The Future of Colleges and Universities

In 2013 Janet Tully and I published Rethinking Post-Secondary Education - Why Universities and Colleges Need to Change and What Change Could Look Like.  Its a provocative look at such institutions in the developed world. This blog continues that provocation.

The goal of this blog is to stimulate an inspired conversation about the future of learning in our post-secondary education system. I want to focus on three things:

1. The importance of understanding learning and the way students learn;

2. The importance of access, performance and engagement of students; and

3. The challenges we face in delivering affordable, mindful and effective post-secondary education which is a great experience for all.

This is really about how we create a new learning environment.  As a sector, we are looking to do this through “innovation” which automatically and logically means we need to be ready to:

•  Explore new insights;

•  Take  calculated risks;

•  Be surprised and to surprise ourselves.

Innovation, by its very nature, is an experiment with unknown outcomes.

So to help us begin the process of creating a new learning environment, let us identify a series of insights, surprises and risks we see based on my experience working with students, colleagues throughout the Canada system and colleagues from around the world.

One other point: students you should not be seen as the recipients of learning or as the “fodder” of the education system but should be seen as co-workers and co-owners of the college, university and training system.   They are investors, partners, allies and the co-creators of the institutions in which they learn.The one overriding way for students to help transform our post-secondary system is for students to be “demanding customers” of the system in five key areas:

1. Accessibility

2. Flexibility

3. Transferability

4. Recognition of credentials

5. Affordability

In the 1960s, students campaigned for the right to be at the table and to be engaged in decision-making.  Now they need to champion their right to help focus thinking and investment in the education system we are building together.

Insights

1. Significant change in our institutions will come in response to developments from outside rather than from innovation within them.

Post-secondary institutions are built to withstand demands for significant change.  They have done so well - one paper suggests that the real challenge for educators is Massively Outdated Traditional Education (MOTEs) rather than MOOCs[1].  Emerging new delivery models (MOOCs for example) and new assessment centres offering new kinds of assessment will force change on our institutions as will the growing use of globally-recognized and transferable credits.  Students will make decisions and behave in accordance with the “what is best for me” principle and these behaviours will demand change in the system. Post-secondary educational institutions will likely follow these developments rather than lead – others will be expected to take the “start-up” risk.

2. The best predictor of student success is student engagement – yet we don’t make systematic attempts to measure this.

Student engagement is not at all the same as indicators of student satisfaction which are usually taken in simple surveys at the end of a course. Engagement speaks to a set of behaviours and attitudes experienced throughout the course.   Not measuring it means it often goes unrecognized and unrewarded for students and instructors both.  Effective pedagogy requires the student to be the focus of the work of the college or university – academic staff is there to enable the student to learn.  We need to shift from instructor-centric to learner-centric forms of learning.

3. Online learning in 2015 is where online music was around 2005.

Many see online learning as a maturing field – it is not.  It is in its infancy and a lot of things are yet to happen.  A useful way of thinking about this is to compare iTunes in 2005 with iTunes in 2015.  Dramatically different.  Key to this is understanding that, for most students, online learning is not something different or unusual – it is simply part of how learning is done.  It’s the digital tourists who see it as “new” and “different”.  Since 2000, students have seen digital resources, e-learning and the use of the net as a utility – a part of every one of their courses – not as anything “special”.

4. Canada’s information technology sector is in decline.

It’s not just Blackberry that is in trouble, the whole sector is.  Many medium sized companies are selling out to US based organizations or leaving the field.  We already lost Nortel.   What are the implications of this for our use of technology and for the skills we need for our competitive advantage as an economy?  What are we not teaching our entrepreneurs?  A great many of the emerging resources used for learning are global resources.  We need to continuously scan the world for “next and best” practice so that our students can experience effective, efficient and engaging learning.

5. Many have a 1950s view of the role of post-secondary education in terms of preparing learners for the workforce. 

In the 1950s, students went to school aged 5-21 and then entered the workforce, with many entering the workforce at 16.  Now students enter education at 2 (kindergarten) and many go through to 24 and return for learning at 31, 40, 50-55 and 65.  Yet we design our system as if it hadn’t changed. With life-long learning now more than a slogan – it is in fact a description of what is occurring – we need to begin rethinking our understanding of our post-secondary institutions.

Lifelong learning is no longer the slogan of a small group of continuing education specialists – it is what the knowledge economy demands. Companies like the Hudson’s Bay, Ford, Stantec, Air Canada all require their managerial and operational staff to be continuously updating their knowledge and skills. Learning is the key to their competitiveness.

6. Faculty are both the biggest asset and the biggest impediment to the future.

The key to effective learning is the relationship between the student, knowledge and their coach/guide/mentor, aka the faculty.  But faculty doesn’t especially want to change either what they are teaching or how they are doing so.  Adoption rates for online / blended learning are below 30% of faculty even in institutions which are most advanced in the use of technology for learning.  Many of the subjects we now teach need revision, especially, as I will note in my next point, as knowledge is changing and expanding at a very fast rate.  We need to change what we teach, how we engage learners, how we connect learning to the wicked problems we face in society and how we assess students.  Those faculty who “get these” changes will lead the future in partnership with students.  Those who don’t get it will “get lost” as the future overtakes them.

