Picmonkey (see previous post here) has picked up where Picnik left off (after Google bought it and effectively killed it) by releasing their collage functionality within the past few days. The video below shows a short tutorial of most of the features. It’s only slightly different from the Picnik functionality for collages, and I kind of like how they have added the ability to add a box here or there on the fly.

Picmonkey has great functionality, although you can’t yet integrate your photos with Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, or any similar service. That is one thing I miss about Picnik. The other thing is the ability to load photos into the basket (maybe on Picmonkey it would be a barrel, get it?) where you can combine them together by dragging and dropping onto layers. Picmonkey is free and doesn’t require (or even allow, at this time) users to have an account. Just come and go as you please.

And here’s an example of the finished product. Click image to enlarge.

Queen’s Landing Guest House is a great Bed & Breakfast and only about a 20 minute walk from D2L Headquarters in the Tannery Building. Your hosts are Wilma and Brian Skipper. They share their beautiful home with people like me who enjoy a home away from home. This home was built in 1920, and “features ten foot ceilings, large porches, stained glass windows, etched french doors, hardwood floors and walnut trim.”

Read the full post … including the first recipe I’ve ever posted on my blog, along with many more pictures and more info about Queen’s Landing.

All the data that I have collected over the years from online students indicate that time flexibility is the number one reason that they enroll in online courses. Not cost, not distance, not even preferred learning methodology; but clearly they place a premium on having time flexibility that allows them to fit higher education into their otherwise busy lives.

UPDATE (4/23): This will probably not result in an actual rubric. I’m having a hard time figuring out the lousy-good-better-best type of hierarchy that you typically need for a rubric. Instead, I’m thinking that the output will be a list of effective (or maybe “promising”) practices for ensuring time flexibility in an online course. Please keep the comments coming.

The purpose of the rubric is to come up with a way of measuring the flexibility in various online courses, and to encourage more flexibility rather than less by those who are using the rubric. I have no doubt that some online students are frustrated when they enroll in an online course with certain personal expectations about flexibility, only to find that the course offers them very little of it. These are some of the factors that come to mind for me.

Time flexibility, measured by the size of the “window of opportunity” for:

• Quizzes and exams (how long are they open to students?)
• Dropbox assignments (how long between start and end of assignment availability)
• Making the required number of discussion postings per module/topic (how many days to do it, etc.)

Other factors affecting time flexibility:

• Timeliness of quiz/exam grading (is quiz feedback received before next one is required?)
• Stated expectations (syllabus/outline) for instructor responses to student inquiries
• Required synchronous activities – how many, how long, and when (& are there alternatives?)
• Required group work projects/assignments
• Days of the week when due dates are scheduled (e.g. weekends and/or holidays)
• Online office hours: timing of availability
• Online office hours: modes of availability (might affect timeliness for students)
• Added 5/3/12 from comment received: Online courses should have a rhythm or consistency to them as to when things open, when they close, how large the windows of opportunity are, etc.
• Added 5/3/12: Appropriate amount of content
  • Too little content provided means students have to spend time hunting down relevant content that allows them to achieve the required outcomes.
  • Too much content provided typically includes content might be on-topic, but not relevant or useful in achieving the required outcomes,; causing students to spend time filtering through the information (a case where the instructor throws everything but the kitchen sink at them).

One of the keys to this type of rubric will be to walk the fine line between enough flexibility and too much flexibility. An extreme example of “too much” flexibility would be those cases where there are no deadlines at all in the course except for the course ending date. This might work for an electronic independent study course, but not for online courses where learner interaction is expected and/or required. Based on my past online teaching experience, I find that I am in agreement with many faculty members I know who state that you must keep students engaged with the course every week (and probably 2 or more times per week) in order to not have them fall off the face of the earth (fall behind and drop out or just quit).

I’ve thought about including other types of flexibility rather than those focused on the students’ time availability. I’ve decided not to tackle those right now. For example, it might be interesting to include things related to the nature of assignments – do they allow students to choose different assignments or different methods of completing the assignment (write a paper, make a movie, make an oral presentation, etc.). I think that’s interesting, but I don’t think it captures the reason that students take online courses – which is clearly time flexibility.

