Please excuse the long time since the last blog folks.  1EdTech is adding a lot of new members and staff supporting an unprecedented array of exciting initiatives – which has kept yours truly very busy the last few months.

We are now in the final push toward our annual Learning Impact event, May 5-8 in New Orleans, USA. While this is also a busy time we’ve got a great chance at the event and before to be talking about where we are and where we are going in 1EdTech. We hope you will join the conversation! Consider this a first installment.

The (perhaps) provocative title of this post is actually one that we are sometimes asked. After all, 1EdTech is very much a “bottoms-up” meritocracy, like many other organizations that develop interoperability standards. Most of the ideas in 1EdTech, and certainly the best ideas, come from the individuals that are participating on behalf of their member organizations.  And, 1EdTech is a true membership organization (legally organized as such) that provides a level playing field for organizations of all sizes – a construct that we think provides a very good structure for what we do as previously described here. So, when the members speak – we listen – and usually act.

1EdTech does have a strategy. 1EdTech has an elected Board of Directors that helps formulate the strategy. But, the strategy is very organic, flowing and dynamic. New ideas brought forward by the members go through a certain “due diligence” that occurs by putting the idea in front of key stakeholders – those most motivated to act – and adjusting accordingly (including sometimes putting on the shelf until further interest). Having much experience in the venture capital world I will tell you that it is much like the funneling of ideas/business plans that every VC firm goes through in terms of the process of looking at the risks and opportunities involved.

So, the resulting 1EdTech strategy is a function of bubbling up, testing (against the critical concepts of adoption and learning impact) and organizing into something as coherent as we can make it given what is actually happening in the sector and various sub-segments.  And occasionally adding some key missing pieces that for whatever reason have not bubbled up – like for instance members not willing to share in an area that is actually good for them to share.

For several years past this process unfolded into an 1EdTech strategy centered on what we have called the “Digital Learning Services” standards, focused on (but not limited to) Common Cartridge, Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) and Learning Information Services (LIS).

The strategic theory behind the DLS focus was that together these standards would solve a very large percentage of the integration challenges in/with the education enterprise.  And, in fact, while different pieces have evolved and been adopted at differing rates, we think this thesis has largely turned out to be on target.  See the accompanying charts on growth in 1EdTech membership during this strategy and growth more recently in the conformance certifications that are the market adoption proof point.  Notice the 97 certifications in 2013 – almost 2 a week. So far in 2014 we are averaging close to 3 a week. In other words, this strategy is still taking hold, but clearly it is taking hold in a big way!

However, the 1EdTech strategy has definitely shifted beyond DLS in the last year or so. First of all, e-assessment, an area 1EdTech has had some activity in for a long while via QTI (and a subset of which is covered in Common Cartridge) became a hot area. The very simple idea that electronic assessments if done right are much more affordable and scalable than paper assessments coupled with the very obvious idea that there should be open formats to enable the e-assessment ecosystem of suppliers and states has come of age (both in the U.S. and other nations such as the Netherlands). Second, now that the 1EdTech DLS standards are working – radically reducing cost, time, complexity of seamless integration – our attention is naturally now turning to what can be enabled with the standards.

While there may not be complete agreement in the 1EdTech community (given its size and diverse nature) over what we should be enabling with the standards, here are the current thoughts – and thus, the strategy going forward:

1. The power of LTI (first v1 and now v2) to reduce cost and time of achieving seamless integration by 10-1000x will soon lead to 1-click integration.  1EdTech-enabled applications will be auto negotiating which 1EdTech services are supported – thus revolutionizing the ease with which standards-based applications will be incorporated into the teaching and learning process.
2. #1 enabling a very diverse open ecosystem of new types of learning platforms and applications and potentially rearranging the ordering of  integrations – very much an “app to app”  model of cooperation with or without a learning management “system” in the middle.
3. Merging LTI with the 1EdTech work on student information (LIS) and course planning and scheduling (CPS) exchange to continue to open up the educational enterprise via easy to use standards.
4. Establishing and growing the “educational app community” – like an open source community on steroids that builds things that work across platforms (the “things” may be open source or not, but there should be tools to enable this that are open source). This is a remarkable new type of community indeed – suppliers and institutions working together across platform – kind of like the worldwide web but focused on the education vertical.
5. Enabling what most refer to as e-books or e-texts as a highly interoperable format across a wide variety of e-readers/mobile devices for the needs of learning and education.  See EDUPUB.
6. Making instrumentation / measurement of learning activities easy to enable collection of analytics – big and small data. See Caliper Analytics.
7. Including everything we’ve learned and are learning about e-assessment across #4-6, meaning that we’ve got the standards to enable innovative assessment apps, enable assessment in e-text and the enable easy instrumentation of assessment in learning platforms and apps (via Caliper and the outcomes standards developed on QTI/APIP).
8. Utilize the standards to create an open source reference implementation for a peer-to-peer app sharing framework that can be used to do, well, what it says – share apps with trusted partners and encourage using standards to do this – thus, the enabling of a standards-based “app store” or “app sharing” equivalent to iTunes, etc. See CASA.