7. No researcher can maintain full knowledge of development in their discipline. 

According to figures supplied by James Appleberry, cited by José Joaquín Brunner cited by UNESCO[2], internationally recorded discipline-based knowledge took 1,750 years to double for the first time, counting from the start of the Christian era; it then doubled in volume every 150 years and then every 50.  It now doubles every five years and it is projected that by 2020 knowledge will double every 73 days.  However, we are only capable of giving attention to between about 5% and 10% of that information.  Will this change the link between research and teaching in the post-secondary system?  What will this mean for the challenge faced by learners in their attempt to master an understanding of some key ideas?

8. Sustainability issues will dominate the world from now onwards. Water, air quality, climate change, environmental impacts of our current forms of economy are all becoming critical issues around the world.

What contribution will our institutions make not just to the research on these issues, but to action?  How will our institutions be role models for the future? Institutions are beginning to develop courses and programs in which the “wicked problems” facing the world are the focus for learning – subjects like biology, climatology, technology, history, psychology and so on are all harnessed as resources so that students can learn, engage in action research and develop applied skills based on sound knowledge aimed at solving these problems at a local level.  Do we need to re-think curriculum, the focus for learning and pedagogy so that communities are enabled through their post-secondary institutions to be better prepared for tomorrow?

9. The creative economy requires learning to be a creative process.

One measure being considered in a number of jurisdictions for their K-12 systems is known as the Innovation Index – several US states and one Canadian jurisdiction are considering the introduction of this measure.  It asks the simple question “on how many occasions this week did our students have an opportunity to create and innovate as part of their learning activities?”  Our answer would be…… yet we seek to prepare our students for a knowledge-based, innovation-driven economy where creativity is key.  What are we actually doing about it? Do we assess institutions and their progress against systematic measures of innovation, creativity and imagination? No. We should.

10. Quality assessment of institutions, programs and courses focuses largely on inputs.

Yet students can now secure inputs from a range of resources.  Shouldn’t we shift our quality focus to outcomes and student engagement and creativity? As an aside here, most educational research activity focuses on the past and the present – not on the future.  We may need to challenge our research community to look systematically as the future using the tools of futurism studies.

These ten insights suggest that re-thinking what and how we learn is the key to understanding the challenges and opportunities of our system.  Rather than campaigning for “more of the same”, we should all be campaigning for an engaged pedagogy that is based on a better understanding of real-world problems and their solution and makes best use of all available resources for learning.  Technology can help us, but it is not the answer: re-thinking pedagogy is.

SURPRISES

There will be many surprises in the medium to long-term future. Here are ten.

1. Demand for post-secondary education changes in response to the stability and growth of the economy.

As the economy contracts, so demand rises unless the contraction is seen as more permanent.  When this occurs, demand falls.  This is exactly what is happening in Europe right now - 50,000 fewer university applicants in the UK in 2012 than in 2011- and if the global economy suffers in 2015 as most analysts suspect it will, then demand for post-secondary education in Canada will fall dramatically.  Companies are reluctant to recruit when the economy remains volatile –the lack of resolution of the Eurozone crisis, falling oil prices, economic uncertainty in the US, a slowing of Canada’s economy and the challenging situation in the Middle East all suggest a continuing period of economic vulnerability.  Individuals work when they can – learning comes second.

Yet learning still needs to occur. We need to imagine new ways of connecting work-based learning with credit and sustaining an interest in learning for those in work.

2. It is likely that some Canadian colleges and/or universities will file for bankruptcy before 2020.

Several are already running significant deficits and are reliant on substantial growth in overseas students as well as very moderate faculty settlements for survival.  Both of these look problematic.  BC cut $70 million from its post-secondary education budget in 2012 and Alberta first constrained growth of its spending to 2% and will now start to make significant budget cuts.  If enrolment falls, then many more institutions will find their fiscal situation beyond repair.  We may need to re-think funding at a fundamental level, but one solution needs to be “off the table”. We can’t repair the fiscal health of our post-secondary education system by transferring debt to the student body.  We just need to look to Québec to see what could happen.  A serious, adult conversation about how we re-think the finances of the sector is needed.

3. The fastest area of growth in demand will be for online learning not for traditional classroom-based learning.

This is already occurring in the US which is experiencing 10% growth in online versus 1% for traditional.  It will happen here too.  It will accelerate if online learning becomes available on-demand, with students calling for assessment when they are ready.  It will accelerate when digital devices – tablets, smartphones and other mobile learning devices become more affordable. It will accelerate even faster when the quality of online learning improves.

4. Strong demand for access to post-secondary education will come from retired baby boomers seeking to learn “what they always wanted to know”.

Many years ago there was a lot written about The University of the Third Age. Well it is happening.  A significant driver for many uses of open educational course materials, OER, is demand from baby boomers.  This is the wealthiest generation of retirees in history and they are using their retirement wealth to travel, learn and be engaged in projects to help communities.  How can we harness their knowledge and skills as mentors, coaches and guides and see them as more than “just another target group of potential students”.  How can we enable the inter-generational transfer of knowledge?

