Current Issues in Education

Foreword: The Final Installment

Samantha Adams Becker — 2021-01-07

This final installment of the ShapingEDU special issue was inspired by the concept of a “sibling” body of work to compliment the first publication installment. The themes of both bodies of work overlap in their calls to action, yet each article stands solidly on their own. Educators, learning designers, and education leaders have felt the responsibility of helping to usher in the right solutions that will spur student engagement, inclusion and success. Eleven articles unpack the various intertwined journeys we must embark on together to bolster digital equity and inclusion, to recognize all forms of learning and to spur an even more harmonious connections between our institutions and the workforce of the future.

Designing Learning Experiences for the Future of Learning in the Digital Age: A Proposed Framework

Derek Thurber — 2021-01-07

While our understanding of how we learn has grown exponentially, our knowledge of how to incorporate these ideas when designing instruction has not. This paper proposes a new framework for designing learning experiences which build on existing instructional design models but also incorporates a deep understanding of humans, how we learn, what motivates us, what causes us to lose interest, and what instruction will get us to remember and use our knowledge. The learning experience design framework includes three parts which form a continuous cycle of development and improvement: planning, creating, and refining, all informed by key situational factors. While non-linear, each part is further divided into two sections to address both sides of designing a learning experience: the learning and the experience. These sections can guide anyone into designing better learning experiences for the future of learning in the digital age.

Inclusive Access for All

Marcia Dority Baker — 2021-01-07

Inclusive Access provides a framework for digital course material delivered via the learning management system (LMS) day-one to students. This platform assists instructors with selecting current, quality, affordable material, and supports learning analytics by providing engagement data in Canvas. The University of Nebraska Provost office has funded an initial series of grants to support open educational resources (OER) initiatives at the Lincoln, Kearney, and Omaha campuses for several years. The vast majority of these dollars went to incentivize faculty in the adoption of OER. The OER and Inclusive Access pilots are ready to mature into a service supported by Academic Technologies in ITS at the University of Nebraska. As the launch of the 2019-20 academic year, the services that began as pilots were ready for prime time, which was critical for scaling these services during the COVID-19 pandemic. As the Fall 2020 semester completes in a hybrid, de-densified environment, we have even more data to show the successful adoption of OER and Inclusive Access platform made a difference for both our students and instructors as courses moved online. Initially there was excitement about using inclusive access platforms to help save students money and provide content the first day of the semester. Now our faculty across the NU system are using OER in innovative ways to connect with their students. The Academic Technologies teams at the University of Nebraska will continue to gather feedback from the faculty and students we support, tweaking the services as need be. The initiatives have been successful, and we look forward to hearing from more faculty members who report: “it just works!”

Inclusive Campus Environments: An Untapped Resource for Fostering Learner Success

Susan Whitmer — 2021-01-07

The purpose of this paper is to consider new possibilities for higher education, where the principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) provide a framework for creating digital and physical environments that honor every learner’s unique lived experiences and support the expectations of learners for their individual life goals. Each learner brings their own unique lived experience; multi-level intersectionality; and cognitive and social learning variabilities to their educational journey. Many of these present obstacles to their realizing successful learning outcomes. Understanding the lived experiences in the learner’s journey and creating environments that remove barriers to learning requires a deep understanding of inclusion, which is central to the framework of UDL. How can we create a campus that promotes a sense of belonging, community, and well-being — a campus that has the potential to increase the number of learners who persist to completion? It begins with honoring the uniqueness of every learner.

Helping STEM Students Thrive: Adult Learning Pathways

Patrice Torcivia Prusko — 2021-01-07

Surrounded by stories of underrepresented and first-generation students lagging behind or switching out of STEM majors, three women saw an opportunity to shift the narrative. They created a new online speaker series, The Next 10 Years: Helping STEM Students Thrive; where faculty, staff, and students could share ideas, learn from one another, and build a community. They were all members of the Women in STEM Cooperative, which consists of a group of volunteers who are dedicated to advancing women in STEM in their respective communities. It is now in its third season with participants from 56 institutions, eight organizations, four countries, and 23 states.

