Title: Are We Amusing Ourselves to Death?

1. Adult Student Recruitment and Retention
Conference – March 2011
Are We Amusing
Ourselves to Death?
With a tip of the cap to
Neil Postman

2. Barry Dahl dot com

4. Clicker Time
• Grab your clicker
• First, some
demographics.

5. Your Job at a College/University
1.Faculty 93%
2.Staff or
Administrator
3.Not at a college 6% 1%
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6. Gender & Life Experience
1. Female, < 40 yrs. 52%
2. Female, 40 + yrs. 33%
3. Male, < 40 yrs.
12%
4. Male, 40 + yrs. 3%
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7. Self-evaluation: Tech Savviness
1. Technophobe/ 74%
Newbie
2. Perfectly normal
3. Propeller-head/ 11%
15%
Gadget-geek
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8. Faculty Perspective
• For the next two clicker statements –
• Put on your faculty hat, regardless of
whether you actually have one

9. Entertaining Students is
NOT my Job
44% 1. Fact
56%
2. Whack

10. Engaging Students is
NOT my Job
8% 1. Fact
92%
2. Whack

11. Not this kind of entertainment

12. More like a Bridge Party

13. Who said this?
“Anyone who tries to make a
distinction between
education & entertainment
doesn't know the first thing
about either.”

14. and now this …….

15. Which of the following do you do?
62% 1. File income taxes online (e-file)
74% 2. Use online banking services
48% 3. Check email on 3 or more diff. accts
9% 4. Have an avatar in Second Life
12% 5. Were born in 1980 or AFTER
1% 6. None of the above

16. Choose each true statement
45% 1. You own an iPhone, Droid, Blackberry
48% 2. Prefer online news over newspapers
63% 3. You consider yourself to be creative
6% 4. You have more than 5 cloud documents
24% 5. You can define the term “Web 2.0”
6% 6. None of the above are true

17. What is Web 2.0?

18. Select each site where you
have an account.
82% 1. Facebook
26% 2. Twitter
62% 3. LinkedIn
16% 4. MySpace
25% 5. YouTube
15%
6. None of the above

19. The most wired are
185.71 Propeller-head/ Gadget-geek
148 Faculty
133.31 Team Scores
Female, < 40 yrs.
116.36 Male, 40 + yrs.
116.3 Staff or Administrator
110 Male, < 40 yrs.
109.93 Perfectly normal
106.95 Female, 40 + yrs.
78.44 Technophobe/
Newbie
60 Not at a college

20. There has been a large increase in the
use of Web 2.0 tools in higher ed.
65% 1. True
35%
2. False

21. Web 2.0 Users
Frankly my dear, most people just don’t give a damn

22. 1 million on Facebook

23. 1 million Haters on Facebook

24. < 1 million on Facebook

25. Who said this?
“I don't necessarily
agree with
everything I say.”

26. and now this …….

27. Speaking of
Twitter …….

28. Twitter is Stupid!!!
63% 1. Twue
37%
2. False

29. Twue Enough
100 Not at a college
100 Technophobe/
Newbie
Team Scores
67.44 Female, 40 + yrs.
63.64 Male, 40 + yrs.
61.9 Perfectly normal
61.04 Staff or Administrator
59.26 Female, < 40 yrs.
40 Faculty
33.33 Male, < 40 yrs.
30.77 Propeller-head/ Gadget-geek

30. Twitter makes me like people I’ve never met and Facebook
makes me hate people I know in real life. @shaylamaddox

31. Adult Students Enroll in Distance
Education (Online) Courses
Primarily Due to …
2% 1. cost savings
1% 2. learning style preferences
4% 3. distance from campus
93% 4. time flexibility

33. Why do Adult Students Not Persist?
• From the Maricopa CC System:
– 10% due to academic reasons such as
course too hard or too heavy a load.
– 65% due to life interruptions (includes the
normal things of family or job issues, illness,
etc. etc.)
Source: Ron Bleed, CIO of Maricopa CC
(retired)

