(Note: A summary of this blog post has been published here by EdSurge.)

An Auspicious Assembly
Next, Jen Hu, Director of Account Management at NovoEd welcomed the group, and described the affinity between how NovoEd helps institutions, through its social, collaborative learning platform, and the passions of the group in discussing what is next for higher education. She also let the audience know about a free four-part webinar series on Learning Experience Design being offered by NovoEd, starting next month.
The event was structured with five Lightning Talks of six-minutes each by distinguished speakers, followed by breakout groups where the audience got a chance to engage in a smaller setting with the speaker of their choice. Below is a brief recap of each of the lightning talks on The Future of Digital Learning.
Lightning Talk Recaps on The Future of Digital Learning
1. Suzanne Gibbs Howard, Dean, IDEO U
- An online student, Jess in Melbourne, formed her own in-person local Learning Circle, and IDEO U created a guide to hosting learning circles, to be used by Jess as well as others.
- An architecture firm in Italy had three employees enrolled in a course, and IDEO U created a Prototyping Leader’s Guide to help them work on a common project during their weekly happy hours.
- Gordon Jones, the Dean of Innovation & Design at Boise State University, used the Leading for Creativity course as a digital textbook to blend his credit-bearing class, with the final challenges as real-world projects. IDEO U created a Professor’s Toolkit for him.
2. Candace Thille, Head of Stanford Open Learning Initiative (OLI)
On the topic of data science, Dr. Thille was excited by the potential to develop better algorithms for personalized learning systems. Yet she also raised concerns that having these developed, and kept proprietary, by private companies may result in “black boxes”, which are not helpful in advancing the field of research in personalized learning.
That being said, Dr. Thille’s message was optimistic, and at the end, she left us with a quote from the famous Herbert Simon, whom she worked with at Carnegie-Mellon:
“Improvement in post secondary education will require converting teach (and courseware, platform & analytic system development) from a solo sport to a community-based research activity.”
3. Dr. Marco Molinaro, Vice Provost for Educational Effectiveness, UC Davis
4. Jonathan Katzman, Chief Product Officer, Minerva Project
- Creative thinking (evaluating claims, weighing decisions)
- Critical thinking (solving problems, facilitating discovery)
- Effective communication (writing clearly, presenting)
- Effective interaction (negotiating, working on teams)
They broke down these four competencies to 120 objectives and these guide their teaching experiences. Jonathan, in describing how Minerva does not like lectures, shared the quote: “Lectures are a great way to teach, but a terrible way to learn”. Minerva uses the more intimate approach of small seminars of 15-20 students.
Jonathan also talked about how Minerva uses technology in their teaching. To them, there is no clear distinction between online vs. offline, instead, it is all interwoven. They make use of a digital classroom interaction tool, dubbed the Active Learning Forum,which allows for lively virtual experience, including polling, cold calling, and stats captured, and even allowing teachers to go back and watch “game tape” to give additional comments or feedback to students.
5. Bridget Burns – Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
- You can’t be a superhero – you must work within the system and with the well-intentioned people within them. It helps to spend time asking questions before diving in with a solution.
- Empathy – this is a key success factor. Most people work within higher education because they care about people. You should tap into this by connecting with them, not seeing them as barriers change.
- Project Management is critical – you should be spending half your time,or more, on this. You can’t throw things ‘over the fence’ but must work to make sure that things get done. “Tolerating and moving through bureaucracy is a skill–a rare skill,” Bridget says.
Bridget has worked with a lot of technology solutions in different scenarios, having advised 27 university presidents. She had a general comment for the edtech community noting that there tends to be too much focus on the productization of an edtech innovation. In many cases, services are critical to getting the solution implemented. In fact, she stated that she’d rather have an inferior product, with strong services to implement it, than working with the best leading-edge product with no support. She summarizes this with a quote that fills her next slide, s something university presidents and education researchers know, but 26-year-old Silicon Valley tech developers and VC’s don’t always know:
“The product is not the innovation. Innovation is what people can do with it.”
Conversations to Remember
In all, one couldn’t but feel the positive energy, the vibe, the buzz, from a group of people so heavily involved in education, yet inquisitive and trying new things, pushing the envelope, never satisfied, and in search of a better future in digital learning. It was infectious, and we hope conversations were advanced, relationships made, and ideas sparked through this wonderful event hosted by EdSurge.
Be sure to also check out our Inspiring Lifelong Learning post.
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