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VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: And so probably like many of you,
we signed up when Canvas Network came out for a couple
of MOOC classes.
And by chance at a conference similar to this, we met
sitting in a conference room and said, oh, you're in the
that class with me.
So that's how we established our rapport.
So we look at this idea of, wow, you can meet a lot of
people personal and professional using Canvas
Networks and MOOCs in general.
RAYMOND LAWSON: Uh-huh.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: So the idea about bridges.
RAYMOND LAWSON: The concept of bridges is basically a concept
that involve the building of relationships between people
who don't know each other or between
people hate each other.
So you can take it from there.
Someone that you don't know at the beginning and you
establish a bridge so that you can know better that person
and establish a relationship.
And according to the Cambridge Advanced Learning Dictionary
and also other dictionaries, building bridges means
improving relationship between people.
And what we have found out--
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: So visualize if you will, much
like a bridge, a MOOC is a course that's an architecture.
As instructors, we architect an environment, and we provide
a means and a mechanism for students who want to learn to
pass through or make their way to a better education.
So question for you.
How many of you have enrolled in a MOOCs?
About half of the room, huh?
RAYMOND LAWSON: And how many of you--
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: And how many of you
three or more MOOCs?
OK.
That's a pretty good.
RAYMOND LAWSON: So those who were in at least one MOOC,
have you had the opportunity to create any kind of or to
build any kind of relationship with people that are learner
in that course that you enrolled in?
Feel free.
This is a conversation.
Yes?
AUDIENCE: Do you mean virtually?
Or do you mean it personally?
RAYMOND LAWSON: Not personal face to face but within the
system, within the platform, within the learning space,
have we established some type of rapport with someone and
say, you know what?
Oh, by the way, I notice that you are in this field, and I'm
also in this field.
Are you interested in this?
Is there any way that we can hook up either by LinkedIn and
just be professional network-- set up some type of
professional network?
Yeah?
AUDIENCE: You asked rather we'd had the opportunity.
Yes, I've had the opportunity.
Have I taken advantage of it? no.
RAYMOND LAWSON: OK.
And that's what we want to talk about because a lot of
people do have that opportunity, but they don't go
beyond the class.
Once the course is done, the relationship ended.
So we want to encourage you so that you can move forward with
that relationship.
And the metaphor of the bridge that we are using in this is
basically a call for us for globalization of education
because we see MOOCs as a way to provide access to education
for people who are underserved, who are
underprivileged, and who don't have the
means to get that education.
So the first-- yeah, let's go with for this.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: Yeah.
RAYMOND LAWSON: We came up with the four top bridges in
the world, and we just want to quiz you a little bit if you
guess one of those bridges.
So the first one is on the screen.
Which bridge is this one?
AUDIENCE: Tower Bridge.
AUDIENCE: Tower Bridge.
RAYMOND LAWSON: Very good.
This is the Tower Bridge in London.
OK.
The next one is?
AUDIENCE: Spain.
RAYMOND LAWSON: Spain.
No quite right.
Anyone?
This is the third well-known prominent bridge in the world.
This is in France, south of France.
It's called Millau Viaduct in south of France.
This is the second one.
Everybody should know this.
AUDIENCE: San Francisco.
RAYMOND LAWSON: And this is the number one
bridge in the world.
And this is the oldest bridges in the world--
the oldest bridge in the world.
And it survived World War II.
AUDIENCE: It's in Italy.
RAYMOND LAWSON: It's in Italy.
Yes, that's correct.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE].
RAYMOND LAWSON: It's in where, which city?
AUDIENCE: Florence.
RAYMOND LAWSON: Florence in Italy.
It's called Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: So I have to warn you.
So this is not really about anything we've done.
This is more about an idea.
So if you need to leave right now, go ahead, feel free
because we want to talk with you, share with you an idea.
And we're going to further dialogue, if you're willing,
about whether you think that idea can work and how we as
educators can make it happen.
