Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

The NYTimes’ education section features articles on MOOCs, Massive Open Online Courses and badges, which are the digital records of the courses and coursework a student completed online. In a March post on this topic I described the basic outline of these new elements of higher education. A portion of that post is included below:

I have long been an advocate of mastery learning. In explaining the concept to non-educators in the early 1990s, I used my driver’s license as an example. My driver’s license certified that I had the knowledge and skill to drive a car. My driver’s license was identical to every else’s— even though some license holders failed the written test four times before getting the license, some license holders failed the performance test multiple times before getting the license, and some license holders “outscored” me on both the written and the performance tests.

MOOCs result in on-line educational badges that are a form of the driver’s license. The State Highway Department determines the “cut score” for obtaining a driver’s license, but the marketplace will determine the “cut score” for MOOCs and the “Merit Badges”. If the 160,000 people enrolled in the Artificial Intelligence courses by Udacity find that they can get a leg up in their current job or land a better job as a result of attaining the pdf certificate that went with the course, enrollments in the course will increase. If not, enrollments will wither. The feedback loops on course quality and value will be much quicker and much more valid than what is in place now, where post-econdary students can spend years accumulating debt and wasting time accumulating credits that do not prepare them for today’s workplace. It will not take long for this to spread to secondary education, particularly when virtually all schools are strapped for funds and many are too small to offer the wide array of courses our students need and desire.

In a country where many states offer alternative certification for teachers and administrators by accepting “life skills” in lieu of coursework, in an country where many States have abandoned the Carnegie unit to award credits for high school students, public education should be ready to adopt some version of MOOCs and Mastery Merit Badges. If not, watch out for home schooling to displace public schooling even faster than it has over the past several years…

The articles in today’s Times indicate that MOOCs are now poised to explode in the near future and tow of the inherent glitches are being worked out. One major glitch, the need for honest assessments, is being addressed by contracting with a third party (Pearson in most cases) to operate test centers where the students take tests. A second major glitch is the need for face-to-face interaction among peers, which is being addressed incrementally through social networking organized organically by students or orchestrated by the course providers.

The most fascinating and far reaching element of this disruptive change is the digital badge, which is far more than a “grade” or a certificate:

…digital badges are actually portals that lead to large amounts of information about what their bearers know and can do. They are also being used to improve education itself, by borrowing techniques from video games that keep users playing, until they advance to the next level.

Carnegie Mellon has developed online courses in robotics and computer science in which students are awarded badges as they reach learning milestones — one for teaching robots to move and another for manipulating robot motion sensors — ultimately leading to a final badge certifying their overall robot programming skills. It’s similar to the process used in video games. Players accumulate enough points to achieve higher levels and thus the opportunity to undertake new, more challenging quests…

All of this points toward a world where nontraditional credentials become more valuable. Instead of taking Advanced Placement tests, high school students can jump directly into online courses like those offered at Purdue and Carnegie Mellon and present their badges on college applications. The National Association of Manufacturers is developing a system of digital badges in the fields of industrial motor control, robotics and welding — the kinds of jobs that, even in a time of high unemployment, can be hard to fill. Over the next year, Mozilla will be working with the National Human Resources Association and other organizations to help employers better understand how to use badges.

This means that a prospective employer or a prospective college or a prospective teacher can  drill down into a “digital transcript” and look at the actual tests a student took, the work the student completed, and make their own determination if that individual is ready for work or ready for the next course in a sequence. This creates a possibility for schools to move away from the standardized testing that is narrowing course content, stifling the creativity of teachers, and limiting the opportunities for students to engage in coursework that interests them and prepares them for work or intellectual advancement.

Technology Advent, a Powerpoint Presentations I used in my consulting work, features two slides that I drew from the book Disrupting Class by Clay Christensen, Michael Horn and Curtis Johnson. The slide illustrates that changes in technology occur on a logarithmic curve as opposed to a linear one… which means once a tipping point is achieved change happens rapidly and irreversibly.

The changes described in these articles will not only transform post-secondary education, they will change public education as well. The only question in my mind is whether the changes will take place within the framework of public education or through homeschooling or privatization of schools.