J-DEPM+622

=DEPM 622 The Business of Distance Education Spring 2011 =

Deleted from My Business Model Deliverable Author: Stuart Adams Created: 3/27/2011 These are some items that were a part of my Business Model assignment but were deleted to meet word count. They represent insights, ideas, and understanding that are worth keeping even if they didn't speak directly to the requirments of the assignment.

· In this model, I am the principal participant in the business and will have responsibility for virtually all aspects of the business, including strategic planning, marketing, and engagement fulfillment. The one exception will be that my wife, and accountant, will provide bookkeeping services. She will also act as editor for any deliverables that I produce.

· My Business goals (measure and prioritize) for the near future are:
 * To secure my first substantive, paying engagement by the end of this calendar year.
 * To complete my Masters in Distance Education and E-learning degree by the end of this calendar year.
 * To make direct contact with personnel in 30% of the school districts in Colorado so as to establish a relationship with them. Focus will be on the “western slope” districts.
 * Within 3 years, to establish engagements in at least 3 school districts annually within the state.
 * To become recognized as an authoritative resource on the subject of OLL within the state, either through contacts with the state government or with non-governmental organizations within the state.

· My value chain: I get information from the client, I process the information to make it useful to the client, I produce deliverables as outputs, I make contacts with districts to identify needs and opportunities and I do follow-on service to clarify and support conclusions and recommendations in the deliverables. All support systems are me, except Lori.

· Be cooperative with other consultants that may be competitors. In the long run, consultants form a community and can be a help to each other. {cite Looby}

· There may also be opportunities to develop relationships with community colleges (CC) that are active in DE and have outreach contacts with local school districts. The CCs would like for incoming students to have some familiarity with the DE world and how to work with an LMS.

· An alternative approach might be to engage school districts on a contingency basis, getting paid based on the number of students that I can bring into the school district's OLL program. This approach raises both practical and ethical issues, however. {cite Ziperman}

· It is said that most business models aren't successful and that learning the specific market and the clients is essential to building a successful business. It must be implemented with an eye towards flexibility and the willingness to adjust to circumstances and opportunities as they arise. 

What's This Quick Study Guide About? Author: Stuart Adams Created: 4/7/2011

I think that we are a part of something of a pedagogical experiment. The Quick Start Guide is a departure from typical UMUC conferences designed, I believe, to respond to the smaller sized class. Over the course of the class, we haven't made any use of the WebTycho Conference system. But, as we all know, effective online learning depends on interaction. The only opportunity for student-to-student interaction in this class is through the QSG. Maybe, if this approach to student-to-student interaction is made effective, it will be easier for UMUC to present classes that might otherwise be considered under-enrolled.

But, here's the key. We're supposed to use the QSG for interaction. I don't think the goal of the QSG is simply to put up a 250 word entries on a topic. I think this experiment is designed to have us giving each other feedback and commentary on each of the topics. I think we in the class can help each other if we are actively involved in writing responses to each other's work.

The problem is that the lead time is really tough to work with. We have only about two weeks to get each QSG completed and turned in. Sometimes it takes almost that long just to read each of the required readings. How to get some decent interaction under those circumstances?

I proposed that each member of the class select a topic from the list and do whatever readings and research that would be needed on the topic. Based on that, we should then write a very quick and dirty write-up, not intended to be a final product, but something that resembles a Conference post. Then, the classmates would provide responses, again in the Conference mode. It will be critical to get first posts in early, and let each other help write the final product. If the class follows this approach, we can simulate a traditional MDE conference with just a few students participating.

Next Steps for My Business Plan Author: Stuart Adams Created: 4/7/2011 I need to take each of the three parts of my business plan and consolidated the into one document. I should look at the feedback from each assignment and use that to fill in gaps in the document. When I'm done, Lisa has committed to review it and offer final comments and suggestions. When done, I'd have a really useful document. From there, I can use the plan as the basis for my Capstone project, identifying some key components that would provide a starting point for my consultant practice.

Fighting Back Against The Naysayers Requires Better Learner Support Author: Stuart Adams Created: 4/8/2011

Stella P. put this article out in the MDE Lounge blog and I picked it up. For some reason (perhaps 'cause it was late in the evening), it really got my goat.

