Access Courses and Course Equivalency data in the palm of your hand with the iPhone. Download the AcademicGPS application today and browse to find comparable courses. It is the first application of its kind using the National Course Atlas. Get access to 3.5 million course equivalencies with keyword searches and more...
Click Here to visit the AcademicGPS in the Apple Store.
Consider the transfer friendly Colleges and Universities publishing and promoting their transfer information on CollegeTransfer.Net and the AcademicGPS. They commit the extra effort maintaining proactive transfer pathways for students considering transfer. Having good transfer information available when considering enrolling in courses is crucial to avoiding problems with transfer credit down the path.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Getting Ahead of the Curve: New Needs for data management
The Obama Education Plan1 is a compilation of messages, comments and high level priorities assembled to articulate one of the key priorities of the new Administration. The book covers proposals for Pre-K through 12th grade, education reform, and college affordability and access. The book’s introduction states the goals for education will take an extraordinary level of leadership, resources, consensus and collaboration to enact. However, something is missing in the discussion. No mention is made of using or leveraging the country’s existing technology assets in a more effective way to hasten, support and enhance these reforms and policy changes.
President Obama knows and understands that technology is important, because he has appointed a lead person in the White House to address how we can better utilize technology. One of critical questions that needs to be posed during the discussion on education should be -- how do we retool the technology to support, and enhance America’s whole education system, P-12 and postsecondary institutions, to be more efficient and effective? For this effort to be successful requires leadership from the top to ensure the development of common terminology, common academic progress measures, and an IT framework that replaces isolated methods and structures costing our education enterprise $50 billion annually. Of this amount, $25 Billion is spent patching together data systems, moving data between users, and using tools and external reporting mechanisms ineffectively and inefficiently.
Today’s highways, roads and freeways were developed and built to replace dirt and inefficient roads in the 20th century because the country’s leadership, especially President Eisenhower, realized mobility and a quality infrastructure were critical to growing commerce. A shared technology platform can be developed to address these new reforms and will be more flexible and agile, reduce the burden of bureaucracy and create lower costs, if a similar form of leadership and investment is made. This platform would respect institutional autonomy, mission and purpose. It is an enormous challenge because there is a split across the States and thousands of stakeholders, but the time is right. The President’s education agenda along with the current economic situation, and the potential for serious collaboration between P-12 and higher education leaders presents a unique opportunity for a success.
The present cost of maintaining the status quo in data management is the inefficient and ineffective use of the annual investment society makes in the nation’s education systems. The current use of technology in structuring and managing these data systems has limited payback or value given the isolated designs and deployment. It does not have to be this way. By creating a new technology platform, the nation’s education systems can share definitions, be interoperable, build new tools to foster transformation and reform, improve measurement, and enable aligned efforts.
The call for better data management is powerful, whether at the macro level serving policy, at a governance level serving administration of schools and institutions or at the micro level serving learners. Developing comparable data measures and managing data movement has never been harder or more costly to education. Tracking academic progress, through the student life cycle, from the onset of aspirations to the success of learners and attainment of various milestone credentials is critical. The industry needs electronic bridges to optimize student placement, assessment, progress reporting and the interchange of data along the pathway of achievement. Band-aiding more and more applications and systems on top of an already out-of-date platform is not the solution. Leadership is needed to push for synchronized reforms and retooling technology. Duplicative efforts make things worse by increasing an already taxed system. Today’s academic and administrative systems lack interchange and workflow standards that can radically empower learners, engage faculty, reinvent management, link governance and bridge policy needs with useful, transparent and functional information designed from the beginning to serve these purposes. Therefore, technology needs to be visibly added to the President’s Education Plan that focuses upon the critical retooling needed for the American education system to remain competitive.
A new technology platform will support the collaboration articulated in the book, but impossible to achieve under current technology architectures used in education. The solution is not an exotic technology or something that is extremely esoteric. It is about cooperation, incentives to cooperate, common data definitions, and a shared vision that collaborative efforts are essential to achieve accountability, quality data management, improved assessment, transparency, increased access and affordability in higher education; and improved alignment between, elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, as well as with workforce development.
