Education

Can Open Data Improve University Governance?

I have the privilege of being one of a few student senators at NYU.  As equal partners along with faculty and administrators in the university governance process, I’m often amazed at how much goes on at NYU that no one knows about.  When I raise this point to others the response I often get is that I’m an aberration for even caring about this stuff.  Most students, the logic goes, really don’t care. 

Yet, the more I’ve spoken with classmates, the more I believe that the detractors have it all wrong.  They care a lot, but important information rarely gets to students through all the clutter of emails, posters, and new articles.  And then when it does actually manage to cut through, the information is presented in an incredibly unreadable way. 

My experience on the University Space Priorities Working Group (USPWG) has been particularly illustrative because it illuminates another critical aspect of this issue.  For those who are unfamiliar, NYU’s 2031 plan has come under immense criticism from vocal parts of the Greenwich Village and NYU community.  Numerous schools have held votes of no confidence to express their disappointment.  The USPWG was created a year ago to be the honest broker in negotiating a broad consensus among these disparate groups.  One of our central tenants as a body has been transparent communication.  Any documents we receive related to the development of the 2031 plan is immediately shared on our website as well as correspondence we received from outside groups or school administrators. 

While our transparency hasn’t disquieted many of the voices of discontent, we have learned some valuable lessons.  People do appreciate being able to find and review the materials.  People also find that it is sometimes inconvenient to parse through the numerous documents in order to get a sense of what’s happened so far.  They would like the data to be more focused and more understandable.  Students repeated all of these sentiments.

So all of this got me thinking.  Maybe the simple fix (if there ever is such a thing) to increasing community engagement in universities is through open data.  The issues expressed earlier are common to all types of data.  Data must be shareable.  If it’s not, then its value is sacrificed.  So could NYU build an open data platform to distribute this information and generate stakeholder feedback about its contents?  Might unlocking data be the key to bringing together the many disconnected and siloed microcommunities here at NYU?  How could NYU leverage open data to create a more inclusive governance system?  I’m not sure, but I look forward to exploring those questions and finding some answers next year.  

Data, Accountability, and Teacher Evaluations

by Corey Blay 

As a former teacher, I’m extremely familiar with the fear, anxiety, and confusion teacher evaluations and observations generally elicit.  Like many in my position, I didn’t always feel like the observations truly aligned with what took place in the classroom.  In specific, I often recall feeling as if the aims of the lesson were fully being comprehended by the observer.  How could someone understand how students were activating their prior knowledge in ways they hadn’t beforehand to answer new and challenging questions that forced them to think critically about the information before them?  More important, how could he/she know my students were learning without ever asking my students?  

I admit that I had the luxury to even ponder these questions or demand that my observer grasped these ideas, because I taught at an expensive elite private school in New York City.  I had control of my curriculum and therefore a sense of justified entitlement that my lessons needed to be understood on their own terms.  My friends who taught in charter or public schools didn’t have the same luxury.  They were accountable to state standards and tests.  They were being graded on the performance of their students on said tests.  Still, despite our different experiences, we shared a similar concern – what data should be used in order to properly evaluate the effectiveness of a teacher and development of one’s students?

Data is a word often referenced within education reform circles.  KIPP, Teach For America, and Mayor Bloomberg all expouse its virtues.  But “data” is nonetheless a broad term.  What does it represent and what does it tell us?  More relevant to me, how do we move from a focus on data to one on open data? 

Having worked with some of the organizations I referenced earlier, I know firsthand that the data aggregated is immense and overwhelming.  It’s almost impossible to differentiate the salient data from the unimportant data.  Furthermore, that rarely gets shared outside of a single organization.  Each educational organization owns its own data.  Cross collaboration that utilizes this data is a rarity.  Consequently, the potential value of that data and its relevance to student performance and teacher effectiveness fails to be realized. 

The solution is simple to me – unleash the data and unlock its potential.  Make all this siloed data open.  Share with one another.  Let’s people find creative ways to analyze that information and reconstruct understanding.  Develop best practices collaboratively.  I wanted to do some research to see if I was the only one who believed so. 

