Issue Contents

The Babson Strategy: Blended Education Enables Localness and Geo-localness

John Bourne Ph.D.
Executive Director
The Sloan Consortium

Babson College is a specialty business school in the Boston area that has experimented with blended online programs since 1999, primarily in the offering of blended MBA programs. Commencing with offering a complete blended MBA program for Intel in Portland, Oregon and growing to an open enrollment program, Babson has developed the blended MBA into a model for delivery and experimentation around the localness concept.

This program was born from necessity-part-time evening MBA programs at Babson were shrinking rapidly (entering students fell by 25% from 2001 to 2005) and online MBA programs were growing rapidly. Babson decided to take the plunge in 2004 and commit to growing the FAST TRACK program, a blended program for an expanded local area, based on the Intel MBA experience. After spending a year refining the program and outreach approach, Babson enrolled over 100 students in January, 2005 with an anticipated additional intake of 150 in the fall of 2006.

Growing this program to over 500 in-process students annually will make the program the largest at Babson and will help ensure that the small school (1,600 undergraduates) escapes from potential financial difficulties. The MBA program can be completed more rapidly than the traditional program and therefore is less expensive for students. Already, indications are that the model program has dramatically increased interest in Babson in the local area.

The model for the blended program developed by Babson is about 60 percent online, with 80 percent of the online portion delivered as asynchronous discussions. No live lectures are provided, only Breeze presentations that can be view asynchronously. Live synchronous sessions are minimized and employ Elluminate Live! only when deemed essential by the instructor. Babson hopes to be able to investigate how best to tune the percentages between on-ground and online and, as well, understand how best to combine live and off-line asynchronous presentations (such as Breeze presentations).

Babson's second strategy is "geo-localness" - that is, establishing the Babson brand at remote geographic locations. Based on the Intel connection, Babson was able to extend its connections in Portland, OR to begin to engage other industries and students in the West Coast area. The basic concept is to provide a blended program with online education equaling about 60 to 70 percent of instruction with the remainder on-ground at the West Coast site. On-ground instruction is offered though a combination of instructors that live on the West Coast, and instructors that fly in perhaps once or twice a semester.

Among the interesting strategies that come from the above activities are brand enhancements through localness. The appeal of the program captures more students due to lowered cost and more convenience. Is the program sustainable? Only time will tell. The key appears to be offering excellent content in an environment that students need and will want to purchase. In this case, students are primarily working adults, returning to school part time and often paid for by their employers.

Establishing new frontiers through geo-localness. The appeal of this methodology is that it enables reaching new populations of working adults who need to access education regardless of delivery method.

In sum, as a small specialty college, Babson has significant tasks: maintain and grow market share through the blended localness theme and provide scaling up of staffing and management of distributed centers of blended education, while insuring that content remains uniquely high quality. Optimizing the delivery model and combining it with the model for content organization should help Babson maintain a viable position in this market.

Podcasting in ALN

Raymond E. Schroeder
Office of Technology-Enhanced Learning University of Illinois at Springfield

Podcasting has captured the imagination of college students and faculty members alike. More than just a rationale to have Mom and Dad buy their 18-year-olds an iPod, podcasting has become a core delivery mode for lectures, debates, speeches and creative presentations in college classes.

Podcasting, named 2005 word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, is a newly created word combining "pod" from iPod and "casting" from broadcasting. The advantage of podcasting is that the audio is automatically downloaded to the students' computer. An iPod is not required to listen to the .MP3 audio of podcasts, but if an iPod is configured on the computer, the podcast is automatically transferred whenever the device is connected for the purposes of re-charging the built-in battery. In the case of "enhanced podcasts," audio plus graphics or even video is provided in the podcast.

The maker of the iPod, Apple Computers, has even created "iPod U" (http://www.apple.com/education/solutions/itunes_u/) with the motto "Click. Sync. Learn." iTunes U enables faculty members to upload podcasts and take control of their content. At the discretion of the college or university, the content can be password protected. This free service enables an "end-to-end" all Apple solution, from the creation of the podcasts ("enhanced" podcasts are most commonly created with Apple-only iLife Garageband software), to the Apple iTunes storage at iPod U with its automatic download to Apple iPods.

Not everything podcast is affiliated with Apple. A new higher education podcast repository, Ed-Cast (http://ed-cast.org) is a collaborative project of the University of Illinois and the University of San Francisco to create a repository for the sharing of higher education lectures, speeches and related educational material for the purposes of sharing across institutional boundaries. The project, currently in beta format, is free and open to submissions and searches.

K-12 - Higher Education Collaboration

On March 17, 2006, 35 representatives from higher education, the K-12 sector, alternative education providers (e.g., museums, PBS, National Geographic Foundation), and professional organizations met in Washington, DC, to discuss collaborative efforts to strengthen online K-16 education. This event - funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, planned and implemented by Penn State University, and hosted by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - focused on three areas of online education: dual/concurrent enrollment programs for high-school students, online teacher professional development, and online alternative certification programs for K-12 teachers.

