes), the class would be full with no seats for the last two or three to come in. By midterms, the classroom would be half full and by the final (done on computers), a woman about 50 who was planning to go to UCLA to get a library science degree, and I were the only ones left.
The classes were very well done. They were mostly taught by the chair of the department and her husband, both of whom also taught at UC, Irvine.
"resulted in my being short several credit hours when i got ready to graduate from UNM. I had completed all my engineering requirements and humanities, but they said I had to have the number of hours"
I entered medical school without a bachelors. I had a partial engineering degree but had never finished when I switched to premed. I could have gotten a BS in medicine but engineering did not require a language and I hadn't taken any courses. No degree.
I'm actually attending something similar to this at Western Governor's University. It's an on-line school that is competency based instead of just sitting thru various lectures.
Since I'm already reasonably successful in my career, actually getting a degree is more or less scratching an itch that has always annoyed me.
In addition, it's a huge cost saver since I was able to complete almost 4 "terms" worth of material in the first one. Each term is 6 months for a fixed cost regardless if you complete the minimum units or the entire program in that time. I'm shooting for completing my four-year degree in 2-3 years without really pushing that hard.
Ann Althouse said...
By the way, I am already serving as law professor to the world... on line.
But there's no tuition and no degree in sight. Still, it's law professing.
Are you gonna cover the rule against perpetuities, professor?
Bravo again Scott Walker - a man of our times. Maybe even man of the year if Time wanted to credit real change.
Here in UVA country there is a flap going on about the Board ousting the President after only 2 years. It isn't settled yet as the faculty, etc are in full rebellion mode.
However, a paper by her was published after she was fired (it was written before she was fired) in which she goes full bore to explain how "value" was so important and UVA was delivering value to the state, the nation, the community, and the students and their parents. The only problem was she was just parroting the same old same old on why they do a great job and nothing changes. Tuition goes up.
Also, she was touting the high percentage of students graduation in 6 years!!! Imagine that not just high tuition but 50% higher tuition to get the brats a sheepskin.
Udacity. khan Academy. Online MIT courses. The cracks continue to develop in the bricks and mortar.
Good on Walker for recognizing that education isn't immune to Jack Welch's saying - Control your own destiny or someone else will.
The Individualized Programmed Instruction (IPI)is actually the radically different part of this proposal. Colleges have been offering online courses for a couple of decades, but most of them are still professor-paced and designed to fit into the semester mold. The IPI aspect is not only great for students who can maintain a more rapid pace - it's also great for a student who reads well and understands what he reads, but takes longer to do it. My husband never enjoyed a literature class in high school because he never had enough time to finish a book before the class moved on to the next one. Over the summer he would go back and finish all of them. When we met each other in college, I suggested that he get the reading list and read the books ahead of time, and for the first time he was able to enjoy lit class and did very well.
Oxford U. had been operating for over 300 years before the printing press started to catch on. Before that, lecturing was the only way to transmit information.
Higher ed seems to have weathered that storm reasonably well.
Online video can easily replace massive lecture classes, which won't be missed by anyone. So I'd guess that the future of university teaching is a larger number of small classes.
18-year-olds will still be very interested in spending a few years hanging out with their peers far from their parents.
Competency, not seat time, indeed.
I live in a state that mandates both a minimum number of days that schools must be open and a minimum number of days that students must be in attendance. Both of these numbers are significantly larger than what they had been when I attended public school twenty-five years ago. Somehow, the increased school time has not made an attributable improvement in academic performance, but it certainly has increased costs by keeping schools open into the summer, particularly to make up days lost to winter weather, even if no further teaching is accomplished.
but it certainly has increased costs by keeping schools open into the summer, particularly to make up days lost to winter weather
Why are you a global warming denier?
PS. Of course, the problem with using competency as a criterion in the public schools is that any standard of measuring competency seems to be anathema to teachers unions. It will be very entertaining to watch the reactions when this model is tried in pre-collegiate environments.
With digital ink tablets coming soon, even math exams that involve writing out equations will be possible in real time. There are no more excuses. However, this doesn't solve the chemistry, physics, electronics lab class.
Those academicians fully invested in the brick & mortar model will fight to the bloody death to stop online self-paced learning.
Lefties are good at capturing institutions. Lucky for conservatives that we have creative destruction to radically reform those institutions.