Perhaps though, most importantly, 1EdTech is making great progress with our end-user/institutional led groups to ensure that all of these initiatives are in fact getting them where they want to go.  Our K-12 district advisory board (I3LC) continues to grow and our new HED connected learning advisory board is shepherding the app community, the app sharing architecture, analytics and competency-based learning initiatives.

Hopefully you will see the evolution of the 1EdTech strategy in the above. The 1EdTech community is making change happen in some very substantial ways and I invite you to partake at the May 5-8 Learning Impact event – where the breakout tracks mirror the strategy areas above and the plenary sessions undertake the broader discussion  of “why” we are doing this in terms of the emergent models of education that we wish to enable.

One of the great things about the annual EDUCAUSE conference is hearing the many stories about how 1EdTech standards have enabled innovative new software applications to easily integrate into the educational enterprise. You might think that 1EdTech knows everything about every application of 1EdTech standards. I'd estimate that we typically know about 1/3 of what is actually occurring "out there" - just based on some off the cuff measurement by how often we are surprised or not surprised by something we hear about.  The very weird thing is that sometimes the things we don't hear about are really big adoptions of 1EdTech.

Anyway, please let us know what you are doing so we can help get the word out!

Ray Henderson has recently posted this blog: My Investment Thesis for IN THE TELLING about a start-up he has invested in called "In the Telling." As you can "tell" by the name the product has something to do with "stories."  The more mundane name for what is being offered here is "flipped classroom" - use the out of class time to watch the lectures, use the in the class time for more meaningful interaction.

Problem is that getting students to do anything out of class is a challenge these days. So, In the Telling provides a unique approach that helps the instructor create a story with narration. In essence they are creating a documentary of sorts that is more compelling than a simple lecture.

I have not seen any of the output of In the Telling yet - but the idea is very intriguing.  As someone who has bought more than my share of "great lectures" on various media in which I never made it past the first 30 minutes . . . well, I think better ways to teach is what we need to be investing in.

But, the crowning achievement with respect to 1EdTech comes in the following words from Ray's blog:

COMPATIBLE WITH ALL MODERN LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS: The Company designed their solution assuming that the launch point for most learner experiences would begin within an LMS. This is, after all, the way most assignments are made. The platform is built using the 1EdTech’s open standard for systems integration—Learning Tool Interoperability or “LTI”—which most modern LMS platforms now natively support. Students can initiate sessions with the platform just as they might with any other assignment, and the same basic usage statistics recorded by the LMS are preserved.

1EdTech is very proud to be a part of enabling the rapid rise of innovation in the edtech community!  

With 1EdTech’s recent announcement of the upcoming e-assessment interoperability challenge we thought it would be a good time to discuss electronic assessment. Here is a Q&A with Rob Abel of 1EdTech. Feel free to post additional questions and Rob will answer them (if he can)!

Q1: Is it time for electronic assessment in education?

A1: Yes, paper tests are more difficult to administer, take longer to process, are more prone to error and are not able to provide timely data to help improve instruction. Compared to a situation where paper textbooks may still have some usability advantages over digital e-books, paper assessments have no advantage at all over e-assessment.

Q2: Can e-assessment be used for summative or formative testing?

A2: Both.  E-assessment can be used for pure “high stakes test taking” scenarios as well as intermingled throughout other learning activities for formative assessment.

