New England Board of Higher Education » University of Massachusetts Boston

Add a Caption and Call It Accessible? Not so Fast!

John O. Harney — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:58:27 +0000

NEJHE on Models that Will Change Higher Ed Forever

MOOCs claim to make education accessible to everyone, but institutions offering MOOCs have yet to define best practices for accessible design. For many, universal design efforts end when course video material has been captioned. Captioning is important, but the idea that you can just caption course video and call a MOOC accessible belongs on the cutting-room floor.

Captioning instructional videos and providing access to long-form transcripts of video material are two important accommodations for learners who are deaf or have auditory impairments, but of equal importance, provide a universal design benefit to all learners. Reading is a key learning strategy for most of us, and access to written material presented in an uncluttered format proves essential for many learners with cognitive impairments. A MOOC that UMass Boston planned to launch on March 25 is designed within a tool that evaluates students’ learning strategies, then systematically delivers content customized to each student’s individual learning patterns.

This is a unique example of the attempt to provide high-level customization of instruction within MOOC design and is out of reach for most institutions. Yet we should all be working toward developing accessibility standards for MOOC instruction. That effort will require paying attention to advice from universal design specialists. I’m blessed to have such a colleague in my work world. I am one member of a team of instructional designers and technologists working in the online program of the College of Advancing and Professional Studies at UMass Boston. Recently, the Academic Technology Coordinator from the UMB Ross Center for Disability Services, Valerie Claire Haven, introduced me to the technique for transliterating visuals, included in course video content, into analogous auditory information. The technique is called “descriptive captioning.” I believe it should become a standard practice in MOOC universal design.

It’s easy to remain unaware of important accessibility strategies like descriptive captioning because universal design techniques keep evolving. As course designers, we find most new accessibility strategies so straightforward, once we catch on to the central ideas, we often don’t bother to spread the word; we just assume we were the only one who didn’t get it. In the case of descriptive captioning—audio annotation of graphical material—it shouldn’t have taken my colleague, Valerie, several days to get me up to speed. A year ago Valerie and I presented at a conference in Las Vegas and one evening we attended a showing of Blue Man Group. I’d seen the Boston show several times, but Valerie had never been. As it happens, Valerie is blind.

Anyone who has seen Blue Man knows it is a very visually oriented show, with lots of sight gags, such as the scenes involving marshmallow throwing and the gyrating of Hostess Twinkies. As I often do when with Valerie, I began to provide her with a running narrative of what I was seeing, not aware of how challenging (and exciting) that process would be. As she often does, Valerie began providing me with insights picked up from what she was hearing and otherwise sensing and cued me to things I always had missed in the show. We were seated among a group of non-native speakers of English, who soon became engaged in listening to Valerie’s observations of the show and to my descriptive captioning of the visuals. At first, Valerie and I were whispering to one another, but the people around us kept leaning forward to hear our dialogue so we eventually just talked throughout the show in normal (albeit quiet) voices. I think the foreign visitors sitting around us understood the performance better because of the dialogue Valerie and I had shared. I certainly learned incredible new things about Blue Man that evening.

This experience should have taught me the value of descriptive captioning. Somehow though, I didn’t take the lesson to heart. Since no one had put a name to the technique nor shown me examples of description captioning, I imagined (as most do) that traditional captioning by itself counts as comprehensive universal design. Now I’ve left that idea on the cutting-room floor, though, thanks again to Valerie. She recently consulted to the UMass Boston MOOC production team I’m leading. As a result, we’ve adopted the complimentary technique of descriptive captioning to accompany traditional captioning. In any video segments of our MOOCs that include visuals not overtly clear from the narrative, we’ll be adding descriptive captions to allow full understanding of context for learners who are blind or visually impaired.

Valerie suggests a free course on descriptive captioning for persons who are visually impaired being offered by Fractured University. One of her favorite examples of descriptive captioning was produced by TheDOITCenter. Instructional videos detailing description techniques can also be viewed at WGBH’s National Center for Accessible Media.

At UMass Boston, I am lucky to have constant access to expert advice on universal design. I get sound advice even when I don’t know the questions to ask. But MOOC designers without this advantage need to make special efforts to seek the guidance of accessibility specialists, so we can make good on our claim that MOOCs make education accessible to everyone.

Alan Girelli is director of the Center for Innovation and Excellence in eLearning at the College of Advancing and Professional Studies, UMass Boston.