Huge good public universities will probably become much better and much more selective with admissions, radically shrinking in size. The vast majority of non elite students will get muuuuch cheaper degrees via primarily online education that will be optimized to get them a job. Their parents will rejoice.
Leslyn - My wife teaches at Metro State (Adjunct). It seems to be somewhere between a Juco and a full fledged University. It gives some people a chance to go to school who perhaps would otherwise not, but that also perpetuates two myths: First that many jobs actually require a college education, and second, that everybody should go to college. A good portion of her students turn in work that would not have been acceptable at my high school.
Which Justice went there? Hadn't heard that.
I always pictured you as better looking than that avatar. Ha!
"Might we extend this to high school? Or have we already, with the GED? "
We already have - not with the GED, but with Homeschooling.
"REALLY?? It's called Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, MN. They're a very successful branch of the University of Minnesota, with several distinguished graduates. One became a justice on the Minnesota Supreme Court. They've been in existence about 40 years...."
If the idea has been around for so long and it is such a good thing then why didn't someone initiate it in Wisconsin prior to Scott Walker?
Minnesota has also combined its tech colleges and two-year college system. I would love to see that in Wisconsin.
"Might we extend this to high school? Or have we already, with the GED? "
We already have - not with the GED, but with Homeschooling.
Also, Metro State is not part of the University of Minnesota. It is part of the Minnesota State College and University System.
Scott Walker has demonstrated how to eviscerate public unions (i.e. stop the state from confiscating employee wages to pay union dues). This will be copied in most of the states and will be a shot to the liver of the left.
Now Walker is showing how to eviscerate lefty academia, another huge blow to the left.
Not bad for a guy without a college degree (could that be part of his motivation in this latest reform?).
I wonder what he is going to do next?
Not bad for a guy without a college degree.
I wonder what he is going to do next?
He gets a degree from UW online?
These conservatives. Always stuck in the past.
@Sofa King:
"Well, there's your problem. Why doesn't somebody explain to these nice young people, if you're not here to learn, GTFO and stop runiously indebting yourself while wasting everybody's time."
6/19/12 1:44 PM
Agreed. As a current adjunct professor of business, it's clear to me that another subset of college students today is the group that has no interest in working, being accountable or taking responsibility for their decisions.
That's why many (not all), will go from BS to MS to PhD without ever having worked in the "real world."
It's scary out here.
On line education is set up for easy cheating. Who is doing the work and taking the tests? You can pay someone to do that for you. Who is helping the student take the tests or write the papers? A professor waling around the classroom and checking ID's during a test has value.
With digital ink tablets coming soon, even math exams that involve writing out equations will be possible in real time. There are no more excuses. However, this doesn't solve the chemistry, physics, electronics lab class.
Quite so. There are classes that lend themselves to online formats and others that really just require a personal hands on experience. Biology, anatomy, chemistry etc.
Think it is GREAT idea whose time has come. When I was decided that I wanted to sit for the CFP exam I realized that I needed to brush up on algebra. Took an online class and was pleasantly surprised at how much easier it was the second time around. I could work at my own pace and repeat the problems that were giving me trouble. I loved it.
"A professor waling around the classroom and checking ID's during a test has value."
Not a problem for dems, if you don't check IDs to vote, why check IDs to take a test? In any event, it does not take a Phd to check IDs, any person with nearly normal intelligence should be able to check an ID. Technology will also help a lot in this area.
Re online chemistry courses: There are several good virtual lab series out there that teach students more chemistry than an in-person lab ever thought of. Many students perform a lab incorrectly and walk away with a false idea of how chemistry "works". Available lab space and limited equipment and lab materials make repeating a lab difficult. Often students wait weeks to get input back from a teacher while the misinformation they took away from the lab grows and festers. A virtual lab gives a student immediate feedback if they perform the lab incorrectly w/o any of the physical dangers of allowing mistakes to happen. Should someone planning a career in chemistry only have online labs? Of course not, but many chemistry students have no plans to ever step into a chemistry lab as a career. Similar labs exist for physics and biology, but many small animals continue to be sacrificed needlessly every year.
When I was getting out of the army and fixin' to go back to school, I knew I wanted to take 15 hours of calculus (equivalent of 3 courses where, for each course, you attend 5 hours per week for a 16 week semester) to speed up my degree.