Continuing education is often one of the most dynamic and creative areas of institutions, showing that it is possible when released from some of the constraints of academe.

5. New knowledge areas will demand a place in the curriculum. Knowledge is changing quickly both in volume, complexity and in synergy.  New areas of knowledge are rapidly emerging.

Synthetic biology matched with engineering and ecology is one example - real work in the oil sands in “solving” the tailings ponds problem requires these synergies.  We will need to change what we teach more often than we have done in the past.  Nimble curriculum will be a mantra for the future. 

6. Global credentials will emerge in 2015.

As collaborative arrangements amongst institutions expand, enabling students to take courses from a variety of them so as to “construct their credential”, a form of personalized learning, then global credentials will emerge.  For example, where will a student who studies courses from the Princeton, Stanford, University of Edinburgh in Scotland, the University of Toronto and EPF Lausanne, a technical university in Switzerland, be awarded a degree in computing science from?  All of these or just one?

7. The World Trade Organization will succeed, eventually, in its desire to have education seen as a service sector and be subject to WTO trade rules.

Since 2000, the WTO has been engaged in a conversation that would see educational services such as courses, programs, etc. as a service sector subject to the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs .  The WTO is confident that, at some point, education will be a “settled service”.  This would open the global market to direct competition and see many of the quality assurance mechanisms now in place as discriminatory and anti-free trade practices.  Real competition (on price, on quality, on pedagogy) would arrive.  When it does, it will be a new game in town.  Canada has resisted this development, but the momentum for a resolution in favour of the WTO is growing.

8. Companies will seek credential arrangements with institutions on a large scale.

As demography challenges firms to secure a workforce with the skills they need for their competitive advantage, they will look to retain staff through support for learning and will demand work-based learning credits, more in house programs and more “purpose built” credentials.  Someone will provide these.

9. Despite predictions, demand will shift from highly qualified people to trades and skills-based work.

Our economy is changing.  Ontario, for example, is a service economy rather than a primary manufacturing economy.  Will the mix of employment shift to favour more and more skilled service employees and trades?  It is elsewhere.

These surprises suggest that the future will not be a straight line from the past. Several of these surprises are forms of disruption to the status quo.  One option for Ontario is to lead the disruption rather than wait to be a victim of it.  That is the option we should pursue.

RISKS

When anyone looks in any kind of systematic way at the future, they see risk.  So here are ten risks that I see to the emerging global economy for learning:

1. In the face of challenge, threat or change, our institutions will seek to constrain innovation from new entrants and third parties.

The adoption of restrictive practices, market protection and related measures will be in response to perceived threats from private sector players, global players and new entrants from the public sector in other jurisdictions.  The risk here is that in seeking to protect existing practices, the opportunities for real change and collaboration across borders and institutional boundaries will be lost.  This would be a short-sighted response. We should learn from competition and thrive on the opportunity the competition provides to improve, change and develop new forms of institution, new pedagogy and new programs.

2. Leaders who try to change their institutions will be left out in the cold by their own institutions.

We have seen this in prestigious institutions like Oxford and elsewhere in the world.  In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit talented people to leadership roles from Deans upwards in colleges and universities.  At the heart of the challenge for our future is the need for courageous, visionary leadership.  We need to enable more courageous leaders, including from the student body, if our system is to thrive rather than just survive.  Courage, vision and commitment will be key.  We need renaissance leadership for our colleges and universities.

3. Faculty members will become highly mobile.

For years, colleges and universities have been warning of the coming implications of the grey tsunami.  It is now beginning to occur.  Faculty members who are skilled and highly effective teachers and researchers will be in high demand and will trade their skills for pay and time and move more frequently.  

4. Universities and colleges will lag so far behind the emerging technologies for learning that students will vote with their feet and study with those institutions elsewhere in the world who “get with the technology”.

Many institutions appear “unsure” of their strategy with respect to learning, technology and assessment and in turn lag behind in their adoption of emerging technologies.  As technologies become cheaper and more powerful (Moore’s law) and more ubiquitous, then this issue will become a determining factor in student choice.  This will be enabled by transfer credit and prior learning assessment, especially if the “residency” requirement, usually that 50% of credits for a program awarded by an institution must be taken at that institution, changes.  Imagine a program that has no residency requirements where credits can be obtained from anywhere in the world. You are thinking of new institutions, such as CourseA, which are operating now.

5. Maintaining government funding through the Carnegie unit, payment for X hours of study in a course, will inhibit innovation.

A major system constraint is the way in which institutions are funded.  If the current model persists, then institutions will continue to offer the kind of programs and choices they offer now. To secure innovation, new funding models are required. Without these, the system may well atrophy.  Those institutions which have shifted to outcome-based funding are seeing more innovation and higher levels of student registration such as the state of Kentucky with its on demand program.