There weren’t as many search hits as I would have liked, but there does seem to be an emerging consensus that open data can be used to improve teacher effectiveness.  However, it should be noted that most of the efforts already out there seem to focus on creating new content for educators.  Coursera recently has moved into the teacher professional development, and Data.gov has opened up lots of data related to education.   There are all great steps in the right direction, but I can’t help but wonder when we, as educators, will embrace the notion that open data is the true key to keeping teachers accountable and encouraging creative new solutions to professional development.   

 

Let’s Talk about MOOC’s

by Corey Blay 

I’ve heard many senior administrators throughout NYU mention the importance of understanding – and competing with – Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC’s) in various closed-door meetings this year.  Usually the conversation centers around the threat MOOC’s pose to the current business model of universities and graduate schools.  For those who are unfamiliar, MOOC’s, such as Cousera and Udemy, are free classes about literally thousands of subjects that can readily be found on the Internet.  Why is it that prestigious universities like NYU or Harvard could feel threatened by free courses?  And why is it that other universities, like the City University of New York, may be openly embracing them?

These issues ultimately center around the question, “What is the value of an education?”  American society has largely come to agree with the basic premise that an education is important, even if there isn’t consensus about exactly why.   Elite American universities, which are often considered the best in the world and often possess large endowments, are free to define that value proposition as they wish.  Is it the quality of one’s classmates?  The inherent intellectual capacity of one’s peers?  The number of tenured professors who are considered leaders in their respective fields?  The variety of disciplines one could study? 

MOOC’s value proposition is much simpler – the value of an education is learning more about something you are interested in.  Implicit in the business model of most colleges and universities is the assumption that knowledge will be acquired in a set period of time.  MOOC’s flip that notion on its head and says that students can – and maybe should – learn at their own pace.  The learner is the focus, rather than the teacher.  Again, the business model of our current system of education is an illustrative counterpoint – the teacher is the center of our traditional view of the classroom. 

So what do teachers think of MOOC’s?  This infographic from the Huffington Post tracks teacher acceptance of online courses:

 

 

While the percentage of faculty members has remained steady, there is a growing perception that the education received in comparable.  This trend explains why universities are beginning to question and worry about the impact of MOOC’s on their business models.  Broad-based acceptance of MOOC’s have begun to make them a viable option.  Some universities like MIT, UPenn, NYU, and Harvard offer open courses.  Still, other university systems, such as UCal and CUNY, are considering bolder steps to integrate online classes into their business models. 

Let me end with this note – I began this post by questioning the value of an education.  Looking back at the points I just laid out, the answer is very simple.  We don’t know. And we don’t even know where to start.  And that’s why I’ve been so mystified that the conversation about MOOC’s within places like Stern and other parts of NYU have mainly happened between administrators, a few teachers, and only recently students.  We need a more comprehensive conversation to tackle the many interrelated questions that MOOC’s help raise.  I hope next school year we begin that conversation in earnest as a community of open-minded learners.  

 

Reflections on Open Pedagogy

by Corey Blay 

Sitting in Gov 3.0, I often find myself on the cutting edge of pedagogical innovation.  We talk about open data and its applications in a flipped classroom structure that invites the students as participants in a learning community to leverage their skills and collaborative to construct new knowledge.  Listening to open data advocates and engineers alike I can hear a true excitement about innovation new modes of learning and educating – an approach that is iterative, self-directed, yet community focused. 

Yet, I’ve also wondered aloud how “new” any of this actually is.  While elements of lean start up and computer programming are relatively new in their applications, the spirit behind their respective modes of learning are definitely not new.  Indeed, I would posit that Open Pedagogy is a natural outgrowth and new iteration of progressive education.  Let’s uncover why.

