Summer is usually the time for some professional development, after all during the academic year things are going at such a fast and furious pace that it doesn't leave much time (let alone brain/mind-space) to undertake much professional development.  This summer (because of "factors") professional development was not as easy going as it has been the past few years, so I needed to pick a time to do schedule in the PD rather than pick it up throughout the summer.  This year one of my big work projects was  to manage and lead an OSCQR review of my department's online courses.  I started out with a manageable goal of 10 courses (our core courses consisting of 80% of the required curriculum for all of our students), but once I saw that our I am our three fabulous summer student aides were cracking through those 10 courses in about half the time I had originally budgeted, I decided to utilize the resources that I had on had (three great reviewers) and add another 8 courses, for a total of 18 (or - to put it another way: 75% of our entire course catalog).  Because of this massive project I ended up bracketing my PD to a week in August, and a week in June.  Even though it was a bit more compact than previous years, I thought I'd reflect a bit on it, and perhaps reflect a bit on the OSCQR process.

In this blog post I will focus on the two conferences I attended in June: LINC at MIT, and the Mass College Online Conference.  Hat tip to John (@dbeloved) for letting me know of the LINC conference - something that was in my back yard, but I was totally oblivious to.  The Proceedings for the 2019 conference are not online yet (hopefully they will be soon) because I want to dive into the sessions that I missed.  In addition to this thing being local, one of the things that piqued my curiosity was that Peter Senge was presenting (of Firth Discipline fame).  He was one of the favorite people of some past professors I had in the instructional design program, so it was an opportunity to see them live.  Throughout the three days there were a number of very interesting talks (to many to even recall everyone - but names do pop out when I look at the schedule).  From this conference there are two things that are still vivid in my mind:

There seems to be a lot of talk about using technology platforms and MOOCs to teach ESL. As a language learning geek, and a MOOC person (yes, still am!) I find this fascinating.  I WANT to see it happen: language learning through massive online environments.  It is undeniable that English at this point has a massive advantage as being the world's lingua franca, and it's understandable that people want to use technology to teach ESL broadly.  But... what about using the expertise that we have, and the technology at our hands, to teach other languages?  For example why not a Greek MOOC†?  Or an Arabic MOOC? Or Algonquian (the language of the people who are native to Massachusetts prior to colonization)?  It seems like you can't walk a kilometer in Greece (or any other country in Europe for that matter) and not see an advertisement about learning English.  There are so many people that teach English, so why not use our technology and knowledge to promote other languages?

The other thing that stands out is the panel about Educating the Future of Work (see here for schedule) which had panelists from Microsoft, American Job Exchange, and San Jose – Evergreen Community College District.  One of the things that is often talked about are alternative credentials (and related to that micro-credentials).  Not that it was brought up in the panel (as far as I remember), but news (greatly exaggerated IMO) about companies doing away with the college degree as an entry credential to the job market have been making the rounds.  Taking these two threads an putting them together might make it sound like the days of the college degree are numbered.  However, I don't feel like we reached that conclusion with this panel.  A lot, from what I read into the discussion, seems to revolve around trust relationships.  A college degree, as vague as it may be when it comes down the the specifics, comes from a trusted source, whereas some letter vouching for your apprenticeship or micro-credentials (as they currently stand) do not.  Furthermore, there is a bit of an implicit bias favoring bigger college names.  So, someone who graduated from MIT (we liked to pick on MIT since they hosted  us 😜) would have an advantage over someone who graduates from a State college somewhere.  There is lots to unpack here I think, and lots of room for discussion. It's also such a multilevel/complex problem that I think we need constituents discussing this now just from higher education, but from government and private industry.

Anyway - some short reflections from the two conferences I attended this past June.  Your thoughts?




MARGINALIA:
† - MOOC here is just a placeholder. Fill it in with whatever open classroom you'd like.