I'm reading Change.edu by Andrew Rosen, chairman and CEO of Kaplan, etc. See http://www.change-edu.com/ . He points out that many institutions are set up for elite, traditional-age students. He has it in for fancy buildings and posh accommodations as misuse of funds better spent elsewhere. That argument pains me. I retired from a campus that was a wasteland when I arrived in 1974. University of South Florida's Tampa campus started out as a large swath of land with a few discouraged-looking 1960's buildings. There was no landscaping to speak of. Just a couple of images...

Aerial view of the campus from 1960.

John and Grace Allen Administration Building 1960

There were more buildings by the time I got to campus in 1974, but most buildings were pale, slightly yellow-ish, dreary-looking... beige... The new library was opened to users in 1975 - and this recent photo from a bomb scare makes you wonder if the motive could be bringing down the uninspiring building itself. When they put up the Communications and Information Sciences Building that has just a bit of oomph, it was so unexpected, that some of us thought that they must have made a mistake and dropped the building on the wrong campus.

University of South Florida's Tampa Campus needed some building up! Construction has continued through tough economic times for higher education funding. Why? I remember being told that the construction industry is a beneficiary of state contracts. The construction industry lobbies for funding for building projects. (It might be hard to remember, but there was a bad patch for higher education in Florida around 1980. There was a year in there when the library bought no new books and cancelled many journal subscriptions and we brought our own pencils and pens because there was no supply money. Hard economic times are not new to higher education - at least not in Florida! )

This talk about aspirations and fancy buildings is going on here in Florida. There's an interesting political back and forth going on over architecture at the USF Polytechnic campus. USF Polytechnic does have aspirations to establish itself as a separate university. Big dreams include a contract with noted architect Santiago Calatrava. Santiago Calatrava to Design Cornerstone for USF Polytechnic's New Campus. (2009, June 16). There's a political battle underway developing yet one more stand-alone university. This contract's being attacked as a misuse of funds. Toothman, Mary. (2011, December 15). USF Poly Architect Calatrava Fires Back at Critic. from The Ledger.com

I think it would be a sorry choice to insist on dreary buildings.

Let's leave aside whether higher ed's physical campuses should be models of planning and development - or not. Let's leave aside the attack on the country club atmosphere of some institutions. Let's leave aside the issue of over-investment in college athletics. The increase of administrators and their salaries - oy vay! Rosen gives short shrift to some other things important to me. Rosen mentions the cost of maintaining libraries (p.70 "the immense expense that's required, in part, to maintain optimal humidity levels to preserve the millions of books in university libraries..." ). Yes, maintaining print resources and artifacts takes humidity control. Should universities get out of the business of preserving knowledge? Rosen doesn't acknowlege the importance of libraries and museums. There's a mention of universities as cultural centers, but again, he seems to place preservation and dissemination of culture in the area of frills. He doesn't mention much about scientific research. He mentions research almost as an aside. I'm not convinced that it's awful hat some universities are Harvard - or like Harvard - or focused on the liberal arts instead of workforce education, or provide a place where people gather to make advancements in the arts and sciences. I'd skip the first few chapters.

The main argument for me is that there are large numbers of people who's educational needs cannot be filled by traditional bricks and mortar universities and community colleges. We have to look to new solutions. I'm dismayed by the attack on the public's role in supporting higher education, but if the for-profits can be regulated to the extent that students get what they pay for, let for-profits be part of the solution. (Rosen does acknowledge that some schools have enticed under-prepared students to accept loans that they can never repay. Some schools fail to disclose that their degrees are not accredited. Some schools really are diploma mills. Rosen says that the marketplace will work this out as schools build reputation. However that doesn't provide restitution to those students who have spent time and money to without recieving the proper credentials.)

I was particularly interested in Chapter 6: The Learning Playbook: 2036 and the Coming Twenty-Five Years of Change in Higher Education. These seem to be the same arguments that proponents of open education are making. Rosen suggests that education will be more mobile; education will be more disaggregated; education will be more personalized; education will focus more on learning outcomes; education will be more accessible; education will be more global; education will be cooler. Well, education won't be more accessible if it costs too much. Students will be discouraged from pursuing higher education if there's no way to pay back student loans. Maybe educational opportunities ought to include traditional institutions, for-profit schools, and open education(?)

Ursula Franklin. Education as a production model.