Determining the specific parameters for each rubric item is yet to come. Right now I would love to have your input on other factors that could be included in a rubric to measure time flexibility for online learners. Please leave your thoughts in the comments or email me at barrydahl at gmail.

Thanks in advance, and yes, I realize this could be a colossal failure. I’m okay with that.

Figuratively speaking, that’s what’s happening with my career in education. I recently signed a job offer sheet and all the other necessary paperwork to tie the knot with a company where I hope to spend the rest of my working years.

I’ve known some of the people in this company for nine years now. They are talented and driven and inspired. There are many other newer employees that I’ve haven’t yet met. I’m looking forward to meeting many of the newer folks during the next couple of months.

It will probably not come as a surprise to many people in the e-learning world that I’ve taken a job with Desire2Learn. I’ve told many people over the years that there was only one company that I’d dealt with while CIO of a college in Minnesota that I would be willing, even anxious, to work for. That company is D2L. Even after a nine year relationship, nothing has happened to change that point of view for me.

Almost every interaction with them has been pleasant, engaging, and positive. I consider many of the D2Lers to be friends of mine. The company is doing great and I look forward to being part of the team that continues to execute on their mission and vision.

My connection with D2L started in the spring of 2003 when I was the chair of the the MnSCU IMS of the Future task force. Desire2Learn submitted a response to our RFP and was selected to be one of the four finalists for the process. In May 2003, I met John Baker and Jeremy Auger for the first time at St. Cloud State University for the day-long demonstration of the D2L platform. Their presentation that day, along with a superior written response to the RFP, elevated D2L to the top of the list of the platforms being considered. Other milestones:

• My former college started using D2L in place of WebCT in 2004.
• In 2006, I started Desire2Blog (which I shuttered last month – no new posts).
• In 2007, we hosted the D2L FUSION Conference in Duluth.
• In 2011, my job was eliminated at the college. John Baker told me “If you ever need a job …”
• In April 2012, I signed an offer sheet to become a D2L employee.
• May 9, 2012 will be my first day on the job as Senior Community Manager for D2L, Ltd.

Just a few quickies.

• I am able to work as a remote employee so my family will not need to relocate. Major kudos to D2L for making these opportunities available. Most of my time will be spent in “the hole” (my basement (dungeon) office) and traveling. I will spend a few weeks each year at D2L headquarters in Kitchener.
• Although I don’t start until 5/9, I’m already working on some ideas to create a whole new User Community experience for D2L clients and employees.
• I will no longer be conducting business as Excellence in e-Education. I loved it, but I’m going to love this even more.
  

  CC-By photo: Terri-Lynn Brown

• I’ve made so many friends over the years who are in the D2L user community, like those in the photo on the right from FUSION 2011. I’m thrilled that I’ll still have the opportunity to interact with all those friends and with the new friends that I’ll get to meet along the way. Yay!!

Yep, lots of good things have happened. My network of educators around the country (and beyond) has really paid off as far as getting contracts from friends and from friends of friends. I’ve been able to do some really fun and fascinating work for a variety of clients. Much to my delight, I never was faced with the same project or task twice. Always something new, always more to learn, always the next challenge.

At the same time, it’s been a real roller coaster ride from a financial perspective. Overall, it was a definite reduction of the income with which we had grown accustomed. However, less income wasn’t the problem. Uncertainty about future income was a significant problem. I often talked about how I had a long list of “maybes” and how I needed a fair number of those maybes to turn into “yeses.” Sometimes a maybe turned into an actual contract for work to be done, but often times they didn’t. With three kids to put through college, the maybes really start to take a toll on you. “Maybe I’ll get that contract with XYZ College” quickly turns into “maybe I’ll be able to pay for my kids to go to college.”

When I told people about my adventure as a self-employed person working on the fringes of higher education, my standard line was something like this: “Being self-employed is a whole lot like being unemployed – just different paperwork.”

