Expect to be Disrupted

Some notes from "Expect to be Disrupted: The Next Wave of Innovation in Online Education." Richard L. Edwards

Thought Experiment:

If you re-imagined the perfect eLearning course from scratch, what would be in its DNA?

Individualized—when I hear this I’m not sure what it means. I know I want it.

What about a course that doesn’t have a fixed length? IE. It takes 6 week to learn X. It takes 20 weeks to learn Y. Why are they both 15 weeks long?

(There were other ideas, but I didn't catch them all.)

What would you answer to this question?

These are the Tools—What I have to use, at least in the next few years, to get to what I want in the thought experiment.

• Adaptive Learning
• Flipped Classroom
• Competency Based
• Social Networked
• Open Education Resources
• Mobile Learning Software
• Gamification
• Cloud LMS

 “Good” Innovation 

Supports and fosters continued learning

Fosters creative thinking

Tolerates the risks

Provides incentives

Tries to avoid adding to the “baggage.”

Some “Rules” for Innovation in Online Teaching

1. Start with your objectives and work backwards. (Not with the technology.)
2. Embrace constraints. (Monetary and cultural.)
3. Engage in Design thinking. (We are all designers.) “Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way as best accomplish a goal.”
4. Remix and reuse everything.
5. Use what you know. Your unique point of view matters.
6. How would Alfred Hitchcock shoot an education video?
7. Use lots of whiteboards and post it notes. (Write it down;  then share it.)
8. “Build what you need. Use what you build.” Moot of Xerox PARC

Someone in the audience asked about "clickers," claiming that this was an example of failed innovation. Edwards answered that he thought the flipped classroom innovation came out of the how disappointed professors were with clickers. What they wanted was dialogue with students, which they didn't get with clickers. When they took the PowerPoint and assigned it as homework, then talked with them in class, they got what they wanted. This is also an example of  how goals should lead technology, not the other way around.