Edtech

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Policy & Reform

Why schools need to introduce computing in all subjects

Uri Wilensky, Northwestern University

In his recent State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said schools need to offer every student hands-on computer science classes to be better prepared for the workforce.

President Obama is right: the next generation of learners will require a high level of fluency with modes of thinking in which computers act as interactive partners.

The question is: how best to make sure they acquire that thinking? Are computing classes the only way to do this?

More computer classes

There is widespread agreement that computing should play a more prominent role throughout our education system. For this reason, there have been more concerted efforts to increase computing classes in the K-12 grade levels.

The STEM Education Act of 2015 was recently passed into law, expanding the definition of STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) to include computer science and encouraging more STEM education efforts.

Seven of the nation’s largest school districts are adding more computer science classes. The Chicago Public School District, for example, plans to have computer science classes at all levels of education and make it a requirement of high school graduation by 2018. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently said the city will ensure there is computer science (CS) instruction in every public school by 2025.

I have been researching efforts to bring computing to schools and have participated in national efforts to design CS classes, train CS teachers and implement CS curriculum at a variety of grade levels.

I know that efforts to implement CS courses have encountered many challenges, particularly in teacher preparation and retention.

In contrast, efforts to train teachers to meaningfully employ computing in their own disciplines, for example, in biology or history classes, have met with significantly fewer difficulties.

So while I believe these efforts to add CS courses are good and necessary, they are not enough.

Shortage of students

The fact is that the success of such initiatives depends heavily on schools’ ability to hire and retain qualified teachers, and on students’ ability to make room for new coursework in their already-packed schedules.

Here’s what the current picture looks like:

Currently less than one high school student per 1,000 takes Advanced Placement computer science, which is the standard course for CS education for high schools.

In fact, according to Code.org, a leading nonprofit dedicated to expanding access to computer science, the number of high school computer science classes – both introductory and AP – has significantly dropped in the past decade. Since 2005, introductory classes have dropped by 17 percent and AP classes by 33 percent. Only 25 percent of high schools have any offering at all in CS, and less than 5 percent have an AP CS course.

Even in the best financial environments, not all schools offer or plan to offer courses in computing. In most of the schools that do, the courses are elective-only and reach a small percentage of students.

According to the College Board, which tracks AP exams, only 20,414 students took the AP computer science exam in 2014. By comparison, about 263,000 took U.S. history, and 438,500 students took English language. Of those who did take the computer science exam, only 18 percent were girls. And only 3 percent were African American.

There is a shortage of teachers for computer science.
Berkeley Lab, CC BY-NC-ND

Lack of qualified teachers

In addition, there is an acute shortage of teachers qualified to teach computing courses.

In 2010, the National Science Foundation launched the CS10K project, with a goal to train 10,000 CS teachers by 2015. However, at a recent meeting, the NSF reported that they were able to train only between 200-600 teachers per year, which is approximately 2,000 teachers, and vastly short of the goal.

There are other issues as well with the training: the project has not ascertained how many of the trained teachers are still teaching CS. We do know that the trainee population has shifted from mostly senior teachers to mostly younger teachers, meaning that the project could be training teachers, who are more likely to leave for industry and less likely to stay.

In addition, most states do not have certification for computer science, and among most of those that do, the certification is weak and doesn’t make them qualified for teaching high school CS.

All this makes the task more daunting.

What can schools do?

So a preferable strategy is to incorporate computing into every school subject.

Recent studies from my lab and at a few other university labs in the past 10 years show that it is much easier to train subject area teachers in computational thinking in their subject areas – such as chemistry or history – than to train and retain full-time computing teachers.

In this way, teachers learn the computing in the context of materials they already know and see the value added of the computing. Furthermore, since this strategy involves all subject areas, it ensures that all high school students, including traditionally underrepresented groups, will have access.

Using this strategy, a host of studies have found that a range of students – not just the “geeks” – can not only learn these computational skills, but they can learn them quite easily compared to print or mathematics literacy. And these skills can help them improve their learning in other areas.

Why does this matter?

Students who are exposed to computation think more deeply about their subject areas and are able to deal with complex content at significantly younger ages.

For example, computer modeling allows middle schoolers to understand many complex patterns of the world.