6. Linear learning paths are not how students will learn in the 21^st Century.

Increasingly, students will stop and start, drop in and out of their learning. For them, learning is a personal journey and a life-long one.  But institutions still think of cohorts, program completions and time to complete.  By thinking of personalized learning pathways as the route by which students learn, institutions will change what they do.  The risk is that many institutions will make this more difficult than it needs to be.

7. Institutions will price themselves out of some communities and some target groups.

Costs are increasing from a student perspective – the costs of post-secondary education constitute a sign cant portion of Canadian household debt.  At some point, we need to recognize the impact of this on a variety of groups and re-think student support and financial aid.

8. First Nations students will feel increasingly marginalized in expensive systems which focus on forms of learning which are a-cultural and do not speak to their concerns.

First Nations students are a fast growing cohort, yet their success in the post-secondary system is weak.  Many of the directions in which the system is going are counter to their preferred way of learning and many new programs are “alien” to their understanding of need.  We need to build new bridges and adaptive institutions to meet their needs.

9. The link between post-secondary education and the needs of the fast changing labour market will become more and more disconnected.

We are preparing students in school, college and university for a world that is fast changing and for jobs and roles which are just emerging and are ill defined.  We do so increasingly by competency / skills-based learning.  Yet what we really need is life-long learners who have core skills and adaptive abilities who are intrapreneurs, entrepreneurs and resilient.  Do we have the right forms of learning to enable this to occur?

Be the Owners!

We have made twenty-nine provocative points.  You are probably experiencing a mixture of excitement, fear, anger and annoyance with these points right now.  But pause and think of these three things:

1. The future isn’t what it used to be.

The game is changing.  We need to collaborate and partner with all who have an interest in the system to re-think the system as a continuous process. There are no magic bullets to “fix the system” and we have to learn our way to the next iteration of a great post-secondary system.  Through partnership, collaboration and dialogue we can do great things.  Indeed, “collaboration is the DNA of the new knowledge economy”.

2. Pedagogy

What we learn, how we learn, how we engage learners and how we assess learning are the core challenges.  While finances, governance, quality, access are important, it is pedagogy that is the driver.  Pedagogy is changing.  Are we changing pedagogy in appropriate, effective and meaningful ways?

3. Students as the owners

We noted at the outset, as students you need to “own” your education system and institutions.  By own here, we mean that you are more than a “customer” of the system.  You are critical co-owners and co-workers in the system.  You have knowledge, skill and understanding and have experiences which can be key to understanding what we need to do to ensure that Canada continues to have one of the best systems in the world.  Engagement in decision-making is as important as engagement in the classroom.

The hope is that this blog challenges, inspires and provokes.  Don’t shoot the messenger.  

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[1] See http://hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2012/07/20/lets-talk-about-mooc-online-education-and-also-about-massively-outda#.UAw8bYYxHRy.scoopit

[2] See http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0013/001344/134422e.pdf

"And They are Off!" - The UK Election Race is Officially On!!

In just under 120 days there will be a general election in Great Britain. It will be a cliff hanger and the race to replace the current coalition government is on. It will get nasty, it will become bitter and it will be a spectacle to watch.

The key problem the electorate faces is that there are genuine choices. They can vote Conservative and get an uncertain future, but it is clear that that future involves austerity, privatization and the rich getting richer and more evenings watching the smug David Cameron getting smugger. They can vote Labour and for the least effective Labour leader since Michael Foot and get austerity, more commitment to public spending and confusion. They can vote for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and get the pub landlord Nigel Farage, a get tough on immigration and out of Europe policy and very little else. They can vote Liberal and support the ineffectual Nick Clegg and get confusion, sidestepping and populism but little substance. Or they can chose one of the other myriad of options – Green, Monster Raving Looney and, in Scotland, the Scottish National Party (and Plaid Cymru in Wales).

What will happen is that no one will win. It is likely that UKIP and/or the Scottish Nationalist Party will hold the balance of power in the Commons. There could either be a minority Government (probably conservative) or a coalition – David Cameron has refused to rule out another Liberal coalition or a coalition with UKIP.

If the Conservatives do retain control of the government agenda, then we can expect the more rapid privatization of schools, an in/out vote on Europe (“Should Britain stay as a full member of the European Union?” – Yes or No) and further austerity.

The battle lines will focus on the economy, the National Health Service, immigration and EU. While there will be lot of noise about other issues – climate change, roads and infrastructure, social security, debt, labour and the nanny state – the economy will drive this election.

The pollsters will have a tough time. Voting intentions will shift a lot during the next 120 days and the predictions will be off by 5% or more, which is the difference between the parties.

A lot will come down to personality. None are especially appealing – they are all career politicians except Nigel Farage, who doubles as an advert for British beer. The standard view is “none of the above, but if pushed…”. Milliband has not connected with voters, Cameron is a smooth talking toff supported by Osborne (another toff), Nick Clegg is a wimpish, skittish, untrustworthy toff and Nigel Farage is Enoch Powell reincarnated without the intellectual skills and vocabulary. Its not pretty. But it will be fascinating. Trust me.

