Tweets from Socrates: #ReturnOnEdInvestment

Tweets from Socrates:  #ReturnOnEdInvestment

Effectively Conveying the Value Proposition through Online Course Design

Currently, Vermont Law School (“VLS”) offers four master’s level online programs and approximately 20 online courses for law students obtaining a Juris Doctor (JD). Concededly, law schools are relatively new to online education and face many unique challenges (ABA accreditation standards restrict “distance education” to a maximum of 15 credits).  Yet, we see more commonality with the broader, global online learning community than differences.  Distilled, the shared challenge is to communicate and to convey value to the student.  This session will enable you to:

1. Frame your online program and course design processes and development around the "value proposition" (internally and externally);

2. Leverage basic cognitive science, content, technology, and data to convey value at the course design level; and 

3. Advance and improve learning transfer and ROEI by incorporating more high utility learning tools (interleaving, spacing, retrieving, frequent low stakes assessing) in online course design. 

• Challenge:  The Dilemma of Icarus

Law schools are asked to prepare lawyers for 21st century practice (increasingly digitized, AI applications traditionally performed by lawyers, demands of clients amidst tech megatrends) but, we must first maneuver through the labyrinth of 19th century methodology and accreditation standards modeled on the Socratic Method.  Then, try to escape the shackles of preparing students to sit for a mid-20th century summative bar exam.  Not to worry, though, we are promised freedom and given tools to “innovate” (aka escape), which are about as useful as wax wings on a sunny day.  Essentially, we appreciate the dilemma faced by Icarus. Most blame Icarus for flying too high and not heeding his father’s warning. Few bother to analyze Daedalus' culpability in creating the labyrinth that resulted in their imprisonment and designing an ineffective and defective product with which to escape. 

• Opportunity:  The Value Proposition

When you feel like someone has made you don waxed wings, reframe your dilemma as an opportunity as how to convey real value to students. 

If you frame the problem that way, then all the other challenges become more attainable and scalable.  Convey Value (ROI) is not biz speak or buzz words; it is a mindset that allows a true student-centric, outcomes-based model.  Return on Educational Investment (ROEI)!  We have reframed the Issue by looking at our online program and course development through the value-added frame.

Through a deliberate and iterative design process, we: 1. Define, 2. Disrupt, and 3. Deliver. 

Define:  Convey that we understand the problem uniquely well.

Disrupt:  Convey that we bring a disruptive and transformative model.

Deliver:  Convey that we can deliver a solution.

From an online design perspective, “value” is conveyed at the convergence of:  1. cognitive science, 2.  content, 3. technology, and 4. data:

In 2017, we determined we could better maximize the ROEI (and hopefully improve outcomes) by:

1. designing online/blended courses informed through advances in cognitive and neuroscience and the understanding of how we learn;

2. delivering our quality content and tapping into our full time faculty as subject matter experts (SMEs);

3. leveraging the best, yet scalable and sustainable, technology and learning platform to enable academic achievement and attainment of competencies; and

4.  collecting, interpreting, and acting upon data.  Data is likely the most important byproduct of online learning, often overlooked or overshadowed by the more glamorous attributes of distance ed.  Problem – institutions are drowning in data.  If we clearly define “value,” it’s a lot easier to find “nuggets” in the slag.  

While all four components are critical to achieve ROEI, the most impactful shift to our processes (our “Ah-Ha!” moment”) includes the incorporation of what recent advances in cognitive science tell us about learning.  Namely, the Socratic Method is not enough for a valuable learning transfer.  

The traditional model of legal education involves large class sizes, the “sage on the stage,” and the stereotypical and palpable nervous perspiration generated in anticipation of being “the” student pegged for discourse” (aka “skewering” by the sage).  The classroom experience interrupts hours of text based readings (judicial case opinions) stimulated only through lavish highlighting with a Sharpie®.  I like to call this overused/misused, low utility learning key:  “Sharpie Syndrome” - giving students a false sense of mastery and competency. The semester and third year culminate in a high stakes summative examination – the final and the Bar Exam respectively..    

Our online design process has incorporated what research reveals as the highest utility keys:

1. Frequent and formative low stakes practice exams/assessments with immediate and relevant feedback.
2. Spacing aka distributed learning involves retrieval at pertinent intervals based upon how long the info needs to be stored – magic formula: space study at 10-20% time intervals of period needed (for example, 30 months from sitting for the bar exam?  Study/retrieve every 3 months.  Really.)
3. Explain (explanation (aka teach backs) and elaborate interrogation techniques (channel the inner 2 year old who incessantly asks “why”).
4. Interleave = the learning buzz word for 2017.  

The utility of interleaving is increased when intertwined with spacing (retrieval practice) having students regularly revisit content.  Mixing up concepts or problems within study sessions or chunks of learning builds more and stronger connections  Because of the linear nature of our classic case or textbooks and the unit-unit or modular breakdown of syallbi, students tend to see concepts in silos of information bites on a need to know basis for the final exam (then forget it).  The connections that are obvious to us are not apparent to students.  

Online course design is conducive to the kind of malleability necessary to maximize learning by using these high utility techniques generally unknown to and underutilized by legal educators and educators in general coupled with technology, data and content.  The result – ROEI.