PESC Summit Meetings on Academic Progress

We had two great working sessions on Academic Progress at the PESC Summit October 19th and 20th. The face to face meetings brought together new and old members of the workgroup interested in documenting the data exchange functions to determine and reveal student academic progress by actor. Our meeting focused on review of the goals of the group, a review of the draft message sets and discussion on next steps. Most of the meeting reviewed the past work.

Discussions and questions focused on how the draft message sets need to reflect catalog year/term. The legacy of using year/term as a means to segment course and curriculum data is difficult, given many institutions govern changes to the data when it occurs mid year. Which means, year/term is not grandular enough to be distinctive. This led to the discussion about using start and end date ranges to complement and reflect the tracking of data changes. This would be more realistic going forward. There was general agreement on that.

The list of participants were:

John Ittelson – California Virtual Campus
Jason Elwood – RedLantern
Steve Hellen – Johns Hopkins University
Ed Walker – CS4Ed
Rich Petrick – Ohio Board of Regents
Shawn Bay – eScholar
Daysie Kratz – eScholar
Andy Wood – Oracle
Jason Presley – Colorado Dept of Higher Education
Manuel Dietz – Unisolution
Bill Hollowsky – SunGard Higher Education
Ken Sauer – Indiana Commission for Higher Education
Deborah Newby – United States Department of Education
Charles McGrew – Data Quality Campaign
Anne Valentine – Academi Ccatalog
David Moldoff - AcademyOne
Bill Pryor - Academy One

The next meeting is scheduled for Friday October 30th and 2:00pm. Conference Call Information is:

866.352.3799 meeting number is 7696363

New Conference Call Number

Conference call number was changed by PESC.
866.352.3799 meeting number is 7696363

Tracking Learner's Academic Progress

In our recent conference calls of the Academic Progress Workgroup, we have discussed about two dozen granular academic progress events with data payloads from a general level. That sounds pretty technical, but essentially, we are crafting an abstract model of events that could be supported by any product engaging in student support and advising systems. We are not constructing this event model specific to a vendor's product. Nor, are we confined by the limitations of existing technology. Our efforts are motivated to create a new way of thinking about the growing list of what are essentially snapshots in time that would reveal either a need for data or for a process against a set of data to help students succeed.

Our goal is to create an abstract interface layer with detailed specifications to support academic progress within one academic institution, across academic institutions, and supported by others stakeholders like state agencies as students persist, stop and start on their path to a degree. This abstract layer would be owned, in a sense by the public and not vendors through PESC. It will allow the community of software developers, implementers and agents to build bridges between applications on campus and across campuses with consistency and purpose. We need to motivate student system authors and other academic progress related system authors impacting or tracking a learner's academic progress to think of this work like Underwriters Laboratories (UL) which is a worldwide standard to ensure safety across power, chemical, plumbing, fire, energy, lighting, and appliances.

UL is not governmental, but it is intertwined in code required by local, state and federal agencies and enforced in a range of laws and regulations. Vendor software systems, are like appliances. Think of a washer or dryer. There are standards on how the appliance is connected to the electrical system of a house, apartment or building. You would not consider it safe to hardwire the 240v, 20 amp power feed direct into the power grid would you?

The software industry in general has been shielded by complexity and continuous development that has yielded the environment we face. That is, one that is not very easy to plug and play products, nor leverage the assets of appliances built by many and managed inside or shared by universities and colleges. Without some form of data exchange standards, we will continue to expend a large portion of our resources on very unproductive results since the bridges between systems are limited or non-existent. This friction is actually harming the adoption of products industry wide, because of the cost and technical complexity limits the use of appliances in general.

Often, software authors and developers assume their limited functions are airtight. Like the washer machine that is made by GE or Maytag, systems are somewhat self-contained with their functions and purpose. Yet, the appliances have to fit into the confines of the power brought into the house, and be safely used by consumers who are not expert at power or professionally trained electricians. If the power load is not 'standard', special interfaces have to be constructed. This drives the cost up and often, limits the utility of all products in our industry. And, this resistance slows sales, turnover of systems and actually hurts the software industry that is trying to grow their value or utility in a small market confined by academic mission. It is not like we (software authors) are creating software products that can span into other industries. The small market footprint thus limits the ability of vendors and authors to rationalize the need to turn over technology and reinvest - or redesign for the evolving global market.

