By Jonathan Lopez
Although the availability of digital courseware has surged in recent years, both students and administrators have gotten less than expected from their experiences, says Phil Hill, a leading analyst of technology in education.
Hill, who runs MindWires Consulting, was speaking at UC Santa Barbara as part of a recent two-day conference called “Disquantified: Higher Education in the Age of Metrics.” The conference was sponsored by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Chicano Studies Center, the English Department, and several other organizations associated with the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.
Phil Hill, a consultant in the field of education technology, speaking at the UC Santa Barbara conference: Disquantified: Higher Education in the Age of Metrics
The goal of the conference was to discuss the use of data and technology as a way to measure the quality of higher education and to drive policy change.
In his keynote address, Hill assessed the recent trend of pushing for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The availability of electronic data has been driving a push toward online, or adaptive, learning with the hope that students would benefit from the increased autonomy. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, for which Hill conducted research, is one of the most influential advocates of this shift to online courseware.
But, referring to the drive for more MOOCs as “impatient optimism,” Hill said there is a need to reevaluate the effectiveness of online learning that is meant to allow students to go at their own pace. Often, students aren’t given enough instruction and instructors or administrators aren’t able to give effective guidance or feedback, he said.
Hill cited the case of Rio Salado College in Tempe, Arizona as an example of how a school can have mixed results when applying data to develop an online learning program. An effort to increase the availability of digital courseware at Rio Salado led to higher registration rates because of effective use of digital platforms. Today, Rio Salado has one of the fastest growing online course programs in the country.
Aashish Mehta, a UC Santa Barbara professor of global studies spoke about measuring equal opportunity in education at the “Disquantified” conference.
But when Hill critically analyzed the quality of these courses, he found them to be subpar. He cautioned his UCSB audience against using Rio Salado as a template for developing online course programs. While Rio Salado did have a successful rate of certificate completion, Hill called into question its graduation and transfer rates.
Other speakers looked at other higher education metrics.
Joanne Nowak, academic coordinator at UCSB’s Blum Center for Global Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development, attended a talk given by Aashish Mehta, an associate professor of global studies at UCSB.
In his talk, titled “Equality of Learning Opportunity at a Public University: New Measures of Something that Really Matters,” Mehta said higher education has become stratified despite being seen as the great equalizer. Mehta presented data that revealed underrepresented students were receiving a lower quality of education.
He said significant numbers of students of color were entering STEM majors only to be leaving them for humanities or social sciences. Looking at indicators such as class size and student-to-faculty ratio, Mehta challenged his colleagues to identify some of the barriers faced by minority students in higher education.
Nowak felt the talk was provocative and a great way to spark discussion about the challenges students face in the area of equal opportunity. “Finally, we have some proof,” she said.
Nowak said she hopes this data inspires policy change within institutions so that students can be more effectively supported in their pursuit of an education. “In that sense I left feeling hopeful because I think that matters.”
Jonathan Lopez is a UC Santa Barbara student majoring in sociology, who plans to graduate this spring. He reported on this event for his Writing Program course “Journalism for the Web and Social Media.”