34. Example of Life Interruption
PsychologyPsychology Psychology
12 Weeks
Invested,
Humanities
Humanities Humanities 12 Credits
Paid For,
No Credits
Earned,
Biology Biology Biology With Little
Incentive
To Return
History History History
4 weeks 8 weeks 12 weeks

35. Alternate Outcome
Psychology 12 Weeks
Invested,
12 Credits
Paid For,
Humanities 9 Credits
Earned,
With More
Incentive
Biology To Return
History - No
4 weeks 8 weeks 12 weeks

36. Flexible Learning Options

37. Adult Learners Tend To …
• Focus more on convenience and price
• Pay more often with personal money
• Place greater importance on technical help
• Find tutoring services to be more critical
• Be more satisfied with their online college
experiences
• Be more willing to accept “alternative
educational opportunities” … such as

38. StraighterLine

39. StraighterLine

40. StraighterLine Data
• 1) About 60% of courses started are successfully
completed.
• 2) Students spend about 45 days per course.
• 3) About 90% of students say they would
recommend the courses to their friends.
• 4) The cost per success and the cost per failure are
much lower than traditional offerings.
• 5) 20 colleges award credit for StraighterLine courses
directly. Hundreds more through the ACE Credit
Recommendation process.

41. and now this …….

42. Neil Postman
• Public Discourse
in the Age of
Show Business
• Published 1985
Prezi

43. Amusing Ourselves to Death
• Many of the
remarks he made
about television
can be made
today about
computers and
social networking

44. My Take on Postman
• Web 1.0 was just another one-way
distraction device, very TV-like.
• However, Web 2.0 goes beyond
amusement by bringing people
together and encouraging creativity.

45. Legit Questions
• Is online learning a serious
endeavor, or just a dumbing down of
education?
• Is the use of emerging technologies
just an attempt to be more cool?
• Where’s the beef?

46. Hard Questions
• Shortly after Postman’s
death, Web 2.0 started
to develop and began
feeding what Huxley
called “man’s almost
infinite appetite for
distractions.”

47. Hard Questions
• What is happening to
deep reading?
• Do hypertext sidetracks
add or subtract from our
learning?
• How do we develop the
proper discipline on the
net to not be so easily
distracted?

48. and now this …….

49. Is this Innovation or Insanity?
Culture, Gender, and Identity – taught with World of Warcraft
CC Flickr photo by
glenn.batuyong

50. Take Your Pick
72% 1. Innovation
28% 2. Insanity

51. Who said insanity?
55.56 Technophobe/Neo-Luddite
55 Team Scores
Male, 40 years or more
54.29 Propeller-head/Gadget-geek
51.61 Administrator
45 Staff
44.44 Not at a college
44.19 Faculty
44.19 Female, 40 years or more
42.86 Female, less than 40 years
40.63 Male, less than 40 years

52. Is this Innovation or Insanity?
History of Rock-n-Roll Music course – taught with Guitar Hero
CC Flickr photo
By 5th Ape

53. Who said this?
“All media exist to invest
our lives with artificial
perceptions and
arbitrary values.”

54. and now this …….

55. Some people are great multi-taskers

56. No! Multi-tasking is a Myth
• Great Book
• Brain Rules,
by Dr. John
Medina

57. Who said this?
“We shape our tools
and afterwards our
tools shape us.”

58. and now this …….

59. DIY U
• Anya Kamenetz
• Edupunks,
Edupreneurs, and
the Coming
Transformation of
Higher Education

60. DIY U – Ch. 1 - History
• Single biggest recipient benefactor
of federal financial aid is
______________
• University of Phoenix
• Does it seem odd that a private, for-
profit university gets the most
public funds?

61. and now this …….

62. Who said this?
“We look at the present
through a rear-view
mirror. We march
backwards into the
future.”

63. Who said this?
“The medium is
the message”

64. Marshall McLuhan

65. Higher Ed Moves Slowly