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  • 3.2 Million Reasons to Talk

    By Joshua Kim November 9, 2010 8:00 pm EST

    "For-profit colleges receive about a quarter of all Pell Grant and federal aid, according to the Federal Student Aid Data Center. These institutions enrolled 3.2 million students, or 11.8 percent of the 27.4 million students in the postsecondary population, during the 2008-09 academic year…."

    --Inside Higher Ed article 'Learning From For-Profits', 11/8/10 by Jack Stripling

    Maybe I'm just missing out, and you have found effective ways to have authentic conversations and build collaborative relationships with leaders, faculty, and learning professionals who work for for-profits. Perhaps my networks are too limited and narrow, too residential private non-profit, too EDUCAUSE centric, to build networks with people from for-profits. I'll accept the blame - and declare that I want to do better.

    We have 3.2 million reasons to get to know the people who make the for-profits run.

    Some areas I'm hoping we can talk about:

    What sort of research are you producing around best-practices in teaching and learning?

    How can we learn from your advances in faculty training, course design methodology, course delivery technology?

    How do you measure success in your courses?

    How can we figure out ways of working together to promote active learning?

    Do you have any plans to contribute to the open education commons - such as places like M.I.T., Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Yale, UC Berkeley, etc. etc.?

    Will we see your materials on YouTube/EDU and iTunesU?

    What do you see as the big problems in our higher education system?

    What have you learned and how can we adopt your innovations?

    What are the areas where your approaches have not worked, and where are you committed to doing better?

    Where do you publish your research?

    What conferences do you present at?

    What blogs do you write?

    What would be your questions? If you work for a for-profit, what would you like to talk about?

    Where is this conversation taking place? Are you part of the discussion?

Go to comments (4) »
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Comments on 3.2 Million Reasons to Talk

  • Is research really necessary for good teaching?
  • Posted by Brian Mulligan , Open Learning Coordinator at Institute of Technology Sligo, Ireland. on November 10, 2010 at 7:00am EST
  • I'm worried about this question:
    "What sort of research are you producing around best-practices in teaching and learning?"
    It seems to play into the myth that activity in research is necessary for good teaching. As an engineer in education I am aware that many really good manufacturing companies do not carry out research. They keep an eye on research and an even closer eye on practical developments elsewhere that would not be classed as research. My work in Learning Technologies has brought me into contact with many e-learning and educational researchers who seem to be totally unable to stimulate better teaching practice in their institutions. I would be quite happy for faculty to get to the level of best practice of private trainers (which is really just a bag of tricks, eg. less words on your slides), than to be familiar with esoteric principles in cognitive psychology, much less be involved in educational research.
  • Challenges of learning about for-profits
  • Posted by Denise Davidson at Bloomsburg University on November 10, 2010 at 9:00am EST
  • I have a strong interest in learning about students' out-of-the-classroom experiences at for-profit institutions. From my reading and conversations, I have learned that for-profit institutions (and their employees) are reluctant to expose themselves to scrutiny. First, negative perceptions of their practices have a potentially more damaging impact on finances (particularly for the FP institutions with shareholders). Second, if a for-profit institution is doing something well, why would they want to share and help others benefit from their efforts? And, third, it takes time to share, which means directing faculty/staff time away from their work with students. I do not fault these institutions for this approach, but would so love to be able to help others understand how we can learn from FPs in and out of the classroom.
  • Posted by Steve Foerster on November 10, 2010 at 9:45am EST
  • Prof. Davidson, are you saying this because you've found that those who run non-profit and public universities were open to scrutiny? I've worked in both the for-profit and non-profit university sectors and did not observe that those who ran non-profits were any more enthusiastic about having their mistakes be revealed.
  • Should always be improving!
  • Posted by Hugh Miller III , Biology at ETSU on November 10, 2010 at 2:45pm EST
  • Any one involved in teaching should always be improving! You should always be focused on making students understand and retain concepts; helping students with cognitive skills like analysis and critical thinking.

    My professional motto is not so much continual research for the sake of research but to always question what is happening in the classroom and looking for improvements.

    I think that one thing that is missing in most discussions of learning and teaching is the role of motivating students to improve! In my cell biology class, students do two oral presentations. After the first one, I provide them with written feedback and a set of expectations for the second presentation. If they work to improve ad meet the expectations, they will get full credit, if not they will get less credit.

    We need more approaches that define expectations and we need to learn how to motivate students to meet expectations!

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