I've been reading some material by Ursula M. Franklin and this caught my eye: " ...[P]roduction models are almost the only guides for public and private discussions. It is instructive to realize how oten in the past the prodction model has supplanted the growth model as a guide for public and private actions, even in areas in which the growth momdel might have been more fruitful or appropriate. Take, for instance, education. Although we all know that a person's growth in knowledge and discernment proceeds at an individual rate, schools and universities operate according to a production model. Not only are students tested and advanced according to a strictly specified schedule (at least at the university where I have taught for the last twenty years), but the prospective university students and their parents are frequently informed that different universities produced different "products." Within all production activities, complaints of users are taken very seriously, and those complaints can often result in modifications of the production line. Thus, adverse comments from captains of industry may results at universities in the establishment of extra courses such as entrepreneurship or ethics for engineers, spelling for chemists, or fundraising for art historians. The implication is that choosing a particular university, following a particular regimen, will turn the student into a specifiable and identifiable product. Yet all of us who teach know that the magic moment which teaching turns into learning depends on the human setting and the quality and example of the teacher - on factors that relate to a general environment of growth rather than on any design parameters set down externally. If there ever was a growth process, if there ever was a holistic process, a process that cannot be divided into rigid predetermined steps, it is education. " [p.22, 23] - Franklin, Ursula M. The Real World of Technology. CBC Massey Lectures. Revised edition. Toronto, Ontario: House of Anansi Press, Inc., 1999. Some judicious searching inside the book on Google Books or Amazon should get you a look at a few more pages. Her lectures are supposed to be available as audio files via CBC Radio: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/massey-archives/1989/11/07/1989-massey-lectures-the-real-world-of-technology/. Franklin's comments got me thinking about things we do at schools that are good for schools that might not be good for all students. Even outcome measures like "graduation rates" imply that graduating is the only goal even though a student might be interested in picking up a course or two.

Amazon: Check editions

I'm so embarrassed! I've been waiting for the paperback for Kenneth Crews Copyright Law for Librarians and Educators 3rd edition to come out. Amazon indicated that the paperback version will be available to ship as of December 19 - but right there on the same page was the Kindle version which I promptly ordered - only to find that the Kindle version is the 2nd edition. A little too fast with the clicking! Even going back and looking at the way the item is listed on the Amazon page, it's not clear that the Kindle version is the 2nd edition. There's even a listing of the ISBN number of the edition I want in the description area for the book - but I see now that the ISBNs are not attached to each version (hardback, paperback, Kindle edition). Lesson learned! Amazon might do well to hire a librarian or two to make the edition information more explicit.

Ads and poor web page design

Complaint about the busyness and general ugliness of many web sites seems to be in the air. Roger Black writes a part 1 and part 2 blames the structure of advertising on the Web. Content providers are forced to seek advertisers since users are not paying for content. This feeds the tendency to oversell ad space bringing about sites: "Most content sites look so bad they actually repel readers rather than attract them." Black suggests that content providers "greatly reduce the number of ad positions" and "charge more for ads" along with some other design solutions. (via GigaOM) Would that it were so! In the meantime there are apps/browser add-ons like Readability and Clearly for Evernote.

University of Phoenix student's online learning testimonial

I was at Publix bright and early this morning - 7:15AM - and got in line behind a pleasant, talkative woman - perhaps in her mid 30's - who tried to insist that I go ahead of her - but she'd already been helping the woman in front of her, so I figure it was my turn to wait a few minutes. She had already said that she was going home to do a final exam. I told her to stay ahead of me since all I had to do was go home and do some grading. I asked her about her final. She said she was a student at University of Phoenix and loved her online courses there. She'd been a business major, but when she wanted to switch to English with a minor in business, they informed her that the entire English program was online. She worried over whether or not she could be successful in that environment especially since she'd been out of school of a long time. She took the plunge and she says she loves it! She works full-time and having online asynchronous courses means she can come home and rest for a while and get into her course work when she's recovered. She says that she goes to the nearby University of Phoenix learning center a couple of days a week and uses her time there to concentrate on her course work. She was also busy telling the cashier that she couldn't go over $50 on her purchases. She joked that she'd bought a lot of "college student food" trying to keep her bills down so she could pay for her degree. In spite of the financial part she seemed happy with her educational experiences at University of Phoenix. Nice to hear someone with a positive view of her higher educational experience! I'm glad I didn't taken her offer to cut in front of her in line.

Save our scrollbars!