Computational thinking can make kids smarter.
hackNY.org, CC BY-SA

Students engaged in computer modeling can understand the fluctuations of populations of predators and prey in an ecosystem. For example, more than 50 years of data on moose and wolves in Isle Royale Michigan show fluctuating population levels. When there are a lot of wolves, there are fewer moose, and when there are a lot of moose, there are fewer wolves.

Such phenomena are usually studied at university level, using advanced mathematics of calculus and differential equations. Using computer modeling enables much younger students to have access to the ideas and calculations without needing to master the advanced mathematics.

At the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling (CCL) at Northwestern University, we have done extensive research with children and adults, asking them to explain complex patterns in the world such as traffic jams, changes in the fauna and flora in a habitat, the flocking of birds or the housing segregation patterns of cities.
The overwhelming majority did not understand the causes of these phenomena.

In the CCL’s work developing computer-modeling-based curriculum, we have found that computationally literate students can use their computational thinking to make sense of complex patterns and understand the role of randomness in generating complexity.

Understanding the constructive role of randomness enables us to harness it, for example using computer algorithms to let self-driving cars react to changing traffic patterns to prevent congestion, or enabling groups of robots to “swarm” together to accomplish a goal.

Some may argue that we can’t afford the resources to transform subject-wide curriculum so extensively, and some others may feel schools first need to improve reading and mathematics skills, before adding yet another literacy.

I certainly agree there are always competing priorities, but we cannot ignore computing, especially in our increasingly complex world. These are the skills students will need to thrive as adults, and moreover, these skills help students with their other subject areas. By integrating computing across all classes, we can make it a true literacy.

The Conversation

Uri Wilensky, Professor of Learning Sciences, Computer Science and Complex Systems, Northwestern University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Matthew Lynch

A Digital Future: K-12 Technology by 2018

Rapidly changing technology continues to make its mark on K-12 learning. Last fall the New Media Consortium Horizon Report released a report that details six up-and-coming technologies in the next five years for K-12 classrooms. Let’s take a closer look.

Horizon #1: In the next year, or less.

Mobile learning. Tablets and smartphones in the classroom are no longer a matter of “if,” but “when, and how quickly?” Administrators and educators can tap into the convenience of mobile technology in the classroom and the potential for student learning adaptation. Over half of school administrators say there is some form of mobile technology in their classrooms and that they plan to implement more when it is financially feasible. School districts should keep in mind that the purchase of mobile devices for K-12 use is only one piece in the learning puzzle. There must be funding for teacher training and maintenance of the devices too.

Cloud computing. When it comes to greater educational collaboration, cloud computing has unlimited potential. This is true for teacher-to-teacher, teacher-to-parent and teacher-to-student applications. By using a common location, academic expectations can be better accessed, along with actual student work. Instructors can also share learning materials and experiences through the remote opportunities that cloud computing provides.

Horizon #2: Within two to three years.

Learning analytics. This evolving concept in K-12 classrooms is different from educational data mining in that it focuses on individual students, teachers and schools without direct implications to the government. Learning analytics is the education industry’s response to “big data” that is used in the business world for improvements and redirection of focus. Learning analytics essentially show students what they have achieved and how those goals match up with their peers. If implemented correctly, this technology has the potential to warn teachers early of academic issues while keeping students more accountable. Using the mobile and online technology already in place, students can better track and tailor their academic experiences.

Open content. The rise of MOOCs, or massive open online courses, in terms of college learning is having a trickle-down effect on K-12 education. The idea that all the information that exists on any given topic already exists, and does not need to be re-created or purchased, is gaining steam among K-12 educators. Within the next three years, expect more shared content available to teachers and to students. Open textbooks, resources and curricula are not the only benefit of an open content push; shared experiences and insights are also valuable teaching tools.

Horizon #3: Within four to five years.

3D printing. Also known as prototyping, this technology will allow K-12 students to create tangible models for their ideas. Many fields, like manufacturing, already make use of this technology to determine the effectiveness of ideas on a smaller, printable scale. In education, this technology will bolster creativity and innovation, along with science and math applications. The STEM Academy has already partnered with Stratasys, a leading 3D printing company, to start integration of the technology in programming classes.