Do you realize that States spend nearly 50% of their budget on education? When you consider that many States are like countries, what does that mean when we think globally? Institutions receive directly or indirectly billions of dollars of support from Federal and State funds - something on the order of $300 Billion. Roughly 4% is spent on IT. That is somewhere in the neighborhood of $12 Billion. Not a small market at all.

There is a bigger picture than looking at the institutional model as the sole constituent of software utilized in higher education or K12. Vendors and authors may not be convinced this is in their best interest. They make money from the expensive connections they build and support today at the institutional level. They protect their institutional install base by not allowing others to do the connections. But, as States and the Federal Government Agencies continue to expect new virtual connections, the bigger market to consider is how to develop appliances that could plug in and support the next generation of products and services that will support learners everywhere.

Most vendors and authors feel their application services do support open integrations and interfaces according to their own definition of use. This includes all forms of software from commercially developed systems to open source systems. Yet, most are not engaged in the community process spanning their own self interests. If they joined PESC and worked together, even with their competitive organizations and offerings, the world and outcomes would be different. Most developers and authors still market open systems, open technology and flexibility in the guise they are. Many have promised integrations, API's (application program interfaces) and adapters, only to find it near impossible to really deliver them given the complexity and motives already mentioned. Meanwhile, the promise of technology goes unfulfilled. It is not delivering on the true potential to support connectivity, communications and data workflows. When we see systems like Twitter and Facebook expand with viral adoption, one must question, does the proprietary view the industry has generally taken, been the root reason why systems don't work well together?

We know or can at least argue about it, that this is a very narrow market and is also difficult to breakdown since proprietary motives tend to hinder open access and sharing. Vendors protect proprietary assets the same as institutions. Yet, systems must interchange data and processes to support the freedom of data flows in my view to support learners. That is what Government will mandate and regulate, whether we like it or not. It will require technical evolution led by new forces that will drive the evolution of software. Governance will not come from institutions. It will evolve from Government. The single institution's perspective is still relevant and important, but only one perspective. In order to leverage the billions of dollars spent on education, and to grow the value invested in education, Government will support the use of shared resources. PESC is like a sandbox we can all play in.

As we look to the future, learning will not be confined by an institution or a period of time. Institutions will offer the means to obtain credentials and verify we have obtained them. Institutions will continue to meter how we view learning outcomes, knowledge creation and the socialization of knowledge in small, statically controlled communities of faculty and learners - in person or online. How learning delivery and recognition evolves will be impacted by technology no doubt. Yet, no matter how it evolves, learning and academic progress will always be events distributed over time. Systems snapshot time and capture data. And, if systems continue to evolve as they are, we will eventually get to the point that the events and data will have to be better defined independent of products to allow expansion of the technology, the development of more advanced tools and the creation of a better learner enterprise.

Mobility matters because the world is our campus. Learning, assessment and recognition of learning are at the core of academic progress. Come join us and work to define how the systems to support 21st century learners could leverage the work in our sand box.

Next Six Meetings

Here are the next six meetings including the PESC Fall Summit in DC. Use Conference Call Number except for
Oct 19th. Conference Dial-in Number: (712) 775-7100 Access Code: 726310#


Aug 28th 2:00pm EST
Sep 11th 2:00pm EST
Sep 25th 2:00pm EST
Oct 9th 2:00pm EST
Oct 19th 2:00pm EST
Oct 30th 2:00pm EST

Academic Progress Message Sets

June 5th 2009, 2:PM EST
Conference Dial-in Number: (712) 775-7100
Participant Access Code: 726310#

In our last meeting, we discussed the event model and draft message sets.

Friday afternoons were confirmed to be the best for most people to participate in the conference calls. The next three meetings are scheduled for June 19th, July 10 and 31st. Each one hour call will concentrate on further review and definition of the draft message sets and how they relate to the event model.