Save the Scrollbar! Why are Apple Google, and Facebook eradicating a linchpin of user interface design? asked Farhad Manjoo. I already commented that I totally agree with his concern about the loss of the visible scroll bar as an element of web page design. Also lost is the down arrow at the end of the right-side scroll bar on web pages - a nice clue that there was some reason to scroll down(!) Also lost: the scroll bar as a partition of spaces on the web page. Without the obvious visible cue, I find my eyes drifting all the way to the left side of the screen even though the text I'm trying to read is in the center of the page. (I had to switch over to using a theme for gmail so that the color would act as a divider between the left-side tools and the email messages in the center of the screen.) Just now I was trying to read blogs via Google Reader using Chrome. I'm finding it just about impossible to use my not-too-shabby Logitech mouse to read down through one article without finding myself having skipped down to the next article. I can go to the each blog itself and work it from there - but that negates the usefulness of Google Reader. I find myself working to overcome the navigational tools in my browsers rather than just get on with the tasks at hand. Some users say they like the invisible scroll bar. Isn't there some way to give users a choice? (The older version of Firefox still provides a view of the down arrow at the end of the scroll bar in Google Reader.) My recent frustrations with reading via the Web has made me grateful that Evernote has developed Clearly (like Readability for Evernote). I asked about the ability to move items from Readability directly to Evernote after I became aware of Readability, but the reply back then was that Evernote didn't work with other companies like that. However, time has passed and others must have put their request more eloquently and Clearly seems to be working very well - "one click for distraction-free online reading" (and clipping to Evernote.)

Print books

I've been thinking about the physicality of "books" lately. Books have weight, mass, volume... whatever. James Wood writes about his father-in-law's library/ "The acquisition of a book signalled not just the potential acquisition of knowledge but also something like the property rights to a piece of ground: the knowledge became a visitable place." (My father-in-law's library. New Yorker. November 7, 2011. p. 41) Electronic books? Not so much! (I know that some have calculated how much the electrons in a digital book weigh, but come'on! That's not on the same physical plane as most of us.) At least some libraries are busy on re-organizing spaces that incorporate no physical books. They are losing out on the idea of print books as emblems of their contents, posters for their contents, eye-catching advertisements for their contents - and even acoustical aids. When others are happily considering books as an element in interior design, libraries seem bent on cutting down on the number of physical books they own. (I'll have to take some photos inside the USF Tampa Library where the only visible books on the main floor is a very small browsing collection next to the requisite Starbucks.) Now... I have to say that I'm pretty much over the idea of owning physical books. I used to own tons of books. Then somewhere along the line decided that I was never going to have a larger house and that most of the books I owned were not endangered species. I cut down on the number of physical books I own relying on library access and electronic access - free when I can figure out a place to get items for "free" and paying for e-books when other routes are not available. I was faced with a gift of some physical books recently and had to say that I was alarmed at their weight and volume. I was at someone's house not too long ago - and again, the size of books was alarming. BUT... I have a lot of empathy for those who still appreciate the physical book. Ben Mezrich said "I hate the idea of the Kindle, but I love my Kindle." So...there seems to be this acceptance/rejection of print books - something that has weight, odor...handling a print book invokes our senses. (The Tampa Library at University of South Florida is moldy. Many of the books smell slightly of mold.) A book e-reader has its tactile charms, but handling my Kindle doesn't seem quite as rich as hanlding print books. Lately therehave some visions of the future that imagine everything under glass, made of glass, glass-like... our future interface for knowledge, communication of many kinds, etc. Does this mean that everything we handle will feel the same? Will everything we touch have the same temperature? Will everything we touch feel slick? Nothing warm and fuzzy? Hmmm...that idea makes me feel a little more sentimental about "books." Some of the things that got me thinking about print books: Carr. Nicolas. People in glass futures should throw stones. (November 10, 2011) http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2011/11/people_in_glass.php Mezrich, Ben. In depth: Ben Mezrich. BookTV.org http://www.booktv.org/Program/12753/In+Depth+Ben+Mezrich.aspx Paulus, Michael. Defending my library. Curator. (October 21, 2011). http://www.curatormagazine.com/michaelpaulus/defending-my-library/ Victor, Bret. A brief rant on the future of interaction design. (November 8, 2011). http://worrydream.com/ABriefRantOnTheFutureOfInteractionDesign/ Wood, James. My father-in-law's library. James Wood. New Yorker. (November 7, 2011), p. 41