The NUTN 2010 Summit was held September 27-29, 2010 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  This year’s theme, “Leading the New Normal in Higher Education; a Forum for Innovative Leaders” brought together distance learning leaders from across the US and beyond.

SUNY and SLN are new members and participants in the NUTN membership organization that provides networking and professional development opportunities for innovative leaders in the advancement of teaching and learning. SLN Associate Director Alexandra M. Pickett was elected to serve on the 2010-11 Advisory Board and attended the Summit to participate in Advisory Board meetings and as 2009 winner of the NUTN Distance Education Innovation Award, was invited to present the award to this years’ winners at the awards luncheon on September 29, 2010.

At the core of its mission:

• NUTN members represent a majority of the current experience that exists within higher education in planning, designing, producing, distributing and evaluating distance education.

• NUTN is unique in its service to the breadth and diversity of higher education communities serving public, private, lower and upper division, and graduate institutions, in the United States and abroad.

• NUTN members address the needs of traditional and non-traditional learners by applying their expertise in producing and delivering high quality content utilizing teaching and learning technologies.

• NUTN provides a forum for continuing collaboration among its membership as well as with external organizations, corporations and agencies.

The Conference began with keyynote speaker, Peter Smith, Senior Vice President of Academic Strategies and Development at Kaplan Higher Education. A self-described recovering politician and former college president he was self-effacing, provocative, and passionate about serving the under-served… and he is optimistic … he was not at all what i expected and i was not prepared to like him, or to be engaged by anything he had to say. But i did and i was. I thought… he is here to shill his book Harnessing America’s Wasted Talent: A New Ecology of Learning (Jossey-Bass), and I did not think that  he could possibly have anything to say that would be interesting or relevant to me. He said a lot of stuff. For example,  20% of all ninth graders will obtain at least and associate’s degree in the next 10 years. He asserted that in order to sustain our leadership role in the global economy, we will need to double the number of people with at least an Associate’s degree by 2025. He contends that if  we are serious about increasing success rates in higher education, America must adopt radically new understanding of effective teaching and learning in the 21^st Century. To remain competitive in the global marketplace, he says we must dramatically increase our success rates in higher education and bring millions of people from the margins of America’s economy into the mainstream. He says that the failures of our traditional educational systems have profound and far-reaching social, civic, and economic consequences. He said that the new ecology of learning needs to change from one of “scarcity” to one of “abundance.”  He said that learning platforms and networks are the new architecture where place not campuses are “where” learning happens, and where networks and networking are the new process for learning. He talked about course level learning outcomes and consistency, and that the new definition of “quality” in a mobile learning environment was the eportfolio as reference and reputation. Where learning was valid, reliable, and consistent with independent 3rd party evaluation. He also said that higher education should stop aspiring to be the “Waldorf Astoria” and aspire to be the “Olive Garden” – i guess to feed the masses… i have trouble with the MacDonaldization of higher education metaphor, but he said that our hierarchic faculty system is incapable of turning theory into practice and that there is a disconnect between curriculum, and learning and learners. Students, he says, are paying 25K for 5 years for stuff that is only 30% useful and relevant to their future jobs and that people are increasingly not caring about validation by earned degree or credential. He said that the end of scarcity is truly disruptive to the traditional model of higher education. He said that change is not driven by government and that innovation requires protection. He said that there is in higher education a climate of fear preventing innovation and change. He ended by saying that the promise of opportunity needs to engage the economically disadvantaged and that our country is at risk if that promise of opportunity does not apply to them. He made me think. If the traditional model of education blocks access to opportunity and wastes talent and stifles innovation for the many by indulging in an archaic model of education that it won’t or can’t change because it can’t or won’t see that it needs to change, then we will get the “Olive Garden” education that Kaplan is more than willing to sell to a more than willing consumer that can’t tell and can’t afford the difference. They can and they will employ teaching and learning models that appeal to varied learning styles. They will be creative in how they apply resources. They will focus on the learner, and on their needs convenience. They will develop systematic ways to assess, validate, and recognize life experiences, and they will figure out how to create transfer policies that recognize earned credit from other qualified sources to reduce time, costs, and frustration on the path to a degree. They will technology enhance instruction and leverage online learning to personalize and meet the needs of every learner. If they can do what we can’t, what is the solution? I am thinking we need to partner. What do you think?

The plenary session – Presidents and CEO’s Opportunities & Challenges: Leadership Under New Norms with George Boggs from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), Edward Hammond (Fort Hays State University) and Bernard Luskin (Turo University Worldwide). This session was disappointing at first as it started out as a benefits of membership in AACC, but it got better. Here are my take aways. 50% of baccalaureate degree recipients started at community colleges. Students that start in CCs are less likely to graduate from a 4 year institution. Students that transfer from CCs do well.  Challenges: Transfer from the CC to a 4 year is often a challenge for students. There is a need for standards between 4-years and CCs. Collegefish.org is a database of CC students and transfer planning tools. Some universities offer discounts for CC graduates to remove that barrier. There are partnerships between for profits and CCs. (Broome and HVCC are partners with Excelsior College). Physical presence on the CC campus appears to be key. This would then give institutions like ESC an advantage. 60% of high school graduates are not ready for CC. They require remedial math and language arts. With local control of school curricula, there are no uniform standards from district to district. Poor children more around a lot and this results in a disconnect and inconsistencies in their learning experiences and environments. The minimum requirements for 8/9th graders don’t prepare students for college. There needs to be a k16 partnership to address these challenges. Online learning may be able to be used to diagnose and remediate students. However, high risk high school students need a lot of individualized attention. Metrics: CCs are asked to report completions, which means that they need to try to keep the student to the AA degree. If the student transfers, then that is reported as a failure. What metrics do we need to capture? Can we measure student intent? How do we measure the ultimate success of the student? We need better metrics.