If you can’t make it, you can still keep up with our progress on our wiki:
http://sites.google.com/site/academicprogress/Home/artifacts

Academic Progress Event Model Call

May 15th 2009, 2:PM EST
Conference Dial-in Number: (712) 775-7100
Participant Access Code: 726310#

In our last meeting, we agreed Friday afternoons the best for most people to participate in the conference calls. If you can’t make it, you can still keep up with our progress on our wiki:
http://sites.google.com/site/academicprogress/Home/artifacts

We will continue our discussion of the Academic Progress model outlined in our last get together in DC. Attached to this email you will find a Visio diagram we drafted at the meeting last month. It can be viewed with an ActiveX control when you open the attachment in your browser. The first page of the diagram represents the high level Academic Progress model showing the touch points of a learner/student through the stages of obtaining a credential or satisfying requirements. Each box represents a high level perspective of something happening at an abstract level. There could be more than one message or data schema required to support each event. Each event could create, update, delete or add data to systems supporting Academic Progress, guidance, tracking, etc. Our next step will be to drill down as we fill in the event model. If you have any questions, let me know.

Please join us if you can for our next working session on May 15 (Friday) at 2:00PM EST.

The Visio diagram will be added to the wiki and notes will be posted on the academicprogress wiki. Check out: http:http://sites.google.com/site/academicprogress/Home/artifacts

When I complete an update on the blog, I promise to send another message to the list serv. Look forward to our progress...

Meeting March 27, 2009, 3:30PM EST

Before we can serve the vision of the “Student’s Academic GPS” (coined by the Washington HECB), we need to have a plan to develop the transport(s), the interconnection(s) and means to transmit data to new “devices” that can reveal pathways and data mapped by destination or in other words aspirations (and required competencies) linked to careers. Where are learning outcomes, not just courses, programs and requirements? What are the events that occur intersecting learner and institution? How do we support learners through the continuum? What data do we need? Sometimes it is helpful to reference or model innovations in other industries when we explore our challenges.

If we are going to make headway on this, we need to make the investment up front to work thru the details. Our European counterparts and the diploma supplement demonstrate stakeholders are attempting to redefine methods of tracking academic progress, transitions and completion, while respecting the needs of those who assess learning throughout the life cycle of serving students. Should we create a transcript supplement? A document that would attach to a transcript defining the outcomes and value of learning accomplished?

The PESC Academic Progress Workgroup is underway and we hope you can join us. The PESC Workgroup was formed back in October 2008. We are focused on improving degree completion and student success through improved data management. This workgroup will span three levels to help practitioners, policy and governance stakeholders understand the nuances, concerns and challenges facing our industry as we develop requirements for data exchange specifications.

The PESC Academic Progress Workgroup is made up of volunteers - working together. Our goal is to produce a neutral set of data exchange specifications for tracking and assessing a learner's academic progress through institutional programs of study. This is a broad topic. We will promote specifications in stages, once complete. And, we hope the specifications will be adopted and built-in to application tools employed by institutions and stakeholders over time. The impact, we hope will build toward our overall goals of interoperability, improved utilization of resources and services to learners everywhere.

Data, assessment methods and processes are important elements of guidance, planning and response to learners. It requires institutional orchestration and coordination. Guidance requires information to transition on and off bridges - to transverse institutional policies and practices, whether inside one institution or across several. As we build the next generation systems, let’s work together to define the touchpoints.

We hope you can contribute to our initiative. If not, track our progress on our blog and wiki.

Wiki: http://sites.google.com/site/academicprogress/
Blog: http://academicprogress.blogspot.com/

Reminder, Conference Call, Friday 3:30PM, EST
Conference Dial-in Number: (712) 775-7100
Participant Access Code: 726310#

Focus on this call will be on creating an Academic Progress work plan. I have outlined a series of todo’s on the wiki site starting with the Scope. We will review the task list, edit, add more, delete, etc.

