No 14 - Journal of Social Informatics / Revista de Informatica Sociala

Embed enterprise-wide predictive analytics in academic and administrative processes tosupport reimagining, enhancing learner success, and achieving financial sustainability. Complement existing offerings with new, Web-based mash-ups and communities of practiceas “expeditions” relying on learners and participants to continuously provide feedback onwhat is working and what is necessary in the near future; expeditionary initiatives need touse such feedback to evolve into fast, fluid, flexible and affordable solutions with high valuefor learners. Respond aggressively to opportunities to leverage valuable knowledge flows that fillknowledge gaps and meet critical, unmet needs for potential learners, addressingcombinations of innovation, entrepreneurship, employability and problem solving that haveeluded traditional institutional-based approaches; then combine knowledge-gap andknowledge-pathway solutions.To be successful in Stages IV and V of the evolution of e-learning and competence building, futurecoaches, teachers and mentors will follow, evolve and improve these expeditionary principles.Focus Energies on America’s “Finishing First in Higher Education”If America is to reclaim its position atop the international league tables for education andcompetitiveness, we must focus our energies on relevant factors. Collaborations of key foundationsand public agencies have been funding initiatives to accelerate attainment of coveted courses ofstudy, certificates and degrees. Respectfully, we offer the following listing as a way to align onlinelearning with the Lumina Foundation’s Four Principles, and to do this to fit the challenges of the21st Century marketplace:Reward Institutions that Use Online Learning to Focus on Learners Completing High-Value Objectives and Demonstrating Competences. Completion of objectives is key;institutions should be provided incentives to improve the successful completion rates oflearners. Institutions should also be incentivized to focus on value, meeting the needs oflearners and employers.Use Online Learning to Track Students Who Should Be Rewarded for CompletingCourses, Certificates, Degrees and Demonstrations of Competence. Again, it isimportant to provide support systems, incentives and rewards that emphasize the completionof meaningful learning objectives. These can be courses, certificates, degrees ordemonstrations of competence. The linkage between these learning objectives and the needsof the marketplace will receive increasing and critical attention.Use Online Learning to Expand and Strengthen Options that Reduce the Total Cost ofCompetence and Transformative Options at Market Prices (Push These Techniques intoPK-20). Policy makers and funders should support the already robust efforts to reduce totalcost of competence and go to scale with such efforts. These are critical both to give learnersaffordable options and to enable institutional financial sustainability. To be optimallysuccessful, these practices must be pushed down into K-12 as well.Invest in Institutions that Use Online Learning to Demonstrate Good BusinessPractices that Focus on Student Success, Value, Productivity, Financial Sustainabilityand Linkages between Learning and Work. Without establishing a foundation forfinancial sustainability in the New Normal, it will prove fruitless to increase student access,affordability and success. Policy makers and funders should “water where the grass isgreen,” supporting institutions that are simultaneously achieving efficiencies, innovating inways that enhance student success and value, enhancing productivity and establishing freshrevenue sources – all critical to financial sustainability.In all four of these areas, use the organizational competences associated with online learningto strengthen the linkages between learning and economic returns. Also, support the paralleldevelopment of knowledge gap/flows approaches in addition to knowledge pathways.