Virtual laboratories. These Web applications give students the chance to perform physical science experiments over and over, from anywhere with Internet access. As in a physical lab, the performance of the student will determine the results of the experiment. While not a replacement for all in-lab exercises, the virtual version can provide extra practice and guidance. There is no pressure to “get it right” on the first run, and mistakes are allowable because the technology lends itself to no-cost repetition. It also may prove a smart solution to rekindling the American public’s interest in the scientific.

In coming posts, I will take a closer look at each of these technologies and their implications on K-12 learners. Which do you think will have the greatest impact?

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation

Poll: Majority of children admit to online risk-taking

From VoicED

A new poll of 2000 11-16 year olds carried out for BBC Learning has found that almost three in five (57%) have done something ‘risky’ or anti-social while online. In addition, almost two in three (62%) said that they felt under pressure from peers to act in this way on the internet. The research was released to coincide with Internet Safety Day, which takes place on February 10th and utilized a combined CATI and online methodology.

In terms of accessing the internet, all those surveyed were active internet users. 94% accessed the internet from a PC or laptop, 83% from a smartphone, 72% from a tablet and more than half (51%) from an online games console.

The activities described included saying negative things about other people, viewing unsuitable websites and, perhaps most worryingly, sharing unsuitable videos or pictures of themselves. Moreover, a fifth of those surveyed admitted to having pressured someone else to act in a negative way online (this rose to 32% in London).

Of the 2000 respondents, almost half (47%) said that they had viewed something on the internet that they did not think their parents would want them to view, whilst around one in seven (14%) said they had sent images of either themselves, or of someone else, that they did not think their parents would want them to send.

A tenth had signed up to online sites or services which were not meant to be viewed by their age group.

In terms of cyber-bullying, almost three quarters (72%) of respondents aged 14-16 had witnessed some form of online bullying, or had been subjected to it. While this is a bleak statistic, there are positive signs. Three quarters had blocked another user of an app or on a website, two thirds (68%) had supported someone else who had suffered cyber-bullying and 74% had ‘stood up for themselves’.

According to a different survey, YouTube is the most popular website used by children aged 11-16, with almost four fifths (78%) using it weekly. Three quarters use Facebook the most (74%), around half cited SnapChat (46%) with a similar number mentioning Instagram (43%). Twitter and WhatsApp were mentioned by more than a third (37% each) with Skype and Minecraft both garnering just less (32%). The BBC Learning survey largely corroborates this data – with YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and SnapChat all featuring among the most used apps.

This post originally appeared on VoicED.org.uk and has been republished with permission. 

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation

Are massive open online classes still the wave of the future?

With a steady stream of news that the price of college is quickly becoming too high for many Americans to afford, an alternative form of higher education may be how some future students learn. MOOC, or massive open online classes, offer free lectures and web based courses by some of the world’s best universities.

But according to NPR.com, MOOCs popularity never really took off. Because the courses are free and open to anyone with an internet connection, many believed that this type of offering would soon be the death of college.

Not so, or at least not yet.

According to a paper produced by Harvard and MIT for MOOC courses that both institutions offer, more than one million participants entered a HarvardX or MITx course between 2012 and 2014.

While those numbers may seem high, it is important to remember that each course is free, though participants may choose to purchase a certificate of completion at the end.

The paper also found that nearly 40 percent of those surveyed who took one of the MOOC courses had a teaching background.

Overall, the study showed that MOOC is growing at a steady pace but not enough to pose a serious or significant threat to brick and mortar institutions.

That doesn’t mean that these free courses will soon be de-funded or that they will go away, this simply shows that it needs more time to cultivate and to figure out its appeal.

MOOC may still represent a new wave of how students will digest education in the future. Free may be good but quality has to be attached to it. As long as institutions that offer MOOC continue to give valued information through these courses, our future workforce and economy may be better because of it.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers

Emails and Teacher Morale

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Megel Barker

I overheard a conversation a few days ago between two of my colleagues. The text of the interchange was the concern with the frequency of emails and more importantly there was some doubt about the relevance of most of them. The conclusion centered round the idea that emails were a major distraction to the serious issue of teaching. One colleague signed off with a retort that maybe we were all better before emails.

This final utterance really made me think. I pondered what the world of teaching was like before emails became the daily deliverer of information. How did we get by? A cursory check with other teachers conveyed a similar annoyance with the uninvited intrusion of email on their daily duties. Another task added to the ever burgeoning list of ‘to-dos”.

