Start the new year right: REFWORKS! 2.0!

It's been confusing and disappointing in the past that UW would spend so much to join the wave of universities purchasing and offering RefWorks FOR FREE to their students, and then not promote the tool. Mention RefWorks to most students and you get a blank look. Add the challenge that it takes a bit of time to learn to use it on your own, without support or promotion, and even those that heard about it found it challenging to start up. But those that do? So much time and effort saved, excellence and error-free citations gained.

Now, a new year, a new plea from Academic Technologies: hop in, the water's lovely and the UW Libraries have stepped to the plate with a new RefWorks support site! Check it out. Still a bit complicated, and we strongly recommend you stop in the Library, if possible, and ask a Librarian to get you started. If you do, you'll soon be spinning with joy seeing how easy it is to build your own personal library of citations.

Even if they don't offer to show you, DEMAND they teach you how to add Google Scholar citations straight to your library. We strongly recommend you also use the free paper writing tool Write-N-Cite, Learn that in Phase II, once you're a RefWorks addict.

Here's the new UW RefWorks site. 

You're welcome.  

Heads up, UW Tacoma! Poll Everywhere is coming.

After long recommending Poll Everywhere, and their cloud-based polling via diverse mobile devices, we now have even better news on the classroom polling front. In the past, we leveraged their generous academic license of up to 40 responses per poll question at NO COST, but with the free license, responses were always anonymous. This wasn't perfect in creating energy and engagement. 

The University of Washington heard the collective voices of instructors across all three campuses, and have agreed to enter into a site license with Poll Everywhere. The license will allow NetID authentication and unlimited number of responses per polling question. We will soon be able to use Poll Everywhere in classes of any size, no sharing of responses needed, AND be able to record multiple questions into a gradebook, automatically entered by NetID. 

Hurrah, UW! Hurrah, Poll Everywhere. We'll keep you posted as the Go-Live date becomes known. Expect it sometime in late Fall, is the rumor. 

Economic Returns on a College Education

I'm a first generation college graduate, the only one of five inner-city siblings to desire a scholarly life. I desperately loved sticking my nose in books and I was determined. My parents were puzzled. 

Now, in one generation, society has changed the narrative to "everybody should go to college." We herald the New Traditional Student: first generation, minority, over 25, young parent, limited financial resources. To meet their needs, we saw the rise of the for-profit schools, rapid growth of public universities, and a national commitment to access: a nation going to college. Part of this narrative is that college is the "ticket to the middle class." Everybody says so.

Until three researchers published a paper that questioned some of the assumptions (and societal changes) built into the value of that ticket. What happens when you're a male, heavily in debt from the rising cost of a degree, and graduating from a second tier school? What happens when you start, can't complete, and leave college with debt and no degree? Read it and weep: 

Benson, Alan and Esteva, Raimundo and Levy, Frank S., Dropouts, Taxes and Risk: The Economic Return to College under Realistic Assumptions (January 26, 2015). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2325657 

My conclusion, once I let the tables, graphs, numbers and variables slide into my assumptions is that we in higher education have the obligation to do less harm. We have to change, to be aware, to not put our students' futures on the line. 

Here are a few things that I think my urban-serving campus - and other well-meaning,  campuses - CAN & SHOULD do to mitigate the harm of creating greater risk of lifetime financial distress:

• Use DATA to determine who is at risk of failing, leaving, incurring debt without a degree. We should be proactive and get them the help they need to complete. Intervene early and let them know we have resources to help. Insist they use them. We have the ability to do this; we need the awareness and the will.
• DECREASE time to graduation. One of the most prominent factors in risk of financial distress is the rising cost of college. I graduated in four years, debt free. This now seems impossible. According to the study, "among 580 US public four- year institutions, only 50 report four-year graduation rates above 50%." As long as we take little responsibility for seeing that students take the courses they need, when they need them - we are doing harm. Other institutions are providing road maps with guarantees that students will graduate on time IF they focus, take the right courses, and commit to a schedule that maps their path to graduation. We can learn from these schools, and from others creating 3-year degrees, online course options, competency-based courses, hybrid and flipped courses - modern pedagogy focused on engaged and personalized learning. Many of our students are working 30+ hours, are adults, are parents, are commuters traveling long distances to campus. We can and should do what we can to support their efforts.

The data is in, the evidence is clear. We can do better.

-Colleen 

With thanks to Bryan Alexander at http://ftte.us/ for directing me to the study.

Smart Phones Don't Make Us Dumb

Pace Nicholas Carr and urban myth, but no, they do not. Not phones, not Google, not video games. Evidence says NO. Then, why do we believe that (if not ourselves) our students are growing less curious, more distant, less engaged...well, dumber?