Bubble Wrap: Higher Education and the Value Gap

John O. Harney — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 12:16:54 +0000

A recent report by the College Board might be an indicator of how fast the sands of higher education are shifting. The prices that most people actually pay for college, which had remained stable for several years, are on the rise again, as tuition and other cost increases outpace financial aid awards.

In its latest annual survey, the College Board reports that after rising swiftly since the 1980s, these "net prices" began to level off in the past decade and actually dropped a little during the recession, before climbing again.

Concern is rising that this year’s increases in what students really pay at four-year colleges could be a sign of things to come—and might intensify what many already feel about the value proposition of an undergraduate degree.

Rising rates of student loan debt (up 15% since 2007) and decreases in reported household incomes (down 11% since 2007) could conspire to cause a drop in college enrollments. Although official numbers have not yet been published, state-by-state enrollments appear to be down.

Some suggest colleges will price themselves out of the market as tuition and fees rise a good deal more than the rate of inflation. The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities has announced that its members raised fees an average of 3.9% for 2012-13, almost double the 2% increase in the U.S. Consumer Price Index. Public higher education tuition and fees have risen even more—up close to 5%, about 3% after adjusting for inflation on average from last year.

Others are concerned about the rate of return on the college investment. According to The Institute for College Access and Success, two-thirds of the national college class of 2011 finished school with loan debt, and those who borrowed walked off the graduation stage owing on average $26,600—up about 5% from the previous class.

Does a value gap exist? In considering the return on investment of a college education existing data suggest that it does. Companion surveys conducted by The Chronicle of Higher Education and the Pew Research Center in 2011 reported that 80% of the general population thinks that education at many colleges isn’t worth the price.

Reflecting the dilemma many are experiencing, consider the recent New Yorker cartoon depicting a student in his advisor’s office, explaining “I’m looking for a career that won’t be obsolete before my student loan is paid off."

With tuition and fees relentlessly increasing, student loan debt climbing and unemployment receding at a glacial pace, the numbers may not add up for most of this year's college graduates. The number of recent graduates in the job market grew to around 1.5 million in 2011, and the time to complete a degree is also increasing. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), many college students are not completing college in six years—let alone four. NCES found that nearly two of every three students who started college did not graduate from that same college in four years, and more than 40% did not graduate in six. Accordingly, the U.S. has the highest college dropout rate in the industrialized world.

Moreover, research shows that even a college degree no longer guarantees a good job.

Assessing the cost and the value

So, here is where we stand today. The annual price tag for a college credential has risen dramatically with no sign of slowing down. The cost of college rose 440% between 1982 and 2007, compared to the cost of living rising by 106%, and family income growing 147% during the same period.

Accompanying all of this is a looming student loan bubble with student debt burdens amounting to $110 billion borrowed last year.

And just when the need for career preparation is becoming more obvious, the cost obstacle is growing dramatically. Consider the following:

• Growing numbers of college students are ending up in relatively low-paying jobs traditionally held by persons with modest levels of educational attainment, or, worse, are becoming unemployed.

• A recent study by the Federal Reserve reports that 27% of the 37 million student-loan borrowers in the U.S. are delinquent on their loans.

• America’s student loan burden is poised to hit $1 trillion this year, according to FinAid.org and Fastweb.com (note: in 2000, student debt was $200 billion).

• Student debt is piling up so quickly, it now outpaces credit card debt growth.

With most institutions hiking tuition, traditional universities under attack on many fronts, and state and federal support in flux, some observers question the worth of a degree.

There is a growing recognition that something is not quite right—that the focus on a college degree may in fact be an outmoded concept—not serving the needs of all citizens in a knowledge-based economy. There are many roads to an educated life, and higher education institutions may be the perfect incubators for non-degree credentialing and expanded learning options.

Next: Credentialing

Philip DiSalvio is dean of University College at University of Massachusetts Boston.

Pardon the Disruption … Innovation Changes How We Think About Higher Education

John O. Harney — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 11:57:24 +0000

The first online course from MITx titled 6.002x: Circuits and Electronics, offered earlier this year, had more students than the entire number of living students who have graduated from the university. Indeed, that number is not far from the total of all the students enrolled there since the 19th century.

MIT reports that 155,000 people registered for MITx 6.002x and of those, approximately 23,000 tried the first problem set, 9,000 passed the midterm, and 7,157 passed the course as a whole. According to MITx: "… if the number is looked at in absolute terms, it had as many students as might take the course in 40 years at MIT.”

