Higher Ed CRM

Mark Smithers: eLearning at Universities: A Quality Assurance Free Zone? « higher education management group

Keith Hampson — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 21:49:54 +0000

Guest Author Mark Smithers is an educational technology guru located in the brilliant city of Melbourne. With Mark’s permission, I’m reprinting his most recent blog post. I don’t think it got quite the attention it deserves.

Mark points to one of the rarely discussed truths about online higher education as it is practiced within traditional colleges and universities: the low quality of content. I think his post is useful beyond the immediate issue of content quality; it touches on several related and equally important aspects of higher education (online and classroom), including faculty autonomy, the limits of applying practices designed for classroom education to online education, and the inability of academics to play all of the roles required in online higher ed.

Over the last couple of months I have been asked to help a university (that will remain nameless) in its transition to a newer version of of its Learning Management System (LMS). As part of this I have had to access many LMS course spaces to check that content has migrated successfully and that that things are working as they should.It has been a profoundly depressing experience. I knew it would be and you’ll appreciate why I knew if you look at my current full time occupation.Let me begin begin by saying that there are a few dirty little secrets about online learning at traditional universities. Here are two:1. Not many courses have any form of content online whatsoever (even when the university promotes a policy of minimum online presence).2. When a course does have online content it is invariably rubbish. Here are some things that typify the courses I have seen recently:

Poorly structured sites with no narrative, no instruction, no guidance for the student.

Un-capitalised headings and grammatically incorrect sentences in mixed and garishly coloured fonts.

HTML using deprecated tags and with strange symbols that are presumably the remnants of copying and pasting from MS Word.

Links to PDF, DOCX and PPT files that are often way too large with no indication of the size or file type before the user clicks on the link.

Discussion forums that are not used or are used in very strange ways indeed.

Student blogs where the student is expected to print their blog out before submitting it for assessment. Although it should be said that I’m impressed that course was using blogs at all because I reckon only maybe 2-3% of course sites would have a blog set up.

But worst of all perhaps is the content itself. I had the misfortune to visit one site that was being used to teach web design. You’d think that this site would be really good but sadly no. It displayed many of the features I’ve listed above but worst of all the content of this site was at least three years old and made reference, in many cases, to information that was 8 or 9 years old. From this site I learnt that Alta Vista was the third biggest search engine and Netscape Navigator 4 was a major browser. If this was a human anatomy course then older content might be fine but a course like web design needs to be updated almost monthly the pace of change is so rapid.To put the icing on the cake, this course was a wholly online course being offered to students as part of an Information Systems degree. I kid you not.All of this brings me to the title of this post and the observation that there appears to be no quality assurance applied to elearning at most universities. The only surprising thing about this observation is how little it is spoken about. Senior academic managers appear to be totally unconcerned. I suspect they don’t know and probably don’t want to know. If they knew about it then they would have to do something about it and then all of a sudden you have to deal with academic staff who cry ‘academic freedom’ at the drop of a hat and we all know how much fun that is.What has happened is that academics have been allowed to continue into the online environment their thousand year old practice of engaging in a secret communion with students that happens in the classroom . I remember, as a young course leader at a university in the UK, being asked a question by a very respected Professor and external examiner (now there’s a novel thing). He said “Mark, how do you know that the lecturers are teaching what you want them to teach in the classroom?”. I, of course, had no idea so I mumbled something about outcomes and assessment. I could have said to my teaching staff that I thought it would have been a good idea to have some peer observation of their teaching but that would have gone down like lead balloon.And there is the problem. Academics don’t like non students (dare I say, people who are not beholden to them and therefore are more likely to be critical) in their classroom and they don’t like them in the online course spaces.Of course a really brave Vice Chancellor or President would say, right we are going to have all of our content as open courseware in five years time and the first thing we are going to do is allow every member of the university, staff and student, to be able to see the content in every course. Not sensitive data but just the learning content itself. We’re going to identify and reward the staff members working on the best courses so that everyone can see good practice. Finally we are going to provide course development resources to help you transition your content to an engaging online format and to ensure it is only made available when it has been through an appropriate QA process to meet some mutually agreed standards.Such academic leaders are few and far between. Many (most) senior academic managers don’t understand online learning at all. I remember being at a meeting of Deans of Faculty who all thought that uploading Powerpoint files was the same as blended learning.In the meantime student expectations increase continually as they engage with high quality content from many other providers as part of their daily online activities. Something is going to give and it may be sooner than we think.

