Learning Innovation

The fact that MOOCS and online courses have sparked new conversations on your campus about teaching and learning is a terrific development. We should be grateful whenever attention is paid to teaching. The problem is that neither MOOCS or online courses are, in themselves, a strategy to meet the challenges we all face in higher ed. MOOCS and online courses are a means, not an end, and should be understood as such.

The most important change in higher education is not the growth in online learning, the rise of the MOOCS or the mobilization and digitization of curriculum. Rather, it is the change from courses as the product of one (faculty) practitioner to a team approach, where faculty (as subject matter experts) collaborate with learning designers, librarians, media specialists, and technology professionals to design, deliver and evaluate the course.

2012 was a great year for concise nonfiction books due to the growth of platforms such as Kindle Singles, TED Books, and Atavist books. I suspect that we will be seeing many more concise nonfiction e-books come out in 2013.

Some possibilities for 2012's best gadget might include: Google's $250 Samsung Chromebook, the Nest Learning Thermostat, the iPhone 5, the FitBit One, the Microsoft Surface, the iPad Mini, the Starbucks Verismo, the Nexus 7, and the Wii U. What else?

Say you are about to initiate a new edtech project. Maybe you have been asked by your leadership to roll out a new service, say a MOOC, a lecture capture rollout, a media management project, or a new help desk, or a new blended learning program. Or perhaps you are initiating and leading a project, and you need a way to communicate the rationale and frame the resources needed to your end users and stakeholders.

Hotels share some things in common with higher ed. They are both bundled businesses, combining a range of functions and services at one location. They are both high fixed cost industries, where the economics only work if the high costs of the physical structures and staffing expenses must be distributed across many customers. They both offer differentiated services by price, with both luxury and no-frills brands competing in the same marketplace.

Planning on taking some time off between Christmas and New Year's? Looking for some fiction that will accomplish the twin goals of keeping your brain engaged with technology trends while giving yourself a break? I have 4 suggestions.

Audrey Watters has a great piece this week in her Hack (Higher) Education column Top Ed-Tech Trends of 2012: The Business of Ed-Tech What resonated most with me is her assertion that: "…for all the finger-pointing about the flaws in the business models of higher education, it's not clear that the business models of many education companies, particularly startups, will fare that much better."