SXSWedu offered a wide variety of thought-provoking and innovative higher-ed sessions–see what panelists and attendees had to say.

higher-edDoes the traditional major-minor course design have a chance of surviving as today’s college and university students demonstrate a desire to design their own courses and competencies across a wide range of disciplines?

Can learning management systems evolve with education, or is it time for a new way to bring together instructors, students, and learning materials? How can investing in MOOC design yield benefits when it comes to student engagement and course completion?

During SXSWedu in Austin, Texas, panels of higher education instructors, technology staff, and industry experts debated a variety of technology and innovation challenges facing the university community.

Here, eCampus News features some of the most interesting and thought-provoking statements and sound bites from various SXSWedu sessions focusing on current issues in higher education. In each case, we’ve linked to the session descriptions to provide more information on the content and presenters.

(Next page: The best of SXSWedu)

Putting Hollywood into MOOCs

“You can have great pedagogy and amazing subject-matter experts, but those experts don’t necessarily know how to produce courses in a way that is deliverable to a 2015 society, which, especially with the younger demographic, is video streaming. If you take that great pedagogy and you want to really get that massive reach, you have to deliver it in a way that can stand up to everything else out there.”
–Ray Jones, Lead Videographer, Emory University

“A lot of educators don’t necessarily know what high production value means. You can create cheap videos with higher production values. You don’t want someone to negate your pedagogy because you’ve shot something in the dark, or it hasn’t been color-corrected, or the sound is off or hasn’t been captioned.”
— Nadja Oertelt, Producer, Harvard University

“There’s lots of pre-production work and editing work that makes something concise and digestible. High production value is really important for retention. Why not make your course more like a story, with high visuals and story production value? If you structure it well and have a good story, people will stick with it.”
— Zach Wise, Associate Professor, Northwestern University

We had no real resources. For us, it was a question of, given what anything we were investing in the MOOC was out-of-pocket, where did it make sense for us to invest in order to achieve the maximum production value?”
— Jason Marsh, Editor in Chief and Director of Programs, Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley

The answer to the “Why bother?” question is often found in “the changing landscape of media and the vast array of opportunities this presents for institutions in terms of new ways of teaching and online learning.”
–Ray Jones, Lead Videographer, Emory University

We’re already seeing what’s next for MOOCs—more interactivity, to different extents. We’re trying to replicate a classroom experience, but that doesn’t work unless you have that interaction. For the most part, the more you engage with people and interact with them, the more they’ll respond and retain information.”
— Zach Wise, Associate Professor, Northwestern University

“Video is very expensive and it quickly ages. If you want to build something interactive and educational, you don’t have to do video. I think what’s next is more audio-based MOOCs and more MOOCs that have interactive elements built into the video.”
— Nadja Oertelt, Producer, Harvard University

Create and Manage Topic-Based Higher-Ed Curricula

“What is driving change is this opportunity to really explore what are the new fields, and what are the affordances that technology brings? The ability to bring a much better learning experience, to influence and be influenced.
— M.S. Vijay Kumar, Associate Dean and Senior Strategic Advisor for Digital Learning, MIT

“We need a dashboard for students to access resources—as [higher education] programs change, we still need a place where content can be curated and accessed. Over the years, faculty had a lot of content they taught in the classroom, and we had to ask where it was, as things moved to flipped models or online. Lots of faculty members are creating learning objects that actually create data. Where does that data go?
— Stephanie Trowbridge, Director of Academic Technology Service, Northeastern University

How do we connect the student experience on campus to what comes after graduation? We can think of that challenge from three different perspectives: giving our students a range of different experiences that have meaning; helping students integrate concepts and ideas from across a spectrum of disciplines and recognizing that the really interesting problems and career directions do not fall into one neat category of disciplines, but typically cut across disciplines; and recognizing that we have a lot of resources we can use to support our students.”
— Sean Decatur, President, Kenyon College

Sometimes, learning management systems (LMS) create constraints around innovation and information-sharing. “How do we still use the LMS, but how do we integrate other things into this system? We need to have flexibility with this content and have the ability for people to share and work together and make this content available in whatever modality they want in order to support learning.”
— Stephanie Trowbridge, Director of Academic Technology Service, Northeastern University

“It takes a lot of time to put content online. It requires a lot of time from faculty. It’s about a learning management environment. This will enable us to be global, have more open courseware, and enable us to have more things, technologically. The biggest change hasn’t been the technology—it’s been working with the faculty.
— Sean Decatur, President, Kenyon College

Culture change needs to happen on campuses, recognizing that you have to open up sharing information resource access.”
— Sean Decatur, President, Kenyon College

Mind the Gap: Faculty and Student Tech Experiences

Note: Data discussed in this session came from the EDUCAUSE Center for Analysis and Research (ECAR) Faculty Study, the ECAR Student Study, and the EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Survey.

“There’s a huge amount of discussion in higher education technology circles about the future of the LMS. Some express frustrations with the LMS in general—they find them constraining and we see faculty rebelling against them. But many faculty and students say they’re happy with their LMS. Are big LMS players going to evolve to be the next-generation learning environments people want?
— Michael Berman, Vice President for Technology and Communication, California State University Channel Islands

A learning management system is not built for students. It’s built to manage grades. The fact that the students use it in some capacity—we need to start building them for the students and back through the system. There are a lot of opportunities for engagement across how the technology is used. We need to collect the data and better analyze what it means. The gaps give us insight into how we can better build an LMS. We have to do a better job of building these structures for better student engagement and easier student use.”
— Stephen diFilipo, Chief Information officer, Milwaukee School of Engineering

“The real challenge is for those who are tasked with collecting data and providing learning outcomes, but much of the learning isn’t taking place inside the LMS for that data collection.”
— Michael Berman, Vice President for Technology and Communication, California State University Channel Islands

“Students are coming to us fully armed, with two and three devices that are constantly pulling on your wireless infrastructure. For traditional college students, it’s about mobile first and social always. We’re inundated with mobile devices. It gets real challenging across that level.”
— Stephen diFilipo, Chief Information officer, Milwaukee School of Engineering

“Our students want things that are mobile-friendly. [Through a grant, we are] teaching folks to find apps and use mobile devices that work with their subject area and get things built and customized for their own course. It’s a small pilot, it’s not across the entire campus, but it is the way this data is really helping form faculty development and instructional design.”
— Nori Barajas-Murphy, Associate Director of Learning Technology, University of LaVerne

The ECAR research shows that responding professors are more likely to encourage laptop use in class, and are very likely to discourage smartphone use. “What’s the difference between smartphones and laptops? A smartphone doesn’t fold in half. We’re not spinning Excel spreadsheets on a smartphone, but I can read documents, post my work, and the fact that a laptop is encouraged so much more than a smartphone—we need to inform our faculty and give them a better toolbox on what a smartphone can and cannot do.”
— Stephen diFilipo, Chief Information officer, Milwaukee School of Engineering

“What motivates faculty to integrate technology—the top answer was a clear indication that students would benefit from that technology use in the classroom. The other top items were confidence that the technology would work, and a better understanding of what types of technology are available.”
— Eden Dahlstrom, Director of Research, EDUCAUSE

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