Keynote: Susan Patrick, President and Chief Executive Officer of the International Association for K-12 Online Learning ( iNACOL) on –Open Educational Resources Domestic Policies: Opportunities and Challenges Across Levels

This keynote was about the role of OER in National K12 and higher education policy. Federal and state policies are encouraging institutions to consider open approaches to collaborating on resources and learning materials.  Susan discussed the current status of OER domestic policy in Washington, DC and also how state initiatives are encouraging sharing, collaboration, and even commercializing on top of open educational resources across all levels of education. According to Susan the #1 indicator to break the poverty cycle is a college education. The Gates Foundation reports a finding from recent research that the education of the mother is the highest predictor of a child’s ability to break the cycle of poverty. We have a 70% national high school graduation rate. That rate is 40-50% for students of color. To education students we  spend $10,000/per student. The US has the highest tolerance for inequality. There are currently 3,000,000 teachers. 1.5 million will be retiring in the next few years. We loos 40% of all new teachers within 3years. We loose 50% of all new teachers within 5 years. The single greates barrier to online teaching and learning in K12 is the cost of course development. Many grants from the US department of labor and other governmental RFPs will have open courses and OER elements. STEM and educational technology provisions will also have strong OER provisions. OER licenses materials to share, access and collaborate and allow for customization and personalization of content. http://nextgenlearning.com/about

Panel: Breaking Free of the Technology Bungy: Delivering Untethered Learning for Today’s Socially Wired World
Ingrid Day is Assistant Vice-Chancellor (Academic & International) at Massey University, New Zealand, and Mark Brown is Director, Blended and Distance Education at Massey University, New Zealand.
Henry van Zyl is Vice Provost, Directed Independent Adult Learning (DIAL) at Thomas Edison State College, New Jersey.

This session presented 2 case studies of  how two different institutions respond to the challenge of meeting the needs of today’s highly diverse and mobile learners. It reported a number of major technology-enhanced learning initiatives that have a mission to go beyond quick thrills and one-off leaps of faith. The first case study presents a new blended and distance education approach at Massey University, New Zealand. Several innovations are described which aim to make the ‘new normal’ an integrated and mainstream feature of university-level education for all learners. Mark (nee Gary) asks what is the problem to which technology is the solution? He presented the technology expectation cycle (Cuban 1986) High expectations, growing support, subsided enthusiasm, Rebukes and lame (of teachers). In the metaphor of a bungy cord, it returns to where it started… thought it doesn’t always bounce back to exactly the same point. Delivering untethered learning that truly disrupts the old normal the pump, pump, dump model.  Massey is creating their new normal with strong leadership and a clear vision.  to producce a exceptional and distinctive experience for all students through a new bl=ended and distance learning. Cost was not the driver to move to moodle. LMS –> VLE = Stream (their branded VLE) it is a metaphor for life long learning. They provide a strong teacher presence with low production video. They use 5+5  = five slides plus five minutes to introduce content (mini lectures). Some of their core tools: annotate, SBLI light work, Kryterion, mahara. They blend with purpose. They employ a quality enhancement framework that provides high autonomy for the academy which employs scholarly peer review of courses. quality indicators are based on Chickering * Gamson’s seven  seven principles of good practice in undergraduate education (1986). Faculty are provided a workload calculator so they can calculate how much work they are asking students to do online . New learners are well supported and provided a are provided an online orientation, preview of courses, an intervention plan, and a workload calculator. Challenges: buy in rom senior executives, Build institutional will and commitment, moodle 2 is coming, ongoing sustainability. Students are the most potent mechanisms for faculty adoption. At Massey the Stream is the new normal.

The dual themes of flexibility and untethered access continued in the second case study, which explained a multi-pronged approach that Thomas Edison State College has adopted to providing flexible high-quality higher education for self-directed adults. They use an independent study course model with minimal faculty intervention. Key features of this initiative include online testing at home, modules delivered to mobile devices and courses on flash drives called Flash Track.  The primary goal was to eliminate active duty deployment as an obstacle for distance learning. The problem: Military students without connectivity. The solution: Portable cms on a flash drive = flash track. No Internet required, no install, self contained asps that run directly from the drive.  Flash track 2= flash top- targets commuting students who have some Internet connectivity at some point.

This was a great conference with many excellent speakers, ideas, and participants. Highlights for me were seeing Barbara Truman from UCF, seeing Ken Udas from UMass Online and his panel presentation with James Fay and Alon Krashinsky, Seeing Ed Bowen, Executive Dean at Dallas TeleCollege, John Sener, Karen Vignare, Gary Greenberg, Alma Cervantes, and meeting the NUTN Advisory Board members.