RAYMOND LAWSON: One of the other things that we need to
mention about these bridge, all these bridges, the main
thread between all these bridge is the fact that they
are part of innovation.
And these innovations came out of technology.
And many of us have grown up with technology.
We have our life changed, transformed because of
technology.
So of us like Baby Boomers we didn't grow up with
technology, but we later on embraced technology.
Those who are newest generation they learn and they
actually grew up with technology.
So technology is bringing us a lot of things, and we need to
know how we embrace the technology and
use it to our benefit.
So that's what we want to talk about, how we can democratize
education using innovation.
And there was a book that came out in
2006 by Eric Von Hippel.
He actually lay out some concepts regarding
innovations.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: So the idea is how can we
understand how people learn so that we can
expand access to learning.
This is critical for us as institutions.
We're at a community college both of us.
I don't know how many of you are at community colleges or
into your institution.
So you know our mission.
It's about serving the underserved, serving the
undereducated.
But let's face it, when we get into our MOOC, most people
I've encountered in a MOOC already have an education.
They already have some type of degree.
The Canvas Network is one of the first networks that really
began exploring offering courses in things such as
basic mathematics, remedial math, English composition.
They really put some time into getting the education, the
basic education to people.
So Eric Von Hippel, he posits in his book that we need to
democratize innovation and that we need to establish rich
learning [INAUDIBLE], much like the Canvas Network and
create communities of inquiries that spur innovation
so that we could build more knowledge
and share that knowledge.
So of we're going to move forward with that concept, you
know, I guess, we all embrace, maybe,
the egalitarian society.
Do y'all really want everyone to have an education and build
wealth and make sure that education is available to all?
That we need to begin looking at how we can take a platform
like a MOOC and serve more diverse populations.
Particularly, this is the mission of community college.
The Pew report showed that minorities who are in adult
households with low income and seniors are less likely to use
technology.
They're not likely to be online.
So we have an age gap.
We have an educational-attainment gap.
And in a way, the digital divide is not really closing
because a lot of people who don't have education, yeah,
they have the technology in their hand, but they're not
using it to learn.
They're using it for fun.
RAYMOND LAWSON: Gamification.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: Uh-huh.
RAYMOND LAWSON: They are using it to play and to do other
things that are not relevant or that are not directly
linked to education.
And MOOCs as we know it is a disruptive technology.
And as such, MOOCs actually provide us with a way to move
towards a way to change how we get educated.
So we look at MOOCs as an opportunity that can basically
change this fear of education and actually help people have
access to education.
But I think that the main elements of that process,
using MOOCs as part for the gamechanger in order to
provide access to education, is how we
actually use that MOOC.
I don't want to go and start listing companies that are
doing MOOCs but are not doing it for the real purpose.
There are lot of companies that are involved in MOOCs.
But when you look at how they're doing it--
and Virginia just mentioned a couple of I would say
specifics of Canvas Network.
Canvas Network actually go directly into topics that are
of interest to people in general, not--
what you look at Coursera courses, the expectation is
that you have to have a certain level of education
before you can get in, although the statistics show
that many people are doing MOOCs as people who have a
high level of education.
Our goal and our purpose here is really to see how we can
take that MOOC that is available for a few that have
the privilege, how we can take that MOOC to people who are at
low level, underserved, underprivileged
in developing countries.
So we need to take advantage of this innovation and look at
it as our chance to bring change to people in developing
countries who don't have access to education, who don't
have the financial means to actually afford an education.
There is the common sense that there is a political
globalization.
Something happening in Asia, we know it here.
Or something happens in Africa, we know it here.
When there is an economy crises here, it
impact people in Europe.
So that is globalization at different levels, political,
economical.
But we need to bring that globalization at
the level of education.
We need to have what we call educational equity.
Just as we have financial equity, we have political
equity, we need to bring educational equity.
