The New York Times has its Education Life section out today, and one of the main pieces is titled “An Open Mind,” an article that takes an interesting look at the impact of open educational resources since the advent of MIT OpenCourseWare 10 years ago now. It’s a pretty balanced read, one that makes clear the potential of passion-based, DIY learning, but also gives fair treatment to the difficulties that go along with it, especially if we’re looking to get something more than just a bit more knowledge in the process. For instance, will OER “lead to success in higher education, particularly among low-income students and those who are first in their family to go to college?” Certainly, access to all of these courses (which obviously vary in quality and relevance) may be a boon to third world learners whose only desire may be to pursue learning. But for those looking to credentialize the experience in some way, very few grades are in the offing.
It’s been a current here of late, but that whole “how do we credentialize informal learning” question has been really tweaking my brain quite a bit. As always, I wonder about this in the context of my own children, trying to imagine ways that they might begin to build something other than a diploma that might showcase their expertise in the same ways that a piece of paper might. Tall order, I know, and probably not doable in the short window that they have (10-15 years). But interesting nonetheless, especially when I read quotes like this one from Neeru Paharia, one of the founders of Peer 2 Peer University:
She likes to talk about signals, a concept borrowed from economics. “Having a degree is a signal,†she says. “It’s a signal to employers that you’ve passed a certain bar.†Here’s the radical part: Ms. Paharia doesn’t think degrees are necessary. P2PU is working to come up with alternative signals that indicate to potential employers that an individual is a good thinker and has the skills he or she claims to have — maybe a written report or an online portfolio. “We live in a new society,†Ms. Paharia says. “People are mobile. We have the Internet. We don’t necessarily need to work within the confines of what defines a traditional education.â€
Right now, that is “radical” thinking, but it’s provocative nonetheless. That “signals” piece is exactly where a lot of my own thinking and reading has been centered of late. And while this is about higher ed, a shift like that obviously has big implications for K-12. Not only is it about how we prepare our kids to learn more effectively in informal environments around the things they are passionate about, but also how we help them begin to build those portfolios of work that have real world applications, that can be used to highlight their learning and their ability to learn throughout their lives. I mean how, right now, are schools helping students be self-directed participants in their own learning who are able to share openly the learning they do and connect with others to pursue that learning even further?
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t continue to help our kids aspire to college, especially in the near term. One-third of our kids are still going to get college degrees, and many others will go down that road even though they won’t finish. But when we consider the growing scale of collaborative study with experts that they are going to be able to do in their lives, we need to help them aspire to that as well, right?
I agree with Ms. Paharia that an online portfolio is an ideal “alternative signal” indicating a student’s competency. In fact, an e-portfolio communicates much more than a diploma or transcript. An e-portfolio can showcase a student’s knowledge, skills, and accomplishments in a rich and meaningful way that much more vividly communicates who the student is as a learner and as a whole person.
I definitely think a new credentialing system is needed, one that is not tied to the student’s geographic location. As a graduate student, I notice professors are taking more and more advantage of the ability to skype in guest speakers. But why not draw on this kind of expertise for every topic in your course of study? Rather than earning a transcript that says you met the requirements of x course taught by y professor, develop a body of work that reflects your learning and showcase it in your online portfolio.
And I agree with you, Will, that students should be developing those e-porfolios in K-12 as well. One good example of this is the Graduation Portfolio System being developed by the Asia Society’s International Studies Schools Network. As a side note, my high school students and I are participating in the Flat Classroom NetGenEd project, and one of the topics is “open content.” It will be interesting to see how the students in the project predict OER will impact education in the future.
But wait, why do we need to credentialize informal learning? Isn’t informal learning what motivates students to get ahead in the first place? It’s not a degree that gets you a job in a lot of fields, it’s a person’s ingenuity and get-up-and-go. You don’t really need that on your resume, because it comes out in the interview.
I think what I am wanting (and it may not be necessary, as you suggest) is some loose framework for what being “educated” looks like without a diploma. Something that we can help our kids aspire to. In other words, if that happens to be a portfolio, for instance, what is that comprised of? Is it social? Is it something more than what we’ve considered a portfolio to be in the past? What are the other “signals” that potential employers or collaborators can look to for? Etc.
Alternative “signals” could provide great opportunities for people of all ages. I am a teacher in the later stages of my career – still jazzed – but getting subtle messages that opportunities exist for those much younger than me. And because of a series of positive life choices, I do not have that piece of paper signalling a Master’s Degree. So . . . in thinking about my next career move, I’m wondering how do I continue to be valued? I want to be a learning, contributing member of society until I die. Would an e-portfolio allow me to showcase the knowledge and talents I possess to continue to make a difference?
A thought -provoking post!
I definitely agree with you that schools aren’t doing much about preparing students to be more “self-directed” to learn more & exchange experiences and expertise with others. Also, actually I believe that an e-portfolio would enable both students and long life learners to “signal” their knowledge and skills. However, there need to be a shift in thinking by the companies, schools and other employment agencies towards accepting e-portfolios as reliable sources of showcasing one’s “real” talents.
Will — Love these ideas, and wonder if the push needs to come from corporate American back to higher ed, then to K-12?
Our educational institutions are just that — institutions. Their structures and processes are heavily entrenched, and — at least for public schools — very reliant on government funding. We all know that’s driven by tax bases and test results.
Yet here’s what I saw at a Web company where I worked: a young man (probably the youngest in a very young company) who’d dropped out of college at the undergrad level (most of us had grad degrees or doctorates) was hired as a programmer when he proved he could hack our security system and write some code as directed.
It wasn’t about a degree or even a portfolio of his work. Instead, he was given a couple of tasks to prove his ability to perform the require work, and he passed them, so he was hired. He quickly became one of the most valued programmers we had.
Many companies really don’t care as much about academic degrees as they do about an individual’s ability to perform on the job.
Several of my past positions included hiring. Educational degrees served simply as an initial screening mechanism — no degree meant the resume went in the “Thank you, no” pile. It was the easiest early bar to set when faced with hundreds of resumes for a single position.
So from my perspective, the primary challenge to e-portfolios is how to quickly filter them. And filter them you must. Maybe the online job services are better, but in looking for a meeting planner, we mistakenly used the word “logistics” in our description and got flooded with applicants from the trucking industry.
It seems to me the idea is great, but the scaffolding for success isn’t quite sturdy enough yet…
Thanks for that comment, Ellen. Interesting stuff, and I think in some form, it’s always been the case that some get hired based solely on the can they do it or not approach. Obvioulsy, a lot of jobs are more nuanced, use other skills, and require more complex abilities. How we screen for that now is where it’s going to get interesting.
Will — this post of yours led to a larger-than-comment-size response from me, which is titled “Why the obession with credentials?” Would love to hear what you think.
I really not sure what this article is trying to say, but I will give it a shot. I think he is trying to say is that if students don’t put forth the effort to get things done and just sit by and coast through school they may not be able to excel in what they are trying to accomplish. I do think the schools need to focus more on the higher ed programs than wasting kids times with the small things. But that has a lot to do with our local government.