Information Sessions

• Liz Pape (Virtual High School, Inc.), Susan Patrick (North American Council for Online Learning), and Tony Picciano (Sloan-C and Hunter College, CUNY) provided data and perspectives on the breadth of online activity in K-12 and higher education, policy issues, and current approaches to quality standards. Despite a considerable amount of online activity, there is very little cooperation or coordination between higher education and K-12 in key areas such as curricular integration and quality standards.
• Cherly Blanco (Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education), Rafael Granados (University of California), and Gary Wixom (Utah Board of Regents) followed with a discussion of online dual/concurrent enrollment courses as one "accelerated learning option." The presenters noted the primary goals of such programs (e.g., curricular enrichments, solid preparation for post-secondary success, and shortened time to degree) and the thorny barriers to broader implementation, such as funding complexities, teacher capacity and quality, and admissions criteria.
• Rick Eiserman (Georgia Professional Standards Board), Ann Flynn (National School Boards Association), Susan Lowes (Teachers College, Columbia University), and Liz Pape (Virtual High School, Inc.) noted the dual focus of online teacher professional development (OTPD)-online development opportunities for classroom teachers and online professional development for those who teach online. Key challenges in both areas are getting local decision makers to appreciate the strengths of OTPD, building clear connections between development activities and student learning, and ensuring consistent quality.
• Robert Henry (MD State Department of Education) discussed the national Troops to Teachers program as a means to increase K-12 teacher capacity and Sharnell Jackson (Chicago Public Schools) reviewed several collaborative initiatives implemented in the Chicago Public School System to expand access to and improve the quality of teacher professional development, particularly in the area of technology proficiency and implementation. These presenters stressed the need for a common understanding of goals among stakeholders and implementation of quality standards.

Brainstorming Next Steps
Participants used Penn State's mobile electronic team-decision center to identify 1) successful models for collaboration between K-12 and higher education and 2) next steps in extending Sloan-Consortium/higher education partnerships into the K-12 sector.

The first electronic brainstorming session, focused on successful models, generated common themes:

• The impact of collaboration (or lack of collaboration) on student access to educational opportunities
• The lack of incentives for collaboration
• The challenge of educating decision-makers on the value of online education
• The barrier of funding models that penalize one partner in a collaboration
• The need for research in the three focus areas, in terms of both learning outcomes and cost-effectiveness
• The need to broaden the vision to better integrate alternative providers such as museums and PBS
• The need for integrated quality standards
• The need for a follow-up event to clarify and move forward a vision for collaboration
• The need for coordinated national advocacy by national organizations and educational institutions

The second session focused on steps to encourage K-16 collaborations. In their almost-200 initial comments and responses, participants recommended a number of ways higher education, K-12, and other entities could work together to foster such collaborations:

• Schedule a conference or "summit" as a follow-up to this event.
• Form an ongoing working group to shape a collaborative agenda and carry it forward.
• Develop a shared research agenda.
• Develop model collaborative programs.
• Develop national online K-12 standards, based on earlier Sloan-C work and that of other agencies.
• Further explore the role of non-academic providers, such as PBS/CPB, museums, National Geographic Foundation, etc.
• Develop materials to educate school leaders and policy makers.
• Develop a K-12 track at the Sloan-C ALN conference.
• Expand effective practices database to include the three focus areas: dual enrollment, OTPD, and alternative certification.

Participants repeatedly signaled their commitment to collaboration as a way of strengthening national education. They also shared a sense that the Sloan Consortium, given its outstanding work in online higher education, was the ideal facilitator for the process of integrating the efforts of all the stakeholders in online K-16 education.

Learn From the Experts - The Sloan-C 2006 Workshop Series

Back by popular demand, the "Using Quality Matters Rubric to Improve your Online Courses" workshop is being held again this July. Don't miss the last workshop of the summer.

Using the Quality Matters Rubric to Improve your Online Courses - July 5-21

Sloan-C announces an interactive online workshop focused on learning how to improve your online course(s). Learn how to use the rubric tool developed by the nationally recognized, FIPSE-funded Quality Matters (QM) project. The QM rubric provides a research-supported framework with annotations and examples for applying quality practices to specific course design standards. Affirm the strong areas in your course(s) and generate specific ideas for improvements. The QM rubric is the centerpiece of the QM process.

Details and registration.

The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C), sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is composed of institutions and organizations dedicated to continually improving the quality, scale, and breadth of their online programs, according to their own distinctive missions, so that education becomes a part of everyday life, accessible and affordable for anyone, anywhere, at any time, in a wide variety of disciplines.

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