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Certainly an interesting step, and one that may work out well. First the "flipped" classroom and now "flipped" admissions.
This type of admissions strategy might actually give some more hope than is indicated in the recent blog post (and subsequent LA Times Op Ed): http://mathwithbaddrawings.com/.../why-ive-stopped-doing.../
MIT's self-disruption: an update
In The future of MIT undergraduate education: a case study of disruption, I described two reports from MIT that laid out a stunning vision for the future of MIT undergraduate education. Among the suggestions of the reports are that education of the future will be unbundled and disaggregated, wit...
Chris Aldrich is now following Andy Shaindlin
Nov 30, 2011
Perhaps it's a much better idea to think of it in the light of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger, and Jake McKee [http://www.amazon.com/Cluetrain-Manifesto-10th-Anniversary/dp/0465024092/]? In particular Doc Searls has a more interesting modern-day take on CRM and what it should function as.
For those who aren't aware, this book is also in part responsible for much of the philosophy behind large portions of the social media revolution which has taken place over the past decade.
Is Alumni Relations a Form of CRM?
A few weeks ago a colleague casually mentioned that he thinks of alumni relations "as a form of customer relationship management," also called CRM. At first I agreed, but later I felt less certain – and realized that I don't know enough about CRM to argue one way or the other. That same day I re...
I agree with Arnaldo that Quality Control might be an effective means of increasing the overall quality of the system, however one will need to be careful not to place too much emphasis on just the factual content in defining a Learning Object – arguably the biggest part of an education isn't just learning the facts, yet being able to approach things from a larger holistic whole. The sum of the facts learned are not necessarily the whole of the education - in fact, it's learning how to learn, cope, adapt, and extend in the future that is one of the greatest factors in the educational process. Utilizing the simplest concept of LOs, may pander to the lowest common denominator, and on this basis the local community college would be on par with the highest research institutions. One would have to take into account the learning atmosphere, the surrounding conversations and interactions, the level of the competition, and the learner's peers as additional benchmarking in such a quality control process.
One of the largest disparities between the highest institutes and the lowest is, in part, the desire to learn and take the most advantage of the opportunities granted at an institution. Towards this end, I'm curious to hear everyone's thoughts on the concept of what the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE)(http://nsse.iub.edu/) is doing. Today's article in the Washington Post on its rankings seems like a very apropos one given the lack of real benchmarks in many of the other rankings and surveys. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/14/AR2010021402968.html
The other major factor to take into consideration is the cost of the process and potentially a measure of cost per unit quantity. The problem here is the "per unit quantity" portion of the equation which needs some significant work to accurately define. Event the general economics of the cost part of the structure are in wide question as last week’s Washington Post points out at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/09/AR2010020903832_pf.html. This article essentially reports that though the price tag of an education is rising, the actual paid cost by individual students has decreased over the past several years. Does this portend the coming of a Wal-mart (or possibly even a Costco) Educational system?
Is anyone aware of educators taking the principles of JM Juran, W.E. Deming, et al. and applying them to education instead of manufacturing? Given that, since the start of the industrial revolution, the delivery of an education is one of the few processes that hasn't improved exponentially as other areas of "manufacture" have, will it really be improving the means of measuring delivery and imposing more quality control that will make it easier and less expensive to deliver an education?
Learning outcomes information and the quality of higher education
But the biggest problem with American higher education isn=t that too many students can=t afford to enroll. It=s that too many of the students who do enroll aren=t learning very much and aren=t earning degrees. For the average student, college isn=t nearly as good a deal as colleges would have...
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Feb 16, 2010
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