The NY Times has an opinion and some research that answers the question. "It may be that digital devices have not left us unable to pay attention, but have made us unwilling to do so." 

OK. Next question: WHY would my students be unwilling to listen to me? Perhaps because there are always other options at their finger tips and our student know that they have access to other forms of knowledge acquisition via the 3+ devices they're often carrying on their person. 

I did a poll in class of mobile devices being carried. The winner pulled out SIX: phone, iPod, laptop, Kindle, FitBit... and a mini-GPS he uses on his bike.

Last year, another student walked into my class wearing a t-shirt that said "I don't have ADD. I'm just not listening to you."

Mobile devices don't make us dumb. They give us options. Perhaps they make us smarter, putting information at our fingers. Let's start talking about how we could leverage those smart options to engage learners and change teaching practice? The Faculty Resource Center has tea, coffee treats and bright, shiny technology tools that could help us hold these conversations.

Horizon Report 2015

Just came out! Click Here! Read NOW! 

May not surprise many of you following emergent learning in higher education, but the methodical and thoughtful work that goes into NMC's determining trends and meaning deserves a shout out and HURRAH.

NMC word cloud of 2015 Horizon Report

So, what did they find? 
Key trends (1-2 years): Online Learning and New Learning Spaces
On the Horizon (3-5 years: Open resources and data-driven learning & assessment
In the distance (5+ years): Agile approaches to change & importance of open communities

There's more, much more, and great stories and evidence that explains the trends, challenges and developments on the "Horizon" that gives meaning to the data. Check it out. 

Prefer video to text? They made one!

Travels with Darcy and TLT

Dateline: November 19, 2014--Portland, Oregon

Darcy and I are here for the WCET annual conference and enjoying the emergence of a theme across many of the sessions. Big Data! The last time I was at WCET, two years ago, the talk was of the new, context-aware, feature-rich, learner-centered LMS. Today, nary a session on the topic in sight. This time, everyone is looking to the data. It's fun to see analytics of so many flavors: predictive, descriptive, action, vendor-culled, pattern-aware, and our own home-flavor: nudge. 

I think it was John Campbell, father of the Signals project at Purdue and the birth of dynamic learner access to pattern data, who said "If we're not applying it in action, why do the analytics?" Who would have thought his call to action would have seen such a rush to response. It took awhile, but some of the reported activity is quite jaw-dropping and awe-inspiring in its ambition and scope. 

I'll leave you to look at the work of new vendors like Civitas and Blue Canary. And to explore the potential of WCET's own baby, the now non-profit PAR Framework. You'll have to find conferences like this one to hear about the home-grown, data-driven learner environments and dashboards being implemented at places like Capella University and Rio Salado Community College. 

A lot of work done by all to get to the point where they're able to shape and join

the data, but just beginning to touch on the actions John Campbell intended, and made available to learners. Darcy and I are doing a session on starting at the beginning, with the low-hanging fruit of using data, small and accessible data sources, to inform, support and nudge students to success. 

Nudging Students to the Finish Line talks about a few action-nudge projects undertaken at UW Tacoma to keep students informed of their progress, options,

supports, smart practices and local resources. (Read more about UW Tacoma's approach to just-in-time nudge initiatives) at Not as sophisticated as the big data machines now churning at bigger money and enrollment schools than UW Tacoma, but aimed at achieving the same goals: better grades, better persistence, better engagement in the learning. 

In the session, we'll talk about UW Tacoma's practices of sending prompts to students, via phone, text message, and our new Canvas LMS. We share faculty LMS feature use ("message students who..."), peer and advisor phone calls based on an event status (students not registered for next quarter; students identified via early warning, etc), or machine-based support messages through a collaborating vendor, Persistence Plus, based on their cohort (first year experience; online math students, etc). 

Analytics in a diversity of flavors seems to be the hot topic of the year at a conference where smart, dedicated people are looking for ways to see the new learner to graduation. Wish you were here. 

Just-In-Time Technology: Improving Retention and Success of “New Traditionals”

In a recent article published in The Evolllution, Colleen and Darcy discuss ways UWT is using "nudges" to increase student success.

Tools designed to automate personalized

retention-developing tactics are critical to 

student persistence and success, helping 

institutions boost their performance metrics.

Just In Time. Famous words of the time-stressed, over-committed adult learner that now makes up more than 38 percent of the college-going population (according to a recent Student Clearinghouse report (Student Clearinghouse report). Whether in assignments, courses, financial aid or getting to class, adult learners behave like most time and task-stressed adults; we queue things up as they need to get done. And sometimes, some of the demands just slip through the cracks. Read the full article...