Open pedagogy employs, “a wide variety of options… from open online courses to even open online projects.  Open pedagogy encourages educators blended learning opportunities and integration of technology in all curriculum [sic].  Open pedgagogy also promotes collaboration within communities of learning and alternative methods of learning like inquiry based projects.”  Inquiry based learning is at the core of progressive education.  And utilizing tools, be they wooden blocks or an iPad, to construct new understanding also is a core tenant of progressive education.  When I hear these descriptions I can’t help but think about John Dewey and his impact of modern education. 

In fact, this summary notes “while instruction in process-oriented composition classrooms clearly shares many elements with the Open Source method, few pedagogies have engaged fully with the implications of that method.”  I found this quote to be truly fascinating, because up until this point I hadn’t heard any advocate of open pedagogy acknowledge its historical roots.  In fact, after one class I had a rather animated conversation about this very subject where I was told emphatically there are no examples of this type of learning anywhere.

That statement is clearly untrue, but I have often wondered why it is seemingly so important for open pedagogy to be a new construction – why it has to be untied to the history of pedagogy that precedes this moment or technology innovation.  Not only do I find that notion to be antithetical to Open Pedagogy’s core element of iterative design, I also just find it short sighted.  If we have more data points available to help better design an open ed approach to pedagogy – use them!  In the end, it will only help us become better educators and learners.  

 

Can Social Media Change Education

Can Social Media Change Education?

By Corey Blay

For the past 3 months, NYU Stern has continually, and excitedly, notified its students that it will soon be moving to Google Plus.  However, the reaction among the MBAs has been decidedly mixed.  Some who are more technologically literate welcome the change with open arms.  Others have met the news with a simple shrug.  Most aren’t even aware of the change.  However, with this move Stern has accelerated its steady embrace of social media over the past several years.   

Nonetheless, there remain real questions about the impact social media can have on the student experience at Stern, NYU, or schools throughout the country.  It’s no secret that educators and schools have been reluctant to adapt to the changing world of social media.  Of course there are notable exceptions.  Johns Hopkins and Duke have created opportunities for students to develop content for interactive websites that offer a first-hand account about student life at each respective school.  These types of efforts have been heralded as both visionary and in touch with the demands of prospective students.  While current students may be empowered to share their perspectives through these tools and prospective student may appreciate an “unfiltered” lens into the life of a student, I’m hesitant to declare that the education system has been truly disrupted by these innovations.

Is transformational change of education through technological innovation even possible?  To be honest, I’m skeptical of this claim.  Books, printers, and computers were all undoubtedly important technological advancements within education, but none of these things fundamentally restructured.  However, they all expanded educational opportunity and access to an increasing number of students.  They allowed different types of learners to be accepted within the academy (the growth and diversification of engineering is a great example of this).  Social media is simply the next step in the evolution of technological integration within schools. 

As a tool, social media offers numerous benefits to students and educators alike.  Chiefly, these tools, whether it’s Twitter or Google Plus, have the promise of creating interactive learning communities that leverage the productivity, intellect, and ingenuity of its members to create something of pedagogical, academic, or even social value.  Before these benefits can be realized, however, schools must answer more idiosyncratic and challenging questions regarding their digital strategy.  What are your social goals?  What resources (people, content, capacity) do you have at your disposal?  What investments do you need to make in order to implement your strategy?  Do you intend for your digital strategy to align with your pedagogical practices.

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions.  Social media can be a tool for educational innovation or it can be an instrument for effective marketing.  However, every school should ask these questions of themselves.  I suspect had Stern demonstrated it had engaged in a deep investigation of its social media strategy and goals, the student body would have had a more positive reaction to the news about Google Plus.  Luckily, there is still time for that conversation to happen.  Maybe Dean Henry can talk about this at his next Google Plus Hangout or Google Talk.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Liberating Education

Beth Noveck and Daniel Goroff’s report, “Information for Impact: Liberating Nonprofit Sector Data,” resonated with me in a deeply personal way, both as a former teacher and burgeoning educational entrepreneur. Earlier this year I attended a conference held by the Annie E. Casey Foundation about innovating the social sector through investment in human capital, and the topic of the 990 was brought up repeatedly as an area in dire need of reform. Since I am in the process of founding my own nonprofit, a private middle school for boys in Harlem, rooted in cooperative learning and community-based collaboration, learning how much the 990 stifles collaboration and cooperation was particularly disappointing.