I’ve know for about the past year that I really wasn’t interested in trying to get another job at a college or university. I pretty much have a been-there, done-that feeling along those lines. 27 years working inside higher ed seems like enough, especially considering the uncertainty of those jobs going forward (I’m living proof of that). I was pretty sure that I wanted to always work in some way connected to higher ed, just not necessarily in the middle of it. That’s why the consulting gig was a good thing, but not perfect. That’s also why I think my next adventure will be totally awesome. I get to continue working in the education sector, I get to have a regular paycheck and other benefits, and I get to engage in totally new and exciting work with people that I genuinely like and admire.

Next week I’ll be ready to spill the beans about where this next chapter will be written and with whom. Until then, just know that this feels 100% right.

Thanks very much to my clients over the past 16 months; including Roane State CC, Minnesota State College – Southeast Technical, Broward College, MnSCU System Office, MnSCU 360 Program, Rowan-Cabarrus CC, TBR-ROCC, MCCVLC, all my webinar subscribers, and the many speaking engagements such as ELCC, Montana XLi, MODLA, WITC, SHOT, SC4, Gogebic CC, UW-Eau Claire, Davenport U, UW-Oshkosh, and many others.

Thanks very much to my mentors and references along the way: John, Kathy, Gary, Jowell, Myk, James, Lisa, and many more.

Thanks to my special colleagues, too numerous to mention, and too easy to leave some out. You know who you are (I hope!!).

This is starting to sound like an obit, which it most definitely is not. Just turning the page and moving on to the next chapter. Over the next month I’ll be wrapping up work on a couple of consulting projects  and a few speaking engagements, and then I’ll be starting a new adventure. Next week I’ll be ready to tell you about that adventure.

This image was paid for. You do not have the right to reuse it.

The Payscale data used here is suspect (no sampling, unequal numbers and %’s of students from each school, self-reported income figures, etc.), but their methods of using that data seem to be pretty sound up to a point. The problem is that they stop short of making the important calculations – so I’ll make them here. They calculate a 30-year return on investment  for bachelors degree students (one number for grads, different one for all students who attend regardless of graduation) based on the extra earnings that the average student/graduate has earned after attending each college after factoring in the total out-of-pocket costs of attendance (both before and after grants) and the average number of years to graduate from each school. They are looking at a 30-year time period, starting after the 4 to 6 years that they spent in college. They look at students from various colleges and factor in that school’s average years to graduation (but don’t share what those numbers are). The base income is the amount that the “average” high school graduate would earn over a 34-36 year period and comparing that to what the average bachelor degree graduate earns over the 30 year period, after spending 4-6 years in school prior to graduation.

So let’s see what Payscale came up with. They rank the schools based on “ROI.” Yep, here comes some more ROI Hooey!! But what the heck, let’s just go with it and see where it leads.

Here are their top 5 schools.

1. Cal. Tech – ROI: $2,033,000  -  Cost (after grant aid): $91,250
2. Harvey Mudd College – ROI: $1,868,000  -  Cost: $117,500
3. MIT – ROI: $1,797,000   -  Cost: $72,560
4. Dartmouth – ROI: $1,701,000  -  Cost: $72,850
5. Stanford – ROI: $1,691,000  -  Cost: $75,710

Many people will look at this data and say “what a great deal!!” Spending $75,710 to go to Stanford provides a return of $1,691,000 over 30 years. “That’s fantastic!”

Ummmm, no, it’s really not all that special. Here’s the deal. If you took the money spent to attend Stanford over a four year period and invested it in the stock market, and then let it ride for 30 more years after that (same 30-yr time frame used in the study for the college grad to earn more than a high school grad), you would come up with an expected value of $1,655,755 – which is only $35,245 less than the benefit of going to Stanford. And don’t forget that you would have a pot of money sitting there equal to $1,655,755, which is very unlikely to happen for the Stanford grad who made (and probably spent much of) the extra income.

Those numbers apply only if we are talking about getting out of Stanford in 4 years. What if Stanford is a five year proposition? That changes things substantially. Now the high school grad has the advantage over the college grad by $53,471. Yikes. Giving the lowly high school grad that extra year of stock market gains makes about an $89K difference.

Crazy talk, right? I’m not so sure. What’s so crazy about it?

Let’s recap.

