Rick West

Instructional Researcher, Evaluator, and Designer

You are here: Home

The beginning of the end of higher education?

by

I learned today that in Georgia, an additional 2% is being cut from the University of Georgia budget on top of the current 6% budget reduction. And from Utah comes this report about similar reductions, with the same size of reductions being possible again next year (yes, a total of 15% eliminated from where the budgets were six months ago).

How can higher education possibly sustain this loss in financial support? It’s obvious that, like commercial entities, higher education will need to do some massive restructuring (can we lobby Capitol Hill for a bailout too?). What I’m wondering is whether higher education will ever be exactly the same? After such restructuring, will it return to like it was? Or will we enter a new age of higher education? Will the split between research faculty and teaching/adjunct faculty grow larger, killing off forever the classic professor who fulfills both roles? Will this be the disruption that tips the scales in favor of distance education? Will public universities severe their ties with the states, reject public funding, and become commercial enterprises?

I don’t know if things will change this drastically. Yet. But could the economic collapse represent the beginning of the end?

How likely are you to get divorced?

by

I thought this little online calculator was a good example of taking a ton of sociological data on the backend to make a very usable product for regular joes like us who don’t want to hear all the regression statistics, but simply want to know the answer to an important question. In this case the question is: How likely are you to get divorced in the next five years?

However, it also raises—very poignantly—another problem with research on human beings: The fact that statistics don’t seem very meaningful when applied to an individual. For example, I don’t feel like the 15% chance this calculator gave me is low enough—I feel our marriage is too strong for that high of a divorce probability. Someone else in marital trouble might feel their percentage should be much, much higher. So the statistics tell good general trends for people of my age and gender, but are still not very meaningful when applied to someone personally.

But of course you already knew that about research! 🙂

[OT] College football playoffs

by

A little over a week ago, I proposed a 16-team playoff system for college football, just for argument’s sake. It was fun today to read Peter Schrager of Fox Sports arguing for exactly the same thing. I believe this would be a win-win for nearly everyone, including mid-majors, BCS schools, and TV channels. He goes a step further to play out a hypothetical scenario, showing how awesome the matchups would be and declaring “sensory overload”.

Yeah. Why can everyone see that this is the best option for college football except the NCAA itself?

[OT] College football playoffs

by

This is completely off topic for this blog, but please indulge me. Let’s talk sports, specifically college football. I’m a former sports reporter, so I have always loved sports debates, and this one’s a doozy. I want to weigh in with my two cents, and leave comments about your opinion!

 Why we need a college football championship

Right now, few schools actually make money off of their football programs. Basically, the BCS schools, and that’s about it. There is REAL big money involved here, as evidenced by the multimillion coaches’ salaries. The crime is that these millions are locked up in the hands of only a handful of schools. Those programs who have established themselves as football powers soak up the BCS millions and turn around and use the BCS to entice the best high school athletes and college coaches. Then the best programs get better and the others grow more and more less likely to ever get a slice of the pie. Because conferences get payouts from BCS bowls too, a low-tier school lucky enough to be in the SEC, for example, might net $1 million dollars for not even playing in the post season! Just because they are lucky enough to be in a BCS conference.

That’s just not right. Besides, without a playoff, a BCS championship is hollow because you don’t really know if the champ really is the best team—or just the one that convinced the most voters.

A Proposed Solution

I think every conference needs a potential path to the championship and the BCS. There should be the vision, that if you play hard enough as a team, you can go all the way. That option does not exist now. Yes, non-BCS schools can “bust” a BCS bowl game, but only one a year (what about poor undefeated Ball State this year, stuck behind Utah and Boise State?), and with zero chance of playing for the championship (how come Utah is not being considered for the championship game if Texas Tech loses today?). No! Every team needs to have the goal that if they play hard enough, they could go all the way. It makes for good sports movies. It makes for high interest among fans. It’s the American way.

So I think they should go with a 16-team playoff. Each of the 11 Division 1 conferences gets an automatic berth (so winning your conference matters), and 5 at-large teams can earn their way in through a combination of human polls/computer rankings. This adds four games to the schedule, which is a lot, so teams will have their preseasons shortened by one game. Then only 8 teams in the end really have to play extra games (and I’m sure they’re not going to complain). The first round will be played at lower-tier bowl sites, while the final three rounds would be played in BCS bowls.

That’s my choice, but if some argue that it adds too many games to the schedule, you could also do a 12-team playoff with 11 automatic berths and 1 at-large berth. The top four teams according to the rankings earn a bye (since they’ll most likely have to play to the end anyway). The remaining 8 play the first round for the right to join the top 4 in the quarterfinals. This would also mercifully eliminate the patsy teams before they get embarrassed by the elite teams, but it still gives the opportunity for a solid, well-coached, mid-major school to go all the way.

Why this would work

This system would benefit the mid-majors by giving them something to play for. If they win their conference, they get the chance to play for the national championship. They can’t ask for or expect more. It benefits the current BCS schools by allowing 11 of their teams to get berths (6 conference champions + 5 likely at-large berths). It also benefits them because each of their teams has the chance to win the championship without argument. That will make them happy.