These statistics illustrate the landscape-changing potential of this "disruptive innovation" taking place on the shores of the Charles River. Learning technologies now being used in the massive open online course (MOOC) movement, some suggest, will change the way we think about higher education. MOOCs are based on an open-networked learning pedagogy where participants are typically distributed and course materials are dispersed across the web.

The new generation of MOOCs offered by MIT and Harvard (edX), are free to anyone with Internet access, feature interactive technology, open admissions, and provide the ability to teach tens of thousands of students at once. MIT/Harvard edX contends that these courses are as rigorous as their campus counterparts and offer exceptional instruction with the best of technology–including online interactive learning, automated assessment, and a credential of mastery for individuals successfully completing the courses.

"We've crossed the tipping point," says Anant Agarwal, president of edX, the worldwide online learning initiative of MIT and Harvard University. Agarwal anticipates that the courses being launched in the autumn of 2012 will have at least a half-million students—and probably many more.

Ultimately, students from more than 160 countries registered for 6.002x. The majority of the traffic on the MITx site came from the U.S., India and the United Kingdom. The countries that followed these top three were Colombia, Spain, Pakistan, Canada, Brazil, Greece and Mexico.

Truly worldwide in scope, MITx reported that a 15-year-old from Mongolia received a perfect score on the final exam - an achievement that should not be diminished. According to Agarwal "... the Mongolian teen shared that distinction with only 300 students enrolled in the 6002x course."

Embracing the fast-moving changes

Popularized by Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School, "disruptive innovation” is described as change, usually technological, that causes upheaval of an entire industry sector.

Indeed, some observe that what we are seeing at edX and other similar ventures (e.g., Coursera, Udacity, etc.) may be the catalyst that will displace established ways of thinking about the role of higher education institutions—and as some observers posit—move us from an instruction paradigm to a learning paradigm where instead of colleges existing to provide instruction, colleges will have to exist as institutions that produce learning.

By leveraging the vast resources available via the Internet and by using the technology available today through the use of multimedia, instructional design, automated assessment and web-based faculty-student interactive strategies, the classroom experience is being re-created and high-quality learning is now available to those individuals who might not otherwise have access or the financial wherewithal – here and around the world.

An unsustainable business model?

Those who say that MOOCs have the potential to undermine the finances of colleges and universities refer to the destabilization of the newspaper business brought about by the Internet and disruption of the fixed-line telephony business brought about by cellular phone technology.

Questions arise that challenge the status quo. If students can access high-quality academic material for little or no cost, will higher education institutions be obliged to prove the value of their institutions’ educational experience? If the content of university courses are freely available and a click-away, especially from institutions such as MIT or Harvard where individuals can learn from world-renowned scholars and scientists, what exactly are students paying for?

Some make cogent arguments about the value of the traditional college experience, but at a time when many higher education institutions are dealing with protests over soaring tuition and student debt, rising costs and shrinking budgets, questions about value are becoming increasingly relevant.

Industry upheaval as seen through the lens of financial viability is becoming more apparent. In the U.S. News & World Report's 2010 college rankings edition, the authors write that the existing structure invites aggressive new forms of competition. "If colleges were businesses, they would be ripe for hostile takeovers, complete with serious cost-cutting and painful reorganizations." They further observe that questions such as “Is the consumer getting the product we promised? What do you actually learn here?” will be increasingly asked.

Foreshadowing change are questions about the unsustainable business model of the university. A recent Bain study of more than 1,700 colleges and universities shows that one-third of all colleges are on an “unsustainable path.” This study also shows that an additional 28% are” … at risk of slipping into an unsustainable condition.” Similarly, debt taken on by colleges has risen 88% since 2001.

As higher education institutions move toward opening up their digital campuses worldwide, other converging forces are accelerating the transformation of the American higher education landscape—and it’s happening at light speed.

Next: The Value Gap in Higher Education

Philip DiSalvio is dean of University College at University of Massachusetts Boston.

Native Tribal Scholars: Building an Academic Community

John O. Harney — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:54:43 +0000

When I first started as interim director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies (INENAS) based at the University of Massachusetts Boston, I was given three studies that broadly identified specific needs and disparities of Native people in the region. These studies looked at demographic data provided by the U.S. Census, tribes and surveys of regional tribes and Native American nonprofits. The findings were clear, and, for me—a Native American from the Eastern seaboard—no surprise. With a few exceptions, most Native communities and individuals lagged behind the general population in terms of educational attainment, economic status and health. In plain language, self-identified Native people in New England are less likely to have college degrees and more likely to hold lower-paying jobs, live shorter lives and suffer from more chronic diseases such as diabetes than their non-Native neighbors.