• A student who graduates from Stanford pays a total of 75,710 out-of-pocket, including loans that have to be paid back. Grants received are free money and are not considered to be an out-of-pocket cost.
• Let’s assume that they make eight equal payments over the four years (one payment every six months). In financial circles, making a payment at the beginning of each time period is known as an annuity due. For Stanford, those 8 equal payments would be $9,464 ($75,710 / 8) per payment. Sure, they’re not really going to be equal payments, but close enough.
• The long-term rate of return for the stock market is approximately 10%, although it’s somewhere within the 9-11% range depending which 30 year time period you choose. We’ll use 10%.
• The future value of an annuity due for 8 periods at a 5% interest rate (10% annual / 2 payments per year) equals $94,889 at the end of the four years.
• The high school grad has been working for those four years instead of going to college. At this point the high school grad leaves his investment nest egg (the $94,889) alone for the next 30 years while the Stanford grad goes to work for the next 30 years.
• The Stanford grad earns a salary over those 30 years that exceeds the salary of the high school grad by $1,691,000.
• During those 30 years, the Stanford grad presumably saves for retirement and invests her riches along the way. How much she will accumulate after 30 years is anybody’s guess (go ahead, take a guess).
• The high school grad has an investment portfolio of $1,655,755 – and that’s assuming that he hasn’t added a penny to it (nor taken one out) over the past 30 years.

I can hear some of the objections you’re raising, such as “sure, but these are averages, and my kid (or whoever) is way above average and will do much better than that.” Maybe so, but the same can be said for those above-average high school grads who will do real well for themselves without the college degree.

Another objection: “but going to college is much more than just maximizing your earning potential. It’s about the people you meet and the connections you make.” I always love that one. It makes it sound like a person who doesn’t go to college is doomed to a life in solitary confinement and cannot possibly live a fulfilling life or expand their mind or any of the other things that people tend to think can only be achieved through a college experience.

Another objection: “you have no way of knowing that the stock market is going to return 10% again over the next 30 years.” Yep, that’s right. We also have no way of knowing whether college grads will continue to earn this much more than high school grads over the next 30 years, nor do we know whether the jobs that your degree qualifies you for will even exist over the next 30 years. It’s definitely a series of dice rolls and we could crap out at any time on any one of them.

Another objection: “it’s completely unrealistic to think that non-college-goers could get their hands on that kind of money, and even if they did, they’d spend it rather than invest it.” That might be true, and it might not be true. It would probably be tougher for people coming from low-income families. But the math still works for those coming from high-income families. It still begs the question of whether they are better off investing their money rather than spending it on a college degree.

Another objection: “maybe that’s what the numbers say right now, but ‘past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.’ All the experts say that a college education will be more important in the future than in the past. They also say that high school grads without college will find fewer and fewer job openings in the future.” How sure are you that those “experts” are right? Other experts are taking a different approach, such as the Thiel Foundation project that encourages entrepreneurship over college attendance.

It’s certainly not an exact science – which is exactly one of my major objections with the whole “ROI” malarkey in the first place. For the most part, they’re just making it up (and so am I).

Some of the things that Payscale doesn’t take into account, but probably should include:

1. the average amount of debt incurred by grads at the different schools
2. the amount of interest paid on that debt over the years
3. the number of defaults on the debt at the different schools

Which leads me to the following adjustments:

• Graduates who have a substantial amount of debt to repay will likely end up on the lower end of the cost/benefit calculation due to their increased costs and inability to save during the years when they are paying back loans.
• Graduates who actually default on their loans are probably in a world of hurt and will have credit problems for much of their lives, and might have been much better off taking the low road of the high school grad.

Just a couple of other tidbits. I looked at a few schools of special interest to me.

• I know someone who recently graduated from Western Michigan. He was an out-of-state student. The average cost of attending Western (after grant aid) is $113,000 for out-of-state students. His extra earnings over 30 years are projected to be $546,700. If he had just invested his college money he would have been better off by $1,931,136 (for 4-yr grad) or by $2,064,305 (5-yd grads). Ouch!!
• How about Wisconsin-Green Bay? Low costs (relatively low) of only $39,050 (in state). But also low salary differential of only $285,600 over 30 years. Investing that money rather than spending it on college pays off to the tune of $568,412 (4-yr) or $614,309 (5-yr).
• How about a school that stands out in a positive way? Take the Ramblin’ Wreck from Georgia Tech. Cost of $39,390 (in state) with a whopping salary differential of $1,467,000. The GT bachelor degree is a much better use of the money by about $605,553 (4-yr.) or $559,255 (5-yr.). Very few of them look like this.

