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Note: Education Futures is on winter break and will return on January 7.

2007 has been a banner year for Education Futures, with expansions in the range of content and participation. First and foremost, I would like to thank the guest bloggers and other contributors that shared their thoughts and expertise this year: Cristóbal Cobo described the need for adaptive learners in the future of education; Brock Dubbels discussed games in the classroom; Arthur Harkins shared his thoughts on leapfrogging; Jayson Richardson explored the role of ICT for development; and, Jeffrey Schulz reflected on his experiences as a virtual teacher. More guest bloggers will join in 2008, starting with Ai Takeuchi, who will provide futures-oriented perspectives on educational innovations from Japan.

As we close this year, here is a short list of the most popular blog postings from 2007 (as determined by Google Analytics):

1. Brock Dubbels’ contributed an excellent series on the use of games in the classroom:

• Part One
• Part Two
• Part Three
• Part Four
• Part Five
• Part Six
• Part Seven

2. We identified trends in education and resources for education futurists:

• Top ten ways U.S. education is failing to produce creatives
• Top ten global trends that focus us to rethink education
• A quick poll on 21^st century education in relation to the New Paradigm of knowledge production

3. Resources for education futurists:

• Top ten resources for education futurists
• Are you future proof?

4. We also focused on m-learning, the use of mobile devices in education. Several devices were reviewed that have potential to transform education today:

• Two Chinese m-learning devices, the Noah NP890+ and the Ozing V99
• How the Nokia N800 might impact education

5. Non education- or futures-related posts:

• How to integrate Wordpress sidebar widgets into the Leia theme
• Questions regarding the safety of SafeAssign (which seem to be resolved)

I just received this response from Max Lytvyn at MyDropBox:

I’m sorry for the delayed response. I met with the development team regarding the issue you mentioned. It turned out this was a known issue since this past fall, and we had a fix ready. The fix was not deployed not to introduce any changes to the system during the peak usage time. Now, that the peak season is over, we deployed the fix and the exploit no longer exists.

Unfortunately, the flaw is still present and active. Max has been informed. More soon…

..:: Update: December 15, 2007

After I provided Max a link to an example of the flaw (without expiring links), he wrote back:

The link that you provided is from a different product (MyDropBox individual, which is completely different from MyDropBox 2.0 provided to ALL institutional clients). This product has permanent links to reports, as these links are delivered to users via email, and thus should not expire. There is no fix for this particular version of the product at this point, but this product is used by less than 3% of our clients. We will develop a fix for it before the beginning of the next semester.

I’ve found a second critical security flaw with anti-plagiarism software.  This time, it’s with MyDropBox, and the problem is arguably more severe.  Again, private student data and student work are being made available to third parties. I’ve reported the problem to MyDropBox, and will provide more details on this after I hear back from them.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a discussion paper, “British Universities in China: The Reality Beyond the Rhetoric,” published this month by Agora, a British organization focused on higher education. Paul Mooney writes in the Chronicle:

Ian Gow, an expert on Asia and former provost of the University of Nottingham at Ningbo, China, expresses similar skepticism toward dealing with that nation. British universities “must stop pussyfooting around this aggressively ambitious country,” he writes.

“Make no mistake: China wants to be the leading power in higher education, and it will extract what it can from the U.K.,” writes Mr. Gow, who now heads the business school at the University of the West of England.

Mr. Gow also describes the challenges of working in China, including finding high-quality staff members, the lack of “enabling regulatory frameworks” for joint ventures with foreign institutions, and partners that are constantly changing their terms.

I have no doubt that China wants to become the preeminent global power in education in 2050. They have the will and the investment capital to build fine institutions. I have doubts that they will achieve it, however. Their strategy to import technologies and ideas from abroad is somewhat flawed. Rather than piggybacking on ideas generated elsewhere, should they not instead leapfrog the competition to create knowledge spaces that are both indigenous and world-class in quality?

Perhaps non-Chinese universities need to assert themselves better and renegotiate their terms of cooperation with Chinese institutions. But, does this need to be a priority? If China is in a state of continuous catch-up with their foreign competition, what harm is there in collaboration?