Looking forward to our progress together

Public Message to Invite Stakeholders

I wanted to let you know we initiated an important workgroup inPESC (Postsecondary Exchange Standards Council) covering academic progress. I clipped and pasted the charter for you below. Our next conference call will be March 27, 2009 at 3:30PM EST and we are meeting at the Sixth Annual Conference on Technology and Standards on April 5-7th in DC (www.pesc.org). We will hold several workshops at the Summit on the business case, user stories and potential priorities. I hope you can help get the word out.

Given the nature of our work, we have all had a conversation or two around improving college degree completion, academic progress and the general need for interoperability across educational institutions to states to corporations to government systems. We so often use the term transparency in our discussion. To me, it means a learner, no matter where they are enrolled or not, can be supported with guidance and nurturing that transcends the borders and policies that are designed institutionally or within a state. 

Academic progress must be considered in a far different light, when one recognizes the challenges of mobility, online learning, academic credit portability, acceptability and articulation when learning spans traditional and non-traditional providers from community colleges, corporate universities or experiential learning to universities providing study abroad or distant learning. This is not all encompassing list. 

How can we make national and state progress toward degree production if we can’t measure and assess where a learner is in their path to a degree and we can’t help guide them through the gateways they enter and exit? The guidance has to be personal. And, resources need to be aligned to foster the conversation and representation to augment the data systems that support the stakeholders. Without such a conversation, we will continue to develop isolated systems and services that will challenge us all or force us to repeat very expensive efforts.

I truly believe, we need to emphasis a plan (or in this case a community developed specification and conversation) that would guide the stakeholders and players in moving toward common means of transcending discrete and isolated systems by utilizing a common set of advertised automated services. If we were an industry run like Walmart (or for that matter, any other consumer oriented organization), our degree production would be predictably more optimized. Yet, we don’t have that governance and I am not suggesting or lobbying for change. In the optimum and ideal state though, we would organize the touch points across organizations and standardize how data is exchanged and then consumed to facilitate academic progress and all its functions and users.

Gaps exist in assessing, tracking and reporting academic progress. They also exist in advising, counseling and linking learners to resources spanning organizations. Today, only 8% of institutions can deliver and consume an electronic transcript. Less than that can deliver an academic progress report for prospective students prior to enrolling, considering their military, industry or prior sponsored learning. The effort under way to develop a plan or specification, will create a dictionary of terms, an outline of processes that need data exchange, a set of events that reflect the actions of a learner interacting with the stakeholders. 

Please pass on the word. We need to grow our group of stakeholders and interested organizations who can help us do this good work. The next conference call is scheduled for March 27, 2009 at 3:30PM EST

Student, Course and Degree Audit Information Systems

There are many systems and developers deployed throughout higher education. As stakeholders in academic progress, we hope to recruit participants from many of the vendors and developers, even home grown systems to participate in our work group.

Reference AACRAO SIS/Degree Audit Survey

SIS vendors and systems:
Academic Edge Student System
Agresso
Campus Management
Datatel
iNet Solutions
Inttelix Software
Jenzabar CX, EX
Oracle/PeopleSoft
Peterson Software
Populi College Management System
Scan Business Systems - CampusCafe
SAP Higher Education
SunGard Higher Education, Banner, PowerCampus, Plus
Three Rivers

Learning management systems, course management systems
Blackboard
Moodle
DesireToLearn

Portfolio systems
rSmart
Nuventive
LiveText

Degree Audit/Advising
Decision Academic
redLantern/DARS
Degree Works
IronSoft

Retention
Starfish Solutions

Transcript Exchange
ConnectEDU
DocUFide
XAP
National Transcript Center
Script Safe

Catalog Production and Distribution
Smart Catalog
Digital Archtecture

Student Mobility Navigation
AcademyOne

Call on Friday March 6 3:30pm EST

Friday, March 6, The Academic Progress Workgroup (formerly Degree Audit) has re-organized under Co-Chairs David Moldoff of PESC member organization AcademyOne and Clare-Smith Larson of PESC member organization Iowa State University will be holding a conference call meeting from 3:30pm - 4:30pm EST. 

Conference Dial-in Number: (712) 775-7100
Participant Access Code: 726310#

If you've been interested in this effort or know of another organization that is, now is the best time to join this initiative. As a reminder...there is no limit to the number of representatives that can join a workgroup from a single PESC member organization but being a member is required for workgroup participation. 

