The OpenCourseWare movement made the educational resources from the nation’s top universities available to the world. MIT goes one step further with the Office of Education and Innovation Technology (OEIT), which works with the school’s faculty to merge innovation and technology. Education-Portal.com recently caught up with Brandon Muramatsu to talk about OEIT’s mission, current initiatives and how they’re sharing their findings with students and lifelong learners like you.

A few years ago at MIT we took a look at how we had organized academic computing and administrative computing; in most universities these are the two organizations that handle the technology infrastructure on campus. At the time, the decision was made to reorganize pieces of academic computing. Stuff like the learning management system went to central IT, and other parts to the library. Our group, the Office of Educational Innovation and Technology was created to bridge between faculty innovation and the service organizations. We do the fun stuff from working with faculty, looking at scaling up innovation, and experimenting with things. We’re part of the Dean for Undergraduate Education’s office, and so our mission is to work with MIT faculty to do teaching and learning innovations for MIT students.

I do a number of things with OEIT, ranging from working with individual faculty members to looking at strategic initiatives for the university to how we might move forward with some of the teaching and learning innovations that we see in the world at large. So it’s both the local focus with individual faculty and students, as well as an Institute-wide focus. I’m also fortunate to be able to continue to participate in the open education community and the broader technology and learning community outside of MIT.

E-P: Can you tell our readers a little bit about some of the very cool things that OEIT does and helps with?

BM: We have a couple big project areas. One group is called STAR; it takes research software, software that faculty and graduate students are using to perform research, and looks at how it might be used in undergraduate classes. More generally they look at the educational problems faculty want to address or they have in their teaching that technology might be able to help address. And so what we’ve done is we’ve taken this research software, we’ve rebuilt pieces of it and we’ve also put in interfaces that are much more approachable, with a few minutes of introduction for undergrads, versus say months of learning if you’re a graduate student trying to understand all the nuances of the software. Our students can get started very quickly doing some really cool learning activities.

Then the other group is the one that I work in, it’s called Content and Curriculum. As the name says, we have a number of projects looking at how content is related to MIT’s curriculum, and how it’s related to pedagogy.

One of the projects that we launched about a year and a half ago is something we’re calling Project Greenfield. I know about the notion of greenfield from manufacturing, it’s an industrial age term where factories and production used to be in towns and cities (brownfields), and if you wanted to try doing something new, you would go out into a green field and start over. And so we sort of took that name and started to think about – and we’ve actually been thinking about this for years – how MIT has this great resource, OpenCourseWare, but that we thought it could be much more. We wanted to try this little tweak to OCW or this other little experiment. Instead of experimenting on OCW live, we came to the realization that wait, we could just try doing all of these ourselves under the same license that everybody else can. What we’ve done is we’ve made a copy and are starting to experiment with it.

E-P: OEIT is awesome, especially for MIT students, but what opportunities do other students who don’t attend MIT have? Can they use OEIT’s resources? Is there anything they can take advantage of, other than obviously OpenCourseWare?

BM: So OpenCourseWare exists. The thread of openness pervades much of what we do at OEIT. And even though we’re doing things in some cases very specifically for MIT students, much of what we do is openly available on the Web. The STAR tools are all on the Web; you can download them, you can use them, there are exercises that you can use as part of them. All of the things that we’re doing to play around with OpenCourseWare are also on the Web. The other software tools we’re developing is often open source, so individual tools and things you can use.

I think it’ll be interesting as we continue to move forward whether there’s additional opportunities for the world at large to really start to use this same set of tools that we’re providing for MIT students. source: education-portal.com

Many academic professionals think online classes will play a major role in the future of college education, but a study released in the spring of 2011 suggests something of a stumbling block with that idea. According to a report from the Community College Research Center (CCRC), students have a lower success rate in online classes than they do in more traditional settings. Why is that so, and how can it be fixed?

Bad News for E-Learners?

According to a study of Washington State community college students conducted by Dr. Shanna Smith Jaggars and doctoral student Di Xu of the CCRC, students in online courses exhibit an eight percent lower chance of success than their brick-and-mortar college counterparts do. For students enrolled in remedial classes, that number drops to nine percent. While that may not seem like a huge deal, it is significant – especially when you consider that the same study finds students taking online classes are generally more prepared academically.

