Reading the web this morning I came across two interesting statements. The first was that online learning is not as good as “an inspiring teacher” but it was available 24 hours a day while the teacher was only available a few hours a week and had to be shared with other students during most of that time. Then I came across this Mother Jones post that says motivation is the critical difference between online and face to face education. Not motivation by the teacher, but the motivation provided by scheduled classes, assignments, tests, and so on. I just had the discussion with my son about “required” courses in college. We like what we “choose” to take and dislike (like less?) what we “have” to take. But we take it anyway, complete the assignments, perhaps (hopefully?) learn something in the process, and move on. When you know that not attending class means that your seat is empty and everyone will know it, you go to class, even if you don’t feel like it. But online, skipping class is a personal choice, and normally only the teacher knows it. Do we work on personal motivation or making online participation more public to improve this situation? Or both?

What should we be teaching? How can we improve teaching? How can we evaluate teaching? In this brief interview L. Dee Finks brings together a number of his well-respected ideas about higher education teaching and learning. It is worth reading. It is worth implementing.

Every time you email a file to yourself so you can pull it up on your friend’s laptop, Tim Berners-Lee sheds a single tear.

I just came across the concept of FedEx days. I read about it in this blog about professional development at a K-12 school. http://lynhilt.com/inspiration-delivers/

Then I did some research. First I watched the videos that were mentioned in the blog.

1. The RSA Animate version of Pink’s Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us:  http://vimeo.com/15488784

2. Two questions that can change your life: http://vimeo.com/8480171

3. What’s your sentence?  http://vimeo.com/14888034
3b. Final “What’s your sentence” video :  http://vimeo.com/18347489

Then I jumped to wikipedia to look up FedEx Days Atlassian and found NOTHING! (Atlassian is the Australian company that came up with the FedEx day idea.) Gasp! I had found something so new it wasn’t in wikipedia?  I knew I needed to spread the word.

What would happen if an institution of Higher Education went to a four day “class meeting” week and used the fifth day for autonomous learning? Like Google’s 20% time or McKnight’s 15% time at 3M? No scheduled meetings. No expectation of working on homework, no class readings, just learn on our own. And that would mean almost everyone, not just the students. Faculty, researchers, staff, students would all take a break and be autonomous, deciding what their goals were, who they worked with, and what they did.

The FedEx day is a single day (24 hours from Thursday afternoon to Friday afternoon) where everyone works on anything they want, with whomever they want. The only requirement is that, just as FedEx delivers over night, participants in a FedEx day must deliver something at the closing session (party?) on Friday afternoon.

The 20% time is a chance to work on something over a longer period, but still autonomously. At Google, Atlassian, and 3M, things developed during the 20% time became major products. For example, gmail at Google and Post-It Notes at 3M both came out of 20% time projects.

Before reading any of this I had gone through my calendar and marked one day a week as a “No Meetings” day. I think I was realizing my own need for FedEx days, 20% time, and autonomy. There is so much happening in my area, educational technology, that I have to set aside time for me to reflect, learn, and produce things that will make today better than yesterday for me and others.

My sentence seems to be my vilberg.com signature: Spreading seeds of education, technology, and more. FedEx Days seem to be a “more.” Let me know if this seed finds any fertile ground in you.

<ASIDE> In my model, the 20% time at a University should be on Wednesday. Then classes would be paired Monday and Thursday or Tuesday and Friday, giving 2 and then 3 days off between classes. Currently we have the strange Tuesday and Thursday classes with 1 and 4 days off between the two sessions: quite unsound pedagogically. </ASIDE>

“Online education is in danger of replicating a system that isn’t working.” Andrew K. Miller - http://tinyurl.com/4xhpvfp

Please set aside 30 minutes to listen to this NPR report (from Talk of the Nation) on Don Tapscott rethinking how we teach today’s students.  What changes have you made in your teaching in the past five years? What incremental changes are you making this coming year?

“We need to move toward a collaborative model of learning that’s student focused, [that’s] highly customized and that is a model appropriate for a new generation that learns differently.”

NPR Story: http://tinyurl.com/3u4frgm

(Source: NPR)

Have you heard of Massively Open Online Courses?  Stanford is offering an Artificial Intelligense (AI) course during the fall quarter that is open, for free, to anyone. 200 students will take the course at Stanford. They hope to get thousands more taking it online, for a certificate, not course credit. This is the two minute “trailer” for the course.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDIRwYHo0KM

What do you think, are the professors crazy or visionaries?

Take 10 minutes and watch the funny stand-up routine Life After Death by PowerPoint 2010 at http://youtu.be/KbSPPFYxx3o

(Source: youtube.com)