Twilight Zone

But how could we arrive at this place? How is it that in the age of information, teachers are feeling overwhelmed, confused, tensed and lost when confronted with an inbox of school e-mails? Rather strangely, we seemed to have entered a twilight world of either under-information or over-information. The former, occurs when important emails become swamped or lost in your inbox, while the latter manifesting as being told everything happening in school. So where did we go wrong? Do we all need to know that someone’s goldfish died? Do we all need to know that a new student has joined the school, when I won’t teach him this year?

A quick survey among my colleagues, gleaned a similar sentiment. Emails are the bane of teacher communication in fact it is even being touted as having significant contribution to teacher morale. How could such a technological improvement, one that enhances the sharing of information and is proven to improve time become the sore thumb in a school environment? I have even heard the words “detest” and “hate’ being associated with some teachers’ feelings toward this mode of communication.

Staff Morale

Knowing that email must be a good thing, I decided to look at email from a purely mathematical perspective and see if it was possible to determine an optimal solution to this dilemma. The common thread that I identified from my simple survey was that email had two variables affecting the environment in which it operates. These variables were Email Volume (EV) and Email Relevance (ER). Email Volume was literally the number of emails received daily, while relevance referred to the impact the email had on the teacher carrying out their daily functions effectively.

The graphic shows four possible situations that teachers can encounter in their work environment. Each scenario has, I believe, a tremendous impact on teacher morale.

Situation A

Situation A is the case where there is a high volume of emails in the school environment. Everyone emails and everything is emailed. All important documents are shared by emailed and all official communications are disseminated by this medium. Staff is expected to read emails but is also expected to read and respond in this way. The reality of this is that the emails are all important! They have high relevance to staff’s daily work but the volume is quite high. This type of environment is quite pressured, where staff feels compelled to read emails but is strapped for time. The morale in that environment is

Situation B

A full inbox is the daily expectation. In this scenario, everything is shared and important emails get lost in the traffic. Teachers are constantly informed about every event in school with numerous follow-ups and communiques that involve issues that require no action. Social events and social notes are posted without concern for who might want to know. The bulk group “all teachers” is used with impunity. This creates an environment that makes teachers disconnect from the emails. They adopt a system that involves requiring them to be reminded that an email was sent. This disconnection can lead to a level of apathy among teachers and paradoxically also a level of tension. This tension, coming from the sensation, that they might be missing something that has great importance.

Situation C

An almost empty email inbox is the daily fare. Numbers of messages in your inbox is small and is irrelevant. This is not a common scenario for most teachers however it is an all too familiar experience for new teachers. This situation plagues the newcomer mostly and can be traced to not being added to main mailing lists. The natural outcome of this is that the teacher is less informed about important and relevant issues and is constantly left to find things out at the coffee bar or in the staff room. Teachers can either disengage from the system or they can complain that they do not know what is going on. Morale is indeed low here; a feeling of detachment persists and can affect performance especially if high relevance information is not shared.

Situation D

The only emails received have high relevance to the teacher’s practice. There is a very low volume of email but each email is entirely impacting on daily practice. Even though the volume is low, the information shared is current, composed and clear. In this scenario, it would be expected to have other means of sharing information such as Google Drives or folders kept on a local server with vital forms and archived information. Essentially, there is an expectation that the only people who get the emails are the ones who will be able to do something about it. Morale here is high and teachers feel valued, they feel their time is being recognized as truly important and so they respond by being energized and motivated. Work gets done and communication is valued.

The table above shows my summary of the four potential dimensions of email in the workplace and the prevailing morale. Despite the clear cry from all I interviewed for situation D, none of my respondents felt they had experienced this Utopian world. In fact they feel it is impossible to have this outcome at their current workplace. This is worrying. Emails should make us more efficient. I propose that Situation D is the optimal solution and I believe that schools should strive for this to materialize. So how do they do this?

An email protocol?

While there will be positives and negatives regarding this, schools should engage with their staff and collaborate on an email protocol. Some key features of this would include:

  1. Clarity on who is copied on emails
  2. Who uses the bulk email features such as “allstaff@….com
  3. The frequency with which emails are shared from admin
  4. Other means of sharing information such as cloud drives
  5. Use of “reply all”
  6. The frequency of social emails
  7. How the subject line of the email is worded

So, which of these scenarios best describe your current email climate? Is my description of staff morale correct? Please respond to my survey by clicking on the link: http://goo.gl/forms/I7y6P9hPXh.

