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Since we're already doggie-paddling around the deep-end of the MOOC phenomenon, it seems high time to begin thinking about how to assess MOOCs.  This is far from straightforward, since they are not typical courses and might best be conceived of as extension or continuing education activities. Very few colleges and universities are revealing their assessment practices for MOOCs; Duke is one exception.   This report explains that selective university's experiences with one course , and demonstrates how their administrators and faculty thought about measuring success. In my view, some of it is good, and some of it is exactly what not to do. So here is my overview of an initial evaluative framework for thinking about whether or not a MOOC was a "success." I'm posting this with the explicit intention of generating discussion to refine this framework and build it out, so please add your two cents. The framework has three components: an assessment of costs expended to g

This post is the second in a series of four. It's hard to say much about Nick Jones, candidate for chancellor of UW-Madison, because hardly anyone seems to know who he is.  He's spent most of the last 30 years at a single, very elite private institution-- Johns Hopkins University-- where he's currently the dean of the Whiting School of Engineering.  About 10 years ago, Jones left Hopkins about about two years to work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but quickly returned. Apart from engaging in various engineering-related activities, he doesn't seem to have done much in higher education leadership. That said, Jones is well-liked by those in the Hopkins community, and appears to be good at fundraising. Very nice. But this is a case where having been a dean and the product of one institution may simply not be enough. He talks in terms of sports metaphors when describing his current job , noting that  "I’m an offensive lineman. Basically, I run interf

PREFACE: There are four candidates for UW-Madison Chancellor. This week I will profile each of them, contributing information gleaned from "off list" discussions and sleuthing. As I noted in my last couple of blogs, unfortunately that sort of due diligence was not undertaken by the search firm. I'm doing this in the spirit of sifting and winnowing, with an eye towards helping us identify the candidate who best suits UW-Madison with its many strong traditions-- foremost among them our tradition of shared governance. I hope you will join me in that spirit, refraining from engaging in name-calling or sheer speculation, while sharing any useful information you may have, using the comments function on this blog. Until December 2012, Kim Wilcox was the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs at Michigan State University, where he also served as a professor in the Department of Communicative Sciences and Disorders, a member of the MSU Foundation board of directors,

Over at the Nation, Scott Sherman makes an excellent case that we are obligated to sift and winnow for a college president or chancellor who will address the real social and economic issues confronting public higher education-- rather than merely "adapting" to the new normal. Sherman writes, " Why should we fret about the presidents of our colleges and universities? Because American higher education is plagued by severe difficulties on many fronts—from soaring tuition and runaway student debt to the loss of public funding, the endemic corruption in college athletics and the erosion of the liberal arts—and the presidents won’t resolve those issues by kibitzing in the gilded suites of Wall Street. The time has come to demand more from them, and to hold them to more elevated standards. The finest presidents of the past—Conant, Robert Hutchins, Kingman Brewster, Clark Kerr—were not perfect men, but they exercised potent leadership, and sometimes they were quite courageous .

There's hardly ever been a more difficult and auspicious time to lead a public flagship university. Yet at the same time, I believe it's among the greatest opportunities, and anyone would be beyond lucky to have the job. The last chancellor of UW-Madison nearly undid our relationship with our state. In my opinion, then and now, she was nothing short of disastrous.  And, we have learned since her departure that her employment could have been avoided if only the search had involved a genuine due diligence process before she was brought in for interviews. For example, had due diligence occurred, we would have known-- before she came to woo the campus with her charisma-- that as long as Biddy's around, no one needs to have good ideas, for she has them all. In a setting like ours, where shared governance prevails, and we know that good ideas come from all sorts of places, she clearly wouldn't have fit. Due diligence is a must when hiring any leader. And it's incredibly

Milton Friedman must be dancing in his grave at the moment.  In every economic crisis there's an opportunity to impose change, he professed, and no smart leader let such an opportunity pass by. Especially when it comes to undermining public goods. Leaders of MOOC movements across the nation, including here at home in UW-Madison, are telling us that this is simply the right time to take the leap into a transformed  space in higher education, one enabled by technology.  I have absolutely no doubt that they sincerely believe this.  And I have equally little doubt that most are entirely unaware of their place in history, and the degree to which they are acting out a narrative written many decades earlier. MOOCs are not primarily or even secondarily about bringing open, no-cost education to the masses. Instead, these efforts created by private elite institutions and for-profit businesses squarely aim to outsource traditional governmental functions in education, and divert taxpayer dolla

The discourse around higher education on two key topics-- MOOCs and performance funding-- is unfortunately trending toward a generic approach to institutions.  Lumping public and private universities together is always unwise, because not only do their funding sources differ, but so do their missions and masters. Public institutions still lean heavily on taxpayer support to provide undergraduate education, and that funding is subject to rules developed by externally , democratically controlled governance units.  They are explicitly responsible for expanding access, growing the proportion of the public that is educated at the postsecondary level.  These conditions represent both benefits and constraints to public colleges and universities. In contrast, at  private instituions  tuition and endowments provide most of the resources for undergraduate education, and rules for that funding and spending are mainly developed internally .  Their missions vary widely and are internally determine

It was only a matter of time.  The anticipation was palpable when a group of about 50 concerned faculty, students, and staff from around UW-Madison gathered last summer to talk about the governance crisis at UVA .  The president of that flagship university had just been ousted for failing to quickly embrace MOOCs-- a sign some UVA board members thought meant that she was failing to embrace the "disruptive innovation" that will purportedly transform higher education.  While President Teresa Sullivan was reinstated some weeks later, after a period of alumni outrage, the writing was on the wall.  MOOCs were established as an especially hot new trend with broad appeal among the powerful who find "shock and awe" scenarios the best way to promote change-- and it wouldn't be long before UW-Madison lept into the quicksand. This morning UW-Madison is going public with the news that we're joining with Coursera to offer four pilot MOOCs .  Our administrators have appa

