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Media Room:
News - Press Release June 5, 2009
Interview with Paul Gleason, Senior Vice President for Operations at Embanet - Part one of a two-part interview
TORONTO, Ontario, and Schaumburg, Illinois, April 22, 2009 - Gleason earned his Masters degree in Education at Vanderbilt and went to work for a Nashville bank as a corporate trainer. He then co-founded the online education group at Career Education Corporation. Now at Embanet he credits Vanderbilt's Learning Technology Center and its accomplishments with K-12 audiences for many of his online learning successes in higher education today.
Part one of a two-part interview.
Should there be college level schools in the U.S. who 'sort and select' their students as well as other schools who don't?
Yes. In our system the mission of a campus is not imposed externally. They've been created by visionaries, by missionaries, and by philanthropists - but never by bureaucrats. M.I.T. gets highly capable people to apply there, and they accept just ten percent of them. Arizona State University wants to reach 100,000 enrolled students and is always looking for ways to accept more students and serve them well.
In which have you been employed?
Both. As an instructor at Vanderbilt I worked on a very selective campus. I've also worked at open-admissions schools like Colorado Technical University. Now at Embanet, I'm working with a mix of campuses that span the range of selectivity.
Describe Embanet and your present responsibilities.
Embanet, owned by private equity firms Knowledge Universe and Technology Crossover Ventures, is an online learning sevices provider and business partner to universities across North America. Embanet supports the online offerings of fifteen colleges and universities like George Washington University, Boston University and Northeastern University. So, in effect, I work for 15 institutions and 40 of their online degree programs. I also work with institutions who are considering launching their online programs. Through our revenue share model, we partner with universities to assume much of the business risk, while the universities maintain complete control over academics and admissions decisions.
How many students are involved today, and what do you expect this time next year?
The universities we work with serve about 3,000 full-time students, and we anticipate annual growth in line with online learning's trends, presently 20 percent per year or better.
Explain the 'awkwardness of learning.'
Learning is the most natural activity in life. However, the role of formal education is to push the envelope. Formal education is rarely intuitive. And it's often modeled after an industrial-like process. From 1:00 to 2:00 you're in a certain classroom. At 2:00 the bell rings, and you move on. That can produce awkwardness in the learner. Other characteristics of formal education can contribute to awkwardness.
Please continue.
The lecture method of teaching today has less and less to do with learning. It's about content, and it's a manifestation of yesterday's notion of 'academic rigor.' Today a competent person often experiences awkwardness in a setting where he or she is passive, rather than active.
Why might awkwardness of learning be less persistent in online learning?
Today's adaptive learning environment utilizes prior experience, inferences, independent research, group collaboration, problem solving. That environment can be created online and in the classroom. It takes insight and skill.
What techniques successfully reduce awkwardness of learning among online students?
First, some background. Unlike K-12, higher education's instructors have rarely been taught to teach. They're scholars; subject matter experts. The explicit formulation of learning goals, the sequencing of the instruction and anticipating student learning needs are instructional necessities they usually need help with. Our instructional designers provide that very assistance. Using techniques like 'successive approximation' and 'formative feedback' and a number of meta-cognitive strategies, instructors can help students understand their own learning process better. When students understand and monitor their learning process, they relax, even while being very productive. Online. Or in the classroom.
You and Embanet can be described as learning management system experts. Do you have a prediction to share with our readers?
Today's learning management systems have come a long way, particularly in their administrative capabilities. They are truly enterprise applications. From a learning perspective, however, they are run-of-the-mill. They store, display and deliver content. They capture and store gradeook data and attendance records. To me, that's a 1990s application. A 21st-century learning management system will incorporate gaming and social networking. And the system itself will learn.
To be continued...