COP20 in Lima -- All Over Except for the Shouting

As predicted, COP20 – the climate change talks in Lima, Peru – ended with an agreement which is both a “breakthrough” and which everyone dislikes. It asks UN member nations to volunteer information about their strategic intentions with respect to emissions reductions and encourages “rich” member nations to contribute to a fund to help alleviated the impacts of climate change in developing nations.

Here are the key elements of the “deal”:

• Nations may disclose and declare their intentions with respect to emissions reductions or may chose not to. It is entirely voluntary. The thinking is that the political pressure will be such that nations will feel obliged to declare their intention – this despite a survey showing that, in almost every country, climate change is not a major issue for voters. There is also no guarantee that the aggregate of these “intentions” (not commitments) will “save” the planet from warming above 2C (3.6F) from pre-industrial levels.
• Developed nations are encouraged to contribute to the UN Green Climate Fund established to help developing nations either reduce emissions, adapt to climate change or deal with “loss and damage”. Previously (in 2010 in Cancun at COP16), a commitment had been made to offer $100 billion annually by 2020. But this has gone nowhere (there is $10 billion in the fund, but some of it is multiyear funding). There is an understanding that there will be work done between now and the Paris talks in December 2015 on how the previous pledge can be “honoured”. But this is most problematic. For example, Japan committed and then spent $1 billion, but this was the costs of them building coal fired power plants in Indonesia. Coal fired power plants are significant CO2 emitters, even when the plants have “clean coal” technology.

This is the achievement after two weeks, many hours of negotiations and discussion with close to 10,000 attending. Included among these are close to 4,000 government officials, a small group of whom negotiate the text of a deal.  What they ended up doing was kicking the ball down the road to May 2015 in preliminary work for the COP21 in Paris. There are some key issues left to deal with:

• The legal status of any commitments made in Paris – the Paris deal will replace Kyoto, which was legally binding for those who signed up (not that this had any significance). 
• The analysis and aggregation of targets set by nations within a “global budget for CO2” to ensure that the targets will not lead to CO2 enabling warming above 2C.
• The mechanism or mechanisms for funding developing nations through the Green Climate Fund and the size of the contribution of each of the contributing nations.

 That is, all the things they tried to settle in COP1-20 but didn’t. Gone is talk of the world not using fossil fuels after 2050. Gone is talk of legally binding agreements. Gone is talk of global governance mechanisms (including a Court of Justice for Reparations). Gone is talk of a global tax on carbon and market mechanisms for carbon offsets. Gone is, well most of the things which many have said are needed to respond to the climate change narrative.

Should we be concerned at the “smoke and mirrors” of these COP events? If you believe the climate change = man made disaster narrative, you might want to think about how this narrative is working for you. If you believe, as a growing number of climate scientists actually do, that almost all of the changes in climate we can now see are within the realm of natural variation, with man’s contribution being low to next to nothing, then we should be focused not on emissions reduction (which are a good thing), but on adaptation.

To suggest, as most developing nations do, that extreme weather events are a result of “man made climate change” and therefore “reparations” must be made by those who emit CO2 (the industrialized nations), is a claim that is not well supported in science. It’s the narrative some like to use, but it is not that scientific. The incidence and severity of extreme weather has not increased. There is little evidence that dangerous weather-related events will occur more often in the future. The U.N.’s own Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says in its Special Report on Extreme Weather (2012) that there is “an absence of an attributable climate change signal” in trends in extreme weather losses to date.  Such events do occur and have consequences, so nations need to prepare for them. But I am not sure why floods in Pakistan or Philippines require “reparations” when in fact what they require is “preparations”.

The fundamental challenge for negotiators is to face up to some hard truths and not to select some science which supports some ideological position. The science is much more uncertain and evolving than Ban Ki Moon, Al Gore or David Suzuki would have you believe. Even the much touted 2C threshold is problematic. Writing about this, Professor Judith Curry (a highly respected and credible climate scientist) suggests that the emphasis on the 2C constitutes “oversimplification of both the problem and solution in context of a consensus to power approach, plus failure to actually clarify the meaning of ‘dangerous climate change.”  She is building on an important contribution to this debate by Oliver Geden. Geden points out that this 2C is not a “set in stone” scientific threshold – it is not a scientific imperative. But it has become one. This is what happens to science – it becomes part of a narrative that cannot then be revised (too many reputations are built around the narrative), even though it was never intended to be used in such a “touchstone” and imperious way. So the idea that we base a “new world order” on science is not in fact what is happening here: the proposal is to base a new global agreement on a story, some of which has some connection (but weak) to science…that may shed a different light on all the talk at COP20 and all the talk to come between now and COP21.

Alberta is Lima Bound: Let's Talk Climate Change at COP20

As the Alberta delegations joins other Canadians at the annual green festival of talk known as the Conference of the Parties (COP) – this time in Lima, Peru – they arrive just in time to watch the talks fall apart. China has rejected some of the language and the terms of the draft agreement as has India. The less developed countries are upset at the focus on mitigation and the lack of a binding agreement. All are upset with Canada just for producing oil from the oil sands. It will not be a pretty sight.