And that can only be done when we have educational sphere or
space like MOOCs and use platforms like Canvas Network
to set up those partnerships that can
bring change in education.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: So the idea of the partnerships
is about building personal relationship, much like we as
students did, and then taking it to the next level, the
professional relationship that you as educators build with
your students and partnering back with our institutions to
say, well, how can we expand this opportunity in order to
create more access to learning.
Hopefully, if we partner well and partner effectively, this
framework that we're going to share with you is a way to
take the educational opportunities that we have and
make them available internationally and
nationally, reach those people who are underserved and
undereducated.
RAYMOND LAWSON: So we all know that MOOC is rooted in
nontraditional of learning theories, including
constructivism and also ranging from constructivist
learning theory all the way to connectivist learning theory.
And according to--
I'm going to read this to you, according to McAuley, et al.,
and this came out in 2010, and those are the people who were
in the forefront of MOOCs in Canada--
"A MOOC integrates the connectivity of social
networking, the facilitation of an acknowledge expert in
the field of study, and a collection of freely
accessible online resources.
Perhaps, most importantly, however, a MOOC builds on the
active engagement of several hundred to several thousand
students who so organize their participation according to
learning goals, prior knowledge and skills, and
common interest."
The framework that we are proposing is actually rooted
in the theory of constructivism.
And when you go back to John Dewey, Jean Piaget, and all
the other constructivist learning theorists, the
constructivist's learning theory means that when the
learner is coming to the learning table he needs to
bring some type of knowledge and
build up on that knowledge.
The participatory model of learning which go back to
people like Paulo Freire, that I actually admired, and he was
one of the transformation learning theory back in 1980s.
And he actually encouraged people to get involved.
You need to be engaged.
You need to participate in the learning process so that what
you take out of that learning process becomes your own
construction of the world that surrounds you.
And we also look at the transformational learning
theories which basically involved--
and Jack Mezirow is one of the people have actually published
a lot on transformational learnings.
And he talked about how we get involved in learning in order
to transform ourself and also to transform the
world around us.
So these three theoretical learning, in addition to
epistemology, which actually bring the knowledge in terms
its validity and how the scope of knowledge is actually built
for individual learners give us a way to come up with a
what I call partnership framework, but I put it as
conceptual framework because we seem to work on that and
develop that framework for partnership.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: And what we're looking at here is
all of these frameworks they've come together to give
us the idea of andragogy.
We're educating mostly adults.
That's what we found in that online environment.
And so we look at the epistemology, it's how do
people come to know things.
How do they identify the various sources of knowledge.
And their intuition, what you know in your gut, the
authority that you get from educators, and the
belief that you have.
We want to use the MOOCs to explore how we learn thing so
that we can spread learning further.
In 1998, Warschauer published in the Anthropology of
Education an article titled, "Online Learning in a
Sociocultural Context." And he cited that learning enabled by
technology introduces unprecedented options for
teaching, learning, and knowledge building and can
help create communities of inquiry capable of stimulating
intellectual, moral, and educational growth among rich
and poor alike.
So it's almost 20 years later, and I don't necessarily know
that we have enough research and enough information that
tells us how people really learn online because we're
still dealing with the fact that the success rates in
online courses are lower than face to face, or so we think.
But at the same time, we have this mission where we're
supposed to provide education further and get a greater
reach to other people.
RAYMOND LAWSON: There is a French--
and I always like to refer to French since
I have French roots--
there is a French cyber theorist by the name of Pierre
Levy who says that none of us knows everything, each of us
knows something.
And we can put the pieces together if we pool our
resources and combine our skills.
And I think that that's what MOOC help us do.
And when I'm engaged in a MOOC, I'm not expecting to
know it all or to gain all the concept.
But my expectation is to come and learn from each individual
that I can build a relationship with and learn
from those people so that I can add to what I know before.
In the same manner, I'm looking forward to share with
those who are involved in the learning space my expertise
and my knowledge.
There is a paradigm shift of today's culture due to a
societal participation as individuals we are engaged in
those different activities, learning activities and so on.
And the paradigm shift is very important.