The Answer Sheet over at the Washington Post recently ran an editorial by a professor at Fordham University about his reasons for not allowing Teach for America to recruit in his college classroom.  Mainly, he objects because TFA focuses on short-term rather than long-term commitments to teaching and as a result, he claims, “an organization which began by promoting idealism and educational equity has become, to all too many of its recruits, a vehicle for profiting from the misery of America’s poor.” Like this professor, I don’t allow TFA to recruit in my classrooms at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Apparently, many of my colleagues feel the same way. When I noted this on Twitter and Facebook, the response was substantial.  Faculty from across the country said “me too,” “me too,” though only a few elaborated on why. Those that did expound on their practices revealed that TFA’s strategy of in-classroom recruitment may have unintended consequences.  The professors, it

We're now midway through my son's first year of public schooling.  Overall, things seem to be going well, he's loving it, and learning a lot.  But I'm confused about a couple of things... 1. School fundraisers .  It seems that this is where bad ideas go to live.  Why in the world would you sell frozen danishes to help a kid's school? Who needs a frozen danish? Who needs horribly ugly Christmas ornaments and why are you selling religious stuff anyway?  Big tins of candied popcorn? Why?   Why not sell something useful or healthy or kid-friendly? 2. Field trips .  I love the idea. I don't love the actual set-up, where kids visit a place like the children's museum and do exactly what they'd do if they went with their parents.  Actually, they are with their parents-- or other peoples' parents.  I went, and had to watch 5 kids for 2.5 hours, having no idea how to actually use the resources to educate  them.  Missed opportunities. 3. Candy.  Seems like cand

The Faculty Senate at UW-Madison is a very quiet place.  We meet monthly for about two hours and while the agenda is packed, hardly anyone asks questions or makes impassioned speeches (present company excluded, of course). But on one issue, you can count on professors to speak up: athletics. More specifically, the money paid to coaches and staff on campus invokes more vehemence and animosity from my colleagues than any other issue I've seen brought to the forefront. I suspect the same is true at other schools.  For it's fairly uniformly the case that salaries in athletics are far higher than those in academics and rise much, much faster. But of course, you might say. And how silly, Sara, to doubt that this is not only a good thing, but a smart thing!  For as we all know, athletics brings money and needed attention to universities, generates revenue that benefits the entire institution, and more than pays for itself. In fact, people who care about financial aid ought to be noth

Readers of this blog ought to be interested in changes at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York affecting the pay and resources of their graduate students. In a nutshell, the same market-based approaches to education inflicted on k-12 schooling and more recently undergraduate education are now being brought to bear on graduate education.  Characteristics of that sector that some find undesirable-- for example longer times to degree--are being attributed to student laziness and treated with new rejiggered incentives.   The President of the CUNY Grad Center recently equated his students with roaches, who check into a model and never check out . The pushback on the part of many CUNY grad students is merited and admirable -- while some of the so-called reforms are good on their face (who doesn't like fellowships?) their roll out and implementation suggest deeper problems.  It seems that too-little consideration has been given to the effects on access  likely to occur w

This is what bravery looks like. My colleague Michael Kissick is an untenured professor  at UW-Madison with an unyielding commitment to the Wisconsin Idea, free speech and vigorous sifting and winnowing.  He is a peaceful man who, like many of us, enjoys a good Solidarity Singalong. But when he went to the Capitol on September 13, 2012,  he was told that he would receive a ticket for participating in that now famous activity.  Group gatherings of more than 4 people that are intended to "promote a cause", are now forbidden in the "Peoples' house." Who decides what's promoting a cause?  Oh, well of course the Capitol Police do. You can't expect any rational, intelligent person to accept this nonsense. And Michael is not. He's now represented by the ACLU and has filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court this afternoon-- on behalf of all of us peaceful, free thinking citizens and our right to assemble. Lord knows what's headed Michael's way

Cross-posted from the original over at the Chronicle of Higher Education.  “There’s no such thing as free money,” Joanne, a middle-aged African-American mother of two sitting across the table from me declared. “But for me, getting this college degree depends on whether I have enough money to afford it.” Solving the problem of college affordability lies at the heart of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s $3.3 million Reimagining Aid Delivery & Design project, which has spurred a series of reports covered weekly in the news this year. While the reports run the gamut of possible suggestions, from tying aid to students’ academic backgrounds to replacing the Pell Grant with a federal-state matching grant, they all have a similar refrain: Whatever the solution, it must be cheaper—it simply isn’t possible to request any additional spending. Similarly, when I visit Washington policy makers and talk about the needs of the Pell Grant recipients I’ve been studying for the pa

This morning, the UW System Board of Regents heard from a prominent speaker: Molly Corbett Broad , President of the American Council of Education.   Then, around noon, she joined a group on the UW-Madison campus to share a similar talk , but this time with an audience of faculty, staff, and students. Both talks focused on the theme of "higher education at a crossroads." I had the honor of introducing President Broad to the second audience, in my role as Senior Scholar at the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education .  I also moderated the discussion portion of the conversation. As I'm grateful to Broad for joining us, I feel it's among the most respectful acts to fully engage with her comments and offer my thoughts and questions here.  Simply receiving information from a talk without vigorously considering and debating the ideas is inconsistent with the spirit of the Wisconsin Idea.  So, with that in mind, here are my thoughts. First, let's