1 The Obama Education Plan, An Education Week Guide, Published 2009 by Jossey-Bass,
989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 ISBN 978-047-048209-4
President Obama knows and understands that technology is important, because he has appointed a lead person in the White House to address how we can better utilize technology. One of critical questions that needs to be posed during the discussion on education should be -- how do we retool the technology to support, and enhance America’s whole education system, P-12 and postsecondary institutions, to be more efficient and effective? For this effort to be successful requires leadership from the top to ensure the development of common terminology, common academic progress measures, and an IT framework that replaces isolated methods and structures costing our education enterprise $50 billion annually. Of this amount, $25 Billion is spent patching together data systems, moving data between users, and using tools and external reporting mechanisms ineffectively and inefficiently.
Today’s highways, roads and freeways were developed and built to replace dirt and inefficient roads in the 20th century because the country’s leadership, especially President Eisenhower, realized mobility and a quality infrastructure were critical to growing commerce. A shared technology platform can be developed to address these new reforms and will be more flexible and agile, reduce the burden of bureaucracy and create lower costs, if a similar form of leadership and investment is made. This platform would respect institutional autonomy, mission and purpose. It is an enormous challenge because there is a split across the States and thousands of stakeholders, but the time is right. The President’s education agenda along with the current economic situation, and the potential for serious collaboration between P-12 and higher education leaders presents a unique opportunity for a success.
The present cost of maintaining the status quo in data management is the inefficient and ineffective use of the annual investment society makes in the nation’s education systems. The current use of technology in structuring and managing these data systems has limited payback or value given the isolated designs and deployment. It does not have to be this way. By creating a new technology platform, the nation’s education systems can share definitions, be interoperable, build new tools to foster transformation and reform, improve measurement, and enable aligned efforts.
The call for better data management is powerful, whether at the macro level serving policy, at a governance level serving administration of schools and institutions or at the micro level serving learners. Developing comparable data measures and managing data movement has never been harder or more costly to education. Tracking academic progress, through the student life cycle, from the onset of aspirations to the success of learners and attainment of various milestone credentials is critical. The industry needs electronic bridges to optimize student placement, assessment, progress reporting and the interchange of data along the pathway of achievement. Band-aiding more and more applications and systems on top of an already out-of-date platform is not the solution. Leadership is needed to push for synchronized reforms and retooling technology. Duplicative efforts make things worse by increasing an already taxed system. Today’s academic and administrative systems lack interchange and workflow standards that can radically empower learners, engage faculty, reinvent management, link governance and bridge policy needs with useful, transparent and functional information designed from the beginning to serve these purposes. Therefore, technology needs to be visibly added to the President’s Education Plan that focuses upon the critical retooling needed for the American education system to remain competitive.
A new technology platform will support the collaboration articulated in the book, but impossible to achieve under current technology architectures used in education. The solution is not an exotic technology or something that is extremely esoteric. It is about cooperation, incentives to cooperate, common data definitions, and a shared vision that collaborative efforts are essential to achieve accountability, quality data management, improved assessment, transparency, increased access and affordability in higher education; and improved alignment between, elementary, secondary and postsecondary education, as well as with workforce development.
1 The Obama Education Plan, An Education Week Guide, Published 2009 by Jossey-Bass,
989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103-1741 ISBN 978-047-048209-4
Monday, March 30, 2009
Reconciling order and chaos in education
The other day, I downloaded "Get Smart" the movie from iTunes and watched it with my kids. Between the lines of humor and the action, I could not stop thinking about the subtle nature of the spy business portrayed by the actors, thriving on the conflict between "control" and "chaos" - the two names of the spy organizations.
"Chaos" was the enemy. "Control" was America's answer to its cold war nemesis. The movie brought back memories of watching "Get Smart" the TV show, when Agent 99 and 86 paired to fight off the attacks of "Chaos" in their weekly segments. Both the movie and TV show portrayed the conflict buried under ground covered by imagery such as the Lincoln Monument and Congress, where freedom shines - at least in our part of the world.
Normal, everyday business just continued, as if neither organization existed. The more the movie was putting a humorous spin on the conflict between "Control" and "Chaos", the more I could not stop thinking about my own existence in terms of innovating and promoting automated solutions for the challenges we face in education. Public policy and thought leaders have strived to bring about order in how public funds are invested in education. The result of order would imply conformity, uniformity and the fear of standards.