Q3: Is interoperability of assessment items important?

A3: Yes - very. In general digital assessment enables new forms of collaboration. For instance, in various countries around the world there is a desire to enable school organizations to collaborate on item development – since many schools are testing on the same subjects. Standard formats for assessment items enables collaboration on/exchange of items without every organization needing to use the same software platform for item creation and/or delivery. It is becoming pretty clear with historic collaborations such as the U.S. states on the Race to the Top Assessment initiative that the era of the “single delivery platform that outputs pdf” is coming to an end. With interoperability of assessment items enabled by standards there is no reason to be locked into a single vendor solution. Across the assessment community replication of effort goes down, investment in proprietary solutions ends and more investment is focused on innovation.

Q4: Does 1EdTech have standards and a community focused on assessment interoperability?

A4: Yes.  1EdTech has two related standards that the assessment community worldwide should be making use of. The first is QTI (Question and Test Interoperability) and the second is APIP (Accessible Portable Item Protocol). QTI enables interoperability of assessment items and tests. The latest version is v2.1 which is the one that the assessment community is rallying around. A subset (profile) of an older version of QTI, v1.2, is used in Common Cartridge, which is a format for importing and exporting content into/out of learning platforms. APIP adds accessibility constructs to QTI to enable electronic delivery of a variety of accessible assessments.

Q5: What about other types of interoperability that might enable more effective use of e-assessment?

A5: Yes. There is a very compelling need to use interoperability standards to enable assessment software platforms to “plug into” or connect with other software systems. So, this is the “assessment software product” as an LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) tool provider, enabling the assessment platform to be seamlessly “launched” from a host system (like a learning management system). This type of “plugging in” can be useful in both formative and summative scenarios (depending on how the later is administered). We see at least four types of assessment products beyond the state level large-scale assessment that will benefit from this type of interoperability:

• Standard quizzing/test authoring and delivery software that are typically used already with learning platforms
• The increasingly popular “homework applications” or “adaptive tutoring applications” can be also be viewed as formative assessment platforms.
• Classroom test creation and scoring systems – yes, including those using paper and pencil
• Assessment tools used for competency-based degree programs, such as those used by Western Governors University.

Q6: What about interoperability of assessment data?

A6: This of course is also very important. QTI describes formats for item data – which describes how test takers answer questions. The latest 1EdTech work on analytics – the 1EdTech Caliper Learning Analytics Framework (see blog Q&A) - will leverage the QTI data formats as well as other assessment-related formats (e.g. gradebook data). Thus, assessment data can be provided “back” to a learning platform, an assessment delivery platform or to an analytics store.

Q7: What about authentic assessment in the classroom or project-based learning?

A7: Any type of educational assessment, including e-assessment, is just a tool. It is one source of input. In our opinion assessment should be used to improve teaching and to improve learning. Thus, e-assessment plays an important role because it can provide real-time or near real-time feedback in a very transparent way – on a question by question basis (QTI enables such feedback), for computer adaptive testing or simply faster processing of an entire quiz or test. And that feedback can go to teachers, students, parents, etc – whatever makes the most sense. And, initiatives like Race to the Top Assessment are folding teacher evaluation of various “performance events” into the assessment mix. Mobile platforms and interoperable apps could obviously have an very important and innovative role to play in that regard as well as all types of assessment wrapped into apps or otherwise. We’ve already seen some fascinating use of QTI in the mobile setting via the Learning Impact Awards.

Q8: Why has 1EdTech announced a Worldwide Assessment Interoperability Challenge?

A8: Use of interoperability standards such as QTI in the past has been rather flakey in that each supplier implemented different versions and different subsets of functionality. Very few assessment product providers provided feedback to 1EdTech to enable the issues to be resolved.  As a result, interoperability was limited.  Things have turned around radically in the last few years in that 1EdTech now has some 25 or so world-leading providers of assessment products actively involved in implementing QTI and/or APIP. As a result, 1EdTech has been able to finalize these specifications and conformance certification tests that will result in high levels of interoperability. The “challenge” is our way of saying to the world that we have a very strong core set of suppliers who have agreed to achieve conformance certification together over the next few months. Please come and join in for the good of your product development efforts and the good of your customers who desire interoperability that really works.  The extra added “bonus” for participating is entry into the annual 1EdTech Learning Impact Awards under special assessment product categories. Details on the “challenge” are here: http://apip.imsglobal.org/challenge.html

Q9: What if a region of the world wants to work with 1EdTech on a regional profile of QTI or APIP?