Upon deeper reflection, I also realized how valuable the report and its framework is to innovating our education system. Simply replace the word “nonprofit” with “education” and the argument still holds true. Our education system is the envy of the world, and its importance to our countries competitiveness is only heightening. In the world of charter and private schools, “donors of wealth and influence will demand greater accountability” from schools than ever before. A quick study of education reform in NYC alone indicates this is true.

Yet, one of my chief frustrations with education as a whole is how siloed information about student growth and program effectiveness still is. In fact, one of the chief lamentations you hear from education policy and practitioners is the lack of collaboration and information sharing. Not only are the metrics of student performance different between schools, but only portions of that data are made publically available. This prohibits the potential for deeper analysis and the development of best practices that could be shared throughout the education system.

The problem is actually more acute and more localized than information sharing between schools – information doesn’t get shared nearly enough within schools. I saw this countless times as an educator. Student profiles, including information about academic performance, learning issues, and disciplinary problems, are only accessible to administrators. Teachers know stunningly little about their students at the beginning of the year. Rather than having individualized learning plans created for them, students have to continually adjust to the individualized quirks of each teacher.

The 990 problem for education is student data. We’ve made huge strides in making aggregated data shareable. Organizations like the Annie E. Casey Foundation and Lucile Packard Foundation have been leaders in this field. Organizations, like 4eyeson.me or Kinvolved, demonstrate how easily this data can be turned into useable data for parents and students alike. I believe this data also must be liberated and shared with critical stakeholders inside of the school. The focus needs to be squarely on innovating new ways to aggregate and distribute student data within school, helping teachers understand their students as learners and individuals before they ever step in the classroom, creating consistent metrics for student assessment, and empowering students to use this information to take control of their own development.

The primary beneficiary of any education reform should be the students, not systems or policy makers. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget that. My simple argument is that open data can and will help teachers to meet student needs more effectively and empower students to own their own academic and socioemotional development – so long as the metrics are clear, consistent, and shareable. I’m looking forward to diving deeper into this issue over the remainder of this course.

Transformational Change and Open Data in Higher Education

By Corey Blay 

With MOOC's like Khan Academy revolutionizing the way education is distributed to learners, I sat down with Adam Brandenburger, Vice Dean of the Stern School of Business, and Jessy Hsieh, Assistant Director for Graduate Education at Stern, to talk about how graduate schools are responding to new technological changes and opportunities.  The conversation takes a decidely philosophical tone and touches on how business schools can help liberate information, make knowledge more available to people, and enhance their educational value at the same time.  

Govt 3.0 Interview with Brandenburger and Hsieh

 

Open Data, Culture, and Global Competitiveness

By Corey Blay 

One of the more interesting points raised in our last class is the question of cultural difference.  While the United States has steered a global effort to share government data, encourage collaboration between countries, and foster deeper level of participation among citizens, other countries have taken a more tentative approach.  Russia’s choice to join the Open Government Partnership (OGP) and how it will choose to leverage that partnership presents a fascinating case study in the how open data appropriation differs by country and cultural norms. 

Russia’s Open Government initiative is rather labyrinthian and inward looking.  Its priorities include fighting corruption, holding government agencies accountable, and creating favorable climates for investment and entrepreneurship.  These principles diverge from those stated by President Obama in the United States’ OGP action plan where he calls for increasing public integrity, managing public resources more effectively, and improving public services.  Despite these differences, Russia is energetically pursuing membership in the OGP.  Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev announced on December 13, 2012 that Russia will join the organization soon.  Given President Obama’s leadership in creating the OGP, the United States’ enthusiastic participation is to be expected.  Still the question remains, How can these divergent sets of principles both define the shared goal of championing open data?