The Alberta Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Resource Development, Hon. Kyle Fawcett, has much he can talk about. Alberta has CO2 regulations and taxes – at $15 a ton for high polluters, Alberta’s CO2 emissions tax is more than twice as high as the current European Trading Scheme price of around $6.83 (the recent high). Alberta’s regional land use planning is based on some of the most progressive land use legislation in the world and Alberta’s forest industry is amongst the most green third party certified forest stewards in the world. None of this will matter to the serious green lobby. They are not interest in evidence, only in stopping oil sands production.

That they are no interested in evidence is clear from the lack of attention to actual data about warming (it isn’t and hasn’t for 18 years and 2 months according to satellite data), about sea level rise (it isn’t), extreme weather events (not connected to climate change according to the UN’s own climate change experts) or other factors at play in determining climate variability (they only look at CO2). The delegates have adopted a narrative which is now independent of the evidence available and does not change, whatever the evidence says. This is one reason the talks are bound to fail. They are driven by a “story” not by science and that “story” is becoming incredible (more accurately UN-credible).

The second reason the talks will fail – remember this is the 20^th attempt to reach agreement – is that the 190+ national negotiators are trading commitments from a base of different expectations and interests. India and China both want and need to sustain high levels of economic growth which require energy. The “green talkers” want this energy to be largely renewable, but this is light years away from being a viable option, except for nuclear (which most greens reject).  China and India want others to cut emissions but want to increase theirs.

The developing nations want compensation for the impact of climate change “caused by CO2”. This should be easy, since there is very little compelling evidence that the world is warming or that the cause ongoing climate change can be attributed solely to CO2. But this is not the narrative any of the green talkers accept. They are looking for big money - $100 billion. Occasionally, nations pledge their contributions but they rarely actually make the funds available. For example, at the recent meeting in Europe, $9 billion was pledged. This upsets the green talkers who want all of the funds available now.

Everyone seems to expect a voluntary agreement (as opposed to a legally binding agreement) to fail. This despite the fact that Kyoto – a legally binding agreement – also failed to cut emissions. The “best” the green talkers can expect is a voluntary, non-binding agreement  which some nations will not sign up to.  By the end of March next year, all countries are expected to announce the level of their efforts to cut carbon as part of the expected deal to be concluded in Paris in 2015. But there is no agreement on what should be included or excluded from these statements.

What will happen between now and Friday is that delegates will settle on a document which is really a hollow shell of a deal – everyone will walk away with different interpretations of what the document means and everyone will say it was a great success. Ban Ki Moon, Secretary General of the UN and UN climate chief Christiana Figueres will declare the document a “breakthrough” heralding a deal to be concluded in Paris and all will go home and celebrate Christmas or their appropriate holiday. Nothing of substance will then happen for some time.

In Paris, some kind of deal will be hobbled together. No one will be happy with it. The green talkers will say that it does little to “save the planet”, the skeptics on climate change and CO2 will say it does too much and governments will use it in whatever way suits their current, short term political purpose. Its all a lot of effort for very little discernible outcome. But then, this is really all politics and talk…its not about the climate or the environment or science..it hasn't been for some time. Its talk-talk.

A Jamboree in Lima - Climate Change GabFest Number 20

They are at it again. Around 10,000 public servants, climate activists and hangers on are in Lima for the 20^th Conference of the Parties (COP20) engaged in the UN’s doomed climate change agenda. The aim: to develop the draft of an agreement which will be signed off at COP21 in Paris next year.

There is a feeling among some that the game has changed. China and the US reached a climate change agreement in November which many are hailing as a “landmark” deal. In fact, it simply reiterates commitments previously made by both parties and changes nothing.

This agreement commits China to capping emissions in 2030 after it has deployed all of its planned coal fired power plants and when demographers predict China’s population growth will flatten or fall. The US promise is to cut emissions by 26% of 2005 levels by 2025 – long after Obama is gone from the Whitehouse and in a nation where Republican’s reject this deal. To cap it all (no pun intended), the deal between the US and China is not legally binding or enshrined in any treaty. It’s a political commitment – like closing Guantanamo or liberalizing Chinas film industry. Neither China or the US plans to tax carbon, but to take direct action – in China’s case, building nuclear power plants and in the US phasing out coal and replacing coal fired power plants with shale gas.

Aren’t we forgetting India in all of this? India’s population is set to outgrow that of China at some point around 2025. India is also seeking to move more and more of its population out of poverty and into the fast growing blue collar and middle class. To do so it needs economic growth of some 7-9% annually and to achieve this, it needs energy. Prime Minister Modi has made clear that he is no fan of emissions controls and carbon tax. Instead, he has reached agreements on nuclear power with the US and sees this as a renewable energy which will help reduce the reliance on fossil fuel power. India will pursue energy efficiency and seek to integrate renewables on the national energy grid.