A9: Yes, 1EdTech is set up to facilitate that and is in fact in partnership in the Netherlands for the last two years on such an effort regarding national exams.  Feel free to send us an email at assessmentchallenge@imsglobal.org

Q10: What do you see for the future of e-assessment?

A10: We are at the very beginning of a long road ahead filled with many exciting product opportunities.  As with many of the other 1EdTech standards, like Common Cartridge and LTI, we are going to see a very dynamic evolution based on market needs of QTI and APIP. For instance, one of the other application areas we are working on at the moment is QTI application to e-textbooks. E-assessment will permeate every aspect of digital learning materials and activities – with an emphasis on adaptive testing to help pinpoint where additional alternative materials and activities are needed. And, with the undeniable trend toward competency-based learning paths and credentialing the need for better assessment is increasing. As with all of the 1EdTech focus areas the key will be for the technology of assessment to “get out of the way” and be simple and easy to use and benefit from.  

At the 2013 Learning Impact conference I presented a keynote “Innovation, Disruption, Revolution – Oh My!”  I chose this topic because the degree of hype about “disruption” in education seems to be at an all time high right now. BTW it's amazing how well the Gartner Hype Cycle fits the Wizard of Oz!

From Rob Abel's Learning Impact Keynote: Innovation, Disruption, Revolution Oh My!

Excitement about the role of technology in improving education is a good thing as far as I’m concerned. Education is a segment that needs disruptive innovation. To me the hype around things like MOOCs represents a longing by many for “a better educational future” – presumably involving lower costs to students and better career/life fulfillment, not to mention better global citizens needed to solve our global challenges. Let’s face it - there is a general sense that the current education system is not up to the challenges of the future. And, it’s not clear how we get from “here” to “there.”

But, as leaders in the education segment we do need to get better at understanding where we have been and where we are going, what constitutes innovation and/or disruption that is worthy of investment?  Are you an investor? I would argue that any individual that is putting time into educational technology leadership at any level is an investor, but certainly institutions that are spending on innovation, and yes, venture capital investors (investors in this segment, including some pretty big names, are making some bad decisions right now about where they are putting their money – but this post is more about how institutions should decide to invest their resources).

In 1EdTech we try to ferret out “winners” by looking at criteria for something we call “Learning Impact” – which is defined by a set of judging criteria we use in our annual Learning Impact Awards (LIAs). You can think of it as evidence that the application of technology in an educational setting has had a clear impact on access, affordability and/or quality. We’re pretty proud of this program because there is simply no way to win with hype. But, in general the whole annual Learning Impact event is about understanding where the innovation really is.

Right now there are quite a few over-hyped activities in the education segment.  I would include in these MOOCs, Common Core State Standards, analytics, badges and open educational resources (OER). Sorry if I tipped over one of your sacred cows there!  Over-hyped does not mean that something good will not come from these developments. It just means that they are being portrayed as more significant in terms of ability to “disrupt” education than they will be capable of delivering on. As with most hyped innovations, eventually some aspects of the innovation “survive,” crossing the chasm to productive advancement of the industry. The challenge for innovators and investors is to utilize critical thinking to rationalize what will sustain and what the real Impact will be.

MOOCs are perhaps everyone’s favorite example of hype right now. It’s difficult to imagine how something could have achieved more hype in the higher education segment – and they are very clearly striking a nerve for being potentially highly disruptive. Literally every day MOOCs are in the headlines – and smart marketers are trying to jump on the MOOC bandwagon even as that bandwagon morphs continually to address the glaring deficits of the MOOC model and quite frankly, more failures than successes at this point.

Clayton Christensen, the leading expert on “disruptive innovation,” has written at least two books specifically focused on education. According to Christensen’s disruptive innovation theory markets are disrupted when new entrants figure out an innovative way to provide a “simpler” product to a wider set of buyers at a more affordable price.  Since the simpler product is actually what the broader market prefers (simpler means more usable, more effective for the desired purposes) the product is highly disruptive – better product at lower price point.  And thus, these new entrants change the market behavior substantially.  Jim Farmer does a very thorough job of digging into the theories as applied to MOOCs here.