____

Megel Barker is a Google Certified Educator that has taught mathematics for 21 years. He’s currently Assistant Principal at an International School in Oman and has written two workbooks that support the Oman GED Exams. You can follow him on Twitter @mathter.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Matthew Lynch

BYOD, Customized Learning and Virtual Academics: K-12 Trends for 2014 — Part II

On Monday I wrote about what lies ahead for K-12 schools in 2014 when it comes to life skills programs, expansion of cloud technology, and a greater emphasis on individual school branding. In all three cases, the trends have been part of classrooms for some time but are sure to see rapid growth in the coming year.
I want to continue that conversation today with three more trends I think we will see emerging, or expanding, in the U.S. K-12 classrooms of 2014:

BYOD: This movement which embraces mobile technology through the devices that students already own has already gained momentum in many districts across the country, but expect it to move rapidly towards mass adoption within this calendar year. Places like Chesapeake Public Schools are already allowed to use privately owned electronic devices to access the wireless network on the school system’s filtered Internet. In Chesapeake, as in the other public and private schools where BYOD policies exist, students must sign a responsibility form that says they will only use the mobile device for academic enrichment while on school property. Students who bring their own devices into the classroom eliminate the initial costs and are also already comfortable with the technology. The downside of course is that not all students can readily afford such technology but look for schools to develop technology financial assistance programs for families to help offset the full cost and maintenance of school-owned devices.

Customized learning experiences: Self-initiated and self-directed learning experiences are based upon individual needs, preferences and abilities of students who are then the masters of their own success. The traditional way to look at learning is through teachers creating and assigning all work for students in a one-size-fits-all approach. By contrast, customized learning that students help direct focuses on feedback techniques that provide strategies for improvement during the process, instead of waiting until much further down the road to see if the methods are working. Customized, or personalized, learning is often met with hostility, especially as teachers must relinquish some classroom control for this trend to really work.

On the flip side, customized learning has the ability to incorporate a variety of resources, such as virtual learning, to aid in the learning process while making it a way for teachers to moderate one-on-one learning experiences in practical ways. I think that the idea of handing control to students is hypothetically frightening to some educators and administrators but once they’ve actually tried it on a small scale, personalized learning actually looks more attractive from an adult’s perspective.

Online learning: Virtual learning is certainly not new to the K-12 scene, but its increasing popularity can’t be ignored. It used to be that online learning was associated only with distance learning, or students who went through the academic process off of school grounds. Today, online learning is more segmented and often just one part of a more traditional learning experience. Virtual learning is no longer all or nothing; it has become mainstream and will continue to transform in-classroom learning in the coming year.

Virtual learning also makes it possible parents, teachers and students have access to information they may need no matter where they are physically located. This, in essence, expands the classroom and gives students more time and space to complete and comprehend their lessons. There are many spinoffs of online learning, like the increasing availability of Massive Open Online Courses, which make virtual academics a returning trend for K-12 learning in 2014.

On Friday I will wrap up my list of K-12 trends for 2014. Has your school embraced any of today’s trends fully?

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Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

A winning formula: how to pick the best teachers

John Hattie, University of Melbourne and Terry Bowles, University of Melbourne

It’s one of those debates that has seemingly gone on forever. All the way back to the ancient Greeks, people have been trying to figure out the best way to choose teachers.

Australian governments, most notably the NSW government and their commonwealth counterparts, have made “lifting the bar” to entry into the teaching profession a priority. Most recently, education minister Christopher Pyne announced plans to have aspiring teachers sit exams before getting into the classroom. While other states are trying to set university entrance score cutoffs for teaching.

These governments are seeking to tackle the perception (and, in some cases, reality) that there is a decline in the standard of entry into the teaching profession. Indeed, it is true that the average Australian Tertiary Admission Ranks (ATAR) for undergraduate teacher education have been slipping year on year, with some universities accepting applicants into teaching with ATARs below 50.

But ATAR cutoffs aren’t the best measure for the quality of pre-service teachers, and they would only likely affect the 40% of people who use ATARs to get into teaching in the first place.