For organizations looking to become a member, please contact Jennifer Kim, Membership Services Manager, at 202.261.6514. For more information go to the website athttp://academicprogress.blogspot.com/ and the home site atwww.pesc.org.

Resources

Shared Website
http://sites.google.com/site/academicprogress/

Glossary of Academic Progress

This is a Shared Glossary (Responsible Editor: To Be assigned)

A learner is a student who participates in formal programs of study offered by academic institutions or other providers of instruction. A leaner can include someone taking courses in traditional classroom or online format. Whether the learner is taking self paced or fixed attendance.

Academic Progress is the group of processes, defined by events, attributes of data, business rules, inputs and outputs that reflect the means to collect learning outcomes, assess their impact on program requirements and determine placement in further courses of study, toward meeting the objectives of the learner's path.

Academic Progress Charter

Work Group Name: Academic Progress

Work Group Chairs:
Mr. David K. Moldoff [DMoldoff@academyone.com]
Ms. Clare Smith-Larson [cssmith@iastate.edu]

Secretary:
Dr. Afshin Mikaili [AMikaili@kaplan.edu]

Scheduler:
To Be Assigned (Manage Academic Progress Calendar)

Founding Members:
AcademyOne
Iowa State University
Kaplan University

Description of Work: To Develop a Community Specification for Tracking and Assessing a Learner's Academic Progress through institutional programs of study

Background: Academic Progress is the group of processes, defined by events, attributes of data, business rules, inputs and outputs that reflect the means to collect learning outcomes, assess their impact on program requirements and determine placement in further courses of study, toward meeting the objectives of the learner's path. A learner is a student who participates in formal programs of study offered by academic institutions.

Areas of Focus:
- Framing the academic progress workflow discussion
- Outlining the functional areas, priorities
- US and Worldwide implications
- Building the case for a messaging architecture
- Identifying publishers and subscribers of data
- Recognizing authoritative sources, destinations and dependencies
- Developing a list of prospective message objects mapped
- List agnostic interfaces crossing applications inside and outside of an institution
- Developing an implementation framework
- Elements and validation, business rules
- Events, attributes of data
- Interface Points

Rationale: There are many reasons to focus on Academic Progress as a key topic for creating data exchange specifications. Here are three good reasons:

· First, learners are mobile, moving through many stages of learning, crossing boundaries both physical and logical, and creating data reflecting events, processes and outcomes that interact across many points and uses inside one institution and crossing into another.

· Second, is the challenge to streamline the interactions of users and application systems designed to serve a portion of users and uses, often resulting in duplication of effort, gaps in functions, and lack of open access to accurate data and broken chains of work flow.

· Third, is the need to make progress reporting and the measures easier for all constituents to utilize, as they interact.

References:
http://www.pesc.org/

Are you a stakeholder in Academic Progress?

“Innovation is not what innovators do; it’s what customers and clients adopt.” — Michael Schrage, MIT, Marketing Matters

Nikola Tesla, one of the most brilliant innovators of all time, had a vision for how electrical technologies could perform faster and more efficiently. Unfortunately for him, and for society, his technologies remained unused for decades or were used for the wrong business reasons. Tesla died virtually unknown to society. It took many years after his death for society to recognize his talents and scientific contribution acknowledged by his peers. One small testament to Tesla’s innovative contribution to the field of science is the use of his name, Tesla, as the unit of measurement of magnetic fields. It is a standard reflected by adoption. When in 1887 Tesla perfected the technology for the alternating current (AC) motor (previously electrical motors were based only on direct current (DC)), he was fascinated only with applying his genius to the technology and didn’t realize that he might have helped the world more by balancing his passion for technology with an equal passion for its business application.

