Dive Brief:
- Blogger and “recovering academic” Audrey Watters spoke during the Future Trends Forum about a range of issues in higher education, including how venture capitalists come in with a lot of money to prop up “disruptions” but have little understanding of the way classrooms operate.
- Campus Technology reports that these entrepreneurs fund projects without an understanding of the history, and Watters says strategies that were tried and discarded years ago are getting a second chance because new people thinking they’re being innovative.
- On the topic of analytics, Watters accused institutions of collecting data without having key questions they want to answer and measuring simple clicks rather than true learning — and doing so without student consent.
Dive Insight:
The question of student privacy in data collection is a concern on many campuses that are experimenting with additional analytics. Many of these programs are collecting data to better give students the supports they need to be successful and complete their programs, but they face criticism nonetheless. At Ivy Tech in Indiana, Chief Technology Officer Lige Hensley says conversations about privacy happen in every discussion of new initiatives, but, so far much of the data they need is already being collected. The initiative, then, is just a matter of parsing that data for useful trends that can help students or run the organization more efficiently.
When it comes to educational technology investments, 2015 was a record year, meaning the whims of venture capitalists will certainly impact the product marketplace. Colleges and universities are the ones that buy the products, though, so it is in administrators’ power to keep the bad ideas off campus.