And yesterday, Josh Coates in his keynote address actually
said that there is a need--
actually he talked about the importance of partnerships.
And I was surprised that's when he was talking at it that
I, well, this is basically what we want to talk about in
our presentation.
So there is an increased number of knowledge and
increased number of consciousness and awareness
that we need to do something in order to build partnerships
and bring education to all areas of the society.
So the conceptual framework that we came up with is based
on the individual institutions.
And within those individual institutions, learners can
actually build a relationship, personal relationships.
And then we have other institutions, and the black
institution are basically what I consider as institution that
are using Canvas Network, a Canvas Network, a platform.
And then we have also organizations that are not
educational entities, but some of them are involved in
learning, training, and all those types of adventures.
So our concept is basically have those organizations and
educational institutions partners with each other
through this sphere of a Canvas Network and also this
sphere of MOOCs.
And by doing that, you start building--
you start seeing a partnership from organizations.
And these triangles represent those partnership that are
within Canvas Network that can be at the national level or go
beyond the national levels and be international partnership.
And this is the framework that we are proposing.
And again, this is a work in progress.
And we will see how this can be done because the Canvas
Network need to--
will be willing to work with other institutions so that
they can actually build these kind of partnerships, and
organizations need to work together with Canvas to build
this kind of partnership.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: So at the end of the day, I guess
we're just simply here to say that the landscape in
education is changing.
And it's only befitting that that transformation occur
through technology.
So there's two goals that we think need
to be realized here.
The first is, as I mentioned earlier, that vision of the
egalitarian society, where knowledge and education is
accessible to all.
Secondly, we have to help spur and create a global robust
economy that's fueled by innovation and a prepared and
skilled workforce.
So with that in mind, we'd like to hear
some of your thoughts.
What do you think about the idea, building partnerships
and using MOOCs to expand access to education,
especially for those who are underserved and undereducated?
Is it doable?
Don't everybody answer at once.
RAYMOND LAWSON: The floor is open because, again, this is a
conversation.
And we have been talking about this, Virginia and I, we have
been talking about this for awhile.
And we thought that it would be good to bring this to the
conference and hear about other people who are involved
in educational adventures who can actually give us their
feedback in terms of how this can be done and
what we need to do.
I don't think that that would work though.
AUDIENCE: Want a mic?
RAYMOND LAWSON: No, it doesn't work.
AUDIENCE: Turn it on.
Can see.
[LAUGHTER]
AUDIENCE: Hello.
RAYMOND LAWSON: Yeah.
It works.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
I had a question on building networks with other
organizations.
What I'm really interested in is working with professional
nonprofit organizations--
RAYMOND LAWSON: Yep.
AUDIENCE: --that sort of are recognize by our technology--
I'm in the geospatial world, GIS--
and somehow creating courses that can be used by
professionals, not necessarily directly for college credit,
but for their own professional development, and yet monetize
that somehow.
And it doesn't need to be necessarily for profit, but
enough to maintain.
RAYMOND LAWSON: So the question is--
AUDIENCE: Maybe the Canvas guys can answer that one.
RAYMOND LAWSON: The question is how organizations that are
not in the educational sphere can actually work and develop
courses that can be MOOC courses and develop those
courses in order to reach out and do whatever the
organization needs in terms of training and development,
professional development.
That's one of our goals.
Our goal is to have educational institution work
with organizations that are not in the educational
business and help those people get the professional
development and any kind of training they need to have.
Now in terms of monetizing that, I don't know.
Because, again, if you talk about MOOCs the expectation is
that it's free.
But it can be done with all the logistics that the
partners will put together.
So I think that that's something that can be done.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: And let me add there, both of
these can't run at the same time.
One of the things we did at our institution, our workforce
and economic development unit, they partnered with Rackspace.
So Rackspace has Open University.
We're helping them to train in technology and do marketing.
And there's a partnership.
And the way that that's monetized is that there are
individuals in the community who, number one, the name
Rackspace invokes a lot of ideas and thoughts about
technology.