Here are my slides from the Mexico 2030 conference on building LeapFrog campuses:

USC’s Lloyd Armstrong posted a link to a draft article for New Directions in Higher Education (2007, Wiley Periodicals) where he argues that globalization has had a small effect on higher education. In his blog, he writes:

But why has higher education responded so slowly to the opportunities and challenges of globalization? I argue that the major reason has been the place-based nature of our history, and consequently, of our missions. There are also constraints in the way of change, which include the reality that at present, US higher education has been dominant in the competition for international students and faculty; that the constituencies that support higher education are not open to a greatly changed role; and that government in the US has not addressed the question of what it expects of higher education in a rapidly globalizing world.

Sure. If you’re thinking of globalization as internationalization, there hasn’t been much change. If you’re thinking of internationalization as study abroad or as attracting more foreign students, creating branch campuses, etc., you’re not going to see much change, either.

There are far more dimensions to globalization than just “internationalization,” and far more dimensions to internationalization than study abroad. A globalized institution attends toward developing a chaordic balance between dichotomies of the local and the global, the real and the virtual, the periphery and core, and its interdependence among and with various actors.

This also means that a globalized university, inherently, is more creative –and its levels of creativity need not operate at administrative levels. Globalizing activities may occur at institutional, departmental, and individual levels within universities. If Armstrong is looking for macro-level signs of globalization, he will ultimately fail.

Breaking away from 20th century paradigms, Armstrong needs to explore how globalization also extends beyond the development of institutional “brands.” Global universities harness the opportunities provided by the interdependencies and dichotomies of globalization. An example of a globalizing activity is the upcoming (”version 2.0″) knowledge co-seminar/open seminar organized between the University of Minnesota and FLACSO-Mexico with linked classes at FLACSO-Ecuador, FLACSO-Chile, and the Technical University of Loja –and with additional participants from the Open University of Catalunya and SRI International. Such projects typically fall under the radar if you’re looking for macro-level signs of globalization or internationalization.

Perhaps the question Armstrong ought to ask is, how do we identify creative, global activities among our institutions?

I received this note regarding Future Scanner, located at memebox.com:

The Future Scanner is a community-powered resource that scours the web for the best future-focused content (predictions by experts, discoveries that will impact future events, product prototypes, industry forecasts, useful resources, etc.) and makes it accessible by future Year and Category. When users locate these types of cool links, they tag them accordingly and submit them as “scans” to the site via their personal accounts. As other users come across interesting scans and vote for the ones they like best, the links that receive the most votes appear on the front page of the Future Scanner. Individual users can also easily keep track of the scans they’ve submitted and voted for via their user accounts.

Looks like Digg for futurists, eh?

Here’s my presentation from this morning’s La Universidad en México en el año 2030: imaginando futuros conference at UNAM in Mexico City.

(Click here for the Spanish version.)

This paper introduces how the convergence of globalization, emergence of the knowledge society and accelerating change contribute to what might be best termed a New Paradigm of knowledge production in higher education. The New Paradigm reflects the emerging shifts in thought, beliefs, priorities and practice in regard to education in society. These new patterns of thought and belief are forming to harness and manage the chaos, indeterminacy, and complex relationships of the postmodern.
(Read more …)

Today’s Inside Higher Ed reports on a new book from the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching. In The Formation of Scholars: Rethinking Doctoral Education for the Twenty-First Century (Jossey-Bass), George Walker et al state the obvious: doctoral programs (and their purposive requirements) often are not understood by supervising professors and students. The purposive use of qualifying exams, the apprenticeship model, and dissertations must also be reformed, they argue.

From the article:

Efforts to assess the quality of what goes on in graduate education are minimal, the report says, and many professors aren’t excited about talking about these issues. “One finds attitudes of complacency (’Our application numbers are strong and so is our national ranking’), denial (’We don’t have problems with gender or ethnic diversity here’), and blame (’Students these days just aren’t willing to make the kinds of sacrifices we did to be successful.’),” the book says.

While many programs resist change, many doctoral students find themselves uncertain about expectations or the rationale for requirements that are consuming years of their lives, the book says. “The rationale for program requirements has often been lost in the mists of history: Students may not well understand why certain elements are required or toward what end, and faculty, if pushed, will acknowledge that there is no unified vision underpinning many of the experiences students are expected to undertake.”

The book’s recommendations are built on themes of scholarly integration, intellectual community, and stewardship. Read more at Inside Higher Ed…