In closing, let me make it clear that I am not an anti-college guy. I’m a pro-college guy. However, I think we need a dose of sanity when looking at the financial value of a college degree. High-achieving students need to go to college to be our professionals of the future. That includes the future doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, nurses, college professors, etc. etc.

However, I think this really begs the question of whether the lower-achieving students or less-prepared students who go to college would be better off going to work and investing their college funds. Looks like that’s a definite possibility, IMO.

Resources:

• Payscale 2011 ROI Data Package methodolgy
• Bloomberg article: College: Big Investment, Paltry Return
• Sortable table: What’s Your College Degree Worth?

I’ve used at least 8 or 9 different screencasting tools. Some of the very expensive services are quite good, but if you’re looking for free – start with Screencast-O-Matic (SOM).

Some of the features of the free service:

1. Unlimited hosting at SOM
2. 15 minute max recording time
3. Can record web cam
4. Publish directly to YouTube
5. Save locally as MP4, AVI, FLV
6. SOM watermark on video

For Pro users, I think you get much more than your money’s worth. Besides what’s shown in the video above, other features for a Pro account ($12/yr) include:

1. Unlimited max recording time
2. Publish directly to Google Docs (YouTube, SOM, & download)
3. Publish screen shots (stills)
4. No SOM watermark
5. Can password protect videos
6. Use offline
7. Add scripts easily
8. Capture computer audio (if desired)
9. Adjust maximum frame rate
10. Insert more video into saved recording
11. Resize the video
12. Cut out parts of recordings
13. Trim around parts of recordings
14. Add transitions
15. Change speed up or down

It’s incredibly simple to use. Lots of educators like Jing, but I’d choose SOM over Jing based on functionality.

It’s a web-based tool, but it does give you the option to download an applet that will allow you to make screencasts even when offline (both PC and Mac).

They have been rather prolific at introducing new features to the service. At this rate, they are well positioned to continue to be the leader in web-based screencasting.

NOTE: I’m a big fan of web-based tools in general, where there is no software download or install. This is a major benefit when working with students and having them capture screencasts of what they’re doing. I’m not saying it’s better than the expensive programs that are out there – but I am saying that it is a great, inexpensive, and easy-to-use screencasting tool.

1. Several ports – including two USB and one SD card reader.
2. VGA connector is now available for about $30-40. I bought one and it works.
3. Keyboard is generally good to have. It doubles as a protective case and greatly extends battery life (see below).
4. Asus is fairly aggressive about pushing out Android updates – which is usually a good thing (or not, see below).
5. Great for playing some games (Kill eight pigs with one bird?).
6. Works great for simple tasks – such as checking email or catching up on Twitter via Tweetdeck or Tweetcaster.
7. The screen resolution seems very good. Great picture when streaming Netflix or Hulu, watching YouTube HD videos, and playing games with high-quality graphics.
8. My kids think it’s very cool (they’re kids, nuff said).
9. Connections to known wifi networks are quick and successful.
10. It must have a magnetic field, because everybody is attracted to it and wants to ask me about it. (This could easily go on the bottom list.)

But there’s also some not-so-good things (okay, a lot of them):

