This is an interesting item that showed up in my inbox this past week. It is focused on the higher education context, but it is quite interesting all the same.
La TELUQ menacée de fermeture
http://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/education/201510/30/01-4915503-la-teluq-menacee-de-fermeture.php
(you will have to translate the page to English from your search engine)
Rory
This came through my inbox via my Academia.edu account. It is higher education focused, but I think some of the trends that were found in that literature likely mirror what is happening in the K-12 environment.
Literature Review in Conceptions and Approaches to Teaching using Blended Learning This paper presents a critical review and synthesis of research literature in higher education exploring teachers’ conceptions of blended learning and their approaches to both design and teaching. Definitions of blended learning and conceptual frameworks are considered first. Attention is given to Picciano’s Blending with Purpose Multimodal framework. This paper builds upon previous research on blended learning and conceptual framework by Picciano (A. Picciano, 2009) by exploring how objectives from Picciano’s framework af- fect teachers’ approaches to both design and teaching in…
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This isn’t specifically related to K-12 online learning, but the item discussing and linking in The Nation series on “defending public education against neo-liberal reform” is quite interesting and applicable…
A sign of hope for adjunct faculty at Temple
The United Academics of Philadelphia, AFT Local 9608, has announced the launch of a card campaign among the more than 1,000 faculty who teach on a contingent basis at Temple University. UAP is a union dedicated to making higher education careers sustainable for the 15,000 adjunct professors teaching in Philadelphia-area colleges. For faculty like Linda Lee, progress at Temple would make a big difference. She is teaching this semester at Temple and three other area colleges, Cabrini College, Philadelphia University and Rowan University (in New Jersey). For adjuncts, “Temple is one our favorite places,” she says. Still, the university just raised its credit-hour rate to $1,300 this year for the first time since 2010, the last time adjuncts had an organizing campaign. “If we can improve teaching and learning conditions for adjuncts at Temple, that will have an effect at the other colleges where we teach.”
Read more about the campaign on the AFT Higher Ed blog
Turning up the heat to reverse climate change
Hundreds of AFT members were among the 310,000 trade unionists and faith, labor, social justice, youth and environmental groups to converge on New York City Sept. 21 for the People’s Climate March. Held just before the United Nations Climate Summit and the biggest of 160 rallies held around the world, the march attracted three times the number of participants predicted. AFT members from Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and elsewhere wore blue shirts emblazoned with “Climate Justice” and held signs reading “Climate change is real. Teach Science.” At a pre-march labor rally, many speakers invoked Superstorm Sandy, describing the shock, loss and heartbreak of a natural disaster that was a climate change wakeup call.
Defending education against neoliberal reform
Progressive educators and parents have been highly critical of the school reform agenda that prescribes standardized testing and charter schools as a response to the crisis of inequality in America. The Nation’s Oct. 13 issue is devoted to “Saving Public Schools,” and features articles by AFTers Michael Fabricant (“What It Takes to Unite Teachers Unions and Communities of Color”) and Gordon Lafer (“What Happens When Your Teacher Is a Video Game”). The Nation also sponsored a panel presentation, “What’s Next for Public Schools?”, moderated by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, with AFT President Randi Weingarten, best-selling author Dana Goldstein and New York University professor Pedro Noguera.
City College takes heart from ruling
In just a few weeks, the case San Francisco Attorney General Dennis Herrera has brought against the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges goes to trial, despite ACCJC efforts to thwart the process. Herrera is suing the commission for withdrawing accreditation from the City College of San Francisco, charging that the accreditors’ work was corrupted by conflicts of interest and failure to follow its own and federal rules. AFT Local 2121, representing staff and faculty at City College, had raised the same charges in an earlier suit. In a summary judgment hearing on Sept. 10, the ACCJC argued it could not be tried under California law because it was not a business. The judge was having none of it. Stay tuned for the case to come to trial on Oct. 27.
Alaska unions shame board over CEO bonus
After the University of Alaska Board of Regents awarded an underperforming university president a $320,000 retention bonus in his new contract, faculty, staff and students at the university rose up in outrage. In his four years, the president has overseen annual budget cuts, layoffs and hiring freezes that impaired everyday operations, cuts in services to students, increased student fees and a current deficit of $26 million. Members of the United Academics AAUP-AFT, the UA Federation of Teachers, the Alaska Public Employees Association/AFT and the Alaska AFL-CIO were instrumental in raising community awareness, mounting a petition, writing letters to the editor and demonstrating outside the campus. In a special meeting, the board rescinded the bonus three months after offering it.
An elegant student loan repayment tool
The U.S. Department of Education has a bare-bones, online tool called the “repayment estimator” to help holders of federal student loans estimate their loan payments under each repayment plan. But if you want to explore more options—such as the long-term effect different career choices will have on your payments—check out the elegant tool education reporter Libby Nelson created for the digital news service Vox.