Given that I was at an institution of higher education, my immediate thought was to do what I could to build collaborations with tribes to help our Native college students. However, when I looked at what resources are most robust at UMass Boston, and at some of the greatest needs among the Native population, focusing on pre-college students made more sense. Although no study existed specifically looking at the educational needs of Native youth in Massachusetts, the data available from public sources confirmed the need for a pre-collegiate program designed to meet the needs of Native students. Some of these statistics for 2005 through 2008:

The percentage of Native adults with bachelor’s degrees or higher is extremely low—21% compared of adults age 25 or older in Barnstable County, compared with 34% of all county residents in that age group, and 18% for adults age 25 or older in Suffolk County, compared with 32% of all adults in that age group countywide.
Nearly a quarter (22.5%) of Barnstable County and a third (31%) of Suffolk County Native Americans have less than a 12^th grade education, according to Census 2000 data, the most recent available by county.
Over the past three years, more than a quarter of Native students (28%) in the Mashpee (Mass.) Public School District failed to graduate from high school on time; of these, 14.7% dropped out, compared with 9.9% of Mashpee students generally who did not complete high school, according to the Massachusetts Department of Education.
Fully half (50.2%) of Native students did not graduate with their ninth-grade cohort in Boston Public Schools (BPS), andf over a quarter (27.8%) dropped out of school, compared with 41% of BPS students generally who did not graduate with their ninth-grade cohort and 20.4% who dropped out.

Additionally, many Native students lack academic role models, access to support that address their specific needs and culturally relevant coursework.

After we identified what we thought we could do (and a potential funding source), I reached out to the local Native communities whom I thought would be most interested and also had access to the largest numbers of Native students in Massachusetts. These communities, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe (MWT) and the urban Indian community in the Greater Boston area, represented by the North American Indian Center of Boston (NAICOB), became formal partners with Academic Support Services at UMass Boston and INENAS in developing the proposal. Submitted by the MWT in 2010, the eligible entity in our partnership, Native Tribal Scholars (NTS) was funded for approximately $1.2 million over four years by the Office of Indian Education in the U.S. Department of Education. Then, the real work began.

Working as a collaboration has benefits—and challenges. Developing job descriptions, forming search committees, conducting interviews and then hiring requires more flexibility and commitment when multiple organizational cultures, geography and deadlines are in play. However, the bonus is that there is greater buy-in from the partners if they are engaged in all major aspects of making the project work. Together, MWT, NAICOB and UMass Boston selected administrative, instructional and residential staff, recruited kids and directly engaged with the program.

Given the serious need for the program, our goals are ambitious. Through the residential and academic year components, the Native Scholars Program will significantly improve the achievement levels of Native students participating in the program. Our goal is to serve 60 students annually (counting both academic year and residential programs). We expect that at least 90% of participants will successfully complete a rigorous high school program of study and at least 95% will graduate with their ninth-grade cohort—a significantly higher rate than of Native students in Mashpee (72%) and in the BPS (50%). We also expect that 80% of NSP graduates will enroll in postsecondary education after high school, and 80% of them will attain a bachelor’s degree; targets which, again, are significantly higher than the rates currently attained by Native students—only 63% of Native Americans in Massachusetts planned to go to college. While data on the college graduation rates of Native students are not available, the rate for BPS students is 35.5%

As we close out our first year, we served 40 students through our summer residential program, surpassing our plan to serve 30 in the summer. The 40 residential program students participated in a six-week intensive residential program with Native-focused classes and workshops in language arts, math, science, public speaking, tribal sovereignty, media/film and Native culture. The youths took part also in a weekly college and career planning workshop designed for Native American students. Our program participants range from grades 8 to 11 and were from the Mohawk, MicMac, Cherokee, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag tribes. Our staff included Snohomish, Innuit, Wampanoag, Nipmuc, Chickasaw and Lumbee teachers, tutors, residential advisors and film production consultants. The students engaged in various field trips designed to connect them to their cultural heritage, including a walking tour of Plymouth and kayaking on Lake Cochituate. The program culminated in a Family Day event to showcase the students’ learning and to encourage their parents and the community to actively support the young people’s academic goals.

