Aerial view of the planned 9/11 memorial on the site of the World Trade Center. (photo from 9/11 Memorial website)

It has been a decade since the unprecedented terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.  Despite the time that has passed, our memories of that day remain fresh and raw.  More than 3,000 lives were lost in the attacks at New York City and the Pentagon as terrorist hijackers flew two planes into the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon.  More than 400 firefighters, police officers, and other first responders lost their lives responding to the tragedies in New York and Washington.  Thanks to the brave actions of the passengers of United Flight 93, countless more lives were saved.  All 45 people aboard that flight were killed as a brave few attacked the hijackers, forcing the plane down in a field in rural Pennsylvania.  Had the hijackers completed their mission with an attack from Flight 93 on any strategic location in Washington, the total death toll would have been higher.

Less than a month later, the US military mobilized to Afghanistan to rout out the Taliban regime which had provided safe harbor to the terrorist mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden.  Within a few years of entering Afghanistan, the US military also began mobilizing to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. 

Approximately three-quarters of APUS’ student body have served as active military personnel and have been directly involved in these missions.  Some of them made the ultimate sacrifice in these two theaters of action.  To date, more than 6,000 American military personnel have lost their lives in Iraq or Afghanistan since those wars began.  Each of us owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to the first responders who risked their lives to assist those trapped in the rubble in New York City and at the Pentagon, to our men and women in uniform, and to the many people who work diligently to identify and avert future attacks.  I encourage everyone to take a moment to reflect on the lives lost on that fateful September day and to commemorate and honor those who have continued to risk their lives to protect our nation and its citizens. 

Two months to the day after the attacks, President Bush said, “’Time is passing.  Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th.  We will remember every rescuer who died in honor.  We will remember every family that lives in grief.  We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.’”  These words are as accurate today as they were ten years ago.  Even as we near completion of an official memorial to victims in New York, celebrate the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the capture and execution of Saddam Hussein, and the death of Osama bin Laden earlier this year at the hands of US special forces, we will always remember that day, the tragedy it brought to our entire nation, and those who have given their lives since to ensure that the freedoms on which this nation was established remain intact for future generations. 

In honor of this weekend, Story Corps preserves some of the voices of those affected by 9/11.

On July 21st, the APUS Sustainability Committee hosted its First Annual Sustainability Summit.  Since September 2007 when I signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment (ACUPCC), the APUS Sustainability Committee has been working diligently to find ways to reduce the school’s carbon footprint. 

The event was an opportunity to share ideas for promoting sustainability within higher education and within the communities in which college campuses are situated.  The audience included members of the Jefferson County Commission, representatives of the Jefferson County Planning Commission, the Mayor and other officials from Ranson, WV, the President of Shepherd University, Dr. Suzanne Shipley, and other higher ed representatives from APUS and West Virginia University (WVU), and various representatives of the building and development industry.

Rather than provide a few introductory remarks, I chose to provide the audience with a history of the acquisition, renovation, and construction of the buildings comprising APUS’ Charles Town, WV campus as well as some of the other green initiatives implemented by the Sustainability Committee since 2007 (click here to see my presentation).  I explained that our pathway to green construction occurred over time as we could see the demonstrated benefit to the community, our employees, and our energy consumption.

Read the rest of this entry »

An article in the August issue of Wired magazine about the Khan Academy and how it is changing the rules of education prompted me to write.  Back in 2006 when my neighbor’s son was a middle school student at McDonogh School, I heard his mother describe how the math teachers at McDonogh had created math instructional videos for the students to use to grasp mathematical concepts.  The part that resonated with me was her statement that her son would review the videos from their home computer as many times as necessary to grasp the topic before submitting homework or taking exams.  Although I was a good math student in high school, I remembered the experience of learning new concepts where I would either see the teacher or another student after class in order to better comprehend the methodology for solving the question.  The videos being used by my neighbor’s son substituted for the after class or after school in person tutorials I used to seek out. 

Since APUS courses are offered wholly online with no time for face-to-face instruction, we developed a number of math instructional videos using Camtasia tablet software and embedded them in our classrooms to supplement the instructional materials.  Later, we decided to make our math videos available to everyone on our American Public University iTunesU site  and our APUS Youtube channel.  Comments to the individual videos, primarily in the form of thank you’s, demonstrate the usefulness and the need for technology like this.  More recently, we partnered with McDonogh School to establish a website, www.campusmath.com, to offer primarily math videos to the public for an elementary school through high school curriculum.  While I can’t speak on behalf of McDonogh School, I think that both of our institutions are aligned with the belief that math skills need to be improved and providing access to these videos to teachers, students, and parents may contribute to improved skills without providing the teachers and professors inside of a physical or electronic classroom.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I had the opportunity to present two papers at the Association for the Advancement of Technology in Education (AACE) EdMedia 2011 conference in Lisbon, Portugal.  One of the keynote speakers was Alec Couros who is Professor of Educational Technology and Media at the University of Regina.  Couros’ talk was fascinating for the insights into learning as it is evolving through the utilization of today’s rapidly changing technologies.  However, what particularly interested me was his description of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

In an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, I read about the eduMOOC 2011 being hosted by the University of Illinois at Springfield, but at the time of Professor Couros’ keynote address, the course had not started.  However, Couros stimulated my interest in MOOCs by inviting all 900 conference participants to register for a MOOC at his university entitled EC&I 831: Social Media and Education.  According to Couros, the MOOC is free unless you want to take it for academic credit AND the course is dependent upon having the non-credit-seeking students attend.  I attempted to register immediately for Couros’ course, but registrations are closed until August.