And that partnership, we have students who are not
necessarily coming to The Alamo Colleges, but they're
getting that certification through Rackspace, and they're
leaving what a marketable skill, something that they go
and get a job with.
And they're paying, but not paying as much as they would
the other way.
So partnering with workforce and economic development
entities in community colleges and then working with private
corporations and then establishing that partnership
across the community is one way where you take that whole
MOOC concept.
If you--
AUDIENCE: Is Canvas involved in that?
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: Canvas is not necessarily
involved, other than the courses that we may teach.
We build our content.
This start maybe two years ago, but we're migrating.
We went full-blown with Canvas this past spring.
And we're migrated all of content and everything that we
offer into our Canvas environment.
But that touches upon your concept.
And most of it is really hosted, in
this case, at Rackspace.
And they're running this off of their servers.
Your question?
AUDIENCE: Am I on?
Am I on now?
It's a great topic.
And it's something that I've worked on.
I actually am a for-profit provider of continuing and
professional education.
So I do development for professionals.
And most of my clients are state and local governments,
and it's in the finance departments.
And what I've noticed as an enormous opportunity is the
finance departments are aging out so quickly and they
desperately need talent to come in, and they're not doing
a good job doing succession planning and developing the
new workforce.
And so I would love, love, love to talk to colleges to
get this information.
So I'm going to actually get my information to you because
this is exactly what I've seen as a huge opportunity.
And plus working with state and locals, a lot of them
would be interested in possibly doing--
the idea of Tom's 1-plus-1 is coming to mind.
Or if I have a finance director that his putting his
staff through it, why not pull a couple of kids from the
community--
RAYMOND LAWSON: Sure.
AUDIENCE: --that are currently studying finance and equip
them to assume those roles.
AUDIENCE: The question is why would I you come to Canvas?
Why would you come to the Instructure?
AUDIENCE: I switched over to the Canvas learning management
system this year.
And the reason I did that is no other continuing
professional education company that I know of uses Canvas to
deliver their content.
But I wanted to be more of a community--
RAYMOND LAWSON: Right.
AUDIENCE: --instead of just your traditional you go buy a
couple of CPEs, you take the class, and you're
on your merry way.
So our students that are involved in our courses they
get a certificate at the end.
They take 17 courses, and it takes them
through a whole year.
So we're engaged with them throughout the year, so we use
the social networking tools to build relationships, like what
you're talking about.
RAYMOND LAWSON: Right.
Yes.
AUDIENCE: Because my community of users are people who have
always been gathered around conference settings like this
offline, and the new technology is
completely new to them.
And so now I'm able to take some of those relationships
and content and bring it, merge it offline and online--
RAYMOND LAWSON: Right.
AUDIENCE: --and extend their ability to build relationships
throughout the year instead of just once a year at a
conference.
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: Really, how many of you are in
online learning?
All of you pretty much.
Yeah.
So you offer an introduction to online learning
course, don't you?
How many of you do that?
One, two.
We do.
But it's the intervention of people just like that, people
that she's describing.
You have all of these professional adult learners
who we have to get trained.
We're responsible for getting them trained
in this 21st century.
And yet they don't necessarily have the
exposure to the skills.
And so we have to shift what I think the R1s have done.
Because at the end of the day, you are already in the game.
You were doing the job online from the beginning.
The R1s wanted to participate, and they've made MOOC popular,
put a bunch of hype around it.
And they started offering education to the overeducated.
We still need to get to the undereducated people.
And so by taking this whole--
the hype behind the MOOC, reinventing our intervention
strategies for education, and then on top of that building
up on that core education, those core skills that learner
need, we can change the world.
Yes.
This is Pinky and the Brain.
RAYMOND LAWSON: OK.
We'll be around if anyone wants to approach us and kind
of talk about any--
VIRGINIA STEWARD HUNTLEY: He's the brain.
RAYMOND LAWSON: --discussion, we'll be happy to do that.