But with quality teaching having such a big impact on student achievement, we should be looking at ways to better select teachers before they enter the classroom. If not, just to address the problem of so many new teachers dropping out.

The question is: how?

TeacherSelector

We, along with colleagues at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education (MGSE), have developed one tool that could be used, called TeacherSelector.

A web-based tool, TeacherSelector is comprised of a battery of tests and is now used by a number of education institutions in Australia and overseas to help with their selection processes. We are also using it, along with a student’s academic record, to better select students into the Master of Teaching from next year.

TeacherSelector sees students complete a series of questionaires online, over a period of about one to one and a half hours. These questionnaires are based on what qualities we know excellent teachers have; factors like achievement, experience, motivation and personal attributes. The aim is to select people into teacher education programs who will suit the teaching profession.

After all, there’s more to being a great teacher than getting high academic scores. They also need relationship skills, communication skills and sensitivity to others. We know that previous academic achievement and experience as well as certain aspects of personality, can give us a pretty good picture of an individual’s future success in teacher education and their teaching career.

Using a Five Factor Model, we look at key personality traits, including emotional stability, conscientiousness, perseverance or grit, openness to views of others. We also ask open-ended questions about how individuals engage with others, apply themselves to tasks and manage emotion under stress when there are many competing demands on their time. This information can tell us a lot about an individual’s ability to self-regulate, their resilience, their communication style and other personal attributes.

There are also sections asking for transcripts of academic performance, but to complement this, TeacherSelector also measures general cognitive ability, including numerical, verbal and spatial reasoning. This is because general cognitive ability has been shown to be a good predictor of high performance as a beginner teacher.

Finally, the test also covers the individual’s motivation for, understanding of and experience with teaching, through a series of written responses; highly effective teachers are known to be passionate about teaching and learning, and show a deep understanding of their content area.

What we’re finding out

Our findings about TeacherSelector to date generally confirm what we already know, but we are also finding that candidates have a strong interest in using their individual results as as way to become a better teacher. They can identify their own strengths, as well as areas they would like to work on, and take proactive steps to address these, with the support of academic staff.

We are also interested in the predictive capacity of the tool and have embarked on longitudinal studies to establish which factors predict prolonged career engagement and service.

TeacherSelector is not dissimilar to other selection processes that have been used for many years in disciplines like business and medicine, as well as professional career selection. Given the high stakes involved in recruiting the right candidates into teaching, it’s wise to introduce similar measures in education, for the good of our teaching students and, ultimately, students in schools.

The Conversation

John Hattie, Professor, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne and Terry Bowles, Academic, Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

While rethinking admissions process, consider creativity

James C. Kaufman, University of Connecticut

The Turning the Tide report released last week by the Harvard Graduate School of Education has colleges and universities across the country taking a hard look at what many believe is a deeply flawed admissions process.

A number of colleges have already been reexamining their admissions process. In September last year, more than 80 leading colleges and universities announced the formation of the Coalition for Access, Affordability and Success, so as to make changes in the admissions process and diversify student bodies.

The new report characterizes the message being sent by colleges to high schools “as simply valuing their achievements, not their responsibility for others and their communities.” It asks college admissions officers to take the following three primary steps to improve the admissions process so that it is fairer and inculcates a concern for others:

  • promote more meaningful contributions through community service and other engagement for the public good
  • assess how students engage and contribute to family as well as community across race, culture and class
  • redefine achievement in ways that level the playing field for economically diverse students and reduce excessive achievement pressure.

However, what often gets left out of admission criteria is a student’s creativity. As a creativity researcher, I have studied many aspects of creativity that reinforce the idea that creativity is a valuable and necessary attribute for students in the 21st century.

Why measure creativity?

Creativity can be seen at all levels – from young children to geniuses. Creativity can help us discover new things, from the next generation of smartphones to new ways of recycling our trash.

It enables us to make art, tell stories, design buildings, test hypotheses and try new recipes. Indeed, creative people have been found to be more likely to succeed in business and be happier in life.

There is a growing volume of research that shows putting greater emphasis on creativity assessments in the college application process could provide a more holistic impression of students’ potential. Right now, we look only at a narrow range of abilities, which means that we over-reward people with certain strengths and penalize people with other strengths.