Then, I recalled the book by Tom Peters, "Thriving on Chaos". As an entrepreneur, who seeks to find opportunities to address in the market place and the creation of solutions where I can deliver value, I guess you could say I have ventured to address the underlying implications of chaos in an unknowing way. Designing industry solutions begins by developing an organized framework, layered to control inputs and outputs, to support processes in a systematic and sustainable way. And, the subtle nature of a good solution implies ease of use and adoption delivering the value to users.
Get Smart's "Control" and "Chaos" were disbanded after the cold war publicly as the movie tells the story. But, beneath the ground, through twenty or so thick steel doors and hidden elevators, they survived to continue menacing each other for decades. In industry and education, one would presume we will never rid ourselves of the conflict between "chaos" and "control". In the western world, our democracy is built on the premise of freedom and independence. Our "Bill of Rights" and "Constitution" offers insights into not only our founder's vision of how society would govern, but how individuals, represented by their institutions will employ the drive for balance between individual rights and community.
Using the Internet dictionary, I quickly found that control means the power to direct and chaos means the state of disorder absence of rules or laws. Chaos is a world without order, a great void. Characterizing the opportunity to automate a process or function, is taking something that lacks structure and implementing a system to provide clear cut steps, efficiency and control over the actors or users. Control allows us to plan. It allows us to monitor. It allows us to react to changes.
In contrast, where freedom and independence continues to shine, we reveal in the creativity, experimentation, innovation and choices we have from the variety our economic circumstances offered by our society. As a people, reared on decades of free choice and our god given rights, we strive to reinforce our individual pursuits and rights to free enterprise and personal responsibility.
So, is chaos really the enemy of progress and civilization? Or, is it a reflection of our principals mirrored across the seas of commerce and justified by our capitalistic pursuits? Do we thrive on chaos because it allows us to standout, to differentiate and to find meaning in a crazy world?
Our motives are self fulfilling possibly. Through independence, we create confusion, the void of organization and conformity to standards. Art, science and religion reconcile emotions viewed through lens of different colors seeking discovery. When we think of academic independence and the confluence of circumstances drawing us to conclude we need comparability, transparency and coordination across academic programs, I ponder the irony. Control is viewed as the enemy and chaos is viewed and reinforced by the key stakeholders who desire to help learners succeed.
In one sense, we have immortalized principals of fairness and representation, balance and judgments made and passed through legislation debated and negotiated through community activism. As the pendulum swings, we shift back and forth considering the impact of freedom and community good. The catalyst of freedom stimulates individual pursuits, as long as it is not harmful to anyone else while we attempt to defend those that can't or don't know how to defend themselves. Independence allows us to have a personal mission in life, not dictated or controlled by government. Our creativity and free expression offers us perspectives of uncertainty and personal feelings. Ambiguity and confusion is precipitated from the uncomfortable openness or closeness our society. Attempts to legislate laws are a means of imposing conformity. Uniformity is questioned against the principals of the constitution.
How can we reconcile order - the efficiency, control and clarity of a system with the chaos resulting from our creativity, trust, uncertainty and ambiguity in how we deliver education?
America is a society influenced by independence and a strong reluctance of authority. Conformity is not easy to accept nor predictable, except by market demand created by relationships between supply and demand. If there is no demand, then supply inefficiently erodes until equilibrium.
If you have come this far with me, you are most likely confused and lost in how this relates to the Academic GPS and the vision to unify our educational resources to provide an easier means to map, guide and address student needs. Well, if one desires to provide some sense of order or control over the condition we call chaos, where the disorder and confusion overtakes us, one has to challenge the backdrop of why institutions, free to pursue their own mission, practices and policies, funded by tax dollars, offer no means to plan or control the process of attaining educational aspirations outside their borders.
In order to create a shared system, bringing order and guidance to individuals seeking control over their learning pathway and destination, the organizations serving people must contemplate the implications I share. How can we provide such order, if we lack the will to govern and balance the needs of individuals who would be lost in their pursuits, given the industry's structure and vacuum of missing connections? How can we help people be successful? That is our challenge and it is bigger than us all.