Back then there was no such thing as online but they had correspondence courses. I took all 3 calculus courses by correspondence. I had no help but just wore out that calculus book. It was a great experience and saved me a couple of semesters on the critical path to my degree.
I took the correspondence course exams at the local high school where somebody (maybe a secretary?) verified my identity.
This model is already up and running in the Western US. Look at "Western Governor's University", wgu.edu for more.
The CS/IT degrees will net you 15 or more industry standard cerifications from Microsoft and others.
And if you go back further, "law school" was called "reading law", apprenticing with a lawyer, and then passing the bar exam.
Online courses are likely to attract bright, motivated students.
But that still leaves the 2-year community colleges. With completion rates as low as 15%, it's difficult to imagine the typical commm. college student as both bright and motivated.
And that's where a lot of the cost is. The cost per student credit-hour may be lower, but the cost to the taxpayer per completion is higher- partly because of out-of-control labor costs, but mostly because of the dismal completion rates.
Would it be totally ungenerous to suggest that resources should be targetted toward those who demonstrate that they're both willing and able to take advantage of educational opportunities?
"Obviously, the accreditation requirements for law schools are a big deal " sounds like another great area for the governor to address. Government sponsored barriers to entry: law, real estate, medicine.
I shouldn't need an expensive lawyer to help draft a will, nor should I have to hire someone with a decade of special training to confirm my kid has strep and give me a permission slip to buy the antibiotic to treat it.
I earned an engineering degree in college. It was very difficult for me, mainly because I didn't put forth the level of effort I should have. The courses I excelled at were the computer related courses (submit your punch cards at that window over there). I had a home computer in 1975.
I spent 20 years in the Air Force. For much of that time I told myself 'when I get out I'm going back to college and really take advantage of it this time'.
So when I retired in 1994 I did that. I went back to college to work on a Computer Science degree.
Of course it went without saying that 20 years of personal programming projects and even some real software development work and 9 hours of graduate CS courses from the University of Idaho's video tape based distant meant nothing.
Because of the 20 year old punch card based 'real' CS courses I'd taken 20 years before I could start basically as a second semester sophomore.
I took about 16 hours of CS coursework, some of it was pretty good, a lot of it seemed to move at a glacial pace compared to the way they train in the Air Force.
The thing that drove me out after one semester was this:
After 20 years in the Air Force I was totally unprepared to deal with such a bureaucratic, authoritarian, parent-child, arbitrary, caste-based and generally irrational fossilized environment.
In the military, with a few exceptions, senior people recoginze that we're all on the same team, senior people know that to gain the respect they need to accomplish the mission they must show respect to the lower ranking people.
In academia, on the other hand, there was little or no respect for students. Students were treated as idiot child intrusions into the important work done by the 'grownup' teachers. Why was I paying $7000 a semester to put up with these arrogant shits?
So I got a job in a start up (1995 was a great year to go into IT).
There has to be a better way to educate adults than the traditional university system. Better for the students I mean.
As someone said, WGU is up and running, But as the document indicates, it will mostly offer degrees in business, healthcare, and IT. Needed, but little choice.
The largest online and exam competency oriented school of nursing is proved by Excelsior College in Albany, now private, formerly under a the University of New York Regents College (because of institutional duplication). And the largest in the world is the Univerity of London, International (formerly "external"), with 50,000 students.
Regarding the University of Wisconsin and distance learning, it is worth reminding people of its most famous graduate," Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, (UW-Superior, BA in marketing). He could now teach them a thing or two about marketing.
I recall when, decades ago, my 6th-grade teacher allowed us students to work through our math books at our own rate.
We students enjoyed racing each other, even staying after school to work on the problems.
By the end of September, we had completed the problems for the whole school year.
There just might be a lesson there.
Online education is a great thing, particularly for those who are seeking certification for particular job requirements. It's pointless and frankly cruel to require people to spend lots of time and money to follow a medieval academic calendar to get their certification for career advancement.