What if Tesla properly identified the stakeholders who were aligned with his vision rather than the path he chose? What would have happened? What if he had ignored the short-term monetary gain for the long term view to align invention with processes, stakeholders and benefits? Maybe history might have turned out differently. This teaches us a lesson to focus on the users of technology, not just the creators of it. It also teaches us to focus on a long term vision, not just the monetary rewards from technology and innovation. Had Tesla envisioned the business activities or processes in which his technology would have created the biggest impact in the long term rather than focusing only on technological innovation and selling his patent to the highest bidder, his name, rather than Thomas Edison’s, would properly be associated with AC electricity. As a consequence of not thinking about the business or social applications of his innovations, Tesla’s technology was not applied to electrical generators for many years and the world was deprived of lower-cost electrical energy production. As a result of Tesla’s lack alignment or balance between technology and business, he was a spectator to, rather than the acknowledged inventor of, the biggest step forward in electrical energy generation: George Westinghouse’s introduction in 1895 of a version of the AC electrical engine in the hydroelectric station at Niagara Falls, which successfully transmitted electrical power over a distance of 25 miles to factories to Buffalo, NY. This event started a mini industrial revolution.

As a community based standards effort, we need to focus on the business aspects of a shared vision, guiding us step-by-step through the work of identifying the right stakeholders, the key measurements of success (key performance indicators), and the alignment of business processes to be improved by the technology by mapping them to business critical success factors. Academic Progress requires us finding the right stakeholders and making sure we focus our efforts on the right processes. Many may argue that technologists do not need to master the disciplines of business as well as science, yet history presents many examples of visionaries who have not done this and the world has not benefited as a result. Witness the difference between Tesla and Edison, or Galileo compared to Christopher Columbus, who received funding (rather than imprisonment) to send three ships on an expedition based on the same radical and innovative idea that the world was not flat. Columbus was successful in receiving funds not because he presented a scientific expedition to Queen Isabella of Spain, but because he aligned the value of his expedition with the most important goal of Queen Isabella:

Discovering faster trade routes so as to more easily gain gold and spices.

— W. Bernard Carlson, Scientific American, March 2005 “To ensure that your technology vision is applied, do what Columbus did: align your vision with the right stakeholders, the ones with equal vision and the means to accomplish them.”

Are you a stakeholder in Academic Progress? If we have anything to do with learners, student life cycle and the processes spanning advising, guidance, assessment and placement, you most certainly should consider joining on our work group. Together, we can develop a joint specification and reference model to foster interoperability in tools that support our long term vision, which is to help students and learners of all types achieve success. That may mean different things to different stakeholders from achieving a credential to completing a course.

Academic Progress Use Cases

The Academic Progress Workgroup has been formed to craft an industry agnostic specification to enable interoperability across processes, tools and data systems. We are not interested in re-inventing the wheel. So, our focus will be on leveraging our past efforts (in SPEEDE, PESC and other organizations). Yet, there are great gaps in methods and integration regarding how to support academic progress respecting prior learning, transfer of credit, study abroad, enrollment, registration, assessment, articulation and placement.

SOME OF THE USER CASES AND STORIES
· PROSPECTIVE STUDENT CYCLE
· ENROLLED STUDENT CYCLE
· FORMER STUDENT CYCLE
· ADVISING AND GUIDANCE CYCLE
· PRIOR LEARNING ASSESSMENT
· TRANSCRIPT EVALUATION
· TEST ASSESSMENT
· REQUEST CREDIT
· AWARD OF CREDIT
· APPEAL PROCESS
· ARTICULATION OF CREDIT
· PROACTIVE AND REACTIVE MANAGING EQUIVALENCIES
· FACULTY REVIEW AND APPROVALS
· LEARNING OUTCOMES
· PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS
· PROGRESS REPORTING

OVERLAP
· PORTFOLIO
· TRANSCRIPTS EXCHANGE
· COURSE AND COURSE SECTION OFFERING

Launch of Academic Progress

The Academic Progress Workgroup formed by PESC (Postsecondary Exchange Standards Council) to create data exchange specifications to facilitate teaching and learning through educational enterprises.

http://www.pesc.org/

What is Academic Progress?

Academic Progess is the life cycle of learning, assessment and placement of learners in academic programs provided by educational providers.

Educational providers are formal organizations with the mission of providing some level of instruction, on a personal or community format, designed to help a learner through the stages of comprehension and measured to validate their success.