It may be more illustrative to examine the decision making of a country that has chosen not to join the OGP: Ireland.  According to an OGP blog post, Ireland is portrayed as resisting even simple efforts to make government data more accessible.  Yet, a quick Google search indicates that there is a vibrant open source community in Ireland.  Non-profits like ActiveCitizen and companies like Dubl:nked collaborate to create useful applications that improves people’s quality of life by aggregating open data.  Maybe Ireland hesitance is easily explained by the fact that it has suffered through a devastating recession since 2008. 

A deeper analysis reveals the issue may be more complex than simple economics.  Instead, I would argue the true answer is found between the nexus of a country’s economic standing and educational system.  According to the aforementioned blog post, Ireland is well regarded for having the human capital needed to sustain a knowledge economy.  Its highly-skilled workforce attracted multinational companies and strengthened Ireland’s economic standing.  In fact, Ireland is further reforming its education system to ensure its students are best prepared to find gainful, long-term employment, and private companies like ALISON are helping use MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) to deliver free certification courses for adults.  Universitas 21 ranks the higher educational systems of different countries.  The United States came in 1^st.  Ireland ranked 16^th, and Russia was 32^nd. 

Contrary to Ireland, Russia’s higher education system is not well designed for its economic needs.  It has undergone several waves of reform and modernization since the 1990’s.  However, Russia’s economic liberalization has proven much more stubborn, and Russia has seen a significant portion of its talent leave for opportunities in other countries.  In this light, Russia’s goal of creating a climate for investment and entrepreneurship becomes incredibly logical.   It needs to join the OGP in order to become globally competitive.  Among a host of other benefits, membership affords Russia the opportunity to divine strategic uses of open data to improve accountability and deliver educational resources to its workforce.  While it is true that Ireland may soon join the OGP as well, it can afford to do on its own terms.  Russia can’t.  Its economic and educational competitiveness is literally at stake, and Russia lacks the infrastructure needed to compete on its own. 

But let me return to the point I raised in the beginning of this post.  Adoption of open data platforms and standards is not just about global competitiveness, but also culture.  Competitiveness explains why countries may choose to join the OGP.  Culture explains how countries decide to adopt those standards.  The state of a country’s education system illuminates the divergent challenges each country faces. 

Ruairi Quinn, Ireland’s minister for education and skills, stated simply, “Many of us grew up in a household where there was a (great) value on education.”  Galina Belaya, a dean at Moscow’s Russian State Humanities University, shared, “We [Russia] are an illiterate country of peasants who still have a complex about being poorly educated.  This is one of Russia’s big problem.”   While Russian’s eagerness to join the OGP now makes greater sense, it remains to be seen it can live up to its principles and maximize the power of participation that open data holds for average citizens. 

Leveraging the U.S.'s Open Government Model for Education to Improve Russia's Plan

“By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world,” stated President Barack Obama, Address to Congress, on February 24, 2009. As of 2010, our nation was ranked 12th among 26 developed nations when taking into account the number of 25- to 24-year-olds with college degrees. 70 percent of our high school graduates enroll in college but only 57 percent end up graduating within six years. This problem becomes strikingly worse when we zero in on low-income students and minorities. Thirty percent of African-Americans and less than 20 percent of Latinos (ages 25-34) have an associates degree or higher. We were once a leader in academic excellence and now we are lagging farther and farther behind. The economic implications of this achievement gap are horrendous, but that’s another conversation for another day. 

In effort to achieve President Obama’s lofty 2020 goal, the Open Government plan focused on education was created and disseminated.  This Plan was recently modified in 2012 to include the following agenda items: (1) Transparency: Federal Student Integrated Student View; (2) Participation: Public Challenges and Contests; and (3) Collaboration: Connected Communities of Practice. I believe that significant change can, and will, be made when we specifically focus on amplifying participation amongst those in and out of the four walls of a class room.