1. Very tinny external speakers – you must use headphones or auxiliary speakers for music or any other audio.
2. The cameras are pretty crappy. The front-facing camera is 1.2 MP and I rarely use it. The 5MP auto-focus rear-facing camera is completely under-whelming. Especially indoors, the photos are grainy and of extremely low quality. In very well-lit (outdoors) settings you’ll get somewhat better photos, but they have little detail, little contrast, and just an overall muddy feel to them.  Most pics are downright ugly.
3. The keyboard is kind of wonky – especially the touch pad – while typing, the cursor is constantly jumping to other parts of the page – I guess that’s because my wrist or palm brushes against the touch pad (even when I don’t feel it).
4. The metal covering of both the ePad and the dock is very slippery and hard to hold on to. It “looks” like it would be a great “grippy” surface – but those looks are deceiving.
5. Not all Android updates are great – including the much-awaited 4.0 ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich), which seems very buggy, causing the Transformer to reboot a few times a day for no apparent reason. BTW, almost all Transformer user are ticked about this – see the Forum posts here.
6. I very much dislike how the open application closes when the tablet is undocked from the keyboard. Seems to happen with all the apps. Kicks you out of the app and takes you back to the home screen. (Update: this seems to have stopped – maybe that is one improvement with ICS.)
7. The boot time is less than impressive; about 40-50 seconds from a cold start.
8. You need to boot from a cold start unless you are a very frequent user as well as a frequent charger. Even though it touts 12-15 hours of battery life (with the keyboard dock), that seems to include “sleep time” (push the power button to darken the screen and close the top), when you think that it should be conserving battery power. If you leave it in this sleep state for a while (presumably 12 hours or more), you can expect a totally dead device when you are ready to use it again. This seems like a bug, not a feature. Some people are reporting that this battery drain only started for them after they installed Android ICS (late Feb. 2012) – but it has always been that way for me.
   
9. The browsers are crippled. Firefox on the tablet is a very poor tool. Even the native browser, which is similar to Google Chrome on a PC, is not very full featured. As if the weak browsers aren’t bad enough, many sites are apparently coded to kick you into their mobile version even though the  screen is large enough for full versions. Most of the time I hate this.
10. For the life of me, I can’t get the flash player to install properly – and I’ve tried about 20 times. Flash is one of the main reasons I chose an Android tablet over the iSpaz. I need to research this because there is probably a work-around – but I’m expecting it to “just work!” NOTE: YouTube videos do play with the free YouTube app, but most sites that use flash simply do not work in any of my four browsers.
11. Incredibly short power cord. Heck, the cord for my cell phone is twice as long.
12. Some combination of wonky browsers and possibly the flash player recently caused me a great deal of angst. Trying to access a particular app on Facebook proved to be impossible, even though I tried with four different browsers (2 of which just constantly crashed – Opera Mini  and Dolphin browser), and at least 15 times. On my laptop, this was a seven second operation. Not sure who to blame it on, but overall I was not a happy user.

This post tells me that I can expect ASUS to have a fix in place for all the Ice Cream Sandwich issues next week. (Update: I believe this was installed yesterday, and will report back if things are significantly different.)

Overall, I do prefer the Transformer to the iPud – for various reasons. But, as you can probably tell, I’m not very enamored with either of them. My HP TouchSmart convertible tablet (a full powered PC, with touch screen, stylus, Win7, and superior ease-of-use) is about ten times better, albeit considerably more expensive as well. YMMV.

But what about those that WON’T accept you as a member?

This has been stuck in my craw since January, 2011 when I received an email reply from Terry Eberhart. Maybe he’s a great guy. I really don’t know. All I know if that he is (or at least was) the moderator of a LinkedIn group that I was trying to join.

The LinkedIn group is named the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning (HETL) Association. It currently has 13,475 members; including several friends of mine such as John Sener, Chris Duke, Alice Voorhees-Bedard, and John St. Clair to name a few.

Here are the vision, mission, and values statements from that group (copied form their info page):

• Vision: the long-term vision of HETL is to improve educational outcomes in higher education by creating new knowledge and advancing the scholarship and practice of teaching and learning.
• Mission: to bring that vision to reality, the current mission of HETL is to develop a global community of higher education professionals who come together to share their knowledge and expertise in teaching and learning.
• Values: to effectively fulfill that mission, HETL adheres to the values of academic integrity, collegiality, and diversity.

I experienced a mixture of surprise and disgust when I received the email shown below.

I’ve let it sit this long, but now I’m wondering if Mr. Eberhart would care to elaborate on where my values fall short in meeting his standard.  If anyone else would like to take a shot at that, I’d like to hear from you as well. Here is a link to my profile at LinkedIn – which is apparently what he reviewed to come to his conclusion that my values don’t measure up.

(NOTE: I did email Mr. Eberhart about three weeks ago, but he didn’t respond.)

CC-BY photo By Mykl Roventine