SAT is a better predictor of success for white students.
Dennis S. Hurd, CC BY-NC-ND

Studies have shown that the most widely used standardized performance tests for college admission, the SAT, is a better predictor of college success for white students than African-American and Hispanic-American students.

However, creativity assessments are more likely to be gender- and ethnically neutral, thereby avoiding the potential for bias.

A study we conducted recently on more than 600 college applicants compared applicants’ performance on a series of online tests assessing various forms of creativity to application data, which included SAT scores, class rank and college admission interview scores.

We found that traditional admissions measures (SAT scores and GPA) were only weakly related to the creativity measures. Further, people with high creative self-efficacy (i.e., people who think they are creative) did slightly worse on some admission tests.

We are continuing to capture data about students over the course of their college careers to assess whether including creativity tests with traditional admissions measures can better predict student outcomes such as retention, college success and graduation rates.

Assessing creativity makes a difference

We do understand that assessing students’ creativity would not be easy. But that is not to say it is impossible.

As part of the admissions process, students could be asked about how they would solve world problems or what their dream job would be or how they would spend lottery winnings; these responses could then be rated for their creativity by admission officers or trained raters. Many studies have shown that this is a reliable and valid way of measuring creativity, although it can be resource-intensive.

Students participate in creative teamwork. Can creativity be measured?
Creative Sustainability, CC BY-SA

Some universities may ask such questions in current admissions, but most do not actually score answers for creativity. In fact, being creative on admissions essays can actually hurt students.

If there are concerns about adding too much stress on students during applications, schools could use a portfolio approach in which students could simply upload a poem, drawing, movie, invention or science experiment that they have already produced.

The fact is that using creativity as a criterion in admissions has been done before. At one point, Cornell University Professor of Human Development Robert Sternberg and colleagues included creativity and practical intelligence as an optional part of college admissions at Tufts University. What Sternberg and colleagues found was that students enjoyed the application process more and the average SAT score of all applicants increased from previous years.

In an equally important outcome, differences on these new measures showed reduced or no ethnic differences, and minority admissions increased.

Such results are typical in creativity studies. Whereas many standardized or intelligence tests show ethnic, cultural or gender differences, creativity measures tend to produce no differences – everyone has the same potential to be creative.

Creativity is more important than ever as college and universities try to both emphasize diversity in their student population and seek future innovators in science, technology, engineering and math, otherwise known as the STEM fields. Including creativity helps accomplish both goals.

If early impressions of the Turning the Tide report are any indication, we could be heading into a pivotal time for college admissions. Such changes should not be limited to the scope of this landmark report. We need to be creative.

The Conversation

James C. Kaufman, Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Connecticut

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Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education, Secondary Education

Should college and high school diplomas be earned together?

The term “college prep” as it relates to high school paths has a different meaning than when I was a teenager. The high school courses that I took that were “college prep” were designed to prepare me for higher education after I first earned my high school diploma. Today, it’s not uncommon for high school students to have several college credits before they walk across that graduation stage — and some may even have associate’s degrees. Dual enrollment, where students can simultaneously earn high school and college credits, is offered in schools across the country, and supported through legislation (and President Obama has been a vocal supporter of it).

While critics may say it’s just too much too soon for teens, I tend to lean the other direction. I think it’s important to zero in on what possible careers high school students may aspire to have as adults and to start them down the path early — before they have a chance to drop out and before life gets in the way.

Dual enrollment extends beyond traditional classroom settings, too. Virtual classes for both high school and college curriculum are available to teens and the ability to manage both is much more flexible with this setup. Recently, Coffee County Schools and Wiregrass Georgia Technical College (WGTC) announced a partnership called the Wiregrass Regional College and Career Academy that will give students in 11 Southern Georgia counties a chance to take classes from both a fully accredited virtual high school and college. Students will be able to earn their high school diploma AND a college associate’s degree at the same time — with state-mandated tests and exams proctored at locations throughout the area. What’s more — the program is FREE through the state’s Move on When Ready initiative. The schools will tap K-12 virtual learning curriculum Odysseyware for course completion.

Earning both a high school diploma AND a college degree at the same time is certainly not for every student – but should be an option for those who are ready to jump start their careers.

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Matthew Lynch published in Equity, HBCU's, Higher Education

Why scholars emphasize the need for affirmative action

Kalpana Jain, The Conversation

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, during oral arguments in the affirmative action case, Fisher v University of Texas, on Wednesday, December 9, suggested,

There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well — as opposed to having them go to a less advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well.