The Academic GPS is a vision to provide a new student device, supported by automated services connecting institutions, their programs, courses, requirements, and outcomes. It would be learner centric, which means it would help each user navigate their circumstances and aspirations. This would support the notion that institutions, faculty and academic departments recognize the need to be a participant in a process of creating some order to the academic environment beyond their confined perspectives.
If we are going to help guide more learners to a higher level of education, then we must see the educational environment through their eyes. Which, even with the academic structures and foundations of learning organized within institutions, one should be able to sense the chaos all the same. It is good business to support individuals through their learning and career aspirations. I don't think anyone would fault that statement. It is even better business - in my view, and more in line with our democratic and social ideals that we reconcile the conflict between order and chaos in education for the public good. Where do we draw the lines? Let's not be constrained by call for independence for the sake of clarity. It does not mean conformity or uniformity must be forced down the throats of the academic enterprise. It does mean coordination, communication and construction of methods to help learners excel by enabling learning (stages of life) to be better understood by the participants.
Like "Control" in Get Smart, we need an Academic GPS, to offer us the comfort knowing we are protected and that someone is thinking about the risks and fallout of not keeping a watchful eye on "Chaos".
"Chaos" was the enemy. "Control" was America's answer to its cold war nemesis. The movie brought back memories of watching "Get Smart" the TV show, when Agent 99 and 86 paired to fight off the attacks of "Chaos" in their weekly segments. Both the movie and TV show portrayed the conflict buried under ground covered by imagery such as the Lincoln Monument and Congress, where freedom shines - at least in our part of the world.
Normal, everyday business just continued, as if neither organization existed. The more the movie was putting a humorous spin on the conflict between "Control" and "Chaos", the more I could not stop thinking about my own existence in terms of innovating and promoting automated solutions for the challenges we face in education. Public policy and thought leaders have strived to bring about order in how public funds are invested in education. The result of order would imply conformity, uniformity and the fear of standards.
Then, I recalled the book by Tom Peters, "Thriving on Chaos". As an entrepreneur, who seeks to find opportunities to address in the market place and the creation of solutions where I can deliver value, I guess you could say I have ventured to address the underlying implications of chaos in an unknowing way. Designing industry solutions begins by developing an organized framework, layered to control inputs and outputs, to support processes in a systematic and sustainable way. And, the subtle nature of a good solution implies ease of use and adoption delivering the value to users.
Get Smart's "Control" and "Chaos" were disbanded after the cold war publicly as the movie tells the story. But, beneath the ground, through twenty or so thick steel doors and hidden elevators, they survived to continue menacing each other for decades. In industry and education, one would presume we will never rid ourselves of the conflict between "chaos" and "control". In the western world, our democracy is built on the premise of freedom and independence. Our "Bill of Rights" and "Constitution" offers insights into not only our founder's vision of how society would govern, but how individuals, represented by their institutions will employ the drive for balance between individual rights and community.
Using the Internet dictionary, I quickly found that control means the power to direct and chaos means the state of disorder absence of rules or laws. Chaos is a world without order, a great void. Characterizing the opportunity to automate a process or function, is taking something that lacks structure and implementing a system to provide clear cut steps, efficiency and control over the actors or users. Control allows us to plan. It allows us to monitor. It allows us to react to changes.
In contrast, where freedom and independence continues to shine, we reveal in the creativity, experimentation, innovation and choices we have from the variety our economic circumstances offered by our society. As a people, reared on decades of free choice and our god given rights, we strive to reinforce our individual pursuits and rights to free enterprise and personal responsibility.
So, is chaos really the enemy of progress and civilization? Or, is it a reflection of our principals mirrored across the seas of commerce and justified by our capitalistic pursuits? Do we thrive on chaos because it allows us to standout, to differentiate and to find meaning in a crazy world?
Our motives are self fulfilling possibly. Through independence, we create confusion, the void of organization and conformity to standards. Art, science and religion reconcile emotions viewed through lens of different colors seeking discovery. When we think of academic independence and the confluence of circumstances drawing us to conclude we need comparability, transparency and coordination across academic programs, I ponder the irony. Control is viewed as the enemy and chaos is viewed and reinforced by the key stakeholders who desire to help learners succeed.