The key challenge for COP20 is the lack of compelling data that demonstrate that the predictions made from the 70+ climate models are correct. While the talking-points emphasis has shifted from CO2 and warming to extreme weather events, even this is far fetched given the compelling scientific evidence that there is no established connection between such events and climate change (at least according the UN’s own scientific body, the IPCC). But we gave up on real science some time ago and started this COP process as a proxy for “serious” (sic) conversation.

There will be lots of hot air, with wind blowing in the sails of climate fearmongering and extreme scientific claims. But little else will be achieved. Remember COP15 in Copenhagen when we had “just days to save the planet”? Will this is largely the same group of people having the same conversation for no apparent reason. It needs to stop.

Troubled Water: Homeopathy, Ebola and the Oceans

Two incidents in the last ten days draw attention to the real problems with homeopathy.

The first is the claim by some that homeopathy can cure Ebola. Really.  It is claimed that, just as homeopathy can reverse HIV-AIDS, so it can be mobilized to find a cure for Ebola.  The Amma Resonance Healing Foundation in Ethiopia, established in the Netherlands, is run by the British homeopath Peter Chappell. He and his colleague Harry van der Zee claim their homeopathic remedy can reverse Aids and they are part of a group of homeopaths who seek to cure Ebola:

“The good news is that a small international team of experienced and heroic homeopaths have arrived in West Africa, and are currently on the ground working hard to examine patients, work out the “genus epidemicus,” and initiate clinical trials. This work is being done alongside the current conventional supportive measures and treatments already in place. “

This follows other claims about the power of homeopathy in offering cures for malaria, diphtheria, cholera and hepatitis as well as other diseases.  Homeopaths without Borders are on the ground and working – best of luck with this effort!

High-quality scientific studies show that homeopathy does not work for any particular medical condition. This position is even held by the National Center of Alternative and Complementary Medicine (NCCAM), an organization that has been given substantial criticism for being too friendly to quack treatments. Not only that, homeopathy is incompatible with core principles of chemistry and biology: the preparations are diluted to such a degree that there are, statistically speaking, no active molecule of the diluted substance whatsoever. In other words, treating Ebola virus disease with homeopathy is equivalent to treating it with water or sugar pills.

The second incident was the call to action by one of the leading homeopaths in the world to cure the ills of the oceans.  British homeopath Grace DaSilva-Hill has written to appeal to other homeopaths to drop some homeopathic remedies into the sea. She tells homeopaths that those not close to the sea can instead drop their remedies into a river. If even this is too challenging, then Grace advises homeopaths that they can flush their homeopathic remedies down the toilet. The remedy that is to be used today is called Leuticum – a homeopathic preparation of the syphilis bacterium. The aim of this exercise: to heal the oceans.

If these two examples do not demonstrate that homeopaths are not only very odd but dangerous, then I do not know what it will take to convince you that they are. There is overwhelming evidence that homeopathy is quackery. Why do we license it in Canada?

Redefining High School Success- Alberta School Trustees Get it Right

School Boards across Alberta have made it clear that they want change. Their first ask, by means of a resolution passed by the Alberta School Boards Association,  is for a change in the weighting of the High School Diploma exam so that teacher assessments count for 70% of the exam with the “standard” Provincial component being just 30%. Right now, it is 50%.

For some time, teacher assessments from Alberta schools have been used by a great many universities and colleges across Canada as the basis for offers of admission. This reflects the growing recognition that teacher assessments are far more reflective of what students know and can do than many standardized, high stakes tests. It also reflects the recognition of teachers as professionals.

Changing the weighting without changing the nature of the exam itself makes little sense. The next step in this conversation is to imagine a different way of formal assessment through the Provincial examination component. When was the last time you saw a multiple choice test truly assess knowledge, understanding, skills and abilities? Would you graduate a doctor who had completed a multiple choice test rather than being examined for their real-life skills, knowledge and understanding? Why would we do this for the equally important high school graduate?

All of this is a small, but important step, assuming that Minister Dirks agrees with the School Boards. Next we need a conversation about the assessment of the non-academic but equally important learning that students in higher schools have experienced. Their creativity, resilience, compassion, persistence, emotional intelligence are s important to their development, employability and long-term contribution to society as their academic results.

What is perhaps most interesting about this strong position from the School Boards is that they are directly engaged in the question: what should become of our schools and how do we rebuild trust in our teachers ? After the debacle of Jeff Johnson’s tenure as Minister of Education – the first Minister in the history of Alberta education to receive a vote of no confidence from the profession – the school boards seem to be reclaiming their role as stewards of their schools and shapers of educational policy.

This is a start of a longer, deeper conversation about public assurance and assessment. We have a choice to make between what might be thought of as a spider or a starfish approach to this issue. The spider approach sees schools trapped in a web of accountability set by a government agency (often in partnership with private interests, as is the case with Alberta’s decision to make extensive use of a student engagement instrument) so that schools report up and are eaten up by the reporting of their work. In contrast, the starfish approach sees schools and school districts as responsible for their own forms of public assurance, which best reflects local conditions, local resources and school development plans. Rather than reporting up, assurance becomes a focal point for innovation, improvement and change. Spiders webs are what we have, starfish is what we need to become.