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Seems to me that the effort to push back against online and blended learning is increasing, and the teachers unions are at the lead. It seems to me that every innovation and imitative to improve the sad state of affairs in the K-12 public school system, since "A Nation at Risk," is met with teachers union resistance. Sad (but perhaps not surprising) that the NY Times is complicit in the effort; this is one of the most stilted articles I've read. (Notice the treatment of the Dept. of Education's 2009 report. The Times barely mentions how valuable the cited meta-study found online and blended learning to be).

Still, the article does raise a key concern for those pushing for reform using Online/Blended learning: The going-in understanding for generations of Distance Education was that it was aimed at adult learners and a certain level of maturity, commitment, and autonomy were required for a student to be successful. Even so, the concern for, and approaches to "Learner Support" has garnered much academic writing.

When dealing with children and especially young adults, the challenge for learner support becomes more acute. Many, if not most high school students never engage with the learning process and seem only to be interested in "getting their ticket punched." The highly motivated students will take their AP and Chinese courses with a full commitment to getting a valuable education. But, can we expect the same level of interest and commitment from the "credit recovery" students? If not, those using OLL must design and apply different methods for learner support.

There's a paper in this somewhere!

How Libraries Begat the Virtual University Author: Stuart Adams Created: 4/15/2011

OK, so we're spending the last part of this course reading about the future of post-secondary education and creating a wiki on new DE/OLL ventures. What does this have to do with the business of DE? Well, of course, anyone in business would like to be able to see the future (wouldn't you have liked to have envisioned Facebook before Mark Zuckerberg did?). So, it makes sense to look at alternative business models like consortia, off-shore campuses and the entry of publishers into DE. But what can we see as a coherent picture of the future of post-secondary learning and, since we certainly see DE/OLL as a key part of the future, how does DE/OLL fit in?

Futurists take a simple approach to forecasting the future: They start with a significant point in the past and draw a line straight through the present to see where things are going. We can do that with tertiary education and get a sense for where DE/OLL is headed.

In the beginnings of the college, there was, first, the library, a large collections of books. A library, being somewhat rare, was worthy of note. (For an interesting view of how our canon of knowledge has been preserved, read Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization ). Libraries drew scholars, who accessed the books, read them and discussed them with other scholars, creating more scholarship and more books. All these scholars sitting around drew students. Hence, the institute of higher learning. Fast forward and we see progressive-minded folks who see the value of an educated populace creating this sort of institution in a less organic, but more rationalized way. Build a library and classrooms, bring in some scholars and get them to teach students and you have a state university (OK, you might also need a football team and a bar). Again, because they are scholars, they will engage in research and scholarship, as well.

It is important to note why the libraries are important. Books, in the past, were serious things. They carried an ethos of authority; they could be trusted. So what does this look like in the future? To understand this, you have to add technology, the computer and the Internet. As more and more resources are available on the Internet, it begins to take on the function and appearance of a library. The scholars don't have to go to a central physical location where the books are. They can share across virtual space. They can discourse and do research across virtual space. And, as we know well, they can teach across virtual space. One's affiliations with a particular institution, its buildings and football team, are no longer what bounds the scholarly process. So, alliances and cooperative ventures between players in the field tend to expand their ability to do what the scholars of old did around a library. It also makes sense that publishers, who used to sell to libraries, would want a piece of the action. Cindy has it right: evolving beyond "silos" of learning to grander and more powerful institutions of learning, using cooperative ventures as a way to expand reach.

One of the ideas behind futurist predictions is that many of the functions that were a part of the past find their way into the future, but are often changed. So, for example, the academic journal, which provides a means of discourse across space and time, is a critical part of the scholarly process. They fill the stacks in the library, so that other scholars can refer to them, building knowledge upon knowledge. In many ways they take the place of the face-to-face discourse of previous times. But they have the limitation that they take time to produce. In some ways, this is good because part of the time is taken up by peer review, deciding whether the scholarly writing is to be trusted. But, in a era where time is compressed, production time and review time are no longer needed. The Internet provides the capacity for real-time review, discourse, and publication. Knowledge building can move at a much faster pace.

So the predictions of Educause, Tapscott, the eLearning folks and all are how this new virtual university will work. What will be the important structures and technologies that make it go. What must the culture be? What are the high-leverage changes that effect the transition to the virtual university?

Any good business person would at this point, be asking the key question: How can I make money off of this?