First Response to the NMC Horizon Report 2016 for Higher Education

Table of Contents for 2016 NME Horizon Report 

 Hi!  Welcome to this blog.  I'm excited to share my thoughts about teaching, learning and thinking here!

This week I'd like to talk about the NMC Horizon report for Higher Ed 2016...which echoes a lot of similar reports & forcasts I've heard about at other venues (education conferences, etc.).

I'd like to share my perspective on this coming at this from where I sit: as a higher ed teacher, with a position that's fairly representative of the majority of today's higher ed instructors. 
To me, a lot of these reports seem to be aimed at an audience of administrators...leading me to feel like a crucial voice is missing: the faculty that will actually be in charge of implementing/ dealing with some of these long-term, slow-moving tsunamis in higher ed.

First a word about my perspective: I make my living as an adjunct professor - with all that that entails. In my 4+ years teaching, I've experienced being assigned courses  less than 24 hours before the course began, having courses cancelled weeks (and even days) before semesters begin, working at multiple schools, receiving zero benefits, working at multiple jobs, constantly looking for work, and receiving low pay for long hours of work.

I also love teaching, love my students, and feel very passionate about quality education.  I feel pissed off when I see teaching, learning and instruction not given top priority in higher ed.

I think for all Ed Tech issues, I always find myself asking: how does this impact teaching?  How does this impact learning?

Here's some things highlighted in the report that I found really exciting in terms of teaching & learning trends:

• Growing focus on measuring learning - as a teacher, I feel really excited about measuring course outcomes.  I have a sense of what resonates with students and what works, but since I specifically teach a (basically) remedial class, I'd love to dig into the data - what are the trends among students who end up in my class?  What happens to them 1, 2 or 3 years after taking it?  There are students that drop out of my class - what trends do we notice among those students?  At our school, all students have to pass a writing test to graduate - what a great metric to help us measure trends related to teaching, learning & student achievement!  
• Increasing use of Blended Learning - Yes!  Apparently, research says that blending e-learning & face to face learning improves learning outcomes - so let's do it!  But as an instructor, I'd like a boatload of paid training to learn best practices, new technologies & pedagogical frameworks for this new style of teaching.
• Personalized learning & Adaptive learning technologies.  Again - yes!  If done in a quality way, I love these ideas.  My classes often have huge range of abilities: students who are strong writers but need more materials for their portfolios, ESL & international students, students who lack confidence/strategies in reading, writing  or time management, and students with learning differences.   Programs or course designs that allow students to move at their own pace, tackling challenges germaine to their needs, and providing instant support on their weaker areas - sounds great.   Only thing?  I'm not 100% sure how to design that for something as complex as a writing course.

Head-scratchers:

• A few of these just seemed a little silly to me - or at least, not terribly relevant to me as a writing teacher: Makerspaces?  Wearable technology? The Internet of Things? Redesigning learning spaces? collaboration between schools?  All right - sure, go ahead...but won't create a huge change in my pedagogy. 
• Some I didn't understand - is teaching complex thinking simply teaching communication...which is simply teaching infographics?   What exactly is an open educational resource?  How does a culture of innovation fit in with other learner needs & priorities?  (Like, should all majors be encouraging entrepreneurship? Is that even appropriate?).  I wish they'd given some examples of what a meaningfully redesigned learning space would be like, or OER, or informal learning.

Some of the stuff out there about MOOCs and flipped classrooms simply don't jibe with my concept of teaching. These all seem to address a style of education that Paolo Freire would probably call a "banking" style of education - wherein students are considered empty bank accounts to be filled with knowledge "deposited" by teachers.  For example, in a MOOC it's impossible for an instructor to assess anything more than simply regurgitating correct information.   A flipped class seems to be moving in the right direction - but in the case of a course like mine, where pretty much zero content needs to be "deposited" in students, and all learning happens in the context of activities, projects & reflections, "flipping" doesn't even make sense.

Areas of interest & critique:

• BYOD - I think this is such a cool concept - but how to make it work?  My students have a wide array of devices - and they vary widely in their tech-savvy-ness.   How can I teach one set of digital tools (like, say an annotating program) - if it will look different (and maybe not available) on each of their tools?!  What's more....my classrooms often have terrible wi-fi.  How can I teach technology if won't be able to use it?
• Teaching digital literacy - the biggest thing I noticed about this trend is that in order for us instructors to teach digital literacy, we must understand digital tools and how they can be used to inspire good teaching.   The report stressed that professional development of faculty would be key to this.  Again, I say - excellent!   Pay us or reward us for incorporating these innovations into our classroom.
• Competing models of education & informal learning - again, I say...cool.  As a working adult, I love the idea of education that's really targeted to me: online learning, non-semester schedules (why in the heck should I stop learning over the summer?!), certifications in topics that will make me workforce relevant (instead of having to pay for a whole masters degree).  Great.   These seem like big disrupters for universities that bank on being the only ones to provide "official" certification of learning.    As a teacher, I'm not sure how I feel about "vocational" training that may be too narrow to provide life-long skills to my students.  But as a consumer of education, I love the idea of being able to (affordably) choose the kind of education that makes sense to me!   (This is also the case for adaptive learning - as a prospective grad student, I'm looking into some of the for-profit online programs that offer this new model: pay by the semester and move as fast or as slow as you need to to complete the required skills.  I'm totally intrigued...but worried that I'd feel lonely without the community of other students moving through the material with me!)

Grrrrr.....

• "Rewarding Teaching."  Why am I growling?  First, because the report placed this challenge under "wicked challenges: Those that are complex to define, much less address."    For real?!  Second, because to me it seems like without fixing this one, none of these other changes will be possible.

First off, it seems like this challenge is well-defined & documented: traditional higher ed models, with the concept of research-driven tenure tracks, doesn't really reward teaching excellence.  However, these days over 75% of instructors are NOT on the tenure track - many are semester-to-semester contingent (like me!).  So instructors face precarious employment, low pay, and low institutional loyalty.   What's worse?  For those of us off the tenure track there's nowhere to move up (unless we jump tracks to administration).  So there's not only no reward for improved teaching...improving teaching is actually penalized.  Every instant I spend improving my teaching is  time I could've spent getting new work or teaching another course - I am paid by the quantity of what I teach - quality is basically not even measured. 

So, again - why am I growling?   I do  think this is a challenge.  But I definitely don't think this is a "wicked" challenge.  In fact, I personally think solving it is pretty simple: treat instructors well. Pay them for their time.  Don't treat them as disposable.  Invest in their development.  Provide paths to increasingly stable and rewarding employment.  Make room for them to be part of the solution: let us be promoted to be teaching coaches, technology gurus, leaders in professional learning communities, etc.  There are even models out there to do this: some Canadian schools have simply implemented two kinds of tenure: research tenure & teaching tenure.  One question, of course, is how to pay for it.  However, schools have plenty of competing priorities: new buildings, athletic facilities, dorms, technology upgrades, new administrative initiatives, new programs.  Leaders are always making decisions about where to put resources. From my perspective, without proper support for the educators in the classroom, almost all other technological advances will be practically impossible.   Of course, some schools are looking to technology to basically replace teachers & quality teaching.  But a school can decide to prioritize teaching & classroom learning -  it just requires a whole boatload of institutional will & leadership.