For more information about Mark, I encourage you to visit his blog or follow him on Twitter.

http://www.masmithers.com/

@marksmithers

University World News – GLOBAL: Higher education becomes more costly

Keith Hampson — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 17:22:01 +0000

University World News – GLOBAL: Higher education becomes more costly

University students are having to meet more of the cost of their higher education in countries with existing mass higher education systems and “ageing demographics” – and the trend towards reduced public spending on universities looks set to continue. A new report, released today, says governments facing budget-balancing exercises, such as Britain and some US states including California, are already imposing cuts.

Meanwhile, in emerging countries with burgeoning higher education systems, such as China, India and Brazil, the report says efforts are being made to expand access quickly to new student populations.

Tuition Fees and Student Financial Assistance: 2010 Global Year in Review was prepared by Higher Education Strategy Associates, a Toronto-based company set up last year as an extension of the Canadian Education Project.

Read the full post at UWN

Higher Education Landscape (Mel Netzhammer)

Keith Hampson — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 21:48:05 +0000

Interesting mix of facts and issues from Mel Netzhammer at Keene State College (New Hampshire, US).

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Paul Wilcox, CIO of HMH Publishing (Part 1) | Sramana Mitra

Keith Hampson — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:51:17 +0000

Thought Leaders In Cloud Computing: Paul Wilcox, CIO of HMH Publishing (Part 1) | Sramana Mitr

By Sramana Mitra and guest author Shaloo Shalini

It was not so long ago in the history of books – 1936 – that publisher Allen Lane started Penguin Books Ltd. in what would be the first major successful attempt to print and sell cheap but high-quality fiction and nonfiction books on the mass market. Today, the advent of iPads, Kindles, and e-books coupled with the availability of cost-effective, efficient, and scalable cloud computing technology is creating another shift in the publishing industry. Valid environmental concerns about electronic publishing aside, cloud computing seems to be spurring on trends in publishing world such as self-publishing, which can entail additional effort from authors but can also get more books to market faster, cheaper, and on a larger scale. Besides Amazon’s self-publishing technology there are others such as Lulu and Mimeo that are latching on to this trend – Author Solutions saw50%-70% cost and time reductions with cloud-based publishing workflows.

How are publishing houses dealing with this paradigm shift? Are many of them adopting and using cloud computing as part of their business growth strategy? With physical book salesshrinking, both in stores and on the Internet, it looks as though traditional practices will co-exist with newer publishing trends. There seem to be many open opportunities for cloud computing entrepreneurs in the rapidly changing world of publishing. Sramana and Paul Wilcox, CIO of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, explore some of these questions.

Read the full interview.

Keith Hampson — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 18:20:19 +0000

Way, way back in 2002, in an Educause publication, Gary B. Grant and Greg Anderson wrote this of CRM in higher education:

“The notion of effective customer information management as a productivity issue is being replaced by the need for effective customer management as a competitive advantage. Tomorrow’s systems will go far beyond productivity-related features (such as Web-based student registration) to the development of customer informationas a strategic advantage. The concept of students, alumni, faculty members, and staff members as “customers” will become a competitive imperative with profound impact on how colleges and universities attract, retain, and serve customers of all types.”

Has much changed since 2002? What is the current role of CRM in higher education? I’ve asked Lawrence Levy of Enrollment Rx to offer an update on CRM, but also to link CRM to cloud computing – �a service that has developed into a core element of the landscape in the years since the Educause article.

KCH: Given the way in which the term “cloud computing” is commonly used, I’m not entirely convinced that there is a clear and agreed meaning to the term. Care to try defining it for us?

LL: The very definition of cloud-computing is indeed under dispute. �I think the lack of clarity around the term is fostered, at least in part, because some traditional software companies claim to offer “cloud-based” products, when in reality, they have simply tinkered with their legacy systems in order to host their products remotely, rather than on-site at the client location. (Marc Benioff, Chairman and CEO of Salesforce.com, warns us to “beware of the false cloud”.)�The “false cloud” is the mistaken idea that companies can simply host their traditional software products remotely, and thereby solve the same problems that were inherent in their products when they were installed on-premise at the client locations.

See the full post here: CRM and Cloud Computing in Higher Ed: Q & A with Lawrence Levy « higher education management group.

Canadian company releasing education tablet, mySpark, targeted at students

Keith Hampson — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 20:50:50 +0000

Canadian company releasing education tablet, mySpark, targeted at students |

TORONTO – Among the dozens of new tablets expected to be released this year in competition with Apple’s iPad and Research in Motion’s PlayBook will be a budget-priced Canadian device targeted specifically at students and schools.

