Headlines this week a bout the software programs being just as accurate as human readers.http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/04/13/large-study-shows-little-difference-between-human-and-robot-essay-graders#ixzz1rwEWd9Y9  I’ve got two reactions to this.

First, I heard a fantastic TED talk yesterday from one of our computer science students (Christian Gecko) who presented us with a real life ethical problem: suppose you had been hired to check data as a job, but you knew how to code, so you wrote a computer program to do your same job, only it did with 10 times the accuracy in a fraction of the time? Well in this version, the guy finally feels guilty and tells his boss, who fires him. So he tells the bosses boss, who rehires him, fires the boss and put him in charge.

He also gave the example of tollboths at DFw airport where people are paid to sit in a booth and transcribe license plates from one computer screen to another. If you could write code to automate this, you could save the airport $258,000 a year.

These are menial jobs, but the point was that we can count on computers doing more in the future, and looking for a way to reduce the time you need to spend on basic tasks is just smart.

So i don’t think a robo reader is as good as a human reader in all things, but I do think it highlights the need for understanding the distinction. Which think can the robo reader do to free humans to do more critical tasks?

So to start, HAVE STUDENTS WRITE MORE!!! A limiting factor in almost all college courses is the amount of grading faculty have to do. Grading essays is time consuming, so we assign less writing to keep our sanity. Now, we don’t have to limit the writing based upon our grading time!!!

that does NOt mean that we should abandon human grading. But students who practice writing more, will become better writers. The NEW QUESTION is how should we structure courses so the human grading is most useful?

As it happens, grades are NOT the most useful part of learning to write. Assigning grades takes time though, and leaving that to a computer, could free up more time for the really useful feedback on multiple drafts that will really improve writing.

The changes to higher education are coming daily.

First comes the news that students taking free online courses from Harvard and MIT through EdX will be able to take a proctored exam at 450 testing centers in 110 countries.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/edx-offers-proctored-exams-for-open-online-course/39656

The BIG issue of course, is if these courses will be accepted by others, mainly employers and other universities. Employers probably count the most. If employers are willing to hire candidates who have web badges or certificates instead of university degrees, the market value of a college degree will plummet.

I believe the market will test this by hiring a few folks and seeing what happens. The for-profit world is better (and has had much incentive0 to determine the real results of different experiments.

My guess is that free online course badges won’t prove to be any better or worse that a college degree when it comes to learning. We have MOUNTAINS of evidence that you get As in college and not have a clue (as Eric Mazur discovered of his Harvard physics students) and we have equally compelling research that tells that intrinsic motivation far outweighs any possible change in pedagogy. In other words, if a student wants to learn, teaching methods make little difference. For the student who wants to learn in a free MOOC, she will, for a student who wants to be a college surface or strategic learner (See, for example, Ken Bain’s new book, What the Best College Students Do, Harvard 2012), 4 years on a college campus will still result in nothing really being learned.

So the big choice for colleges is whether to accept transfer credit from MOOCs. If they do, then students will be able to drastically able to reduce costs (take a few free courses instead of summer school and still get a regular college diploma.

The first step has happened. Some Austrian and German universities already do, but Colorado State University-Global campus has become the first US university to accept a Udactiy course for credit.
http://chronicle.com/article/A-First-for-Udacity-Transfer/134162/
This is only the Colorado State online campus, but if other colleges agree to take this credit the implications are serious.
If students can take this free Introduction to Computer Science and get transfer credit, why would they need to pay Stanford $6000 for the same product? Part of the answer will be that extra learning is offered on the Stanford campus, but Stanford had better figure out a way to demonstrate that extra learning (and justify is enormous additional cost) in a hurry.

As most not-for-profit universities stick a toe in the water of higher ed marketing, they will need to watch out the for-profit sharks that have been steadily feeding for years. If you want to get a taste of the the competition looks like, check out the Kaplan Your Time ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_5SjeUKQ-g

It is a powerful ad in lots of ways. It makes no direct claims that Kaplan will offer students a better education, but much of what it does says is true and will resonate. Talent is not just in schools and it is being wasted. we are steeped in tradition and we need to react faster.

I don’t know if Kaplan can deliver on the promise of a student-centered educational system, but I know this will be a persuasive argument for students–and it is not the message with which we must compete.