The truth about Teach for America
College students at some of Teach for America’s primary recruiting grounds are escalating a campaign to force TFA to be truthful about its work or get off their campus. Working with United Students Against Sweatshops and nearby AFT locals, students at Harvard, Eastern Michigan, Vanderbilt and Macalester are hosting TFA alumni who are part of a “truth tour” exposing how TFA is undermining the teaching profession and public education. The students are demanding that their administrations stop collaborating with the program unless TFA makes three changes immediately: only send teachers to areas in which there is a teaching shortage, provide corps members more education and training, and cut ties with corporations the students deem socially unjust, like Exxon Mobil and JP Morgan Chase.
In This Issue
Hope for Temple adjuncts
AFT on
Mike N Toby Berke
”If science and technology are measures of man’s intelligence,
the arts are the measure of his humanity.”
In Print
The Fall issue of AFT On Campus looks at how college affordability and access are key issues for working families in this election year.
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So a colleague of mine sent this to me last week.
Middlebury Faculty Seeks to Cut Ties With Online-Education Company
The faculty at Middlebury College last week took a stand against the Vermont institution’s partnership with K12, an online-education company that has been helping the college turn its reputation as a language-instruction mecca into a business venture.
The professors voted, 95 to 16, to end the relationship with the company.
“The business practices of K12 Inc. are at odds with the integrity, reputation, and educational mission of the college,” wrote Paula Schwartz, a professor of French, in her rationale for introducing the motion.
“Press reports and court records show that K12 Inc. has a record of misleading claims and dubious business practices,” she wrote. “Middlebury’s association with K12 Inc. puts its own reputation at risk.”
The vote was not binding and may not affect Middlebury’s online ambitions. The college’s president, Ronald D. Liebowitz, said he continued to support the partnership with K12. Still, the uneasiness of the faculty is the latest example of professors at a liberal-arts college taking a hard line against potentially profitable collaborations with outside entities.
Last year faculty members at Amherst College and Duke University successfully fended off partnerships with outside online-education providers. Amherst passed on an invitation to join edX, the nonprofit provider of massive open online courses. The undergraduate faculty at Duke declined to collaborate with 2U, an online-education company, to create small, credit-bearing online courses.
Middlebury’s partnership with K12 has nothing to do with transposing the college’s own curriculum to an online format. And yet the professors there are increasingly worried about having even the slightest affiliation with the company.
In 2010, Middlebury announced that it was going into business with K12 to create Middlebury Interactive Languages, a free-standing company that would sell online language courses to elementary and secondary schools. The new company would develop the courses with faculty members at Middlebury College and its famous language school. The college would contribute its good name and own 40 percent of the venture. K12, supplying the technology and marketing expertise, would own 60 percent.
“The idea was to extend Middlebury’s leadership in higher-education language instruction into other markets,” said Bill Burger, the college’s vice president for communications, in an interview on Tuesday.
“We knew we could not launch courses independently, as we needed the technological experience and scale to allow for course development and meaningful student and course assessment,” recalled Mr. Liebowitz, Middlebury’s president, defending the partnership in an op-ed piece this month for the college’s student newspaper.
Some faculty members were skeptical from the outset. Some expressed general concerns about online education and for-profit education ventures. Others noted that K12 had been co-founded by William J. Bennett, a conservative pundit and politician who served as U.S. education secretary under President Ronald Reagan. However, there was no attempt to block the partnership.
Middlebury Interactive Languages would not share any financial information with The Chronicle. But Jane M. Swift, the company’s chief executive and a former acting governor of Massachusetts, said it had seen “significant growth over the past three years.” It now has 75 full-time employees and has moved its headquarters to downtown Middlebury, near the college. The company’s website says its courses are used in 1,200 schools, and it has several statewide contracts.
Now that Middlebury Interactive Languages is serving clients, the scrutiny of the college’s faculty has intensified.
Earlier this year, a Latin teacher at one high school that uses Middlebury Interactive Languages found errors in a Latin course and reported them to a professor in the college’s classics department. The high-school teacher thought the course had been developed by the college, but it turned out to have been developed by Power-Glide Languages Courses Inc., a company K12 had acquired years earlier.
Also from Monday’s inbox…
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Current/Future State of Higher Education.
An Open Online Course
AACE is one of the organizers of the massive open online course, CFHE12 to explore the complexities of higher education’s future.
University leaders are struggling to make sense of how internationalization, the current economic conditions, and new technologies will impact their systems. Educators are uncertain of the impact of open educational resources, alternative accreditation models, de-professionalization of academic positions, and increased grant competitiveness.
What is role of the academy in increasing national economic competitiveness while preserving the “vital combat for lucidity” [2] that defines an open democratic society?
A short introductory video:
12 Unique Blogs Are Written By Professors
Virtual School Meanderings 