The Digitization of White Women’s Tears

Niki Messmore — 2021-01-07

Social media is a digital mirror of society. Across disciplines, scholars have written of social justice as it exists and as it should be within higher education and beyond. Looking to social media spaces where higher education practitioners and scholars interact with one another, we can see how scholars who discuss social justice initiatives can themselves perpetuate systems of oppression. Utilizing Mamta Motwani Accapadi’s (2007) article “When White Women Cry: How White Women's Tears Oppress Women of Color” as a foundation, I reflect through poetry on how white women in positions of power within higher education engage in harmful behavior in digital spaces. Finally, I provide recommendations on how fellow white women can disrupt these acts of oppression.

Innovatively Preparing the Teacher Workforce: Virtual Learning Environments

Anni Reinking — 2021-01-07

As one of the hardest professions, teaching can lead to burnout, stress, and other physical and emotional reactions throughout one’s professional life. However, implementing the innovative practice of training teachers in virtual learning environments can reduce stress and increase the success of the teacher workforce. Therefore, in this study, the researchers focused on a small group of novice teachers and teacher candidates in the Midwest in order to reduce initial stress during teaching segments. The findings indicate that practice and coaching, within a virtual learning environment, can reduce stress. However, feedback and peer interactions are also essential.

Self-Mapped Learning Pathways: Theoretical Underpinnings and Practical Course Design for Individualized Learning

Matt Crosslin — 2021-01-07

In the Fall of 2014, several universities came together to offer a unique “dual-layer” open online course. This course was designed with two complete layers from two different course design modalities (instructivism and connectivism). Learners were granted the freedom to create an individualized pathway through the course involving either layer, both layers, or a custom combination of both layers at any given point in the course. Since these options gave learners the ability to map their own pathway as a learning process, this course structure is now referred to as Self-Mapped Learning Pathways. The goal of this design methodology is to allow for true individualization of the learning process for each learner. This article will examine the theoretical underpinnings of Self-Mapped Learning Pathways design methodology. Additionally, several design considerations will be suggested based on practical application as well as research results.

A Collective Case-Study on Navigating Faculty Bilingualism, with Reflections on the Research Experience

Laura Geringer — 2021-01-07

This article is both a research paper and a reflection piece, describing the core of a research project about examining faculty experience and some of the author’s related self-learning and reflection fueled by the project. This qualitative case-study asked: for bilingual faculty whose native language and academic discipline is French, in what ways is language intertwined in their experience of higher education in English-language universities in the United States Midwest? Semi-structured interviews with three individuals suggested this multifaceted idea: for these faculty members, their experience of higher education is intertwined with 1) their relationships with individuals and groups of various linguistic characteristics; 2) complexities of identity/personality; and 3) power dynamics. Parallel to this research about faculty experience was the author’s experiential learning about the research process and reflections on her relationship to research and practice in the field of education. This article sketches this learning alongside the research study.

Catalyzing a Culture of Care and Innovation Through Prescriptive and Impact Analytics To Create Full-Cycle Learning

David Kil — 2021-01-07

Student success, both during and after college, is central to the mission of higher education. Within the higher-education and, more specifically, the student-success context, the core raison d'être of machine learning (ML) is to help institutions achieve their social mission in an efficient and effective manner. While there should be synergy among people, processes, and ML, this synergy is not often realized because ML algorithms do not yet connect the dots on fully understanding and strategically fostering student success. Transitioning from risk to impact prediction is a catalyst for institutional transformation, which can lead to continuous learning and student-success process innovation. This paper explores how ML can complement and facilitate organizational transformation in promoting a culture of care and innovation through virtuous full-cycle learning.

Thinking Backward: A Knowledge Network for the Next Century

Tom Haymes — 2021-01-07

The standards of educational information exchange are still firmly rooted in a Newtonian paradigm that emphasizes strict rules of information exchange. With the explosion of information since World War II, and especially its accessibility through the mechanism of the internet, this paradigm has become a barrier to effective exchanges of information at all levels. Vannevar Bush recognized this problem as early as 1945 and provided a roadmap to addressing it in his famous As We May Think. Douglas Engelbart and Theodore Holmes Nelson applied Bush’s vision to technology but we have never fully realized its potential in part due to our Newtonian information paradigm. This article argues that what Bush, Engelbart, and Nelson proposed is essentially an Einsteinian (relativistic) notion of information flows with tools specifically designed to facilitate the augmentation of human knowledge. It further posits what such a system of knowledge exchange might look like and how we might begin to build it.

The Castle and The Paths: A Story with Two Endings

A. Michael Berman — 2021-01-07

The future of higher education is imagined here in the form of a parable. The reader is challenged to rethink the role and purpose of higher education and the potential paths for evolution in the future.