While I, like many other silicon valley entrepreneurs, have found Christensen’s original formulations on disruptive innovation descriptive of what is generally seen in the high tech world, and a useful thought framework, well, the problem is that these formulations have not been at all predictive for education – and that is the acid test for using theory for strategic gain – is it predictive?  Writing about what happened in the past and putting a framework around it is great – but if it doesn't help predict the future it doesn’t especially help entrepreneurs or us “investors.”

The innovators in the education segment have NOT disrupted the status quo significantly so far. While Christensen predicted in 2008’s Disrupting Class great disruptions in the segment from online learning, the reality so far is that greater adoption of online learning has continued as expected but not very disruptive: price points for education continue to rise ahead of inflation and while online education continues to grow it is largely seen as reflecting traditional models rather than a disruption.  And, while online/blended models have certainly improved access – well, the percentage of the population that has achieved credentials has been very level.  I wrote a paper about what the technology impact in higher education back in 2005-7 - and the situation is not significantly different today.

Christensen was recently quoted in an interview as stating that higher education institutions are going to be in real trouble 5 years from now. However, he has not made it clear why things will be different in the next 5 years versus the last 5 years since Disrupting Class was published. I do agree that “buyers” (students/parents) are in fact getting smarter about looking for lower cost options as well as attempting to understand the value of a higher education degree.  But I would argue that we are nowhere near a true disruption (rise) in the number of participants in higher education.

While it is very valuable to have any great thinker on business strategy analyzing education and providing insights from other industries that might apply (like Christensen), education leaders need to do their own critical thinking about these formulations of “disruptive innovation” in the education segment.

I’d like to provide three key factors that IMHO are needed to be understood if to  understand disruption in education. While these factors may be relevant to understanding MOOCs, they can be applied to other hype areas as well. Hold on to your hat here as these are things that we don’t hear much talk about in the education space – especially when you go to meetings on one of the hyped topics or even to investor conferences!

1. Education is a complex services business in which quality is difficult to define. Disruption in the education space requires better service models that are built around improved educational program quality. Comparison of education to the disruption of the steel industry by mini-mills (a connection some have made because Christensen uses this as a classic example of disruption) is not a valid comparison. Disruption in education is not about replacing the low end of a well-defined product. It’s about redefining quality in a much more complex world of knowledge than that from which most current educational models were designed.  So, for instance, a true disruption in education would be highly desirable/effective K-masters degree in 15-16 years versus the current 19 years (ideally that meets the needs of under performing populations as well as traditionally successful populations).
2. The next phase of true progress will be to come out of the current era of massification into a new era of more real world relevant and personalized educational pathways.  Massification of educational experiences will not be the ticket to success in the next wave of educational models. It seems that many of the entrepreneurs and investors in the education space fail to realize that we have already been in the era of massification of education for the last 30 years or so in developed countries. The disruption in terms of content will need to be content that enables educational experiences that are up-to-date (read “relevant”), adaptive to the interests of the learner, easily adaptable by teachers and yet thorough in terms of teaching the educational foundation that are defined via #1.  No offense to our friends at Coursera (one of the growing number of MOOC providers), but “course era” is an especially off the mark name for describing the future IMHO.  It is NOT a course era now in education nor will it be in the future. It is the same era that it has been: which is one in which a distinctive program of high quality education will be highly valued. It's just that we need to do a better job getting such distinctive programs to the currently underserved populations at a better price point. Yes, there will be different sources of supporting digital resources that will help enable the redesign of educational delivery (potentially a role for MOOC courses). As discussed in other LI blog posts (here & here) digital resources will need to be in a form of a highly usable toolkit for faculty and learners.  But, these supporting resources have a VERY long way to go to meet the needs of learners. And, the more available (i.e. free, open, massive, etc) a course or content becomes the faster it will become commoditized.
3. Education is the ultimate “long tail” market with a growing proliferation of high value niche providers and boutique programs. This is only going to increase in the future. Contrary to other recent online phenomena like facebook or twitter, education is not a “winner take all” market. I was at an education investor conference earlier this year where a leading investment advisor made the statement that education is the “ultimate winner take all market.” Education, if done correctly, is life success enabling. The more unique and distinctive your educational experience is, the more valuable it is. The ability to produce knowledge is the key currency in the current and future global economy. There is no distinctiveness to attending “Massified University.” And, a credential from a massive provider will most likely be such a commodity that most will prefer not to waste their time on it (other than for pure fun or reference). We need many more niche-oriented institutions that provide specialized, career-enabling and life-enabling education. Note that even large public institutions, while having many students, can engage this philosophy to create a large number of differentiated programs of study.   Therefore, the “disruptive technology platforms” for education will need to enable great diversity. Diversity in terms of delivery models and blending of high touch with personalized self-service.  Disruptive platforms will also need to enable seamless integration among cooperating providers of the various components of a solution – meaning close partnership among institutions as well as innovative learning tools.  Old style Web 2.0 thinking of the single pervasive platform or the single way of analyzing data will not work for the future of education. Education is not that simple (sorry!).