Justice Scalia is no stranger to controversy. In an earlier Supreme Court ruling upholding Obamacare tax credits for people on the federal exchange in June 2015, Justice Scalia was scathing in his dissent from the majority opinion.

Writing for The Conversation, Robert Schapiro, dean and professor of Law , Emory University, said:

When Justice Scalia gets mad, he does not hold back. He has often adopted fairly sharp language in his dissents but even by that standard, his dissent in King v Burwell is extraordinary in tone…. His vituperation reaches a crescendo in the conclusion where he snipes, “We should start calling this law SCOTUScare.”

Scholars and journalists alike have emphasized the seminal nature of the Fisher v University of Texas case. Indeed, a number of our contributors have argued that the case could exacerbate the racial tensions that have been evident through protests on campuses around the country.

Clearly, following this week’s oral arguments, the world of social media was on fire. Students and others tweeted at hashtag #scalia. Some even denounced Scalia’s comments with a hashtag of “#impeachscalia.”

Why the case is pivotal

Scholars argue that the judgment in the case will influence not only the admissions policies at UT, but in colleges and universities across the nation. And that could have consequences not just for diversity in education, but also for the educational success of students of color.

Liliana M Garces, an assistant professor at Pennsylvania State University, who served as counsel of record in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in support of the University of Texas at Austin when the case was before the court in 2012, said:

We might not think that admissions policies can have an influence on the work of administrators charged with supporting students of color once they are on campus, but findings from a more recent study suggest that the influence of these laws extend beyond the composition of the student body. Bans on affirmative action can have a detrimental influence on work that is critical to the success of students of color on campus.

Garces’ research also shows that after eight states banned affirmative action, via ballot initiatives and other measures, there was a drop in the number of students of color.

Before bans on affirmative action, for every 100 students matriculated in medical schools in states with bans, there were 18 students of color, whereas after the ban, for every 100 students matriculated, about 15 were students of color.

The case came before the Supreme Court after Abigail Fisher, a white female, applied to the University of Texas at Austin and was denied admission. She sued the university stating the university’s race-conscious admissions policy violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. A lower court decided in UT’s favor.

In 2013, however, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the lower court to conduct a more rigorous assessment of whether UT Austin needed to consider race in admissions.

Garces with her coauthor, Gary Orfield, a professor of education, law, political science and urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles, makes a strong argument that the decision in the case could affect affirmative action policy in higher education in general.

While the case raises questions specific to UT-Austin’s program, it is also possible that the Supreme Court may further limit the use of race in higher education admissions policies for institutions across the nation.

Other scholars underline the importance of looking at the historical context of the origins of affirmative action.

Tanya Washington, professor of law at Georgia State University, says:

Franklin D Roosevelt was the first president to issue an executive order prohibiting racial discrimination in hiring defense contractors in 1943. But it was President John F Kennedy who, in an executive order in 1961, coined the term “affirmative action” to stop racial discrimination by government contractors. Subsequently, state and local governments, including universities, were inspired to introduce similar programs to promote equal opportunity.

In her article, Washington refers to the recent protests on campuses across the country. Black students continue to experience hostility because of their skin color.

Colleges and universities, she says, urgently need policies to address these challenges.

One such existing policy includes the limited consideration of race in admission decisions. This policy allows institutions to build a racially and ethnically diverse student body.

What is happening globally?

Policymakers in the US are not the only ones to have pushed for affirmative action.

Michele S Moses, professor of Educational Foundations and Policy, University of Colorado and Laura Dudley Jenkins, associate professor of Political Science, University of Cincinnati, argue that about one-quarter of the world’s other countries have some form of affirmative action for higher education. And many of these programs have emerged over the last 25 years.

A wide variety of institutions and governments on six continents have programs to expand admissions of non-dominant groups of students on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, class, geography, or type of high school. Several use a combination of these categories.

In fact, as they point out, “the United States’ affirmative action policies in higher education are not the oldest: India’s policies for lower caste students take that prize.”

And this should give policy makers in the US pause, “given that US policies are older than most, much of the cutting edge thinking on the topic is now coming from other parts of the world.”

The Conversation

Kalpana Jain, Editor, The Conversation

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