Meanwhile, I conducted a little research on MOOCs.  Probably some of the best information can be obtained from YouTube videos assembled by Dave Cormier and his associates at the University of Prince Edward Island.  In “What is a MOOC?,” Cormier argues that a MOOC is a response to a world with information overload.  It is a course with facilitators, materials, and participants.  It is “an event in which people who care about a topic get together to talk about it.”  Participants make connections between ideas, materials, and the facilitators and participants.  The course is part of a way of building learning by creating networks that enable the participants to increase their lifelong learning.  Cormier’s “Success in a MOOC” video provides five key points for participants in a MOOC to keep in mind.  My favorite is the last one, focus.  Given that the idea of the MOOC, according to Cormier, is to facilitate a learning network in a world with information overload, it seems that participating in a MOOC with as many as 3,000 participants might contribute to that overload without a specific focus by the participant.

Read the rest of this entry »

It has been a while since I have written about APUS’ green initiatives but after spending several days at the Education Innovation Summit at Arizona State University’s SkySong Center, I was inspired to provide an update.  ASU is a founding signer of the American College and University President’s Climate Commitment (ACUPCC) and the school’s President, Michael Crow, has made sustainability a priority for ASU.  The SkySong Center is a state-of-the-art mixed-use facility that has received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council.  In a previous article, I wrote (very favorably) about my thoughts on the Summit but while I was at SkySong Center, I also was reminded of the importance of higher education’s role in the sustainability movement.

APUS recently completed the newest addition to its Charles Town campus – a 44,000 square foot, state-of-the-art green building which is anticipated to receive LEED certification later this year.  The building features solar panels, low VOC paints and finishes, a reflective roof, a variable flow HVAC refrigerant system, and double hung windows designed to reflect ultraviolet rays, to name only a few of the elements that make the building green.  All furniture in the building was either made or purchased within 500 miles of the site and the building sits atop a restored Brownfields site.  To see more information about the specific elements of the building that make it green, take a look at the article published on the APUS Sustainability Committee blog when the ribbon cutting for the building was held.

As I think of the commitment to sustainability made by the now 677 signatories of the ACUPCC, I am proud that APUS is a charter member.  The initiatives are important if the member colleges and universities can call attention to the benefits of being environmentally conscious.

Read the rest of this entry »

I spent two days last week in Honolulu attending and presenting at the 2011 Hawaii International Conference on Education.   With me were Dr. Karan Powell, our Academic Dean and Dr. Phil Ice, our Director of Course Design, Development, and Metrics.  The three of us co-presented on four different topics, Optimizing Faculty Workload and Learning Effectiveness in Distance Education; Semantic Mapping of Learning Assets; Comprehensive Assessment of Student Retention in Online Learning Environments; and Using Data to Assess Learning Effectiveness, Student Retention and Institutional Productivity in Online Programs. With the exception of the last lecture that was designated a workshop, the format of the conference booked four different presentations in the same room for a 90-minute period.  Because of the format, we were able to attend and participate in multiple presentations other than ours without leaving the seminar room.

While our topics were organized under the headings of Distance Education and Technology in Education, they were not limited to higher education and thus, some of the presenters had topics that related to K-12, language training, and teacher training.  What amazed me about this year’s conference is that most of the presenters in our segments were from traditional educational institutions.  At APUS we embrace technology as it is the platform that serves as the foundation for our campus.  Because of that, we usually present at conferences with distance education or technology as the theme.  With themes of lectures at this conference ranging from training traditional college professors to build and teach in an online class, teaching fractions to fifth graders using a smartphone app, and using Twitter as a means of engaging students outside the traditional classroom, the other presenters represented a segment of educators that I have generally not seen at the more technical conferences.

Education is criticized for its slow rate of change.  While some of us have been utilizing technology to deliver instruction online for nearly 20 years, perhaps 2011 is the year we will look back and see a significant increase in the adoption of technology to enhance traditional K-12 and Higher Education instruction and learning.  In Disrupting Class, Clayton Christensen and his co-authors predict that 25 percent of high school classes will be online by 2014 and half by 2019.  Until this past week, I did not think that their prediction had a chance of being correct.  Today, I am much more optimistic.