The study’s also troubling given the way that some in the education community view online classes. Because of the flexibility they afford non-traditional students (who are now beginning to outnumber ‘traditional’ learners), they’re often lauded as a big part of education’s future. But maybe, this report hints, that self-congratulatory attitude is part of the problem. Jaggars and Xu warn that colleges need to be careful not to just throw an online class into the world and leave it be, forcing students to navigate it by themselves. Without a fair amount of support, they caution, students might easily come to feel lost and alone in online classes, sapping away their motivation to complete them.

An Inherent Disadvantage?

But despite noting ‘technical difficulties, a lack of structure and isolation’ as common problems in online courses, the study doesn’t really consider the possibility that those courses are by their very nature hindered when it comes to holding students’ attention. When you go to class meetings with a professor and other students, you’re drawn into a shared perceptual experience of learning whether you want to be or not. On the Internet, there’s no such guarantee. Any educational material you call up on your computer is much easier to relegate to background noise, especially when you can just open a new browser tab to check your e-mail or Facebook feed. Obviously not every student will do this, and many surely have the discipline not to, but it’s still a difficulty online classes have to face.

What Schools Can Do

As far as approximating the sense of community found in traditional classrooms, though, Jaggars and Xu do offer some ideas. A July 2011 report on the study in The Chronicle of Higher Education notes that the two recommend ‘increased technological support for students and more extensive training in online-teaching methods for faculty.’ Looking at the first part of that, we might imagine that technological support could include an easily accessible online help desk not unlike those operated by major tech companies. If students felt that they had a supporter only a mouse click away, they might be more likely to stick with their work instead of growing frustrating and giving up.

Both parts of Jaggar and Xu’s recommendation involve increased institutional support, and that seems to be the key to making sure online classes remain not just an attractive option for non-traditional learners, but a successful one. Jaggar and Xu’s report found that a full one-third of students in their study enrolled in courses online, and that number’s likely to increase as students come to expect more flexibility from their institutions. On the bright side, an increased interest in online learning should make it easier for schools to commit to quality Internet programs, which could maybe help close that achievement gap a little. source:  education-portal.com/

Could the college admissions process one day involve filling out an application, writing an essay, filing financial aid paperwork…and submitting a urine sample for drug testing? While that may sound extreme, a technical college in central Missouri recently implemented mandatory drug testing for all students as a way to fulfill its stated mission. But what, Education Insider asks, is the fine line between helping students prepare for the future and invading their privacy?

For the Good of the Students or Simply a Bad Decision?

Drug tests in schools are nothing new. They have been administered in high schools and in some private colleges. In 1990, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) instituted a year-round drug testing program to, as the organization states, ‘protect the health and safety of student-athletes’ and ensure fair play practices.

But the mandatory drug testing introduced at Linn State Technical College, which says the requirement grew from its mission to ‘prepare students for profitable employment and a life of learning’, is the first of its kind in a public college and begs the question: ‘Should colleges be allowed to enforce such a test?’

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says no, and has filed a lawsuit against the college. The ACLU Blog of Rights website went as far as to say that Linn State ‘violated the Fourth Amendment rights of its students’. The Fourth Amendment protects the right of the people against ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ and against unwarranted searches without ‘probable cause’.

Linn State maintains that it has instituted the policy due to the nature of many of its programs. School officials cite student safety as one of the main reasons for the mandatory testing; for instance, students enrolled in training programs that involve the operation of heavy equipment are prime candidates for testing. The school also says that the drug testing will help to prepare these students for what they likely face after graduation: required drug testing by employers.

What Rights Do Students Have On Campus?

The word ‘unconstitutional’ has been used when describing Linn State’s new testing, and in many ways one can see why. It’s not hard to imagine that at least some of the students might feel as if they are being treated like criminals. However you look at it, it seems that mandatory drug testing for all college students is a bit extreme, most notably when there is a lack of reported drug use or suspicion of drug activity. Jason Williamson, an ACLU staff attorney, stated that ‘nothing like it has ever been sanctioned by the courts.’

So is Linn State’s drug testing ‘unreasonable’ and without ‘probable cause’? It would seem so, at least as defined by the Fourth Amendment. Is there another way the college could approach the issue? Possibly. Maybe it could implement a voluntary test, or offer classes that educate students about the dangers of drug use and that outline drug testing procedures for employment purposes.

Surely many colleges share Linn State’s mission to ‘prepare students for profitable employment’. Does that mean other institutions should adopt mandatory drug testing? Unless the courts one day decide in favor of that possibility, one would have to say that for now it’s understandable that such a move could be viewed as unconstitutional, and that colleges seeking to govern such a policy should expect to come under legal fire. Source: education-portal.com/