In one sense, we have immortalized principals of fairness and representation, balance and judgments made and passed through legislation debated and negotiated through community activism. As the pendulum swings, we shift back and forth considering the impact of freedom and community good. The catalyst of freedom stimulates individual pursuits, as long as it is not harmful to anyone else while we attempt to defend those that can't or don't know how to defend themselves. Independence allows us to have a personal mission in life, not dictated or controlled by government. Our creativity and free expression offers us perspectives of uncertainty and personal feelings. Ambiguity and confusion is precipitated from the uncomfortable openness or closeness our society. Attempts to legislate laws are a means of imposing conformity. Uniformity is questioned against the principals of the constitution.
How can we reconcile order - the efficiency, control and clarity of a system with the chaos resulting from our creativity, trust, uncertainty and ambiguity in how we deliver education?
America is a society influenced by independence and a strong reluctance of authority. Conformity is not easy to accept nor predictable, except by market demand created by relationships between supply and demand. If there is no demand, then supply inefficiently erodes until equilibrium.
If you have come this far with me, you are most likely confused and lost in how this relates to the Academic GPS and the vision to unify our educational resources to provide an easier means to map, guide and address student needs. Well, if one desires to provide some sense of order or control over the condition we call chaos, where the disorder and confusion overtakes us, one has to challenge the backdrop of why institutions, free to pursue their own mission, practices and policies, funded by tax dollars, offer no means to plan or control the process of attaining educational aspirations outside their borders.
In order to create a shared system, bringing order and guidance to individuals seeking control over their learning pathway and destination, the organizations serving people must contemplate the implications I share. How can we provide such order, if we lack the will to govern and balance the needs of individuals who would be lost in their pursuits, given the industry's structure and vacuum of missing connections? How can we help people be successful? That is our challenge and it is bigger than us all.
The Academic GPS is a vision to provide a new student device, supported by automated services connecting institutions, their programs, courses, requirements, and outcomes. It would be learner centric, which means it would help each user navigate their circumstances and aspirations. This would support the notion that institutions, faculty and academic departments recognize the need to be a participant in a process of creating some order to the academic environment beyond their confined perspectives.
If we are going to help guide more learners to a higher level of education, then we must see the educational environment through their eyes. Which, even with the academic structures and foundations of learning organized within institutions, one should be able to sense the chaos all the same. It is good business to support individuals through their learning and career aspirations. I don't think anyone would fault that statement. It is even better business - in my view, and more in line with our democratic and social ideals that we reconcile the conflict between order and chaos in education for the public good. Where do we draw the lines? Let's not be constrained by call for independence for the sake of clarity. It does not mean conformity or uniformity must be forced down the throats of the academic enterprise. It does mean coordination, communication and construction of methods to help learners excel by enabling learning (stages of life) to be better understood by the participants.
Like "Control" in Get Smart, we need an Academic GPS, to offer us the comfort knowing we are protected and that someone is thinking about the risks and fallout of not keeping a watchful eye on "Chaos".
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Launch of the Academic GPS
Well, here it is. The launch of the Academic GPS. What is the Academic GPS? It is a metaphor on teaching and learning for the next century, given where we have come from, where we are today and the implications of the future use of technology to support lifelong learning.
The internet and technology innovation has brought upon us a new opportunity to map educational possibilities. Like a navigational device on my car dashboard, that has been architected and built from the Satellites down to the earth to help one see the earth's landscape, we need a similar design to scale the boundaries and navigational needs of 21st century learner as they transverse learning content, delivery and comprehension across their checkpoints intertwined by destinations and purpose. It will offer personalization, while addressing the connections to communities, networks and resources globally.
The AcademicGPS is a vision at this point. One that starts with recognizing the existing boundaries of formal and informal learning bridging individuals and the institutions they attend to accumulate credentials from. Viewing the horizon from the GPS, the landscape becomes clearer as we approach, like the pixels on a video, they discern the rendering of color, contrast and brightness.
And, the need to create a common means to bridge the boundaries of learning, by connecting the points to allow one to navigate across them like a GPS in my car or on my cell phone is a pursuit and passion of mine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
