Learning Innovation

My edtech antennae went up when reading Paul Fain's article yesterday on Possible Probation for Phoenix. It is clear from both the article and comments that this is an important and complicated story.

If you take a cruise the main thing you will notice is the sheer number of people that the ship employs.

Would you take a vacation if you could not access the Internet? What would you pay per minute to get online? Having just returned from a week of vacation I can answer both questions.

Karen Symms Gallagher, Dean of USC Rossier School of Education, caught my eye for two reasons. First, I read a couple of opinion pieces in which she argued that we need to look beyond MOOCs to the potential of providing extremely high quality and intimate for-credit degree programs that leverage new options in technology and new opportunities in non-profit / for-profit partnerships. These columns, including Higher Ed Leaders Must Lead Online and Rethinking Higher Ed Open Online Learning stand apart for their combination of a progressive call for innovation in online education and skepticism that the locus of this innovation is limited to the world of MOOCs.

I'm a huge fan of what Drexel University Online has done in online learning. A recent example of Drexel’s leadership role in the development of online learning is its Gateway to Online Learning Scholarship, a program designed to allow an initial group of RN's to pursue a Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN).

A few years ago many were predicting the demise of the onsite sales call. Why should a sales team get on an airplane when Web conferencing was available?

Are we paying close enough attention to the lessons we can learn from our colleagues in for-profit higher education? Will the for-profits invest the resources and maintain the long-term focus necessary to develop educational platforms and post-secondary services that elevate them into the elite tier of higher education?

William Rieders is Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer for Cengage Learning. Prior to joining Cengage Learning, William was a partner at The Parthenon Group, a consulting company with a robust practice in education. Moving from consulting to publishing gives William a perspective on higher ed that is different from those of us that make our living teaching and working within the walls of the university.