Are MOOCs potentially promising innovations? Yes. They are clearly an evolution of the trend toward pervasive online/blended/more flexible educational models/flipping the classroom. Will they disrupt education?  Not on the current trajectory. They pretty much fly in the face of the three tenants above.

But, there are some potential ways in which MOOCs could be disruptive in a more limited way.

I think MOOCs have the potential to be disruptive on the low end of the education market as a new model for delivering “open university style education.”  For example, today’s MOOCs could be an appealing alternative to the content portion of massive open universities around the world, featuring star professors from highly ranked universities. And, such populations of learners could probably support an advertising/low course fee model of consumption. So, open university providers get a “pay per use” version of content (versus the larger investments they must make today for tuition) that is likely better than what they are offering today, which if subsidized by advertising (net revenue equals small pay per use from open university provider coupled with advertising revenues) could equate to substantial revenues over a large numbers of users with similar interests (as indicated by the topic of study).

In such a model MOOCs could also double as a new type of “tutorial” reference materials. Very much like Kahn Academy, which is often referred to as a MOOC now even though it existed for a few years prior to the term.

Would this application of MOOCs be disruptive? Well, if you consider displacement of open universities and/or a new business model for them disruptive, then yes.  This approach could potentially disrupt the open university market worldwide and create a much larger interest in open university derivative models as a way to learn more about a particular topic and/or as preparation for entry to other universities.  Will they substitute for those universities – no. Such a disruption will not radically change the efficiency of higher education segment at all.

Is there a strong motivation for current providers of education to engage in this model? Unclear. As previously discussed the more you commoditize an educational experience the less valuable the education is. As discussed above the next stage in education is greater diversification, not massification. Personally I would like to see existing institutions respond to the three factors above by rolling out new “institutes” with new types of degree programs that meet the evolving needs of society.

Should open universities or other new entrants that wish to compete in that space try a MOOC/advertising/low course fee supported model?  I hope so.  That would be a good fit with the “course-focused” strength of MOOCs.  It would also provide a potential revenue producing and marketing outlet for institutions and their “star teachers.” Of course there are the normal challenges of achieving accreditation from the countries/states as needed to prove value to the potential students.

So, hooray for the MOOC phenomena in terms of making claims about needed innovations such as scale, analytics and the potential power of star teachers that will help accelerate the innovation trend toward online/blended that we are already on! And, congratulations to the leading institutions willing to make a space to try out the MOOC innovations as another set of tools that might be leveraged in the quest for improved education.

However, I would say that if you don’t know at this point why you are investing (in terms of what impact you expect will sustain at your institution, and therefore what the return on your investment is likely to be) then you are not applying the level of critical thinking you need to. Personally I would be asking MOOC providers to take the risk in terms of proving the validity of the market/business model (such as the ideas around open university displacement) – and not taking on that risk for my university. 

[Note: In a future blog post I will take a whack at what I think will be the sustainable innovations that might cross the chasm coming out of some of the hype items mentioned above: MOOCs, Common Core State Standards, analytics, badges and open educational resources (OER).]

See more of Rob Abel’s views on educational innovation throughout the Learning Impact blog as well as this feature interview with Anthony Salcito of Microsoft.