MySpark Technologies, headquartered just north of Toronto, plans to launch its tablet in North America and India this spring, with an aim to have them carried into classrooms by September.

The mySpark tablet, which is based on Google’s Android platform, will be available in two models, with one expected to be priced between $200 to $250 and the other around $300 to $350.

IDC predicts that public cloud computing spending set to soar by 2014

Keith Hampson — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 02:32:28 +0000

From Outsourcery Ltd | Outsourcery Ltd.

Hosted email and other cloud computing applications look set to be more widely adopted in the next three years according to the International Data Corporation’s (IDC) latest report on public IT cloud services.

The organisation expects revenues to rise by 21.6 per cent between 2009 and 2014 as various sectors, including the professional services, communications and media, increase their use of the technology.

Additionally, the IDC expects revenues of $29.5 billion (£18.36 billion) in 2014, compared to $11.1 billion two years ago, which suggests sectors will be investing in other applications including hosted SharePoint 2007 and Microsoft Dynamics CRM.

Program manager for IDC’s Vertical Markers Research Group, Ruthbea Yesner Clarke, said that the healthcare sector, in particular, will make full use of the cost-cutting measure.

“Despite serious concerns about privacy, current healthcare reform and the rise of connected healthcare will lead providers to the public cloud for specific functions such as collaboration applications,” she said.

The news comes only days after the Higher Education Funding Council of England put aside £12.5 million for universities so that they can invest in cloud computing.

Social CRM Doesn’t Exist, But a Need Does

Keith Hampson — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:27:59 +0000

From Software Advice

“Social CRM is to the social media craze what eCRM was to the dot com bubble. The enterprise apps community is hungry for a big new category and social CRM smells tasty. As a result, software vendors, tech media and research analysts are all racing to promote and opine on this new market. Gartner, for example, appears to have hastily published their Magic Quadrant for Social CRM, which has been panned as confusing and unfocused.

But Social CRM Doesn’t Exist

In reality, social CRM is a misnomer. It doesn’t exist yet. This catch-all nomenclature implies a category far more straightforward than the diverse set of specialized systems currently targeting the social media opportunity.”

via Social CRM Doesn’t Exist, But a Need Does.

Salesforce.com (CRM) Upgraded by Signal Hill to “Buy”

Keith Hampson — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 10:26:43 +0000

Equities research analysts at Signal Hill upgraded shares of Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM) to a “buy” rating in a research note to investors on Wednesday.

Separately, analysts at Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) raised their EPS on shares of Salesforce.com in a research note to investors on Wednesday, January 19th. They now have an “equal weight” rating on the stock.

Salesforce.com, Inc. is a provider of enterprise cloud computing applications. It provides a customer and collaboration relationship management (CRM), service to businesses of all sizes and industries worldwide and provides a technology platform for customers and developers to build and run business applications. Cloud computing refers to the use of Internet-based computing, storage and connectivity technology for a variety of different services. The Company designed and developed its offering, which can be deployed, customized and integrated with other software applications. It markets its service to businesses on a subscription basis, primarily through the direct sales efforts and indirectly through partners. In May 2010, the Company acquired Jigsaw.

via Salesforce.com (CRM) Upgraded by Signal Hill to “Buy” – American Banking News.

Solving the Problem: Improving Retention in Higher Education » Academic Leadership Journal

Keith Hampson — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 03:58:06 +0000

As our nation looks ahead in this new century, an educated workforce is more important than ever. Yet college retention is a major problem. Last year, for the first time in 20 years, retention to the sophomore year dropped in the nation’s four-year colleges (Bushong, 2009). For minority students on predominantly white campuses – that is, most four-year colleges and universities – the graduation rate is unacceptably low. For example, less than half of black males graduate from four-year college programs within six years – 20 percentage points less than their white peers (Carey, 2008). And student persistence in community colleges is chronically low, circling at about 50% (Lederman, 2009).

Solving this problem has become a high priority for the Obama administration, which views student retention – particularly in community colleges – as a cornerstone for ensuring a strong American economy in the 21st century. The American Graduation Initiative, announced last July by President Obama, will support a variety of efforts designed to ensure higher student retention rates. The goal of this initiative is to double the number of community college graduates by 2020.

via Solving the Problem: Improving Retention in Higher Education » Academic Leadership Journal.