Educational communities need to be engaged and empowered to have conversations about education reform. Heightened participation means heightened accountability and civic engagement. However, if we expect citizens to participate, we must equip them with the knowledge to do so. Open-sourced, continuously updated, and understandable information has the potential to change the culture of communication around education. This participatory process may allow citizens, regardless of their geographic location, age, race, income status, voice their opinions concerning the U.S.’s educational agenda items. The U.S. Government has aligned itself with this theory as technologies are becoming increasingly available to encourage public participation and collaboration.

On the most basic level, Open Government has pushed access to information about education via their online platform. For example, just now, by visiting this website and in turn being directed to the ED.gov blog, I learned that in a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Secretary Arne Duncan stated that providing flexibility for states under the jurisdiction of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has prompted positive results, particularly in terms of serving high-risk students. Now that I have access to this information, I should theoretically feel so empowered to act on it. Three individuals have engaged in conversation, as they have left comments below the article. Now if only we can reach the millions of others wanting their voice to be heard... This Open Government platform is a good start but there are still hundreds of thousands of conversations to be had if we want to achieve the highest level of college achievement by 2020.

So, how does the U.S.’s Participation model for education apply to the Russian government’s new Open Government initiative? After ruminating and researching for a lengthy amount of about what it exactly is that Russia is doing to advance academic achievement, I have circled back to the belief that most humans ultimately are chasing after the same thing. In a competitive, global market, we simply want, rather need, to be the best. We want to make the most money. We want to lead the pack. A nation’s ability to do these things depends on the quality of its people. The U.S. is certainly not doing that in terms of college graduation rates. The U.S. is also failing our K-12 students with only 75 perecent graduating from high school. One million students per year do not graduate on time. Most alarming, of these students, each drop out costs our economy $240,000 over his or her lifetime.

Things are not looking much better for Russia. The Russian education system has been ranked 20th by The Economist. The U.S. has a slight advantage at 17th. These rankings bear much weight as they determine our positions and define our success in the modern world. According to the World Bank's Country Program Snapshot, Russia’s outcome may be due to the fact that public expenditure levels of about four percent of GDP are allocated towards education. This means that Russia invests less in education than the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average of 5.4 percent. Russia’s government budget for education is reported to be 11.9 percent compared to the OECD’s country average of 13.2 percent. Tertiary education also receives more funding support versus primary or secondary education, which lay the foundation for academic achievement. Efficient public spending on education must be enhanced.

While it remains unclear what exactly the Russian government’s initiatives are around open-sourcing information about education, aside from the statement in their Draft of the National Plan that "education" is included as a part of their municipal services that will be rendered electronically, drawing parallels between this nation and the U.S. can still be tackled. In fact, it is a rather simple exercise if we are to draw out a minimum viable solution for how we can apply lessons learned from the U.S.'s Open Government plan to Russia's evolving plan.

The bottom line is that on a human level, teachers are teachers, parents are parents, and students are students, regardless of latitude and longitude. These individuals have the same universal needs to voice their opinions and have access to information that will strengthen both in and out of the four walls of a classroom. Education systems around the world suffer from the same issues with inadequate funding and resources, poor teacher quality, teaching to the test, the list could go on forever. And individuals around the world have experienced education in some capacity -- whether they have received their PhD or have never step foot in a classroom. At some point a lesson was learned. On the human level, whether you are a citizen of Russia or of the U.S., it seems rationale to assume that creating a more inclusive platform via Open Government to discuss this issue of education would be welcomed. 

Furthermore, what is clear to me is this. Providing information for Russian individuals engaging in education is not only necessary, but imperative. Secretary Duncan’s goals for increased transparency, participation, and collaboration in the education community have driven the U.S.'s Open Data’s success thus far. The Russian Open Data initiative would benefit significantly by following in line. Regardless of a developing country’s GDP, what currency is honored, or what language is spoken, education lays the foundation for social and economic success. Making information more transparent can only strengthen the likelihood of developing strong, contributing members to society. Opening new channels for communication and providing a platform for innovative ways to share knowledge will allow for better governmental decision making, collaboration across educational communities, and most importantly academic success for students in both the U.S. and in Russia.

Alexandra Meis