The Government should pay attention – decisions made nearer to the student and by those with the responsibility for the schools in their jurisdictions are likely to better reflect reality than decisions made by one of the 650+ people working in the Ministry. Decisions about public assurance, assessment and accountability need to reflect not just the outputs of a school, but the social circumstances in which the school operates, its own adaptive processes and capacities and its outcomes. Rich assurance versus standardized accounting is what we need to ensure that Alberta’s education system remains one of the best in the world.

A teacher asked me recently why it was that teachers were being encouraged to individualize learning, to be responsive and imaginative teachers with highly engaged learners but were subject to standardized testing? It is as if the government is saying “lets be flexible, creative and responsive, but not so much!”

The Alberta School Boards are suggesting we recognize the professionalism and responsibility of teachers. So we should. We should also encourage innovation, imagination and creativity not just in how we teach and how students learn, but how we account for that learning. The changing of the weighting of the Diploma examination is a small step towards a more engaged school system.

School Accountability in Alberta - Fit for Purpose or in Need of Change

When Premier Redford committed to ending Provincial Achievement Testing and moving instead to a system of assessments for learning – assessments aimed at helping students, parents and teachers better understand where students were in their learning journey – no one other than the Fraser Institute appeared concerned. There were issues about how student learning assessments (SLA’s) would be undertaken, but these were seen as logistical and tactical rather than strategic. Later some, notably David Staples of the Edmonton Journal, suggested that the SLA’s were just another example of “fuzzy” education-think and not in the interests of the system – but this was after he had drummed up anxiety about Alberta’s maths education and the performance of our students on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

Jeff Johnson, sometime Minister of Education, managed to find a way of converting SLA’s into something they were never intended to be: a key part of the accountability system for Alberta. Rather than focusing on assessments for learning,  Alberta Education will use data from these assessments to develop assessments of learning as part of the emerging “new” accountability regime. Think carefully: something intended to primarily help teachers better understand where each child is in their learning journey has been hijacked to become something it was not intended to be: part of the accountability pillar.

Accountability is a contested space – just look at the issue in the United States or England. Governments seem to think that testing students often improves accountability, yet the compelling evidence suggests that all this does is weaken the focus on learning and drive education more and more to a focus on getting students to jump through hurdles which have no real subsequent value or meaning to them in terms of social wellbeing, career or a life-long commitment to learning.

Perhaps the strongest example of what testing does to “screw up” education and learning can be seen in China. Yong Zhao provides a compelling and masterful account of education in China in his book Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Dragon? Why China Has the Best (and Worst) Education System in the World. He describes how China manipulates assessment activities and how such activities are embedded in the system of rote learning that dominates the elite education system, which is all that PISA assessed.  He also notes that China has “a well-designed and continuously perfected machine that effectively and efficiently transmits a narrow band of predetermined content and cultivates prescribed skills…. and, because it is the only path to social mobility, people follow it eagerly”. Diane Ravitch reviews this book extensively in the New York Review of Books and compares developments in China to those in the US – developments that should worry is all.

Trying to rethink accountability is a tough challenge. Marc Tucker of the US National Centre for Education and the Economy has outlined an approach to accountability which he thinks is new, at least for the US. He is seeking fewer, better quality testing moments in a student career (down from 12 to 3) and better use of big data and analytics to look at these data; a stronger focus on professional development and support for teachers with less time spent on administration and more on collaboration; and finally, a stronger focus on peer to peer accountability than top-down accountability.

In the UK, the role of OFSTED (school inspectors) is now being challenged by head teachers and others. Indeed, there is a recent call to scrap the “Spanish inquisition-like” inspections. Others have suggested that the focus for such inspections needs to change. In the UK such inspections together with assessments of learning form the basis of the accountability regime. So called “failing schools” – schools which do not meet inspection standards and where test results show persistently poor outcomes – can  be subject to “special measures” which can include the replacement of the management team, scrutiny of teaching, restructuring of the teaching team, change of status of the school and the replacement of governors.  

Here in Alberta a loose coalition is working on this same challenge – how can we shift our understanding of “accountability” away from testing so that the focus is more on improving student learning, school and professional development and community engagement? How can we develop a stronger sense of “assurance” for those who have students in school or are concerned about school performance that their schools are world-class and that students have strong skills in maths, literacy, science as well as a strong base in 21^st century skills? How can we ensure that teachers are able to assess students in such a way as to ensure that their teaching and learning strategies meet the learning needs of all students, not just some ? How can we develop a collaborative, reflective and strong professional commitment within each school so that all students attend a great school? These are the questions being explored. This loose network is known as the Forum for Public Assurance.

To help with this work, Dr Sam Sellar from the University of Queensland, will speak in Calgary and Edmonton on the 12^th and 13^th of November (Faculty Club at 5.30pm) about how we can make visible the work that schools do. Given our context and our challenges, this is both timely and opportune. Sam is an excellent speaker – he was here earlier in 2014 sharing his critique of PISA – and will raise challenging issues for us all to grapple with. You can register here for the Calgary event and here for the Edmonton event. Be there – it will be worth it.