But don't assume that there is an inherent conflict between academics (at least at the elite level) and online learning. People who value education and knowledge aren't generally opposed to particular sources of media and if anything the students at elite schools in the future are going to be utilizing online learning early in life. It's no accident that the founder of Khan Academy was the commencement speaker at MIT and Rice University recently. The type of students and faculty at schools like that aren't threatened by online learning. If anything, they'll add it to their set of tools, just like they adopted personal computers and calculators when they came out. The bricks and mortar at the best universities aren't going to be used for quarry material anytime soon.
Funny, Leslyn. Justice Page's daughter was in my dorm at UW for a year. I was janitor. Let's just say she wasn't used to cleaning up her own messes. I did get to meet him once then - very nice and gracious guy. I arbitrated a case with him a few years before he ran for Justice. Never argued before him.
I wonder if he went to Metro State to get a few credits he needed for law school.
samanthasmom said...
...Similar labs exist for physics and biology, but many small animals continue to be sacrificed needlessly every year.
But sacrificing small animals was the best part of the physics lab!
Leo said...
...Are you going to be involved in this at all?
The professor will be hosting the online keggers.
" PS. Of course, the problem with using competency as a criterion in the public schools is that any standard of measuring competency seems to be anathema to teachers unions. It will be very entertaining to watch the reactions when this model is tried in pre-collegiate environments.
"
"David said...
I recall when, decades ago, my 6th-grade teacher allowed us students to work through our math books at our own rate.
We students enjoyed racing each other, even staying after school to work on the problems.
By the end of September, we had completed the problems for the whole school year.
There just might be a lesson there."
The first comment answers the second. Teachers slow down the faster students to keep the work going. I once asked an aspiring counseling PhD what she would do with a student who was already proficient at a second language. Her answer? Have the student broaden themselves by taking a third. After all, if the institution gave credit, they would lose money. That sounds like a conflict of interest. Is she looking out for the student's best interest, or the interests of the school? I suspect protecting the school is far more important to her than helping the student.
Schools make shit up to befuddle students, students at all intellectual points in the spectrum.
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, the Denver Public Schools were one of the few districts in the country to require a passing score on a graduation test in order to graduate from high school. Many students received a "Certificate of Attendance" rather than a diploma. Then some dimwitted administrator had this bright idea. The test would administered in the 11th grade, and students who failed could spend a year in remediation, and have another go as Seniors. Eventually the test was given to 8th graders. Imagine 4 years of remediation. Dante, what level of hell is that on? But imagine you're an 8th grader, soon to start high school, and you've passed the test? So you know what you need to know, but you're doomed to 4 years of hoop jumping. Dante, what level of hell is that on?
Elinor Ostrom would not approve of your use of her image.
Yes, it's a shame that there's less Lin around.
I see you're still hanging on to yours.
I've grown accustomed to his face.
Royal Ascot today, too.
One word: "Accreditation".
Scott M said...
RL is MMO more all the time. Just wait until the min/maxers get their hands on Walker's new achievement-based crafting guide.
ROFL!!!
Well, the entire collegiate/university model needs to be shaken up. There are multitudes of people who could through life experience and work experience alone can earn a bachelors or even a masters, but the system via businesses and through the universities only recognize the accreditation process and anyone who has seat time and is excreted out of those systems. Granted there are many exceptions, for example medicine, but things like engineering, law, and most of the soft 'sciences' could use a good dose of this system.
"I've mentioned often that online works very well for students who want to learn. That is a subset of college students."
*that* is the issue. People have to want to learn. No amount of lecture or button pushing from a laptop will make someone smart.
All this education stuff is about ideology rather than quality. It seems the right wants modern education destroyed since their viewpoints are not dominant. Want proof? I've been reading conservative websites for six years. Anytime education comes up they only talk about two things: the Evil Teachers Unions or the Silliness of College Students if they do not choose the physical sciences (I assume they believe engineers and chemists do not vote Democrat) you never hear about improving public education; you never hear details, like improving the quality of NCLB or helping parents help kids with their studies or how to improve math and science education, etc.
And you will never hear it because they have no idea what they are talking about - they are just upset that very few people worship at the temple of Reagan and Friedman. They love the idea of homeschooling and private schools solely on the belief that they have a chance to indoctrinate *their* way. That (nor the "liberal" way) should be what school is for. Yet the arguments seem to go that way.
You see this with liberals and the Christian churches, same with conservatives and public education.
Remember the sturm and drang over Texas history education? nothing but ideological conflict. The heck with the kids.
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