Due to the federal and academic calendar conflicts (school year starts in September, award notifications in October, with no ability to access funds until November) and challenges in recruiting staff, we were not able to start our academic year program planned for October/November 2010. Now, with our first summer and all its lessons behind us, we are well-poised to begin our first academic year. We are recruiting tutors, additional students, and will be holding monthly academic and cultural workshops and trips, and provide participants with tutoring and academic advising services. Additionally, we will provide training for personnel at the students’ schools on how best to meet the unique academic and social needs of Native youth. Our academic year began with our students participating in the construction of a fish weir on Thompson Island.

Achieving our ambitious goals of increasing the students’ preparation for college will be measurable upon their high school graduation, most specifically, whether they attend and successfully graduate from baccalaureate programs. We already know some short-term goals were met. Youth from varied tribal backgrounds met and significantly interacted with one another in both academic and cultural contexts. Some of our youth had Native teachers and other academic role models for the first time. Many, according to their parents, demonstrated increased maturity as a result of the residential experience. Many developed new friendships and connection with other Native youth, which in some cases, was their first experience taking classes with other Native students.

Stronger connections between university programs and the Native community were clearly formed. UMass Boston staff served as class and workshop instructors. Native community members played an active role in opening and closing ceremonies, cultural workshops and presentations.

At the Georges Island Native Heritage Festival, where the Native Tribal Scholars served as hosts, dancers and drummers, as well as part of the clean-up detail, family and community members came out from the tribes to support their youth (made possible by the National Parks Service and Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation). Many of the adult Native performers at the festival referenced the importance of the positive youth engagement in this event and in this type of program. It was clear that Native Tribal Scholars is now viewed as an important community resource by many Massachusetts Native people and they are invested in its success. We look forward to continuing this relationship for many years to come.

J. Cedric Woods is director of the Institute for New England Native American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

MassBay CC Gets its Largest-Ever Grant; New Program Aims to Boost Haiti Partnership

Shoshana Akins — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 16:40:26 +0000

MassBay Community College was awarded a five-year, $2 million grant under the U.S. Department of Education's Strengthening Institutions Program, which aims to help campuses serve lower-income students by enhancing academic quality, institutional management and fiscal stability.

The Wellesley, Mass. college also won approval of a three-year Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) grant from the Education Department for a collaborative with the University of Massachusetts Boston to help develop teacher education and study abroad between Massachusetts and Haiti.

The Haitian-American president of MassBay, Carole M. Berotte Joseph, recently traveled to Haiti for a meeting of the Haitian Higher Education Consortium. Watch NEJHE for more on the consortium's work.

Private Sector Stimulated, While State and Local Govt. Jobs Stall

John O. Harney — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 18:51:41 +0000

The U.S. economy added 882,000 jobs in the first six months of 2010, and 593,000 of them were in the private sector, according to the "Economic Snapshot" for July 2010 authored by Christian Weller, senior fellow at the D.C.-based Center for American Progress and associate professor of Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

The report attributes some of the private job growth to federal stimulus spending, but warns that state and local government employment has declined for the past four months.

By June, the economy had 7.5 million fewer jobs than at the start of the recession in December 2007. The unemployment rate was 9.5%, but 15.4% among African-Americans and 12.4% among Hispanics. Youth unemployment stood at 25.7%. The unemployment rate for people without a high school diploma wast 14.1%, compared with 10.8% for those with a high school diploma and 4.4% for those with a college degree.

Moreover, in June 2010, 6.8 million people had been looking for a job for 27 weeks or more.

Role of Unions in UMass Boston Project Becomes Issue in Gov’s Race

Shoshana Akins — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 18:13:45 +0000

A Massachusetts board's decision to use only union labor in a $750 million renovation at the University of Massachusetts Boston has become a hot issue on the state's campaign for governor.

The University of Massachusetts Building Authority voted 9 to 2 to approve use of a Project Labor Agreement, a contract under which companies bidding on state projects pledge to use union workers and the workers promise not to strike.

Republican candidate Charles D. Baker, who hopes to unseat Democrat Gov. Deval Patrick, said in a statement that the decision will cost UMass Boston up to $10 million.

Patrick’s labor secretary, Joanne Goldstein, told the Boston Globe that union safety and training standards, along with a no-strike promise, make such agreements more efficient.