This also benefits the NCAA and the television executives. Basketball is not nearly (not even close!) as popular as college football, and yet March Madness draws in legions of television and live-ticketed fans. College football would rake in the dough through a playoff system. And the bowls would be unharmed.

This is so obvious, why don’t they do it? And now especially with ESPN’s new contract with BCS, we have no chance of changing this soon.  Unless Barak Obama is serious about making this a presidential issue, although I don’t agree that 8 teams is enough for a playoff because the same inequalities would exist and some conferences would still be left out.

AECT 2008 presentation

by

I just uploaded the audio and handout from my 2008 AECT presentation. You can listen to it, or download the mp3, on my presentations page. I’m sorry the audio is not the greatest. I have definitely become a believer that conferences should have a podcast team handling the recording, if possible (I know student volunteers are limited). It is tough for me to remember to make a good recording when I’m already thinking about giving the presentation to the people there live. I’ll continue to try and make these recordings more of the regular routine when I present and work to improve the audio.

[Note, this is a presentation of the ETRD paper that I blogged about yesterday]

Communities of Innovation article published in ETR&D

by

I received the news today that my article, to be published in ETR&D, describing a theoretical framework for understanding Communities of Innovation is available online at Springer. It should come out in print sometime next year. This article presents the framework for my current dissertation work. I hope others find these ideas interesting, as I do, and definitely provide me any feedback that you have!

Here is the abstract:

Abstract  The twenty-first century economy often requires the innovative production of conceptual and physical artifacts. These innovations frequently are developed collaboratively within communities of workers. Previous theories about the nature of work and learning within communities have emphasized shared meaning or shared practice, but now shared innovation is required. In this paper, I describe the development of a model for conceptualizing and studying shared innovation within communities. This model was created from merging elements of social learning and creativity/innovation theories. I explain that at an intersection of these two domains is a unique kind of social structure, called a Community of Innovation, or COI. I conclude by describing the characteristics of a COI and its implications for design and research.

What is the value of the Department of Education

by

Here’s a thought to stir the pot! Congressman Ron Paul participated today in answering questions submitted by readers of the Freakonomics blog. I thought his perspective on the U.S. Department of Education was interesting:

Q: It was mentioned you were in favor of getting rid of the Department of Education. Is this true, and if so, how do you feel this would benefit the country?
A: I do believe in eliminating the Department of Education.

First, the Constitution does not authorize the Department of Education, and the founders never envisioned the federal government dictating those education policies.

Second, it is a huge bureaucracy that squanders our money. We send billions of dollars to Washington and get back less than we sent. The money would be much better off left in states and local communities rather than being squandered in Washington.

Finally, I think that the smallest level of government possible best performs education. Teachers, parents, and local community leaders should be making decisions about exactly how our children should be taught, not Washington bureaucrats. The Department of Education has given us No Child Left Behind, massive unfunded mandates, indoctrination, and in come cases, forced medication of our children with psychotropic drugs. We should get rid of all of that and get those choices back in the hands of the people.

Hmm, interesting. I have actually been having similar thoughts the last couple of weeks since having a discussion on this with some colleagues at the AECT conference. Can someone explain to me, exactly, why we need a U.S. Department of Education and what value this department has to justify its huge expense? I can see that there is some benefit to having continuity between states for students who transfer, but is that worth the cost of this department? I transferred mid-year as a high schooler from a school on semesters to a school on trimesters. You can’t get any more mixed up than that, and I adjusted fine when I jumped brand new into the middle of my new trimester and curriculum.

The other argument might be that we need a U.S. DOE to regulate uniform high quality across all states. But that’s so laughable, let’s not talk about it, since our students uniformly perform very poorly compared with other nations, and it could be argued that the U.S. DOE impedes rather than promotes educational reform and improvement. By dissolving the U.S. DOE and throwing responsibility for education back to the states, education would become an important economic issue: States would want to have top tier educational systems to attract people to their states. Competition would breed improvement. Innovation could be allowed to emerge in some states and the others could then learn and follow positive examples.

Now I could be wrong, and perhaps someone can successfully challenge my arguments here. I admit, I am still thinking these things through. So here’s the challenge: Can anyone give me a solid reason why the U.S. DOE is worth the millions of dollars we give it? A good reason why we should continue to allow it to exist? I’m seriously interested in knowing.

Participant incentives

by

I guess I’m doing the wrong kind of research. Because most of my research deals with college students or post-college adults, I usually have to offer some kind of expensive incentive to encourage them to participate in my studies. In my current dissertation study, this includes offering a new digital voice recorder, college class credit, and maybe gift certificates.

But as I was reviewing my friend’s informed consent for working with 3rd graders, her PI mentions that each child will be offered a gift, like “a sparkly pencil.”

Man! That’s cheap! I wish I could recruit these college kids to participate with just sparkly pencils. Maybe I should try it and see if it works … 😉

Recent Posts

Meta

Tags

AECT2010 civility COI COIs collaborative creativity creative climates creativity & creative communities expertise google innovation IPT750 leadership learning communities OER online communication patents presentations research situated cognition teaching trademarks workshop

Latest Tweets